Libertarian: No More Mask Mandates

“Brace yourselves: Mask mandates are coming back,” warns Reason’s Robby Soave. But “if public-health officials are worried about Delta, they should put all their efforts” into promoting the vaccine that reduces risk of death “to almost nothing.” Mask mandates “largely function as a form of signaling” by which vaccinated people can communicate “that they take the pandemic seriously,” and policymakers may associate “themselves with a specific political tribe.” Since officials should be “more concerned with health than with partisan signals,” the mask mandate era must end. Vaccination isn’t simply “one tool among many: It is the tool. The masks are an insult to this life-saving, pandemic-crushing medical innovation.”