Are Michiganders ditching their face masks? I took a drive to find out

President Donald Trump wore a mask at Ford Motor Company’s Rawsonville Components plant in Ypsilanti this week. Just not when he spoke to the press.   

He said he didn’t want to give reporters the satisfaction. Take that for what you will.  

Whatever else you think about Trump, his disdain for wearing masks has helped turn mouth-and-nose coverings into a political symbol. Perhaps he thinks they are a sign of weakness. Or that COVID-19 will go away if he doesn't wear one. Or that they ruin his look.  

Whatever the reason, Trump’s refusal to consistently wear a mask contradicts guidelines from his own administration, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that we wear them in public. The CDC’s suggestion remains even as states are lifting stay-home orders and loosening rules about where and how we gather. 

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is lifting rules here, too, though on Friday she extended parts of her stay-home order through mid-June.  This includes an order to wear a mask in stores. 

Has the (relatively) mixed messaging changed our behavior?

I spent the better part of two days driving around Metro Detroit to see, stopping in grocery stores, retail stores, gas stations, convenience stores. I drove from Chelsea to downriver to Detroit, from Detroit to Birmingham to Southfield … and back to Detroit.  

I took a detour to Pinckney and Howell, to Taylor and Dearborn. I drove through Ferndale and Royal Oak, through Novi and Canton, through Hamtramck and Belleville. Pulling into parking lots, cutting the engine, slipping on a mask, and taking a quick stroll into the businesses that feed and clothe and fuel us, into the places where commerce and politics are mixing in ways we never dreamed about three months ago. 

Of the dozens of stops I made, not once did a see a front-door without a sign asking customers to wear masks, often accompanied by a second sign explaining the rule was a state order.

This doesn’t mean there are stores without those signs.  

But I had only so much time. 

At a Target in Southfield, I watched — from a socially safe distance — a couple of customers and an employee, all wearing masks, try to fit an 80-inch television into a small SUV. At a convenience store in Ypsilanti, I saw customers, also wearing masks, line up for fried fish — it smelled heavenly.  

I saw folks fill grocery baskets with frozen pizza and oranges, with paper towels and milk, with bug spray and hot dogs and plastic utensils, preparing for the holiday weekend, yet mindful of each other, keeping their distance as best they could. 

The stores were mostly bustling, especially Friday, and the cacophony of human voices was comforting. Whether it was the holiday or the governor’s looser restrictions — Whitmer signed off on social gatherings of 10 or fewer — or the 70-degree weather, the stores were largely full of noise. 

It had been a while; in public, the coronavirus had kept us mostly quiet. 

At least a half-dozen of the larger grocery stores I went to were nearly packed. Hundreds of shoppers ambled through the aisles of a Wal-Mart in Taylor. Just as hundreds filled a Kroger in Ypsilanti. At both places, the number of customers without a mask I counted on one hand.  

At the Whole Foods in Detroit — on Mack just east of Woodward — a line formed out the front door, around the northwest corner of the building, and stretched back 20 deep. Customers stood six feet apart. Everyone had a mask. 

I spent almost 12 hours driving a couple of hundred miles. I saw people in construction-style masks and the light blue coverings favored by surgeons, not to be confused with the N95 models front-line workers rely on inside the COVID-19 wings of hospitals. 

I saw masks stitched with the emblem of Batman and masks displaying an ocean. I saw scarfs and bandannas and masks made to look like American flags. 

As a rule, the smaller the business, the fewer the masks. Which makes sense when you consider profit margins and the owners who likely don’t want to turn customers away. 

At no point did I see a store ask a customer to leave. Though, again, that doesn’t mean stores aren’t enforcing the policy. It’s just that their employees aren’t the police and asking them to enforce a law with nothing more than a name badge can be risky.  

I spotted people crowded in line waiting for ice cream, many without masks, and groups walking in parks six feet apart. At gas stations, most folks filled their tanks without them. 

Politics remain the starkest dividing line. Polls show those who lean conservative are less likely to wear masks. This may help explain why I saw only a handful of mask-free customers at a Walmart in Taylor and dozens and dozens of mask-free customers at the Walmart in Howell. And why reports of the percentage of mask wearing varies from community to community in our state.  

For the most part, though, at least in metro Detroit, folks are still wearing masks inside our largest stores. For those who don’t, consider the words of the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, a Republican, who teared up when he spoke about masks Friday: 

“This is,” he said, “a … senseless dividing line, and I would ask people to try to dial up your empathy and your understanding.” 

He called for an end to the shaming.

"If someone is wearing a mask, they're not doing it to represent what political party they're in or what candidates they support," he said. "They might be doing it because they've got a 5-year-old child who's been going through cancer treatments. They might have vulnerable adults in their life, who currently have COVID and they're fighting."

In other words, he's asking us to dial back our assumptions, our conspiracy theories, and truly think about why someone might be wearing a mask. 

It’s a lovely thought at a time when we need more kind thoughts. And while we may not be able to agree on the meaning of masks, we can surely agree that a little more empathy would be helpful. 

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.