DEAR EDITOR:

Has the White House or Gov. Mike DeWine thought of recruiting maskophobes — those who reject mask-wearing — for focus groups to find out what their thinking is?

Why not accept at face value the rationales offered by the maskophobes themselves? Well, maskophobes amount to something like 20 percent or more of the public where masks are mandatory, which sounds a bit high. Plus, does anyone take seriously the maskophobes’ sound bites about “liberty;” it’s a “free country;” the “inconvenience” of mask-wearing; or health reasons of some sort?

I’ve written at length about group health insurance. This actuarial product exists in a sort of national brain vacuum, with lazy elite opinion leaders refusing to attack the subject. That leaves Joe Sixpack to backfill that vacuum with the biggest pile of disprovable junk ideas I’ve ever seen. When America’s intellectual leadership on health care is weak, how can you not expect the man on the street to cook up a theory of convenience that allows him to go about his daily business?

My guess is that an unknown percentage of maskophobes and COVID deniers have a theory of convenience that they’ve been allowed to believe in by America’s lousy health care leadership. What is their theory and how well does it map onto truth?

Wouldn’t it make sense for politicians and public health folks to want to know more about people who are unlikely to believe their recommendations and mandates?

Get a big-city advertising agency to suggest someone who can expertly recruit and lead a group of maskophobes to draw them out in detail. Decision-making will be better for it.

JACK LABUSCH

Nile