Wear the damn mask

      As even the governors of Texas and Arizona have shown, the wearing of masks is both important to control the coronavirus and a significant marker in the Culture wars.   Neither Abbot in Texas or Ducey in Arizona was on the mask bandwagon last week, but huge upticks in new covid 19 cases in both states has obviously convinced both men of the efficacy of compulsory mask wearing.
      We are now in uncharted territory with the pandemic.   With a daily count of new cases lurching above 50,000 per day, it seems the experts predictions of a resurgence of the virus if states emerged from lockdown without a strategy is being confirmed daily.   Nowhere in the country is there a robust contact tracing and isolation program.   Unfortunately, in some cases where contact tracing was tried, people who were know to be at large gatherings refused to admit they were and further refused to tell tracers who else they had interacted with.   Lacking this information effectively ended the program's usefulness.
      Thank to the president's* intransigence on the whole coronavirus issue, many of his supporters continue to treat the pandemic as a "hoax" at least until they or a loved one is hospitalized or dies from complications of the virus.   As long as tRump refrains from wearing a mask and continues to plan mass rallies of his faithful followers, there will be no consensus on how to fight the disease.   Meanwhile we are rapidly becoming an international pariah as our deaths from the virus spirals above 130,000.
     Wear the damn mask Mr. president* and either lead the fight or get out of the way and let a competent person do it.