Consensus? Abbott is wrong about the masks!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There seems to be a consensus building across Texas about the pronouncement made by Gov. Greg Abbott on how the state should handle the coronavirus pandemic.

It is that he has made a mistake in rescinding the mask mandate order he issued this past summer to fight the virus.

Most of us seem to understand his desire to open the state’s businesses back up. The mask mandate, though, needs to remain … if I am reading the state’s collective pulse correctly. Maybe I am correct, or maybe I am all wet.

I’ll presume that I am right, or at least in presuming  that the most vocal folks out there are those who oppose lifting the mask mandate.

It well might be that those who support lifting the mask order are too embarrassed to say so publicly. If that’s the case, well, I’d be embarrassed too. You know already that my wife and I intend to keep wearing our masks when we enter restaurants, the grocery store or stop for a cappuccino at the neighborhood Allsup’s.

I reckon million of other Texans will do the same.

This presumption I am drawing would seem to put the lie to the caricature so many Americans have of those who live in Texas. That we’re a state full of swaggering know-it-alls who distrust government telling us to do anything, let alone take measures to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

From what I am hearing, seeing and sensing among those of us who call Texas home, we aren’t too crazy about Gov. Abbott’s decision to lift an order he issued to protect the folks he governs.

I am totally fine with what he ordered. In fact, I intend to keep following it.