During Governor Mike DeWine's Wednesday night speech about the state’s plan to address the increase in COVID-19 cases, the governor stopped short of requiring everyone to wear masks. Instead, he pleaded with them to do it.
“I am asking each one of you, wherever you live in Ohio -- whatever the alert color of your county -- to wear a mask when you go out in public,” he said.
Ohio State Associate Professor Michael Vuolo says even if the governor wanted to mandate mask wearing there’s precedent giving him the power to do it and the move would not be a violation of one’s constitutional rights.
“There is a precedent in looking at workers’ rights. So if you take, for an example, the smoking ban. There were contentious discussions for the same reasons when they were first passed that they were a violation of individual liberties, but they were able to get passed because they evoked workers’ rights,” he said.
Workers' rights were the reason the government created OSHA or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to protect workers from dangers in the workplace.
In an article he authored for the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, Vuluo writes: “Indeed, decades of research have shown that smoking bans led to measurable improvements in working conditions and worker health.2,11–13 Although the literature on COVID-19 and occupational health is only just developing, studies on mask wearing released thus far3 imply that frontline workers will spend long hours with potential exposure to COVID-19 and its harms without similar protections or oversight. Although some (e.g., individual rights proponents) will cry foul about uniform protections being an attack on individual liberty or business functioning and profit, it is important to recognize that smoking bans were originally contested for the same reasons10 but now are less often viewed as such.”
He believes what the governor did Wednesday night was an attempt to try to normalize mask wearing which he says is a “good first step."
On Friday, 60% of Ohio will be under a mandatory mask order.
The governor said it was the result of more counties shifting to Red meaning more cases, more hospitalizations, and increasing visits to doctors’ offices to name a few.