Surgeon General urges lawmakers to wear masks; meanwhile, lawsuit filed opposing them

The U.S, Surgeon General was in Montana last week and he urged the Montana state Legislature, in a polite way, to wear masks in the upcoming session to stop the spread of novel coronavirus.

“We need to show everyone out there a little bit of grace .. care for your fellow man,” Jerome Adams said during a press conference with Gov. Steve Bullock last week.

Having said that, Adams

noted that the “the science is clear that masks work to stop the spread of the virus.”

The Legislature last week debated about whether it should wear masks during the upcoming session and/or hold remote meetings.

“My body has my own mask system. I exhale what my body doesn’t want. When you have a mask on, it holds it in. It holds it in, so you can re-breathe that negative that your body just put out,” said Rep. Barry Usher, R-Billings during a debate last week, the Montana Free Press reported.

Adams said he’s heard the concern about people re-breathing their own breath and perhaps getting too much carbon dioxide from wearing masks. But he noted he’s an anesthesiologist and he’s worn a masks or hours on end.

If it was harmful, “You’d have millions of brain damaged surgeons throughout the globe,” he said.

Adams commended Montana, which saw a surge in cases this fall, but has since seen them drop on a daily basis.

“It appears Montanans are stepping up,” he said. “They’re concerned when they see hospitals overwhelmed.” Right now about 284 healthcare workers from other parts of the country have come to Montana to help hospitals who were close to or overwhelmed by the disease, as staff either caught the virus or were quarantined because of exposure to someone who had it. Flathead County had been averaging about 2,000 active cases, but that’s dropped to about 1,100 in recent days, though it added 111 new cases Friday.

The first doses of a vaccine were expected Monday and Tuesday, with the state to receive 9,750 doses of the Pfizer vaccine for frontline healthcare workers.

As more doses are expected to roll in from vaccine manufacturer Moderna the following week, Bullock said the hope is to have about 60,000 Montanans at least have their first round of the two-dose shot by the end of the year, with tens of thousands more in the first half of next year. Adams said nationwide, the hope is to have 80 million vaccinated by the end of February. “In the meantime, be vigilant,” he said. That includes wearing a mask, practicing social distancing and avoiding crowds. But on Monday, a group called “Stand Up Montana” filed suit against Bullock, claiming an overreach of power by the administration.

“The lawsuit … claims that mandates by Gov. Bullock requiring commercial businesses to enforce various restrictions on customers are an illegal taking of value from businesses because it forces businesses to operate as police but with no compensation for that required service,” the group’s attorney, Quentin Rhoades said in a release.

He claimed the actions were ripe for judicial and legislative review.

“It’s time for the Legislature to conduct a thorough review of health-related emergency powers, both for the executive branch and for local governments.

“Until that happens, the courts must make a determination about the legality of what health powers have been asserted, and curtail those powers as needed to comply with the Constitution. That is the purpose of this lawsuit,“ Rhoades claimed.

This story has been corrected due to an error in the conversion from print to to the Internet.