UPDATE: Neville later stated on Facebook that he believes masks provide no protection against COVID-19.
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When you see Colorado House Republican leader Patrick Neville enjoying his maskless self at a restaurant filled with other maskless patrons, as we saw over the weekend in Castle Rock, Colorado, you wonder if he understands the life-saving benefits of wearing a mask.
It turns out, he does. He knows that wearing a mask is much more about protecting others from catching COVID-19 from you than it is about protecting yourself.
Wearing a mask is about trying to stop other people from getting the virus from you, doing your part for the community. Being in this together.
Neville knows this.
As he told KHOW radio host Ross Kaminsky Tuesday, wearing a mask isn’t “really protecting me.”
But the strange part is, Neville doesn’t seem to care if he infects people around him who aren’t wearing masks.
“So if other people really didn’t feel the need for a mask, I didn’t wear mine,” he said on-air, explaining why he didn’t wear his mask at C&C Coffee and Kitchen.
It’s a live-and-let die approach.
Neville is saying, “I might as well risk contaminating all these maskless people because my mask isn’t protecting me from them. So who cares.”
What’s worse than that? Especially for someone a lot of people look up to? Especially during a pandemic? Especially in the midst of maskless throngs of people at a restaurant?
Neville went on to say he wears his mask at Walmart, where others wear masks.
“No one was really wearing a mask, so I chose not to wear a mask, because really, I do it out of politeness,” Neville told Kaminsky about the crowded restaurant seen around the globe before being shuttered for violating Colorado law. “It’s not really protecting me. So if other people really didn’t feel the need for a mask, I didn’t wear mine. But if I go to Walmart typically I wear mine.”
I don’t get any of this, and Neville didn’t return my call to discuss it.
