The Dudes Who Won’t Wear Masks
Last week, the former Major League Baseball player Aubrey Huff announced on Twitter that he was no longer going to wear a mask inside any business. “It’s unconstitutional to enforce,” he wrote. “Let’s make this bullshit stop now! Who’s with me?” In a video that went viral the following day, he said his critics had tried to shame him for “threatening the lives of millions of innocent people” and insisted that he considered dying from the coronavirus preferable to “wearing a damn mask.”
Thousands of people responded to Huff. Many called him a social disgrace for disrespecting his community, abdicating his civic duty, and putting Grandma at risk. The anger toward mask naysayers is understandable, and shaming can feel relieving in the moment. Yet those responses did nothing to persuade Huff to wear a mask. Instead, they played right into his notions about the finger-wagging, “elitist” public-health experts who want to take away
