Mandates to reduce COVID-19 spread are about public health, not politics.

The group Mainers Against Mask Mandates misrepresents public health facts. It claims the inside of masks are germ-ridden, but isn’t that the point — to stop the mask-wearer’s germs from spreading to other people?

They use early CDC statements that masks were unnecessary, before scientific knowledge of the novel COVID-19 virus evolved and proved otherwise. Some face coverings don’t work — gaiters, one- or two-ply cloth masks without a filter-insert pocket, masks worn under the nose and/or chin, washable masks that go unwashed and disposable masks worn multiple times. Masks also don’t work when removed to talk/cough/sneeze, defeating the purpose of reduction of spreading airborne particles.

MAMM claims constitutional rights are being violated. In Mark Laflamme’s Nov. 18 column, Gina Choiniere stated, “We just want to maintain our right as free citizens . . . ”.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that mandatory measures (such as mask mandates, physical distancing and business restrictions) cannot be implemented to protect the lives of Americans during a raging pandemic.

Ironically, MAMM also disseminates fear about desperately-needed vaccines, which will stop the spread and eventually end the mandates.

MAMM behaves like a surreal fringe cult with repulsive, delusional, defiant, backward, anti-scientific, hypocritical, denial of the truth. Its “rationale” is incomprehensible; it should re-evaluate its anti-patriotic behavior, since true patriotism is protecting all Americans by wearing a mask and physically distancing in a public health crisis, as well as getting vaccinated.

Alicia Gamow, Greene