Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen has called on Texans to comply with mask-wearing when visiting busy places like grocery stores, even though it’s not mandatory in the state.
Speaking on Austin’s KLBJ 590 AM, Bonnen questioned why some fellow Texans are so outraged by the idea of sacrificing to keep others safe.
Bonnen said that masks help protect others in case you are unwittingly carrying the virus. “Our generation and younger have never had a real, literal war,” he said. “So we don’t know what self-sacrifice is. We’re not asking (people) to go to Vietnam. We’re asking you to wear a mask.”
The Speaker of the Texas House has been critical of big-box stores in his home area of Brazoria County, saying they are not setting a good example compared to small businesses, in regard to COVID-19 precautions.
Last week he wrote in a series of tweets, “In small businesses, you see masks and gloves, creative arrangements for contactless food handoff, areas cordoned off to maintain capacity limits and safe distancing, and employees who have clearly been trained for this new environment.”
“(But) take a step inside some of our largest home improvement superstores… you’ll be surrounded by employees with no masks and zero regard for six feet of distancing — utterly failing at maintaining a safe capacity within the store.”
“I’m tired of navigating a germ pool in an overcrowded Lowe’s, Home Depot, and WalMart. They haven’t dealt with the devastation of having to turn customers away and yet their behavior might be what keeps… restaurants at restricted capacity.
Bonnen is a member of the state’s task force to “reopen Texas.”
Asked on KLBJ whether he thinks the masks actually work, Bonnen said, “The medical experts tell us the mask… reduces the transmission rate by 90%.”
“If you’re going to big-box retail and no one is wearing a mask and no one is social distancing, you’re going to have more cases and it is going to slow down the opening of the rest of business.”
