Gov. Mills did the right thing last week in strengthening the state’s mask mandate in the face of explosive growth of COVID-19 cases. Now it’s up to the rest of us to make it work.

This is a matter of public health, not political controversy. If Mainers make a habit out of wearing a mask every time they leave their homes, we will save lives. If we don’t, more people will get sick and die. It is no more controversial than that.

After hovering around 20 new cases a day for much of the summer, coronavirus infections spiked to 40 new cases Oct. 1.

The number continued to climb throughout the month, doubling to 80 new cases on Oct. 29. Just a week later, the one-day number of new cases in Maine  more than doubled again, reaching 183 on Nov. 5.

It’s not just a question of how many cases, but where they are showing up.

More than 1,000 infections have been reported in Maine over the last two weeks, and they have been spread out among 14 out of 16 counties.

There are more cases in the most populous parts of the state, but just because there are more people there. No part of the state has been spared.

If cases continue to climb at the current rate, thousands more people will get sick and some of them will die. Maine is the oldest state in the nation, and seniors are vulnerable to severe illness from COVID. And many Mainers have the underlying health conditions (such as diabetes, smoking or high blood pressure) that put people younger than 65 at higher risk.

Accelerated spread of disease will slow down a weak economic recovery, in which more than 40,000 Mainers are still unemployed.

We can turn this trend around, but it will take everyone to do their part. If we wait to take action until the people around us get sick, it will be too late.

The people who were diagnosed today were infected sometime between five and 14 days ago. In the meantime, they could have been infecting people who won’t be diagnosed until next week or the week after.

Fighting this takes a commitment to taking this seriously. Since the virus could be anywhere,  we have to behave as if it were everywhere.

That’s why Gov. Mills’ mask mandate is what’s called for.

For months, most people have understood that covering their faces is one of the best ways to slow the spread of coronavirus. But there have been so many mixed messages about when or where people should mask up.

Mills’ mask order clears the confusion: The time to wear one is all the time.

People need to wear a mask inside and outside, whenever and wherever they could spread a virus that they might be carrying.

According to Mills, that means you should wear one not just in the grocery store, but also when you are hunting alone in the woods.

Overkill? Maybe. But it’s easier to follow a simple rule than a complicated one, and while there is a proven benefit to widespread practice of face covering, there is next to no cost.

Masks can be uncomfortable. Wearing one can make your eyeglasses steam up. You can’t read a masked person’s lips or tell when they are smiling.

But stacked up against the real-life consequences of a virus that has already killed more than 230,000 Americans, it’s not too much to ask.

Universal mask wearing has made COVID-19 manageable in Taiwan and Japan. There is statistical evidence that shows that mask mandates in some states have slowed the spread of the coronavirus.

There is no scientific support for anti-mask propaganda. If masks poisoned their wearers with carbon dioxide, as some claim, there wouldn’t be a dentist or a surgeon alive, because they wear them all day long, year after year.

Requiring people to mask in public doesn’t put their liberty at risk any more than requiring drivers to keep to the right does. The biggest threat to our freedom is the pandemic itself, not the public health measures needed to stop it.

Mainers did a great job in the early days of the pandemic, taking it seriously and preventing the virus from taking hold in our communities.

But it’s here now, and it is spreading at an alarming rate. It’s up to all of us to do something about it.

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