Kaci Griffin (left) and Liz Powell with Aurora Concepts administer a first doses of the Moderna vaccine during Hardin County's Monday morning COVID-19 vaccine clinic in Lumberton. The county is holding clinics as vaccine becomes available and trying to reach residents throughout the county by staging them at different locations. Photo taken Monday, February 8, 2021 Kim Brent/The EnterpriseKim Brent / The Enterprise

Gov. Greg Abbott surprised exactly no one with his announcement this week that he would not be re-imposing a statewide mask mandate. In Republican Party politics these days — especially for incumbents like Abbott who face even more extreme opposition in GOP primaries — face masks aren’t lifesaving adaptations to a deadly pandemic. They are outrageous violations of your personal freedom and a sign that government power must be scaled back. If they don’t draw the line here, some apparently believe, the next thing you know some bureaucrat might be trying to tell you how fast to drive in a school zone.

A message like that may appeal to the half of adult Texans who have not been vaccinated yet against Covid 19 and have no plans to do so. Again, it’s a freedom thing. But as politically popular it might be in some places, it ignores an inconvenient truth:

Covid cases are increasing again, from not only a delta variant of the virus and maybe the lambda after that. And just three states are responsible for 40% of the new Covid cases in our country — Texas, Florida and Missouri. On Sunday, the state’s positivity rate — the ratio of cases to tests — went above 10% for the first time since February, a threshold that Abbott had previously identified as dangerous.

Once upon a time, before politics trumped common sense, numbers like that would cause public leaders in those three states to do more to protect their residents from a disease that has already killed more than 600,000 Americans. Instead we see firm promises not to get more people wearing masks and even reluctance to encourage the vaccinations that would make the masks unnecessary.

Abbott is hanging his reasoning on the belief that the combination of vaccinated Texans and those who natural immunity to Covid from having been infected with it before makes more mask wearing unnecessary. But that still leaves millions of vulnerable people, and it’s unclear how much protection people get from natural antibodies. For them, mask-wearing is not a bad idea, and it sharply reduces their chances of spreading Covid to others.

Again, people who find all this annoying could just get a free vaccine shot that will protect them from the delta variant or whatever follows. As President Joe Biden has said, we have a pandemic only among the unvaccinated. Something like 99% of new Covid patients, in hospitals or morgues, are those who have not been vaccinated.

Texas has made a lot of progress in this battle, and Covid numbers are not anywhere near their peak. But when the cooler fall weather arrives and people congregate indoors more, doctors are worried that coronavirus cases could surge again. We can virtually finish off this threat this summer with vaccinations — and masks where they make sense. Our public officials at all levels should be supporting that effort, not undermining it.