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I believe that’s his point, thus his use of “total failure”.
It wasn’t until states outside the Northeast/PNW started seeing significant rises in cases/hospitalizations that admin staff began wearing masks on camera. Truly pathetic leadership, but for most on this board I’m stating something rather obvious here.
You mean it’s not a hoax? Who knew? /s
My news feed has:
Quote:
"Masks are so important," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told CNBC's Jim Cramer.
"If everyone in the United States wore a mask for 3 weeks — just 3 weeks — we would not have anymore coronavirus because there would be no more spread, but people do not want to wear masks," he said on "Mad Money."
I don’t care for the Jim Cramer schtick and don’t watch his show but I generally agree with Marc Benioff’s statement. If everyone wore masks properly, the transmission rate would drop below 1.0 and most things could open back up. I’m hopeful that a new Senate and President will make that the law of the land in February. A state that doesn’t comply gets everything Federal yanked. Military bases. All highway funds. All Federal offices. Enough is enough.
Nonsense. You can pass a federal law where not following rules to keep the transmission rate low is a felony. Big fines. Jail time. Suspended license. Problem #2 is a total failure of leadership.
Nonsense is continuing to go right to the unrealistic/never-gonna-happen solutions. However, assuming for a moment that we live in a fantasy world where the federal government actually does anything approaching the wild idea you propose, enforcement isn't going to happen. Several reasons:
1. We can't effectively enforce speed limits, fireworks, littering, or a thousand other crimes today. People still do them. You can argue this one's all special because OMG PEOPLE WILL DIE IF YOU BREAK IT, but let's be real...people are honey badgers.
2. Assuming even more that we do total enforcement of this, how many police are we going to need for this? In some areas you have half the population not in compliance. With enough social disobedience in some areas, enforcement will be a literal impossibility.
3. Assuming again even more that this fantasy world comes with a magic wand that does suddenly make enforcement at such a scale possible, are we really going to incarcerate all rule breakers? We could be looking at over 100 million felons.
This is exactly the kind of nanny-state red meat the right eats up to use as ammo to convince the swing voters why the left should never be allowed to manage anything ever again. Any elected official proposing anything approaching this radical of an idea would be committing political suicide.
Nonsense is continuing to go right to the unrealistic/never-gonna-happen solutions. However, assuming for a moment that we live in a fantasy world where the federal government actually does anything approaching the wild idea you propose, enforcement isn't going to happen. Several reasons:
1. We can't effectively enforce speed limits, fireworks, littering, or a thousand other crimes today. People still do them. You can argue this one's all special because OMG PEOPLE WILL DIE IF YOU BREAK IT, but let's be real...people are honey badgers.
2. Assuming even more that we do total enforcement of this, how many police are we going to need for this? In some areas you have half the population not in compliance. With enough social disobedience in some areas, enforcement will be a literal impossibility.
3. Assuming again even more that this fantasy world comes with a magic wand that does suddenly make enforcement at such a scale possible, are we really going to incarcerate all rule breakers? We could be looking at over 100 million felons.
This is exactly the kind of nanny-state red meat the right eats up to use as ammo to convince the swing voters why the left should never be allowed to manage anything ever again. Any elected official proposing anything approaching this radical of an idea would be committing political suicide.
I love these types of arguments. People are going to break laws anyway. So heck, why even have them?
The point is--just mandating mask usage at a national level, with the threat of a fine, would be sufficient to get the usage % way up from what it is today. Further, it would take retail establishments off the hook in trying to enforce it. You can see how much anger is directed today at the employees of Costco, Starbucks, Wal*Mart, you name it. If this were a federal statute with teeth, those employees would no longer bear the brunt.
No one is advocating having policemen wander about looking for evidence of masks.
Nonsense is continuing to go right to the unrealistic/never-gonna-happen solutions. However, assuming for a moment that we live in a fantasy world where the federal government actually does anything approaching the wild idea you propose, enforcement isn't going to happen. Several reasons:
1. We can't effectively enforce speed limits, fireworks, littering, or a thousand other crimes today. People still do them. You can argue this one's all special because OMG PEOPLE WILL DIE IF YOU BREAK IT, but let's be real...people are honey badgers.
2. Assuming even more that we do total enforcement of this, how many police are we going to need for this? In some areas you have half the population not in compliance. With enough social disobedience in some areas, enforcement will be a literal impossibility.
3. Assuming again even more that this fantasy world comes with a magic wand that does suddenly make enforcement at such a scale possible, are we really going to incarcerate all rule breakers? We could be looking at over 100 million felons.
This is exactly the kind of nanny-state red meat the right eats up to use as ammo to convince the swing voters why the left should never be allowed to manage anything ever again. Any elected official proposing anything approaching this radical of an idea would be committing political suicide.
While I agree with your final statement, I believe you're significantly underestimating how heavily levied fines can incentivize businesses to become "good actors".
The scenarios you outlined (e.g., fireworks, littering, speeding) are fairly low risk/low penalty acts. What Geoff is suggesting, I assume, is a penalty on par with OSHA violations. Infractions are not terribly hard to enforce en masse as nearly every customer and employee has a high fidelity camera in their pocket. Funnel violations through existing board of health, up-size as necessary, and escalate penalties with number of reports.
A perfect solution? No, but it's better than expecting self policing. In Worcester county it's been quite a mixed bag of compliance, with some businesses operating with great care and others, like a local restaurant/bar, operating entirely entirely mask-less including the blatantly visible prep cooks. It's clearly an internal leadership failure when businesses fail to comply ... the low level employees will flex as far as leadership will allows. Ownership needs an incentive to comply and, at least Baker believes, that incentive should be avoiding penalties.
I have a fair amount of empathy for small business owners given current challenges, but if your employees fail to wear masks that is nothing more than a management/leadership failure of ownership. They are deeply empowered to enforce compliance via existing cameras and employment/pay. Their failure should have consequences beyond locals blowing up their FB/Google page.
I don’t care for the Jim Cramer schtick and don’t watch his show but I generally agree with Marc Benioff’s statement. If everyone wore masks properly, the transmission rate would drop below 1.0 and most things could open back up. I’m hopeful that a new Senate and President will make that the law of the land in February. A state that doesn’t comply gets everything Federal yanked. Military bases. All highway funds. All Federal offices. Enough is enough.
He might be overstating it, but point made. I really believe this would work. We (US) shot ourselves in the foot early, by coming out against masks...going as far as to say that wearing masks would make things worse (talk about a bizarre argument). That bred a lot of cynicism against the CDC, Fauci, and public health officials which persists today. The non-believers can use the old "you can never trust what comes out of those guys" argument as an excuse to not accept any expert advice.
I love these types of arguments. People are going to break laws anyway. So heck, why even have them?
The point is--just mandating mask usage at a national level, with the threat of a fine, would be sufficient to get the usage % way up from what it is today. Further, it would take retail establishments off the hook in trying to enforce it. You can see how much anger is directed today at the employees of Costco, Starbucks, Wal*Mart, you name it. If this were a federal statute with teeth, those employees would no longer bear the brunt.
No one is advocating having policemen wander about looking for evidence of masks.
I don't think the old argument about why do it if nobody will comply is really at issue here. The examples I cite are minor laws with minor penalties and minimal enforcement, yes, but they also have minimal consequence to others in the grand scheme. If the solution is to find a way to drastically increase mask wearing, making it a crime isn't necessarily the way to do it.
Selling alcohol or tobacco to a minor is a misdemeanor. It's still left as an exercise to the retailers to enforce, so why would they not bear the brunt here now? The anger directed at those clerks isn't going to change just because it came from the government. In some of the areas where we're seeing Karens on full meltdown, it already IS a mandate from the state and they still don't care.
Social disobedience on a large enough scale will overcome any mandating/criminalizing of the issue. Heck, aren't we (Boston) a sanctuary city who is technically harboring felons because we disagree with it?
People (or at least Geoff) ARE advocating for this. Big fines? Jail time? Felony? Those are his words. "Felony" alone implies a very serious crime. Not misdemeanor, not infraction.
To borrow an old cliche, it's often more effective to lead with the carrot than with the stick. We can't mandate people into compliance, particularly those in areas who are already virulently (no pun intended) opposed to it. Like it or not, this is a social and political issue now, and the solution will need to address those social and political components. The leadership has to understand that the path forward must be something that's flexible enough to function within this social and political landscape we live in.
The war on drugs wasn't effective, but reforms to make drug use as safe as possible helped. Thinking along those types of lines is where I see the path forward being here. Carrot, not stick.
While I agree with your final statement, I believe you're significantly underestimating how heavily levied fines can incentivize businesses to become "good actors".
The scenarios you outlined (e.g., fireworks, littering, speeding) are fairly low risk/low penalty acts. What Geoff is suggesting, I assume, is a penalty on par with OSHA violations. Infractions are not terribly hard to enforce en masse as nearly every customer and employee has a high fidelity camera in their pocket. Funnel violations through existing board of health, up-size as necessary, and escalate penalties with number of reports.
A perfect solution? No, but it's better than expecting self policing. In Worcester county it's been quite a mixed bag of compliance, with some businesses operating with great care and others, like a local restaurant/bar, operating entirely entirely mask-less including the blatantly visible prep cooks. It's clearly an internal leadership failure when businesses fail to comply ... the low level employees will flex as far as leadership will allows. Ownership needs an incentive to comply and, at least Baker believes, that incentive should be avoiding penalties.
I have a fair amount of empathy for small business owners given current challenges, but if your employees fail to wear masks that is nothing more than a management/leadership failure of ownership. They are deeply empowered to enforce compliance via existing cameras and employment/pay. Their failure should have consequences beyond locals blowing up their FB/Google page.
I feel like the office environments are the safest in this regard because they have the most teeth already over their employees. If I go into my office on a day I'm not supposed to, I can get in trouble or be fired. If I don't wear a mask when I'm supposed to, I can get in trouble or be fired. I can lose my financial livelihood for non-compliance.
Without police enforcement, the customer-facing businesses will have a much rougher go of this. The consequence for non-compliance of a customer is expulsion from the store -- not really that rough of a deterrent. The whole 'the customer is always right' mindset is also going to empower some customers to sh*t all over any employee that tries to enforce the rules. Unless the penalty is much stiffer (as Geoff is attempting to suggest), it's not going to be much of a deterrent.
That leaves us with the original problem, though. Sufficient enforcement at that level ramps up and scales out of control quickly.
The path to winning these types of issues is in educating the masses. Convince everyone that it's a good/beneficial thing to do and they'll do it. The problem of course is we're working with a nation where just under half of them are listening to voices actively trying to undermine the rest, so this becomes very difficult.
It took a long time to gain wide-scale social acceptance on smoking bans and seat belts. It would likely be a similar situation here, except here time isn't on our side.
People (or at least Geoff) ARE advocating for this. Big fines? Jail time? Felony? Those are his words. "Felony" alone implies a very serious crime. Not misdemeanor, not infraction.
Yep. Felony. If you refuse to do your civic obligation to protect the country in a pandemic, you become a convicted felon. Good luck getting into Canada. They won't want you. Good luck getting a job. You'll trigger the Lexus/Nexus search. We need to stop F'ing around. A bunch of covidiots who refuse to wear masks are killing the economy, landing a pile of people in the hospital with pneumonia, and slaughtering 20% of the geezers. It's not like anyone on the planet in mid-July doesn't know how to wear a mask properly. People aren't doing it because they don't give a flying F and there are no penalties.
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