Forum Editorial: Leaders must lead

At the intersection of the misinformation age and a global pandemic, public servants are caught in between, facing dual, competing challenges on unprecedented scales.

COVID-19 has come to our door at the same time as a large number of people across our nation and our community have refused facts themselves. Suddenly the very idea of scientific evidence is controversial, and to be an expert is to be suspect.

There is no one whose job it is to serve our community who hasn’t run into the difficulties presented by the pervasive influence of lies and misinformation over the last 10 months, and who hasn’t found themselves faced with a dilemma: how much influence should those who refuse to accept science, evidence and experts have on efforts to keep the community safe?

Some public servants have undoubtedly had an inclination to make sure to give weight to the voices of those who feel theirs are not being heard. That is as it should be. Everyone in our democracy deserves to have their voice heard, and compromise should not be a foreign concept.

But since the pandemic began, some of the loudest voices in our community have belonged to those of us who are unwilling to acknowledge scientific evidence, and as the months have gone on, those are the voices that have begun to dominate our discourse. And the divide it has created is heartbreaking.

In July, when the Maryville City Council first enacted a mask mandate, the meeting room was packed with those who opposed the move, and offered all manner of misinformation to try and convince council members not to do what the health experts in that same room had said would be the best way to save their friends’ and neighbors’ lives.

We can only imagine how many more of those friends and neighbors wouldn’t be with us today, how many more of our family members would have been on ventilators, running up expensive medical bills, facing a lifetime of the uncertain long-term effects of COVID-19, had the council not taken the action it did.

The council remains the only elected body in the county to enact a continuous mask mandate, which its members will once again consider extending next week. Throughout the harrowing past 10 months, council members have been forced to stand nearly alone in their actions; despite their decisions being backed by the advice of health experts, other local governmental bodies have ignored requests from the council to enact similar measures.

With each mitigation measure since this spring, with each extension of the mandate, the verbal abuse hurled at council members for simply following the advice of experts and listening to evidence has only escalated further and further to truly frightening and reprehensible levels. And with each escalation, it’s only become more and more difficult for those who agree on an evidence-based approach to do so publicly, potentially opening themselves up to similar abuse. From that perspective, it’s understandable why few other health, government and community leaders have chosen to publicly stand with the council over the past several months, even if many of them support the council’s actions.

The name calling, hateful rhetoric and outright threats against those who advocate for facts have only made it harder to do the right thing, yes. But, consistently, council members — though not always unanimously — have continued to show the courage necessary to make the best decisions they can for our community.

We hope that council members will continue to take seriously the information from health experts expected at next week’s meeting, and steel their resolve to make the decision that the available evidence shows will be safest for our community — as they have done so far.

Times of crisis cry out for leaders to stand up and be counted, not to sit idly by and allow events to sweep them away. Leaders must lead, and experts must not be afraid to be experts — whatever others may say about them.