‘No one wants masks again’
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Los Angeles County inched closer to returning to an indoor mask mandate on Thursday, with the rising number of COVID-19 cases moving the County back into the “medium” COVID activity level.
Since the repeal of state and local indoor mask mandates in the late winter and early spring of this year, fluctuating COVID-19 transmission rates, as well as recent new case rises and new variants, have had counties considering a return of some form of mask mandate. During the summer, Alameda County brought their mandate back briefly, with LA County nearly doing so but dropping plans to do so at the last minute due to both a turnaround of new cases and enormous public outcry.
A dip in cases during the fall quelled fears of a mandate for a time, but with the number of cases climbing again, LA County Public Health Department began to strongly recommend wearing masks indoors last month. The number of cases has continued to increase since. On November 21st, 1,123 new cases of COVID-19 were announced by LA Public Health. On Thursday, LA County Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said that the number of new cases a day were over 2,700, with an average of 192 COVID-related hospital admissions, with Thursday’s total going well above that average with 4,493 new cases. Since November 1st, the average number of COVID infections a day has gone up 180%, with COVID hospital admissions up 200%.
“There is this common line of thinking that the pandemic is over and COVID is no longer of concern, but these numbers clearly demonstrate that COVID is still with us,” Ferrer said on Thursday. “Given both the increases in hospitalizations and the lack of certainty in the winter trajectory for COVID-19, continuing some common-sense mitigation strategies that we know work to limit transmission and illness, including masking and being up to date on vaccines and boosters, remains a very sensible approach.”
While the number of cases has pushed the county into the “medium” community level and a “high” level expected sometime in the next few weeks, Ferrer said that a mandate would not be put into effect until CDC thresholds were met. Specifically, a mandate would not happen until there was an average COVID admission rate of more than 10 out of 100,000 residents in the County and that 10% or more inpatient hospital beds had COVID patients.
“However, it does signal that case rates and hospitalizations are elevated, and we could be in the ‘high’ community level as soon as next week,” added Ferrer.
Many healthcare workers noted that reaching the CDC thresholds would take some time to meet, and would likely not be reached until after Christmas.
“If they are met, and that is still a big if, there would still be other County thresholds to meet, as well as a two week period to make sure those rates stayed that high,” Luisa Renteria, a nurse in Los Angeles who has assisted COVID patients since March 2020, told the Globe on Thursday. “That’s what stopped the mandate from returning this summer, and in all likelihood, would stop it again in, say, January or February.”
Hello Orange County.
There is a reason why Ron Desantis is the most popular Governor in America today. He treats his citizens like adults… not subjects.
I have yet to read one study that proves masking has any beneficial effect. Except as a placebo.
PLEASE Keep up this failed assault on Californian freedoms and help pave the way back to a functioning two party republic, we so dearly need (again).
Barbara Ferrer is not a medical doctor but she does qualify as a NAZI ! She needs to be criminally prosecuted along with Fauci !
Medical authorities, get back to me after you at least mention a few words like “Vitamin D” and “natural immunity”.
Those masks don’t work; but every medical outfit we have contact with still requires masks to come into the office. I’m sure malpractice suits are on their minds, but “mal” means “bad” and it seems to me mandating the useless and provably harmful wearing of masks rates as “bad,”
Forget about your feelings towards Fauci and Ferrer. Do you really and truly believe that the doctors you’ve been seeing for however long, really would mandate your wearing masks into their offices if there wasn’t some amount of protection gained. Surgeons and surgical staff have been wearing similar masks for decades when in the OR.
There’s a big difference between containing aerosols in the OR and stopping spread of viruses in society. Masks are helpful at the one and useless at the other. Read the studies, not the Democrat propaganda.
There is also a HUGE difference depending upon the type of mask one wears. Surgical (usually paper) masks that are worn in ORs are designed primarily to help with preventing bacterial contamination and not for the significantly smaller sizes for a typical virus.
Only N95 masks offer any sort of viral protection, and even then wearing the mask must meet very specific conditions including proper fitting to one’s face, frequent changes (no re-using), wearer must not have any facial hair, and mask must stay above the nose and cover the mouth at all times. For the vast, vast majority of the general public, virtually none of these conditions are adhered to (in addition to most masks not being certified as N95), and thus 99.99% of the masks that are worn by the public are and always were essentially useless.
Here is a link to a recent study comparing numerous locations/countries/counties/cities that imposed mask mandates versus those that did not (or did so but then dropped them or vice versa). Results clearly showed no difference between the two, and in fact in many cases infectious rates increased when mask mandates were re-imposed:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/29/these-12-graphs-show-mask-mandates-do-nothing-to-stop-covid/
Re-imposition will do nothing to stop COVID19, but will offer politicians and career bureaucrats like Ferrer virtue signaling points and CYA cover is all.
You and anyone else can certainly wear the face diapers forever if you like (as may be your freedom of choice certainly), but forcing all to do so is not only completely unwarranted given the above, but may actually do actual harm. The far better approach would be to instead encourage folks to exercise more, eat better, get outside in the sunlight, and keep their immune systems functional and healthy.
But nothing should ever justify these types of mandates going forward, and they never should have been considered let alone allowed in the first place. Encourage if you like, but no mandates!
There’s a big difference between containing aerosols in the OR and stopping spread of viruses in society. Masks are helpful at the one and useless at the other. Read the studies, not the Democrat propaganda.
Barbara Ferrer wants to re-run the same scam again? She needs to be fired.