�������ýҕ�l

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday ordered all Texans to wear face coverings in public, with a limited number of exceptions, a sharp reversal that underscored the severity of the coronavirus outbreak that has surged out of control in Texas. The executive order, announced the afternoon before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, followed sustained lobbying from leaders in the state’s largest cities, who are mostly Democrats, and came in the face of likely opposition from Republicans in the state, many of whom already chafed at Mr. Abbott’s mandates from Austin. (Montgomery and Goodman, 7/2)

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) is calling on a Republican state official to remove a cartoon from his newspaper's Facebook page that compares her recent order requiring face masks in public to the Holocaust. The cartoon was published on Friday on the Facebook page of the Anderson County Review, a newspaper owned by Anderson County Republican Party Chairman Dane Hicks. The cartoon features a woman wearing a mask with a Star of David attached to it in front of a line of people entering a cattle car. (Wise, 7/5)

Masks have become a symbol of the coronavirus pandemic -- at first largely foreign to Americans, then treated skeptically by officials looking to preserve protection for health workers and then embraced by a public desperate to stem the overwhelming tide of the virus in northeastern cities. Since then, they have become a political flashpoint, a source of defiance and confusion, all while a debate raged about what type to wear and their effectiveness. (Adigun, Carrington, Farber, Johnson and Salzman, 7/5)

More widespread wearing of face masks could prevent tens of thousands of deaths by COVID-19, epidemiologists and mathematicians project. A model from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation shows that near-universal wearing of cloth or homemade masks could prevent between 17,742 and 28,030 deaths across the US before Oct. 1. (Jingnan and Kelly, 7/3)

Kaiser Health News and Politifact HealthCheck: Social Media Image About Mask Efficacy Right In Sentiment, But Percentages Are ‘Bonkers’ 

A popular social media post that’s been circulating on Instagram and Facebook since April depicts the degree to which mask-wearing interferes with the transmission of the novel coronavirus. It gives its highest “contagion probability” — a very precise 70% — to a person who has COVID-19 but interacts with others without wearing a mask. The lowest probability, 1.5%, is when masks are worn by all.The exact percentages assigned to each scenario had no attribution or mention of a source. So we wanted to know if there is any science backing up the message and the numbers — especially as mayors, governors and members of Congress increasingly point to mask-wearing as a means to address the surges in coronavirus cases across the country. (Knight, 7/6)

After months of living in a pandemic, Liqing Ye got fed up with her lipstick always smearing under a face mask—revealed when unmasking at dinner with friends or in meetings. She hit upon a solution: getting her lips tattooed with a semi-permanent coral hue. (Li and Perez, 7/5)

Wearing masks, a practice that health experts say is one of the most effective ways to slow the spread of COVID-19, is now required across the state. But what if you’re unable to wear a mask because of a legitimate medical condition or disability? Can a business refuse to serve you? Here’s what you need to know. (Marfin, 7/5)

With masks now required in Dallas County and in many places across the country, misinformation has spread about their effectiveness in the fight against COVID-19. Viral posts on social media in recent weeks have claimed that masks can have harmful effects, including depriving a person’s body of oxygen, causing a person to breathe dangerous levels of exhaled carbon dioxide or weaken a person’s immune system. (Marfin, 7/5)

When an employee told a group of 20-somethings they needed face masks to enter his fast-food restaurant, one woman fired off a stream of expletives. “Isn’t this Orange County?” snapped a man in the group. “We don’t have to wear masks!” The curses came as a shock, but not really a surprise, to Nilu Patel, a certified registered nurse anesthetist at nearby University of California-Irvine Medical Center, who observed the conflict while waiting for takeout. Health care workers suffer these angry encounters daily as they move between treacherous hospital settings and their communities, where mixed messaging from politicians has muddied common-sense public health precautions. (Almendrala, 7/6)