Bay Area Hospitals Reinstate Mask Mandate, Concerned with the Dreaded “Tripledemic”
Mandatory masking also returning to Los Angeles County.
Mask mandates are returning to California, despite the fact that covid has become an endemic disease and there is little reliable evidence they are anything other than a virtue-signalling nuisance.
For example, Bay Area hospital officials say the institutions are reinstating mask requirements out of a concern for the “tripledemic”: respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza, as well as covid.
If you walk into a doctor’s office or hospital in much of the Bay Area, you’ll notice every staff member must have a mask on starting November 1.
Bay Area public health officials are hoping to prevent the same ‘tripledemic’ that put a strain on hospitals across the area last year.
“This situation right now with RSV and other viruses, respiratory viruses is basically our March 2020 — this is our pandemic,” Dr. Jackie Grupp-Phelan, division chief of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals said in an interview with ABC7 in November 2022.
Masking is also being pushed in Los Angeles County, with mask requirements in place for healthcare facilities in the region.
…But with positive COVID-19 cases back on the rise starting back in July and peaking in August, Fox 11 reported there is a new masking mandate in place. It started on Nov. 1 and states that masking is required in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities with the hope of curbing the spread of COVID, the flu and RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). It will be in effect until the end of March – aka the end of flu season. L.A. County workers in any form of healthcare or who work directly with patients are strongly recommended to also mask up.
According to the L.A. Times, Los Angeles County has no other signs of mandatory masking making a comeback despite recent outbreaks that have hit both schools and workplaces. Health officials are not alarmed by the spread because COVID is no longer overwhelming hospitals as it did in previous years during the height of the outbreak.
As a reminder, one of the most rigorous and extensive reviews of the scientific literature was conducted and concluded that neither surgical masks nor N95 masks have been shown to make a difference in reducing the spread of Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses.
The gold standard for medical evidence is the randomized clinical trial, and the gold standard for analyzing this evidence is Cochrane (formerly the Cochrane Collaboration), the world’s largest and most respected organization for evaluating health interventions. Funded by the National Institutes of Health and other nations’ health agencies, it’s an international network of reviewers, based in London, that has partnerships with the WHO and Wikipedia. Medical journals have hailed it for being “the best single resource for methodologic research” and for being “recognized worldwide as the highest standard in evidence-based healthcare.”
It has published a new Cochrane review of the literature on masks, including trials during the Covid-19 pandemic in hospitals and in community settings. The 15 trials compared outcomes of wearing of surgical masks versus wearing no masks, and also versus N95 masks. The review, conducted by a dozen researchers from six countries, concludes that wearing any kind of face covering “probably makes little or no difference” in reducing the spread of respiratory illness.
But in terms of virtue-signalling and forcing the public to bend to the will of elite bureaucrats, masks are perfect for the job.
How worried are normal Americans about covid? I am going to take the following news item as a sign that everyone with common sense is quite done with covid drama.
Low demand for Pfizer’s COVID-19 products has put roughly 200 workers out of a job.
“Pfizer does not take these changes lightly,” Pfizer media relations director Steven Danehy said in a statement to News Channel 3 Thursday. “All decisions that impact people, processes and initiatives will be made with transparency, compassion and respect.”
Demand for the COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty, and the COVID-19 pill Paxlovid, had dropped in Pfizer’s recent evaluation of its manufacturing network, according to Danehy.
“Considering the lower-than-expected utilization for our COVID-19 products – Comirnaty and Paxlovid – Pfizer launched an enterprise-wide cost realignment program to support future revenue expectations,” Danehy said.
Now that’s a signal I can get behind.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
The FA/FO graph is about to transition from linear to exponential.
There is a nasty infection going around now, beware. My whole family came down with it, getting better now. It is not detected on the old BinaxNow! Covid antigen tests that Biden recently sent out, but I still think it’s Covid that changed (by mutation or a lab) enough that it’s no longer detected. I’ve experienced a reduction in smell of some things, food tastes saltier than it used to probably because I am not picking up the other tastes as well.
This one is very sneaky because you don’t feel it in the throat, but it seems to go straight to the lungs. Wouldn’t it be sneaky if Biden sent out old Covid tests that he knew would not detect their new laboratory creation?
Bingo on the salt! Taste and smell really blunted but totally back to normal. Glad no sore throat… that was the major hit.
Despite the blunted smell and taste…. sour, bitter and sweet still could be sensed…. and amped taste of salt……and Garlic could be smelled..
I learned the fix for sore throat from an Indian doctor on the web. Gargle with diluted povidone iodine for a while. It’s a mess and hard to do esp. if you have mucus, but it will really get the mucus moving, the throat will hurt more for a while, then it won’t hurt at all because all the bugs are dead dead dead. Doesn’t hurt of you happen to swallow a little.
Sometimes I wasn’t sure if my throat was infected because it felt kind of normal, so then I’d gargle anyway. The hurt would tell me if it had been infected. As usual with Covid, it’s easier to kill it than to test for it so just keep killing.
The iodine gargle and nose swabbing is the best approach… especially when traveling. Back of my throat was splotchy. from lymphoid reaction…but resolved in a day… not strep throat.
Paging Dr. Chicken Little….
OK… so the Bay Area will be harder hit since the serfs have been vaxxed to the max and the immure systems are compromised. There are major viral infections now…. I ran afoul of the biggie that doesn’t seem to have a name yet.. not Covid, not RSV,,,, minimal fever if at all…. started with shivers day one, then major muscle and bone aches only for day two, then lethargy, head congestion and a 5 alarm sore throat. Minimal phlegm. Pulse oxygen normal. Lost 10 pounds. Four weeks out…. residual sinus congestion…big whoop. All to say…. survivable and with enhanced immune response for the rest of the season. Used tamiflu, IVM, zinc, Vitamin D, Vitamin C and Aleve.
Proof positive that Bay area medical services are incompetent. If at all possible, go somewhere else for medical care – if you can find any that hasn’t been destroyed by political correctness and rampant wokeness.
Bending wills, virtue signaling and badges signaling compliance.
That’s the agenda.
Nazi’s were much gentler- just display their flag and they’d leave you alone.
Solid evidence also proves that the climate emergency is a hoax and that there are hard genetic-based differences in IQ by race. But who cares as long as there are hucksters to fleece the ignorant and the emotionally immature?
When the first thing I’m told to do in a doctor’s office is provably no benefit whatsoever to my health it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the rest of my visit.
“Mask mandates are returning to California,… and there is little reliable evidence they are anything other than a virtue-signalling nuisance.”
You could be describing the state as well… especially the Bay Area.
Interesting article I read yesterday, that the big killer with COVID-19 is bacterial pneumonia. A ventilator just usually makes it worse. But so do masks.
That is why outpatient care with IVM should include a Z-pack. The secondary reactions are the killers.