On Wednesday South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster reversed nearly every closure order he issued in the beginning of the Covid-19 fear pandemic. Governor McMaster is now urging businesses to re-open and for schools to begin planning to teach their students in the classroom.
Governor McMaster also stated he will not be closing businesses down or requiring the citizens of South Carolina to wear masks. As most would have expected a croud of critizism came towards Governor McMaster for his statements.
One of the arguments is that Governor McMaster should issue a state wide mask requirement. Comments like this from State Rep. Neal Collins (R-Pickens), “At the end of the day, South Carolinians are law-abiding folks. If the governor were to issue a statewide order (to wear masks), the vast majority of people would follow that regardless.”
McMaster has stood firm on this issue stating it violates peoples personal liberties and would be difficult to enforce such an Order. This statement was backed by South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, “If you mandate masks, how are you going to enforce it?” Graham told reporters this week. “I don’t think you’re going to have the mask police going around and writing everybody a ticket. But the more you can emphasize wearing a mask the better.”
Instead of issuing an Order Governor McMaster has taken to wearing a mask in public himself to encourage the people of South Carolina to wear masks. McMaster has also charged local governments to come up with their own rules on masks and to work with their local law enforcement agencies to ensure these guidelines are followed. Some simply say that Governor McMaster is passing the buck on this issue as he did when he gave South Carolina Department of Health Emergency Powers in the State when Covid-19 began.
“Everyone should wear a mask,” McMaster said Wednesday. “But we cannot force people to do what they don’t want to do.”
“We need statewide action to really make a dent in this thing,” said Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, whose city council enacted a mask mandate. “Leadership matters, and we can’t underestimate the power of the microphone and bully pulpit. And if in fact you had people coming from the right and the left and the middle saying these are minor things we can do to help save lives, then the message carries more. It definitely matters.”
It would seem Governor McMaster is riding a very thing fence between not putting out a public Order demanding mask and allowing local governments to place these orders out. One very important question that has been asked and commmented on by several citizens and legislators is: “What about a person’s rights to refuse such orders?”
Local governments have instituted criminal and civil fines against citizens who have chosen not to wear masks. Several law suits through out the United States are pending due to these questionable orders. How many will be pending in South Carolina is still to be seen.
McMaster’s spokesman Brian Symmes told The State Newspaper the “governor feels that those local officials are the appropriate people to make decisions as to their specific community” and there is no “one size fits all” scenario as it relates to masks.
In an informal opinion from S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson, who was asked whether local governments were allowed to pass a mask ordinance, Wilson stated that absent a court decision to the contrary, South Carolina towns had the right to issue mask ordinances in a time of a life-threatening emergency.
“If there were no COVID-19 pandemic or public health emergency, a court might find the requirement to wear a mask arbitrary,” Wilson wrote. “That is not the case here.”
According to an article issued by WebMd the recovery rate of Covid-19 is between 97% and 99.75%. This is just one of the many rates you can find on the internet.
The Current Death Rate of Covid-19:
South Carolina
| Confirmed71,445 | Recovered- | Deaths1,164 |
United States
| Confirmed3.89M+63,591 | Recovered1.12M | Deaths143K+512 |
Worldwide
| Confirmed14.6M+167K | Recovered8.2M | Deaths608K+4,496 |
As one notices there is no recovery number listed for South Carolina. But according to the SCDHEC website as of July 16th, 2020, 87% of the 25,923 individuals they have symptom onset data are estimated to have recovered from COVID 19 and only 13% are estimated to remain ill.
Now naturally SCDHEC provides a disclaimer to these numbers as to the patients not having any adverse outcomes since they became ill.
With such high recovery rates is there a life threatening situation concerning Covid-19? Perhaps each person must decide for themselves which side of the Covid fence they want to be on.