In my last column, I wrote about how I believe the reaction to COVID-19 has been draconian and inconsistent, which confuses so many Americans including myself. In this column, I want to add to the previous column — so you’re warned.

Over the last month, the Provo Municipal Council has overridden Mayor Michelle Kaufusi’s veto of a mask mandate in Provo city, and I applauded the mayor for her actions in opposing her council at that time. Unfortunately, Mayor Kaufusi has flip-flopped and now sided with two of the Utah County Commissioners who have created a countywide mask mandate.

Kaufusi says she flipped because she is following the county’s guidelines, but she didn’t say she was following the county’s guidelines when she vetoed her city council’s ordinance.

The only county commissioner that Mayor Kaufusi didn’t listen to is Commissioner Bill Lee, who is against a countywide mask mandate — and he is right. The biggest problem with the mandates forcing people to wear masks in public, whether it be indoors or outdoors if a 6-foot social distance can’t be maintained, is that they might be unconstitutional. Furthermore, I think city- or countywide mandates like these are almost impossible to enforce, and when they are enforced it seems to be on a 98-pound young mother taking care of her children and the enforcer is a much larger police officer. When this happens, the video goes viral and who gets all the blame? The police officer enforcing an ordinance that the politicians enacted. Maybe the politicians should have to enforce their own laws once in a while to see the situation that they’re forcing our police officers to be in.

Commissioner Lee described the countywide mask mandate as “nuts.” To further his point, as this column is being written, Utah County has 18,436 cases of COVID and 57 deaths. We all know that any death, even one, is tragic but the data is important. The 57 deaths equal about 1/3 of 1% and the spike in cases recently in Utah County can greatly be attributed to BYU and UVU starting school. College-aged men and women, unless there are pre-existing comorbidities to affect their health, are highly unlikely to get seriously sick.

I have an assignment for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in a young single adult stake in Provo that has both BYU and UVU students attending, and I have been talking with these students quite a bit about the recent spike in COVID cases in Utah County. These are smart people who seem to have weighed the odds and found them solidly in their favor. My anecdotal data indicates the students are diligently wearing masks in classes and when walking across campus, also washing hands with sanitizer endlessly, but in the off hours, i.e. in the evenings or weekends, they are not practicing the guidelines of masks and social distancing. Maybe they should be more careful, but they believe if they get sick, they will quarantine for a couple of weeks and then possess antibodies to protect them and others against further community spread.

There is a case to be made that they are right in their thinking. If an elected official wants to limit community spread, assuming they don’t believe what the students seem to believe, then the politicians should focus their energy and unconstitutional ordinances, to the extent there should be any, on encouraging the young men and women of BYU and UVU to stay away from seniors because they are the vulnerable ones.

If someone is COVID positive or asymptomatic and properly social distances, what is the point of a mask? The mask does a poor job of protecting you against COVID unless you’re wearing an N-95 mask, which no one seems to be doing. A mask does a relatively good job of protecting others if you have COVID, but again with proper social distancing, the need for masks goes away. At least that is what we have been told.

In my humble opinion, politicians should spend more of their time using their bully pulpit to encourage behavior they believe will create the results they want — not violating our freedoms and liberties with unconstitutional mandates.