Morgan Godfery: Masking up is about protecting our most vulnerable

Wednesday, 7 September 2022

A N95 mask and a surgical mask. Good quality masks, including N95s, can measurably reduce transmission, studies have shown.

Morgan Godfery is a senior lecturer in the department of marketing at the University of Otago. He has a background in journalism and public policy, including as a parliamentary staffer with the Labour Party. He is a regular opinion contributor to Stuff.

OPINION: In the near future historians of the 2020s might mark December 2021 as the end of New Zealand’s world-leading elimination strategy.

For almost two years the country had held Covid-19 at the border, buying precious time for scientists to develop vaccines and for the health system to roll them out.

As Auckland academic Peter Davis points out, thousands of lives were saved, and the economy was more or less open for business as other countries cycled in and out of half-hearted restrictions. But that dream run, as it were, came to an end in December 2021.

The old alert level system had run its race and the Government implemented the traffic light system. Public health authorities, businesses, and individuals would focus their energy on containing the virus, not eliminating it.

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For the last nine months the country has been at either the red or orange setting. But in the coming weeks, as a combination of vaccination and prior infection fortify the general population (for now), the Government is indicating we may shift into the green setting.

Auckland GP Dr Sandhya Ramanathan demonstrates how to fit an N95 mask, and three hacks to make surgical masks fit better. (First published in January 2022)

In practical terms that means the modest protections remaining in place – principally masking – will go.

That would come as a relief to the people who find masking, at best, a hassle and, at worst, an attack on their freedom to, well, not wear a mask.

I’m neither here nor there on masking up. I’ve had three doses of the vaccine and a prior infection, meaning my risk of contracting a serious bout of the virus is relatively low.

But the trouble with that line of thinking is it understands masking as a “restriction” on my personal choices. Yet masking wasn’t necessarily meant as a limit on the freedom to go about wearing or not wearing what you like. Masking is meant as a protection – and as a protection for others.

Good quality masks, from N95s to P2s, can measurably reduce transmission between people.

For people in a similar situation to me – with three doses and a prior infection – we could conceivably calculate that the minor inconvenience of masking outweighs the risk of a serious breakthrough (ie new) infection. But for a significant number of other people this isn’t a calculation they can make. For the elderly, immunocompromised, and disabled communities masking is a significant and effective protection.

But if people who are broadly healthy decide to abandon masks for mere personal convenience then the protection available to those communities – the elderly, immunocompromised, and disabled – declines.

Masking works best on a universal basis. If an entire room is masked up the chances of spreading an infection are low. But the more people remove their masks, the higher the risk becomes.

This is why, as mask compliance falls, a large number of immunocompromised and disabled people are recalculating the risk that they can tolerate and, as one friend of mine who is chronically ill said, deciding to forgo any social or public events.

This is why I oppose removing the requirement to mask up in public places. I’d rather not wear a mask, but my personal convenience is far less important than the freedom of elderly, immunocompromised, and disabled people to go about their public lives with a degree of safety against a coronavirus infection. This is a question of accessibility.

If wearing a mask means places like the supermarket or the doctor’s surgery are more accessible to vulnerable people then we should - out of courtesy, decency, and an ethic of care for others - wear a mask.

None of this is meant as an argument that masking eliminates all risk. But it does reduce risk, making public places better accessible to the communities whose risk tolerance is lower. None of this is meant as an argument against mask exemptions either. If you legitimately need a mask exemption, you should get one, and people shouldn’t pry or judge too harshly.

But this isn’t about individual cases – whether it’s a person with a legitimate mask exemption or just a diva who doesn’t like wearing a mask. The argument for masking is about protecting groups of the most vulnerable people.

Disabled people have a right to live a public life. They have a right to participate in society. At this stage of the pandemic, where the elimination strategy is history, and we focus on containment, one of the few protections the broadly healthy can give is to mask up in indoor and public environments. No-one is demanding that you wear a mask to bed or undertake other silly symbolic actions.

Instead, the demand is that we think of other people whose choices are more constrained than our own. Business leaders are insisting on a return to normality, and the Government might give them their wish. But if “normality” excludes certain communities from society, then “normal” isn’t worth returning to.