State health officer tackles misinformation, mask mandate

Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris has been a busy man since the COVID-19 pandemic began and he recently spoke with The Sun about Gov. Kay Ivey’s mask mandate and the misinformation that gets spread about wearing masks.

Harris said that is paramount that anyone venturing into public spaces right now – especially if space cannot be kept between people – is wearing a face covering.

“It’s extremely important. We encourage anyone to do that because it protects the people around you,” Harris said. “Alabama isn’t a very healthy state to begin with. We have chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes and we are an older state on average than a lot of the rest of the country, as well.

“Those are all people that are at risk of having serious illness if they get infected. Everyone really needs to wear a face covering when they go out because it protects others.”

Misinformation, primarily spread over social media, is something that Harris and other health officials have been battling since the beginning of the pandemic. Facebook memes and graphics have been passed around 1,000s of times stating either than no face covering works to prevent the spread of COVID-19 or that only N95 surgical masks can prevent it.

“We’ve learned that when people don’t want to do something then one excuse is as good as another (to them),” Harris said. “We know that cloth face coverings prevent droplet spread of the virus, period.

“When people are infected and don’t realize it – which is maybe 1/3 of all patients – when they cough or sneeze or just speak they put droplets in the air and can infect other people.”

Harris emphasized that the mandate to wear facial coverings is to protect people around you rather than to protect yourself from COVID-19.

“(Cloth masks) certainly don’t work as well as N95 masks from preventing you from getting the disease, but cloth face coverings are not designed to filter your air coming in so that you don’t catch something,” Harris said. “That’s not what they’re for. Cloth face coverings are to keep people that are infected and don’t realize it from spreading it to other people. They do work for that purpose.

“You absolutely are not wearing a facial covering to protect you and it shouldn’t be claimed that it works for that. The evidence doesn’t say it works for that but the evidence does say that it works to prevent the spread to other people. We’re not claiming that masks keep you safe but we absolutely believe masks keep other people safe from you.”

Harris also emphasized that the mask mandate isn’t going to be a quick fix and that it will take time to see numbers in the state go down, especially with the current delay in testing results that is effecting the country.

“I think we don’t know for certain, of course, but I think we would like to certainly give it time to see if we see some improvements overall,” Harris said. “We’re still continuing to encourage other behaviors like social distancing, limiting gathering sizes and staying home when you’re sick that can also affect the numbers we’re seeing.

“When you put an intervention in place we need at least a couple of weeks to see where we are and probably ideally longer than that. I would say more like three weeks would be better.”

Harris said that the issue with delayed test results has to do with the sheer volume of people being tested right now.

“There are more and more people needing more and more tests. There are more people out there that are having symptoms and seeking tests,” Harris said. “You also have people getting ready for school or college or playing sports in which they’re getting testing done or is required of them that wasn’t that way before.

“All of those are consuming test resources. Everybody in the country is kind of in the same boat.”

As numbers have continued to rise, Harris said that the governor will likely make a decision on whether to extend the mask mandate – which is set to expire July 31 – in the coming days.

“Ultimately that is going to be a decision for the governor but the governor is in discussions about that and we’ve had many meetings with her staff about that and I think she’ll say something in the next few days about whether to extend it or not,” Harris said. “I will say this, though, right now the numbers are not encouraging and Alabama is not headed in the right direction.”