Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan claimed that no one has a “constitutional right to walk around without a mask” while defending his state’s newly adopted mask mandate on Monday.
“It’s sort of like saying I have a constitutional right to drive drunk. I have a constitutional right to not wear a seat belt, or to yell fire in a crowded movie theater, or to not follow the speed limit,” Hogan said during a press briefing on Monday after announcing additional coronavirus restrictions.
“We’re talking about a quarter of a million people dying already,” he continued. “You know, more than, you know, the Korean War, the Gulf War and the Vietnam War added together. Which part don’t you understand?”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on resistance to mask mandates:
“It’s sort of like saying ‘have a constitutional right to drive drunk’…. There is no constitutional right to walk around without a mask.”
pic.twitter.com/WtrnnowMAx— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 23, 2020
Hogan cited the Spanish Flu epidemic as historical proof that the country has mandated masks before.
“We did it in 1918. I don’t know why we can’t do it now,” he said. “Wear the mask.”
A recent Danish study found that masks do very little to protect the wearers. The study compared two groups, one that used masks and one that did not.
In the non-face mask group, 2.1% of participants caught COVID-19, while 1.8% of participants in the face mask-wearing groups were also infected.
“The study thereby fails to confirm the expected halving of risk of infection for the wearer of the face mask, but the results could suggest a moderate level of protection of 15-20 percent,” the researchers said in a statement.
Hogan also came under fire last week for criticizing President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“If you had done your job, America’s governors wouldn’t have been forced to fend for themselves to find tests in the middle of a pandemic, as we successfully did in Maryland,” Hogan wrote on Twitter.
