‘Herd’ of mask wearers is key to coronavirus fight, DeWine’s business advisory group says

There were two “a-ha!” moments as Governor Mike DeWine’s Economic Advisory Board met the past several months to discuss how to help the state cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The big a-ha moment: Masks work, and work well to slow the spread of the virus, said Frank Sullivan, chairman and chief executive officer of RPM International in Medina. Sullivan chaired the group — created in late March — of 18 representatives of large and small Ohio businesses tapped to advise the governor on safety decisions.

“If everyone wears a mask, you can develop, and I love this phrase … ‘mask herd immunity,’ ” Sullivan said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s the notion that if everyone’s wearing a mask, we’re protecting each other.”

It’s similar to the idea that it’s important to have people around who know CPR in case of a major cardiac event, Sullivan said. The person having a heart attack doesn’t need to know CPR — but it is vital that others nearby do, he said.

“So I thought of that in the same manner as mask herd immunity,” Sullivan said. “Is it important that I wear a mask to protect me? Maybe, according to the medical folks, no. But it’s important as hell that everybody around me wear masks to protect me.”

That’s why the group’s first recommendation to DeWine was to mandate mask wearing, Sullivan said. Recommendations also include social distancing and that businesses and others put in place such things as Plexiglas barriers where feasible, he said.

Advisory group members basically said, no mask, no work, no customers, no exceptions, Sullivan said. The group’s recommended protocols should be effective for schools as well as businesses, he said.

The governor made mask-wearing a strong best practice recommendation, Sullivan said. DeWine on Wednesday strongly emphasized the importance of continued mask use as a way of combating the current statewide spike in coronavirus cases in an evening address to the state.

DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, former state health director Dr. Amy Acton and others have been working hard to protect all Ohio residents, Sullivan said.

Lesson from China

Advisory group members grasped the idea of herd immunity and masks after looking at businesses operating in China, where the epidemic began, Sullivan said.

Some people have pushed back on the idea of mask herd immunity because the concept came out of China, Sullivan said.

“People don’t trust China. I’m with it,” Sullivan said. “I don’t want to get political here, but this isn’t about trusting China. This was about the experience of some big U.S. manufacturers and their Chinese operations, and it was supported by the medical folks that we talked to.”

American companies with factories and other operations in China mandated all employees wear masks on the job, he said. That includes facilities where 2,000 to 3,000 people worked, he said.

Once masks were mandated, those facilities went weeks without new COVID-19 infections, Sullivan said.

That information didn’t come from Chinese politicians but from Americans such as the chief executives of Procter & Gamble and Dow Chemical, and has been supported by the medical community, Sullivan said.

Impact on grocers

The second a-ha moment for the group came when they looked at what was happening in Ohio groceries — essential businesses open every day dealing with consumers face-to-face, Sullivan said.

When group members looked at the state’s grocer industry in April, RPM, with 15,000 associates around the globe, had 15 known cases of COVID-19 among employees at that time, Sullivan said.

One of Ohio’s largest grocers, meanwhile, told the economic advisory group then they had about the same number of cases after employees began wearing masks, Plexiglas barriers were put up in stores and other steps taken to protect their workers, he said.

“It was shocking,” Sullivan said. “It was shockingly low.”

Sullivan said he thinks grocers’ experiences in the initial phase of the virus showed masks, barriers and other steps are effective in keeping people safe as the businesses operated.

COVID-19 and RPM

As of this week, RPM has had about 75 COVID-19 cases globally that it knows of since the pandemic began out of its 15,000 employees, he said. One person died and there were three hospitalizations that RPM knows of, he said. Less than 20 of those cases are active today, he said.

RPM employees who got sick were kept on the payroll as they quarantined at home, he said.

“We didn’t want to encourage anyone to come to work sick,” Sullivan said. “Not every small and medium business has the resources to pay people who aren’t working.”

The business advisory group included Toby Cosgrove, the former head of the Cleveland Clinic who is now the hospital systems executive adviser, and who played an active role, Sullivan said. State health officials also listened and participated in the business group’s discussions, he said. The group has started meeting every other week, instead of weekly, after giving the governor their initial recommendations.

It’s critical that businesses open and operate safely, Sullivan said. Small and medium businesses provide about 80% of all jobs in Ohio, he said.

“They are getting crushed,” Sullivan said. If a small business’s finances go to zero, “they’re done,” he said.

The pandemic has already led to millions of job losses around the nation, he noted.

Fiscal crisis awaits

Each state will face a fiscal crisis this year because of the virus, Sullivan said.

If no one works, no one pays taxes and governments will be faced with cutting important services, Sullivan said. That has broad societal impact, he said.

A lengthy economic shutdown threatens the existence of small businesses, some of which are someone’s life’s work, some have operated over generations and some are community fixtures and meeting places, he said.

“This is killing these small businesses,” Sullivan said. “It is destroying lives and livelihoods.”

The best practices the group has come up with, including mask herd immunity, are intended to help these small businesses open and run safely.

The medical community thinks the coronavirus will be around for a long time, Sullivan said.

And that’s why the advisory group’s recommended measures are crucial, he said.

“People need to get the message, this is a health protocol that can make a difference,” Sullivan said. “This is not driven by political decision making. I’m a free market, small government conservative. … So I want the people that are righteous about this to realize this is about health, this is about lives and livelihoods. It’s about health and our economy. It will pass, hopefully, in the next 12 months or so. But it’s not a political issue. It really is a health and economic issue.”

Jim Mackinnon covers business. He can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him @JimMackinnonABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/JimMackinnonABJ.