The next lieutenant governor of Indiana is actively encouraging Hoosiers to refuse to comply with visitor mask directives recently implemented by some hospitals across the state to protect vulnerable patients from the spread of respiratory illnesses.
Lt. Gov.-elect Micah Beckwith, a Republican set to take office Jan. 13, denounced the hospital face mask policies, and urged Hoosiers to ignore them, in a series of X/Twitter posts beginning around midnight NWI Region time Friday.
Beckwith's anti-mask fury was set off by an article in an online edition of the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, that noted hospitals in several U.S. states, including Indiana, are requiring hospital employees and visitors to wear face masks amid simultaneously surging cases of the flu, RSV and norovirus, as well as COVID-19, well ahead of the peak of the annual flu season.
In Northwest Indiana, Franciscan Health recently restricted visitors, especially children age 16 and under, at some of its hospitals, and also is encouraging, but not requiring, all symptomatic visitors to its Crown Point hospital along Interstate 65 to put on a mask prior to entering the building to reduce the spread of illness.\
Many Indianapolis hospitals have enacted similar policies.
"Don’t comply!" Beckwith proclaimed. "The government and the industrial health care complex lied to us all once and have proven they cannot be trusted when it comes to the health of the general population."
Beckwith, a Christian pastor by trade, doled out hundreds of "religious exemptions" to individuals who otherwise would have been required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine during the peak years of the coronavirus pandemic that's killed more than 27,000 Hoosiers since 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He said the hospital mask requirements make him want to play "Tyrants vs. Patriots again" and explicitly promised such policies won't continue once he gets in office — "Not on my watch!"
"We don’t have a conservative governor yet. The new administration doesn’t get sworn in until Jan 13th. The current administration is very left. We’re almost there though. Daylight is right around the corner," Beckwith said. "Do not listen to any 'official' who tries to force you to mask up again."
Indiana's lieutenant governor has few formal powers beyond presiding over the Senate and overseeing the Indiana State Department of Agriculture. It's not clear how Beckwith could dictate the visitation policies of privately operated hospitals.
Records show NWI Region hospitals routinely employed visitor restrictions and mask directives to limit the spread of respiratory illnesses in winter, even before the emergence of COVID-19.
Beckwith, however, doesn't buy it.
"Riiiiiiiight," he said. "Never once before COVID did I walk into a hospital and was told to wear a face mask — and I did many hospital calls over the years as a pastor. This nonsense has only started in the last 4 years."