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Senators returned to Capitol Hill this week, and as the conservative Washington Times reported on Tuesday, one Republican member came back with a new idea.
Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio is filing legislation Tuesday that bars the federal government from imposing mask mandates on transit systems or in schools. Mr. Vance, a Republican, is introducing the Freedom to Breathe Act as a handful of businesses and schools reimpose mask rules because of a surge in COVID-19 cases.
I more or less assumed that Vance would unveil the bill; it’d be referred to committee; the Ohio Republican would use it for a fundraising appeal and some Fox News appearances; and at that point the “Freedom to Breathe Act” would quietly fade away. But that’s not quite what happened.
Instead, Vance brought his measure to the floor yesterday and tried to pass it by way of unanimous consent. There didn’t appear to be any great need for his bill — there are no federal mask requirements, and no federal officials have raised the specter of imposing new mandates — but the GOP senator seemed eager to advance his proposal.
“We cannot return to the failed policies of the Covid pandemic,” Vance argued. “Let’s learn from the mistakes we made instead of just doubling down on them.”
It was an odd statement. For one thing, there’s no credible reason to believe mask requirements constituted “failed policies.” On the contrary, they likely helped slow the spread of a dangerous contagion. For another, no one is “doubling down” on federal mask mandates that don’t exist.
With this in mind, the Freedom to Breathe Act did not fare well: Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts balked, denying Vance the unanimous support he needed.
“This bill would undermine the ability of states, cities, towns across this country to make decisions about what’s best for their communities,” Markey explained. “It would silence and hamstring public health experts who have guided our nation out of the darkest days of the pandemic that has killed 1,139,000 people in our country in three years.”
The debate unfolded along predictable lines, except for one specific point that Vance brought up on the Senate floor, which is probably worth dwelling on.
“We are about to have some serious respiratory problems — we always do in the fall — and maybe it will be worse this fall and this winter than before,” Vance argued. He added that while he has three kids under the age of seven, “they need us to not be Chicken Little about every single respiratory pandemic and problem that confronts this country.”
Call me alarmist if you must, but I tend to take “respiratory pandemics” rather seriously. If the spread of dangerous contagions can be reduced with routine mask requirements during “respiratory pandemics,” that’s not hysteria, it’s just responsible public health policy.
The Ohio Republican added that the proper way to deal with public health emergencies is with “strategic thinking.” I suppose that’s true. But isn’t relying on masks a rather obvious example of strategic thinking?