Following the sad example of New York Governor Kathy Hochul, California Governor Gavin News is reinstating a statewide mask mandate to try to stave off a surge of COVID-19 cases.
The order goes into effect Wednesday and is applicable to all public spaces.
The move comes as coronavirus case rates in California have risen by almost 50% in the last 2½ weeks, and COVID-19 hospitalizations are up by nearly 15%. County health officials across the state say they suspect they may be seeing the start of a winter jump in coronavirus cases.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers California as having a high level of transmission of the coronavirus, the worst tier in the federal agency’s four-tier scale.“This is a critical time where we have a tool that we know has worked and can work,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the California health and human services secretary, on Monday. “We are proactively putting this tool of universal indoor masking in public settings in place to ensure we get through a time of joy and hope — without a darker cloud of concern and despair.”
Unfortunately, San Diegans who have been enjoying the fresh air will have to go digging for their old masks.
Los Angeles and Ventura counties, as well as most of the San Francisco Bay Area, already have their own indoor mask mandates, which were implemented in the summer, but the new order will affect nearly half the state’s population, including San Diego and Orange counties, the Inland Empire, the Central Valley and rural Northern California.“This increase in case rates is not experienced equally across the state,” Ghaly said. “We have some counties that remain very low — many of the Bay Area counties, L.A. But others are quite high, and we see this in greater percentage in communities and counties where vaccine rates are low.”
The state is also tightening restrictions on large public invents indoors, and toying with a form of travel-test requirement.
Any person attending an event with more than 1,000 people who cannot show proof of vaccination must now show proof of an antigen test within the previous 24 hours or a PCR test within the past 48 hours.The current rule allows any test within the previous 72 hours.Ghaly said that window is being tightened because more tests are available and they have faster turnaround times for results.In addition, the state is recommending, but not requiring, that travelers who enter or return to California get tested within three to five days of their arrival.
I suspect the mandate will be as full of fail as the vaccine drive.
Lest you think that all Democratic governors are jumping on the Omicron Panic Train, I would like to note that Colorado Governor Jared Polis has sensibly declared the coronavirus emergency over.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, declared in a new interview that the COVID-19 emergency is “over” and that he won’t be implementing another statewide mask mandate in response to the spread of the Omicron variant, explaining that if people aren’t vaccinated at this point, it’s their “own darn fault” if they get sick.“Everybody had more than enough opportunity to get vaccinated,” Polis told Colorado Public Radio on Friday. “Hopefully it’s been at your pharmacy, your grocery store, a bus near you, [or at] big events. At this point, if you haven’t been vaccinated, it’s really your own darn fault.”“Those who get sick, it’s almost entirely their own darn fault,” he continued. “I don’t want to say that nobody [will get the virus if they’re] vaccinated, but it’s very rare. Just to put it in perspective, of the about 1,400 people hospitalized, less than 200 (or 16 percent) are vaccinated. And many of them are older or have other conditions. Eighty-four percent of the people in our hospitals are unvaccinated, and they absolutely had every chance to get vaccinated.”
Given the usual lunacy we have come to expect from the Democrats, this is a pleasant surprise. I am looking forward to comparing and contrasting the approaches in about 6 months.
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