Anderson Herald Bulletin
It’s 2025 and a deadly, highly contagious virus is sweeping the nation, causing acute respiratory failure.
The virus is airborne, meaning every breath drawn could kill you, and every exhalation could kill a family member, friend or complete stranger.
Thousands are dying weekly as disinformation and misinformation about the new pandemic proliferates on social media. Fooled by self-styled experts, many Americans come to believe that wearing a mask will do more harm than good.
The federal government is strongly encouraging face masks to be worn but cannot establish a mandate. Its hands are tied by a law passed in 2023 that forbids such a measure.
So Americans continue to die by the thousands.
As all of us COVID pandemic survivors know, the first part of this scenario is far from outlandish. It not only could happen, but did happen in 2020 and 2021.
The difference between the COVID pandemic and our 2025 scenario? The federal government had the power in 2020-21 to impose mask mandates.
If U.S. Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana gets his way, that power will be stripped in the near future.
Braun is among four Republican lawmakers who’ve introduced a bill that would prohibit federal officials from issuing mask mandates for domestic flights, public transit and schools. The bill would also prevent related institutions from refusing to serve people who decline to wear a mask.
“We’re not going to go back to the top-down government overreach we saw during COVID,” Braun said. “Congress needs to say forcefully that these ineffective, unscientific mask mandates are not coming back in any way, shape or form.”
While Braun sees mask mandates as a violation of individual rights, he would handcuff the government’s power to slow the spread of a lethal airborne virus. Essentially, he would choose the right not to wear a mask over the right to not be needlessly exposed to a deadly disease.
Braun, of course, is a multi-millionaire businessman who sees the issue from a commercial perspective. He doesn’t want to see the economy stagnate because of mask mandates or forced closings.
No one wants to see that. But it might be necessary to help slow the spread of a deadly disease.
Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, recognizes the obvious: The federal government must reserve the right to take public health measures, including mask mandates, in the case of a pandemic.
“This bill is little more than an attempt … to dismantle a public health infrastructure that had to be built in order to deal with this greatest of pandemics since 1918,” he said.
“Millions of Americans will be doing (in the event of another pandemic) what we can to protect ourselves and our loved ones, and our communities must be able to take steps to save lives and keep people from getting sick, or getting sicker.”
Hopefully, commonsense lawmakers such as Markey will prevail in the effort to defeat Braun’s knee-jerk, shortsighted legislation.
Otherwise, the federal government would be needlessly limited it its efforts to stanch the spread of the next pandemic, whenever it should strike.
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