On July 7, 2020, NBC News reported that Arizona had a record
number of cases (105,094) and of deaths (1,927), with a four percent daily
increase in reported cases. Also, coronavirus hospitalizations and related
ventilators being used were also at record highs. A reporter with MSNBC stated,
“Arizona is in crisis.” On the previous day, on MSNBC television, that same
reporter had said, “Arizona is in free fall,” in that the number of cases was
rising so fast. It had taken three months for the first 50,000 cases and only
23 days for the next 50,000. Observing that people were not wearing masks in
downtown Scottsdale, he reported that “Arizona is out of control.” People there
were not taking precautions, and the local and state authorities were not on
top of the crisis. On June 22, 2020, a physician with the University of
Arizona-Phoenix interviewed on The 11th Hour show on MSNBC asserted
that the Arizonans who were saying, “No one is going to order me to wear a
mask,” were being selfish because refusing to wear a mask, say on a bus or in a
store or restaurant/bar puts other lives at risk. Also a salient ingredient of
the crisis in Arizona was the anti-science contingent of the population. In an
interview at the time, Alan Alda (of the TV show, MASH) pointed to “pockets of
people who still think science is just another opinion” as having a mindset
that “puts us all in danger.”[1]
The rigors of scientific experiment, such as the use of control groups and
random selection, render science closer to knowledge than are mere opinions
based on ideology and a person’s own experience. Privileging one’s own ideology
and experiences counts as self-embellishing, and perhaps even self-idolatry.
Such people are not likely to accept knowledge that contradicts their
respective opinions and experience. Living in Phoenix at the time, I had
encountered a lot of anti-intellectualism and incompetence along with refusals
to enforce virus-deterring policies and even laws. Just one year earlier,
Arizona’s education system through High School (K-12) had been rated as 49 out of the 50 States. Combined with an ideology in which companies and individual residents should (which implies can) self-police themselves on physical-distancing and wearing face masks indoors in public and on public transportation, the recipe is for a greater need for respirators.
To be sure, Arizona got to the place of crisis in part
because the governor had lifted the stay-at-home order and opened businesses on
May 14, 2020. His choice was in line with the wishes of U.S. President Trump,
who wanted a more productive U.S. economy that would facilitate the president’s
re-election in the coming November. The spike in new cases began in Arizona
after the governor allowed non-essential businesses, including bars,
restaurants, and gyms, to reopen. Pressure from President Trump and a shared
pro-business political ideology were likely factors in the Republican governor’s
decision. Meanwhile, Arizona had more than its share of political ideologues who believed that business policy or a public law mandating physical distancing and mask-wearing were tyrannical overreaches even though government has a duty to keep its people safe.
Does mandating the use of masks indoors in public constitute tyranny? Is God against public health? Are certain political ideologies blind to the health and safety of a people? Can what is generally viewed as outlandish in most democratic societies be mainstream, and thus virtually unchecked, in one particular society?
However, other salient factors leading to the crisis in Arizona
as of early July are worthy of being mentioned. Such factors include the
refusal of Arizonans overwhelmingly to maintain a physical distance from other
people while in public—especially indoors, such as at retailers including
grocery stores, department stores, and bars. Even before mid-May, when Arizona had
been on lock-down, grocery store employees got away with regularly ignoring the
store policies and state law on physical-distancing because neither the store
managers nor public authorities (e.g., the local police, county Environmental
Services dept, city government) would see that the policy or law was enforced. Store
managers of two grocery chains blatantly told me that they were not enforcing
their own physical-distancing policies and thus the state law. Even on July 9,
2020, when the state’s hospitals were nearing capacity from the virus, I was
stunned at a Sprouts store to see neither customers nor employees paying any
attention to the store’s own regularly-announced physical-distancing policy.
From a business standpoint, refusing to follow or enforce a store policy goes
beyond incompetence and sheer foolishness; fecklessness, I submit, was also in
the mix.
Wearing masks indoors when in public became a local law in
Phoenix in late June, 2020. A few days before July 4, 2020, I went to
Target, a retail department-store chain, to return an item. As I entered the
store, I saw a sign indicating that masks must be wore as per the local law.
Inside the store, I asked the assistant manager helping me with the return what
is done to customers who ignore the policy and law. “Oh, we can’t enforce
that,” she said matter-of-factly.
On the evening of July 4, I
(stupidly) went to a bar/restaurant called Half-Moon Sports Grill for a burger.
As I approached the establishment, I heard a group of customers leaving the “restaurant”
wonder aloud, “No one in there is wearing a mask.” Yet I went inside anyway,
though to an isolated table from which I could see the horse-shoe bar where
neither masks were being worn nor physical distancing was being enforced (e.g.
by spacing out the seating). The store’s policy violated the law on both
counts.
The seats had not been spaced out along the bar. Perhaps the manager was spaced out? Many people sitting at the bar and at the tables near me were not eating anything. Even actual drinking was sparse. The customers "nursing" their drinks could have removed masks to take periodic gulps or sips, as the case may be.
Indeed, the governor had recently closed bars (and gyms) because they
had been hotspots for transmission of the contagion. A waitress told me that
masks were not required when people were sitting. The law, however, stated at the
time that masks need not be worn while mouths are being used to eat or drink. The manager of Half Moon must have assumed
that anytime a customer is seated, he or she must be eating or drinking. This
is not what I saw, and during a crisis wouldn’t it just make sense to err on
the side of caution in interpreting the local law? I was especially shocked
when the waitress came up to my table twice without wearing a mask; she had
been walking without wearing a mask and she had apparently decided that
physical distancing does not apply to herself.
So the next day, I gave the local police a tip. On a Sunday
afternoon, the cops would go to the bar/restaurant to see if any violations
were occurring. I offered to send the videotape I had shot inside the
establishment, but the Phoenix police refused. So the matter being corrected
depended on whether the bar was busy enough on a Sunday afternoon to show a
violation. No one would ever guess that the matter was urgent and important; it
was as if the police were oblivious to the unfolding health crisis. The police
had obviously not been paying attention when the governor had only weeks early
stated in a news conference that businesses refusing to enforce local and state
measures would be dealt with. Instead, the police followed their typical
minimalist enforcement routine. A minimalist mentality has no place during a
crisis, except, it seems, in Arizona.
The local transit authority, Metro Valley Transit, already
had a sordid reputation for enabling bus drivers who were hostile to paying
customers and drove badly. In early July, the company showed just how incompetent
it was by having signs and a company voice (phone) message indicating that
masks were required on the buses and yet Oliver, a supervisor of the
customer-service department, told me that because some passengers cannot wear
masks for medical purposes (i.e., there were exceptions), the company was only
recommending that masks be worn. That a requirement would be treated as
optional because exceptions exist
demonstrates gross managerial incompetence. Such incompetence (and
narrow-minded rigidity) is apparently inert even to a societal crisis (e.g.,
sky-rocketing numbers of coronavirus cases). That is to say, more was involved
than ignorance.
Masks being worn improperly, or "minimalist," quickly became popular in the Phoenix metro on the buses, with drivers looking the other way. In the photo just above, the driver had even contorted his mirror so as to see the passengers, and yet he did not even ask the passenger pictured to wear a mask in spite of there being a "Mask Are Required" ungrammatical sign facing the entry door. This is ironic, given the driver's intent to be able to watch as many passengers as possible. The pleasure of power seized at in weakness issues out in control, yet interestingly here without holding passengers accountable.
On July 10, 2020, I was fortunate on my morning commute to be on a bus in which not only was the driver not wearing a mask, but three passengers were not too. One of them was biting down on a small towel, demonstrating that the lack of accountability on the non-enforcing drivers was particularly risky, given the willfulness and ignorance of many riders. By the same reasoning, the lax enforcement of the public-health state, county, and local (Phoenix metropolitan area) laws by police and the respective governments on not only the bus company, but also grocery and department stores and restaurants/bars bore a high health cost given the condition of the local population.
It was bad enough that the vast majority of bus drivers were not
enforcing the mask policy in spite of the local law even though signs
notifying passengers (and drivers) of the requirement were on the buses. On July 10, I discovered that at least one driver didn't think his company's policy and the law pertained to him. After he let on three passengers who were not wearing masks, I called Metro Valley's customer service number. Not surprisingly, no one from the company (e.g., the driver's supervisor) bothered to call the driver during the route. That too is typical, even though the customer service employees could see to it that someone from the company immediately calls the driver, whether he or she is not wearing a mask, enforcing the policy/law, or being verbally abusive toward paying customers. In May, I had tried calling the local police on a driver who was refusing to comply with the bus company's policy on 10 riders maximum on a standard-sized bus. "You have to call the bus company," the police dispatcher told me. "But the driver is breaking the physical distancing state law," I exclaimed, utterly astonished that a private company rather than a police department would be the only enforcer of the law. "You would have to contact the bus company," I heard again. The local police also tried to avoid enforcing the local laws on nighttime noise, so I was not surprised at the push-back itself.
During my conversation with Oliver of the bus company in early July, I mentioned the company’s
voice-message and the signs specifying that masks were required. “They are
wrong,” he informed me. He even said he would change the voice-message; I was
not surprised at all a week later to hear the same phone-recording that masks
were required. Oliver believed that he could not be wrong even though people
could die as a result. So I wrote to the city of Phoenix and the local press on the conversation. Although Oliver had no reason to fear being held accountable,
given the company’s squalid management cadre, I suspect that the city may have come down on the bus company for telling customers that wearing masks is merely recommended due to there being exceptions. For a week or more later, the bus company's customer service employees were no longer telling riders that drivers do not enforce what is a recommendation. Even so, drivers were still not complying, even though the company was finally taking its own signs and voice-recording seriously.
Despite complaints from paying
customers for some time on driver hostility and bad driving (e.g., abrupt
stops), the management had failed to solve those two problems. In part, the
drivers’ union was too strong, but the city of Phoenix and the suburbs were not
good at holding the regional transit authority accountable. So I was not surprised in early July, 2020 when a bus driver
became enraged when I called customer service to report that masks were not
being worn by about half of the riders, and the driver was ignoring the
company’s policy on the ten-passengers maximum on a regular-sized bus. With 17
riders on the bus, physical distancing was not possible, which made the
non-compliance on masks particularly risky. Fortunately, the customer service
representative also heard the driver’s shouts. In going after me rather than
having enforced the policies (and laws) in the first place, that driver
demonstrated to me why things were out of control in Arizona with regard to the
pandemic. The driver was certainly out of control mentally, and his refusal not
to enforce bus-company policies with impunity means that his company was out of
control managerially. By implication, the city governments in the metropolitan
area were falling short in holding the regional transit authority accountable.
By early July, 2020, I noticed that the riff-raff (i.e., rules don't apply to me) on
the buses were developing a sub-culture wherein masks were to either not be worn at all or just cover the chin. Because the buses are so unreliable there, the riff-raff make up the vast majority of the ridership. Even so, drivers were not enforcing the mask requirement on that ridership, which one driver confided to me is generally viewed as pathetic by the drivers. Is not a refusal to enforce a requirement also pathetic? Does this not liken the drivers to their typical ridership? Signs on the buses
continued to declare that the masks are mandatory, and the drivers continued to
dismiss their duty to enforce that company policy. As evidence for this
investigation, I took a photo of a rider as he was dozing off; he was wearing
his mask to cover his chin only.
When this passenger got off the bus, he put his bandana on even though no one else was on the sidewalk.
As I turned back around, I saw the driver
shaking one of her fingers at me as if she were scolding a child. It is legal
to take pictures on the buses and light rail in Arizona, and yet the driver
felt sufficiently emboldened in her refusal to enforce the policy that she
called her supervisor and took a picture of me! Rather than realize that she had failed to enforce a requirement, she directed her hostility to me. Generalizing, given all the reports of driver hostility toward passengers, the drivers who refused to enforce
company policy not only felt entitled to do so, but also aggressively went
after the paying customers who felt that the drivers should be held
accountable because they were putting the health of those customers at risk. Sadly, given the continued bad driving and driver-hostility
generally, I could conclude that the company’s management was lax (i.e.,
incompetent) on holding its drivers (and bus operating subcontractors)
accountable.
It is interesting that at least some retail companies,
bar/restaurants, and bus companies in Arizona gave up on enforcing their own
respective policies (and any underpinning laws), while Airlines, libraries,
medical clinics, and hospitals had no such problem. It is not surprising that
NBC News would find that things are out of control in Arizona regarding the
pandemic. It is ironic that such a heavily-policed state, where intimidation
from a huge police show of force/presence is presumed to be the best deterrent
to crime, would be so deficient on enforcement even during a crisis. Perhaps
views of the national news could finally see just how pathetic the situation in
Arizona really was, and likely will be for some time.
Theists, ecologists, and ethicists could agree
that a pandemic taking a particularly dire toll on such a people would make
sense. Theists could point to God’s disfavor on the selfishness, lack of consideration
for others’ health, refusal to do one’s duty in enforcing public-health business
policies and governmental laws, and hostility. The same rationale would support
a variant on the Biblical story of Noah—this time with God extinguishing our
species for having refused to sufficiently stave off carbon-induced climate
change. Naturalists could paint a picture of a selfish, inconsiderate people
being especially prone to a pandemic. Nature abhors weakness, and thus a weak
people. Ethicists might say that it is just that people who refuse to enforce
policies or laws protecting the public health during a crisis catch the virus
themselves. Similarly, bus passengers and retail customers whose risky behavior
puts others at risk could be said to deserve to suffer the plight themselves.
They would doubtless disagree, and they would insist that they could not be
wrong about it, as if they were gods on stilts during a flood.
1. David Hochman, “Alan Alda Is Obsessed with the Power of Science,” AARP: The
Magazine, June/July, 2020.
