Walmart requires masks, trying to save college football in 2020

The major retail store is one of the latest to require masks to be worn while shopping in its premises.

(This was originally published by Matt Zemek on Trojans Wire.)

It’s not a joke, and it’s definitely not an anti-Southerners thing, either. This REALLY is serious business: Walmart, America’s largest retailer, has decided to require all customers to wear masks. The news broke early on Wednesday:

Let’s be very clear about this: Walmart executives and administrators didn’t have extensive meetings and say, “Darnit, we have to save college football for 2020.” This is — first and foremost — a move meant to promote public health and safety, to get the coronavirus under control. Walmart’s reach in and through American life and the nation’s economy made it important to commit to this plan, which could ripple throughout the country and affect tens of millions of citizens for the better. The domino effect on positive cases, hospitalizations, uses of ventilators, and deaths could be notable.

(You will note that I used the word “could,” as opposed to “will.” I am not a scientist and don’t want to project scientific certainty.)

At the very least, even if you are unconvinced about mask-wearing (and there are plenty of Americans who fall in that camp, a result partly brought about by Anthony Fauci’s own lies and the lies from other public health officials about the effectiveness of mask-wearing in the past winter), this much is clear:

Walmart OBVIOUSLY felt it had to pull the trigger on mask requirements. The company’s cost-benefit and public health analyses led it to the conclusion that it had to put this rule in place, to reduce spread of COVID-19. Yes, in an immediate sense, this was not and is not primarily a college football-related move.

But: Walmart is a company with a substantial presence in the South; more precisely, it has a substantial presence in the less urbanized areas of the South, with fewer alternative or upscale shopping options for large numbers of citizens. Walmart is often — by necessity, as a geographical reality — the main grocery outlet for a lot of Southerners to an extent not matched in some of the other regions of the country, especially the more populous regions.

The idea that college football is completely irrelevant to Walmart’s decision is — I would think — inaccurate. There is definitely increased anxiety in the South about college football not happening in the fall, which would be a massive psychic blow to the region if it happened.

Unconvinced about this last point?

I give you this, from earlier in the week:

College football is such a part of the bloodstream of Southern culture — part of the DNA of the fabric of life in the South — that Walmart executives have surely become more aware of the enormity of what could happen in the coming months. It isn’t — and hasn’t been — the job of Walmart executives to save college football, but I’m sure they either hear about it or talk about it once every few days.

The Southeastern Conference and its coaches have become more aggressive in promoting the need to wear a mask:

You can generally see Southern public figures and entities who carry enormous influence mobilizing to try to save college football. Walmart’s decision on Wednesday — while not primarily motivated by the need to save college football in 2020 — surely INCLUDES the salvation of college football as one of its many goals. It’s all part of a region beginning to realize what’s at stake.

Now, if only Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi would get on board with monthly checks to all Americans, paying them to stay home in a pandemic. Walmart’s decision will give college football a chance of being played, but monthly checks and the continuation of unemployment assistance remain the biggest things which can be done to enable college football to be played this fall.