It’s a lose-lose situation.
Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi defied public health experts earlier this week and announced plans to lift mandatory coronavirus restrictions, including mask mandates. Now small business owners in the two states are faced with an impossible decision. On the one hand, they can continue to require face coverings and risk losing business from customers who refuse to wear masks. On the other hand, they can operate without any pandemic precautions and ostracize customers who value safety. There’s also the issue of spreading a contagious virus that has killed half a million Americans.
The Washington Post explains the series of events initiated by the full-scale re-openings:
The impact was immediate in both states and beyond, with “masks required” signs coming down, businesses trying to navigate the lack of restrictions, local officials pushing back and the White House weighing in.
President Biden blasted the decisions by Abbott and Reeves as “Neanderthal thinking.” In Austin, local officials called an early-morning news conference to beg residents to continue wearing masks, while leaders in the Fort Worth area dropped a face covering mandate they were planning to extend into May.
The Texas Tribune reports that small business owners are facing the brunt of the challenge:
At least one business owner, Macy Moore of HopFusion Ale Works in Fort Worth, said Wednesday on CNN that he had not slept since [Texas Governor Greg] Abbott’s announcement because he’s so worried about the health and safety of his staff. Others, like Anne Ng of Bakery Lorraine in San Antonio, have decided to keep mask requirements in place for staff and customers regardless of what Abbott and the state government say.
While some entrepreneurs in Texas applauded the decision to return to business as usual, others feel that the state government has abdicated its responsibility to keep employees and customers safe. Now that onus falls on individual businesses who can no longer count on police support to administer covid safety measures. One Texas restaurateur told The Tribune, “This leaves it up to my team to enforce these policies, and they are in the business of hospitality, not policing.”
The Tribune also reports that some businesses that have pledged to require masks despite Abbot’s order have already received hostile push back:
Jennifer Dobbertin, who runs a restaurant called Best Quality Daughter in San Antonio, said that an “anti-masker crowd” has already established itself in the restaurant’s social media comments.
“If you don’t want to wear a mask, fine, we can respect that,” Dobbertin said. “Please don’t come eat at our establishments, but don’t come to the restaurant and try to fight us on it.”
In Fort Worth, TX, the Washington Post notes, “the city and its Chamber of Commerce have been giving out signs for businesses showing the outline of a person wearing a cowboy hat and mask that read: “Y’all wear a mask. It’s required.” On Wednesday morning, officials hurried to revise it to a much more vague “Stay strong, together we win.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, several large companies, including Target, Hyatt, CVS, and Starbucks, said they have no plans to drop mask requirements, even in states where mandates are no longer in effect.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves both cited falling case numbers and the increasingly availability of vaccines when they announced that their states were returning to normal. But the Washington Post reports that, “The two states… rank far behind others in vaccine distribution, with Texas 49th and Mississippi 47th for the number of people per capita who have received at least one dose.“
Both Texas and Mississippi are still recovering from a catastrophic infrastructure failure that left millions without power, water, or food. Residents of Jackson, Mississippi’s largest city, are still without clean water.