A few weeks ago, local church authorities issued a statement asking that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wear masks.

Utah Area President, Elder Craig C. Christensen, and his counselors, Elder Randy D. Funk and Elder Walter F. González are all considered high-ranking general authorities. Their callings are specifically to make decisions regarding members who live in Utah. And as a presidency, they looked at the available people like them in their position and made an announcement.

“A growing chorus of medical authorities has confirmed that the simple wearing of a face covering when in public and when social distancing is not possible will significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19,” wrote the Utah Area Presidency as reported by Deseret News. “This is true both indoors and outdoors.”

And here’s the thing. These area authorities are dead right.

Four professors at BYU, Benjamin W. Abbott, Mitchell Greenhalgh, S. Isaac St. Clair, and Jonas Bus, wrote a lengthy layman’s explainer piece that goes over more than 115 different scientific studies that explain whether or not masks are effective at slowing the spread of COVID-19.

Spoiler alert, they are.

Essentially, these professors aired out all the laundry and got into the nitty-gritty details of mask efficacy.

The conclusion I draw is this: If we wore masks and didn’t crowd people we could enjoy significantly more normal lives. We could also enjoy a more normal economy.

The Utah Area Presidency recognized this as a reasonable request and asked congregants like me to follow this one piece of simple advice.

“We note with appreciation the care exhibited by our members in returning to sacrament meetings wearing face masks.” wrote the presidency. “Now we ask all Latter-day Saints in the Utah Area to be good citizens by wearing face coverings when in public. Doing so will help promote the health and general welfare of all.”

The announcement was timely considering how the Daily Herald’s Connor Richards would report not that long after that Utah’s hospitals are not equipped for a surge in cases.

“As health officials warn that Utah hospitals could be overwhelmed if the rate of COVID-19 infections in the state continues climbing, an analysis of health data shows that Utah may be among the states least equipped to handle a surge in coronavirus cases,” wrote Richards.

So we’ve got researchers in firm support of masks. We’ve got the majority religion’s leadership firmly in support of masks. And we have the medical community, the boots on the ground if you will, in a position where they desperately need to wear masks.

And I’m not sure who follows the president on Twitter, but even he is posting captioned photos

“We are United in our effort to defeat the Invisible China Virus, and many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance,” tweeted President Trump while including a black and white photo of himself looking like Darth Vader in a suit. “There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!”

So even the president, whose supporters have been most ardently against masks from the beginning, is now wearing a mask.

So the question I have is this, what more is it going to take?

If you believe in science, how do you square that with the overwhelming body of research that’s been done on the topic? If you’re a Latter-day Saint, how do you square reopening church services while blatantly ignoring general church authorities? If you know anyone who’s working on the frontlines of the pandemic in our hospitals, how do you square your unwillingness to do your part in making it possible for them to save lives? If you’re a Trump supporter, how do you not take on the title of RINO without coming around on the topic as he did?

In the end, I think there’s always going to be a group of people who don’t care about the evidence. Their beliefs are what they are and no amount of coaxing from religious leaders, experts in the field, neighbors, or political leaders will persuade them to do otherwise.

Shaming doesn’t seem to work, but in a pandemic with a highly contagious disease, you can’t just leave them alone to fade out either. Because their actions will directly affect others who want to be good citizens, supporters of science, or sustainers of faith leaders.

This is why mandatory mask rules are important.

They don’t take freedom away from people any more than drunk driving laws do.

They don’t hurt those who have medical problems (all of us are tired of you hiding behind people like us anyway.)

They promote community protection when people who live, interact, and benefit from being society members refuse to connect their personal freedoms to their personal responsibilities as members of said society.

It’s just so exhausting that those who have the most power to affect positive change won’t because it might cost them some votes or funds this election.