Don’t want to wear a Mask? Sign here: The Maskhole Contract

Why call it the Maskhole Contract?

Mask resisters have torn a hole in America’s (and Brazil’s) COVID resistance. Failure to plug this hole could have fatal economic as well as medical consequences for many, mask wearers and the mask averse alike. Legal mandates alone will not plug this epidemiological maskhole. Maskhole is not just a metaphor.

Maskhole Demography: Who are the maskholes?

Survey research in the US and the UK has shown that right wing political views highly correlate with mask resistance, especially among men , with mask-wearing viewed as a shameful sign of weakness and “not cool” (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/shameful-not-cool-a-sign-of-weakness-men-are-less-likely-to-wear-face-masks-to-protect-against-coronavirus-study-finds-2020-05-14, https://psyarxiv.com/tg7vz ).

Just last week Trump supporter David J. Harris Jr, wearing a “Keep America Great” hat, held up an American Airlines flight because he refused to cover his face. Harris, who live-streamed the episode on Instagram (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/02/opinions/masks-whining-protesters-trump-obeidallah/index.html).

Former Republican presidential candidate and founder of Godfather Pizza, Herman Cain, skipped John Lewis’ funeral to attend his own after mask-free attendance at Dr. Trump’s Tulsa rally (https://extranewsfeed.com/herman-cain-skips-john-lewis-funeral-to-attend-his-own-70a685d3aebb). The virus made his immune system an offer it couldn’t refuse.

Maskholes Abroad

The UK version of mask-aversion shows Americans are not alone in defending mask-free liberty: “One Conservative MP, Desmond Swayne, called face masks “a monstrous imposition”….Anti-maskers often refer to the cloth coverings as “face nappies” .(FT, 7/25/20, Henry Mance).

Mask mandates raise mask-wearing compliance rate among men by about 1/3, insufficient to lower infection rates. Dr. Trump’s medical advice shifting from hydroxi-pill popping to mask wearing should make a difference, but not enough. We need a better way.

The Masked Deep State

Many Americans view a mask mandate as the gateway to a tyrannical police state:

The mere suggestion that they contravene Dr. Trump’s medical advice and rely on a mask instead of hydroxichloroquine and Lysol for protection from COVID has met with vehement, and sometimes lethal, violent resistance (Example:https://www.newsbreak.com/michigan/flint/news/1559187850763/michigan-store-security-guard-shot-dead-allegedly-after-altercation-with-customer-over-face-mask).

Former high level Trump administration officials have concurred. Former Trump deputy assistant and Fox News host, Sebastian Gorka, called masks “COVID burqas”, when one of his callers labeled them “Democrat Islamo-Maoist masks that their dictators demand”. Gorka defined mask-wearing as “an act of submission, and, as I said to that lady, clearly a Democrat voter in the post office who said, ‘Where’s your mask?’ I said, ‘My body my choice.’” Appointed to head the government’s Voice of America radio and to the board of the National Security Education Program , the mask mandate resisters are poised to acquire a global platform through Gorka.

Give me maskless liberty or I’ll give you…..

These freedom loving pro-my body, my choice Americans (female reproductive systems excepted) assert their God-given constitutional right to be mask-free in a Walmart, or a little general store on the North Carolina coast. Polite requests by the store’s $10/hour 63 year old asthmatic clerk framed to customers like they were “doing us this big favor” (“Would you please consider wearing a mask?” “May we offer you a free mask?” “We sure do appreciate your cooperation.”), were met with:

“You’re infringing on my rights. This is a free country, and I’m here to shop, so who’s going to stop me?” and “F — — masks. F — — you.” and

a guy who took his T-shirt off and put it over his mouth so I could see his whole stomach. “There. A mask. Are you happy?” and

“How do you like your muzzle?” “Is this going to become sharia law?” “Are you prepping us to wear burqas?” “What’s next? Mind control?”

The local sheriff said on Facebook he didn’t want to be the “mask police”. Should essential frontline workers have to negotiate with the security and infection risks posed by the masked culture war? The maskholes are the immovable object standing in the way of an irresistible force, a virus that hasn’t read the US constitution.

To end the mask standoff, which has led to incidents like this:

Man Arrested For Allegedly Breaking Jaw Of 72-Year-Old Veteran In Mask Dispute https://www.huffpost.com/entry/washington-veteran-assault-mask-dispute_n_5f30c9b6c5b6b9cff7f3be5e ,

we clearly need to bring mask wearers and mask haters around to some sort of accommodation.

This nobody wins culture war demands a practical workaround in the spirit of practical, can-do American ingenuity. The maskholes who insist on their constitutional right to counter the COVID pandemic by dropping hydroxi, like Drs. Trump and Bolsonaro, should be free to exercise their constitutional right to get infected, while taking responsibility for those they infect. As the Carolina sheriff said, enforcement alone won’t work. So let’s reach into the deep well of Americans’ sense of fair play and agree on a fair, incentive-based contract with the maskholes that preserves their 2nd amendment right to open carry firearms to defend their right not to bear COVID burqas, the first step toward an Islamo-Maoist Sharia Law subversion of Americans’ constitutional rights.

The “Fair and Balanced” Maskhole Contract

To strike a blow for mandate-free masking, liberty and free choice, the conservative belief in personal responsibility and good old American rugged individualism, I propose this simple, practical contract with America’s maskholes:

1. In the interest of personal responsibility for their choice, the unmasked shall agree to waive all rights to government-financed healthcare. They should have no issue with waiving their Obamacare, VA or Medicare benefits from the reviled and tyrannical Deep State. To enter any commercial establishment unmasked, the maskhole need only exhibit the signed waiver.
2. Maskholes who don’t accept “No mask, no entry” in stores, bars and restaurants shall sign a lien on their personal assets to guarantee payment for the healthcare costs of store personnel and other consumers they infect. This is a fair epidemiological performance bond. Contact tracing, store receipts and CCTV data that confirm a symptomatic COVID patient was in contact with the Maskhole shortly before symptoms appeared, shall be deemed sufficient proof of Maskhole liability for the healthcare costs of the patients who caught COVID from the Maskhole’s exercise of his or her constitutional right to engage in business mask-free. If contact tracing and CCTV data show the COVID patient was in contact with multiple maskhole signatories to said contract prior to symptoms’ appearance in the patient, the contract mandates that all said maskholes share liability for the patient’s healthcare costs.
3. Insurance: Obamacare-hating maskholes get their repeal wish. Under the contract the maskhole’s insurance company shall have the right to deem masklessness an uninsured pre-existing condition. Insurance companies shall have the right to deny coverage for COVID healthcare costs to maskholes. Maskhole lovers of deregulation and free markets should welcome this without objection.
4. To guarantee that the bearer of the Maskhole contract is indeed the signatory the bearer shall verify his identity with the same government photo ID that guarantees his or her voter registration. Defenders of strict voter ID laws to prevent the voter fraud that prevented Trump from winning the 2016 election’s popular vote, should heartily endorse this contract ID verification clause.
5. In signing the contract, the Maskhole shall acquire the right to enter any commercial establishment without challenge by said establishment’s personnel. Upon entry the Maskhole signatory to said contract shall still be subject to the establishment’s social distancing rules.
6. This contract applies only to mask mandates and no other COVID-related government or company policies. In signing this contract, the maskhole signatory acquires no other exemptions from COVID-related mandates.
7. Maskhole signatories to the contract grant a first lien on their personal assets to those whose COVID infections can be traced back to them through contact tracing and cell phone data.
8. Such first lien on the personal assets of maskhole signatories granted to those infected by the signatory to the contract supersedes prior last will and testaments signatories may have previously signed.

Through insurance and inheritance clauses 7 and 8 implement elegantly symmetrical fair play. For example, if an essential worker contracts COVID and then passes to the next world through contact with a mask-averse maskhole, the victim has an automatic contractual health and life insurance policy granted by the maskhole. The maskhole’s assets pass through the hole in the maskhole’s unworn mask that the maskhole has chosen to cut in the fabric of the COVID patient’s life through infection.

Clauses 7 and 8 guarantee that superspreader maskhole events like the Sturgis, South Dakota bikers’ rally could raise billions to fund COVID patients’ care through asset transfer candidates such as this one:

One biker who need not sign the Maskhole Contract:

This cartoon sums up how the Maskhole Contract combines freedom with basic fairness by legally binding the maskhole biker to personally pay for the guy in the sidecar:

Revisions Welcome

This is merely the first, work in progress draft of a final agreement designed to arrive at a truce in the mask wearer-maskhole culture war. After both sides sign, Trump can claim credit for liberating Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia from tyrannical Deep State mask mandates. Retail workers hiding behind their COVID burqas will rest easy knowing their job description no longer includes acting as public health enforcers, but instead includes the right to foreclose on the Maskholes’ assets if they catch COVID from one of them. Liberty, choice and justice for all, which is the American Way.

Of course, anyone who wishes to suggest additional clauses to this contract is welcome to comment.