claim: “We know mask mandates work. There’s enough evidence out there between counties that have done it and counties that haven’t."
evidence: So Governor Kim Reynolds there, also a Republican, was initially against the mask mandate, and she even said that cities couldn't issue their own mandates back in the summer. But she recently reversed course. Iowa has seen one of the biggest surges in cases and hospitalizations in the country per capita. Iowa has roughly half the population of Missouri, but it's almost in the same ballpark in terms of new cases. So earlier this month, Reynolds did end up issuing a statewide mask mandate, as well as some restrictions on public and private gatherings, with exceptions for some businesses and religious services. [...] INSKEEP: Well, I guess we can be consistent here and note that there's more and more evidence that masks work, that mask mandates work. There were questions about this six months ago - hardly any questions now. And if I'm not mistaken, Sebastian, there was even a study in a very red state, Kansas, that proved this. VALDIVIA: Yeah. So Kansas actually has a mask mandate that counties can opt into and opt out of, and so the CDC looked at how cases have played out in the counties that opted out and opted in. And they found that in the two months after the mandate, new cases on average actually slightly decreased in counties with the mandate, but they doubled in those nonmandated counties. Now, there's some caveats there. Some of the mandated counties had other additional public health orders, so you can't chalk it all up to mask mandates. But the difference is pretty stark.