Limited Mask Mandates Will Return to California Bay Area
California has got to California.
The mask mandate is making a comeback in some parts of California. Several counties in the infamously blue Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Napa) are planning to start masking requirements on November 1st.
In Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Napa counties, masks must be worn in skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, and many other healthcare settings.
The new mandate was put into effect to limit the spread of the flu and other viruses during the late fall to early spring flu season, with some counties opting to end the requirement in March and others in April of 2025. The orders only apply to healthcare workers except for Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which are also requiring visitors to wear masks; in Santa Clara, patients must also wear masks.
These mask mandates come as the 10-campus University of California system banned masks to conceal identity, and Los Angeles Mayor Kare Bass reportedly considered a similar mask ban until she recently contracted COVID-19.
Presently, it does not appear that there will be a more comprehensive mask mandate.
As a Southern Californian, I am relieved that the insanity is being confined to the Bay Area. However, I do not see the logic behind the move.
To begin with, covid has become an endemic disease. The following snippet comes from an article published by the Harvard School of Public Health.
Masks in public are rare and many people have stopped bothering to test or isolate when they feel ill. As official guidelines and social expectations have shifted, the landscape for navigating one’s own risk can feel trickier.
These shifts reflect what many experts are now saying about COVID: that it has moved from a pandemic to an endemic phase. While epidemiologists’ definitions of endemic can vary, [Bill Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health] said in the article, it generally means a constant presence rather than a disruptive outbreak. By that definition, “we’re definitely there” with COVID, he said.
There were no mask mandates for colds or flu (also endemic respiratory diseases) before COVID-19. Why institute them now, especially as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House Coronavirus Advisor, indicated no evidence showing mask mandates worked to stop the spread among the public?
Anthony Fauci has sparked a backlash from politicians and commentators after saying that wearing face masks protects individuals from spreading coronavirus, but that there was inconclusive evidence to suggest it prevented a pandemic spiraling at a whole population level.
The former chief medical adviser to the president, who was regularly the face of the government’s response to the pandemic, told CNN on Saturday that “an individual protecting themselves or protecting them from spreading it, there is no doubt that masks work,” amid a spike in infections of the virus and speculation that fresh COVID restrictions could be on the horizon.
“Fauci admits that masks don’t work for the public at large but still absurdly claims masks work on an individual basis,” Rand Paul, a Republican senator for Kentucky who was suspended from YouTube in 2021 for questioning mask wearing, wrote on Sunday in one of many critical responses to the interview. “More subterfuge.”
And if any of the control measures for covid had actually worked in the first place, it would not now be an endemic respiratory illness.
Finally, I am using the Wayback Machine to take us to early 2023, when I discussed a study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit widely considered the gold standard for reviewing healthcare data. The conclusions of the Cochrane Study, as it is now known, were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of which were conducted during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries.
Jefferson summed up the conclusions in an op-ed in The New York Times written by Bret Stephens, which is that mask mandates did nothing.
The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?
“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
But California has got to California.
California is bringing back mask mandates but I clearly remember Gavin Newsom lecturing people about women’s right to do what they want with their bodies. pic.twitter.com/k6L7w7O7jI
— Being Libertarian (@beinlibertarian) October 11, 2024
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Who is surprised? They are true Leftist believers
AKA, zealots and fanatics.
Don’t care, If those beta males and subservient on their knees to big government types are good with that then that is ok by me. To Hell with those who f0rgot how this country was founded.
I still occasionally see mask wearing outside, alone sometimes in cars by themselves here, a long way from Leftifornia.
It’s the same people who are terrified at the thought that you might own a gun.
But who will not prosecute a hostile foreign invader who uses a firearm to commit felonies against citizens.
Subotai Bahadur
Ecause he wears a mask!
I see it every day in my lefty town. I still see people wearing them while driving in cars alone.
I also remember that in June, 2020, Gov. Noisome promised that the CA Health Department would soon provide solid scientific evidence that masks are the most effective means of preventing the spread of respiratory viruses; since then nothing, including any acknowldgement that he was wrong.
Wait! What about when I’m shoplifting? Is it mandatory then or just advisable?
Not mandatory if one is engaging in self-reparations or anything linked in any way to a leftist protest.
You need no mask if you take items worth less than $950.
Yes on Prop. 36! Make crime criminal again.
Not wearing one is like open carrying — it’s legal, it’s your option, but it’s tactically unsound.
Open carry is tactically unsound? Name one assault stopped concealed carry (alone). By definition, a concealed carrier is not identifiable as an armed person. Therefore, concealed carry cannot prevent an assault.
Open carry gives away the “element of surprise”? “Surprise” that can only manifest once one has already lost the advantage on not being attacked in the first place.
Criminals don’t prey on open carriers for the simple reason that they’d rather not deal with resistance. Are open carriers sometimes subject to assault with the idea of taking their firearms? Yes, I’m sure that must happen. But concealed carriers are regularly attacked for their valuables. Should they stop carrying/wearing valuables?
This is the short version. Don’t get me going on this.
Open carry also allows me to be a representative for gun owners to people who don’t like guns. I had several upbeat interactions with people in a national park today as I was hiking with a S&W 329 PD .44 magnum on my hip (my bear gun). They noticed I was carrying (hard to miss). They also had an interaction with a polite, cheerful, helpful, funny, and surprisingly nice guy who just happened to be carrying a gun.
Gays got the acceptance they wanted from the public by coming out of the closet, not by hiding in it. Gun owners will get the acceptance of others if they make their neighbors, passers-by, and others aware that they’re carrying, and being super-nice and super-polite while doing so. Open carry is gun ownership out of the closet. The public won’t learn if they don’t know that nice guy across the street with the awesome lawn and well-behaved kids is a gun owner who carries.
This is the branch of Medical Science™ that uses the “What Can It Hurt?” reasoning for all its fakshual recommendations.
A mask cannot stop covid, but might stop colds and flu.
Different bugs, different modes of transmission.
Let those who feel vulnerable wear one if they choose but leave the rest of the world out of it .. unless the mask wearing ‘fraidy cat Karens are willing to accept direct and immediate consequences for provoking a confrontation by nagging others who want to be left alone.
“Let those who feel vulnerable wear one if they choose but leave the rest of the world out of it…”
This is the rub. Mask mandates only serve a public health function if wearing them only protects others, not the wearer. This is why we were told this during the pandemic. As soon as it’s admitted that wearing protects the wearer, the “public” health function dissipates, because everyone can protect themselves without the compliance of others. If masks protect the wearer, then they serve a more than adequate personal health function.
If the government can direct us to wear masks to protect ourselves, they can tell us to eat our vegetables (yuck) and take our vitamins.
My point here is we, the vast majority, can be willing to allow the Covid Cray Cray Karens to use their placebo mask IF and ONLY if the Karens will leave the rest of us in peace.
Unfortunately the Karens won’t take that deal and will likely try more mandates for mask that are NOT effective. So if they start this crap up again, not only use law fare and disobedience to push back but it may be necessary to use the masks to ID the tyrants (which sucks for the immune compromised) and the majority start bullying the masked Karens until they are stuck inside their residence too scared to go out.
I would really prefer the policy of ‘do what you want with masks, wear it or don’t, your choice’ but the tyrants probably won’t agree to it.
They don’t stop colds or flu either. No mask stops viral respiratory diseases. They are as pointless in Japan and Korea as they are here.
Wrong
Not true. My wife is an R.N.
Do they have to wear them at the Monkeypox Pride Parade, too?
Nope, they’d need to make diapers mandatory there (and they might be even more effective).
Ass masks only.
Just in time for voting day. But California is voting Democrat anyhow, so why have ID denying masks? Especially as IDs can’t be required there.
Not a government mandate but the hospital and clinics that I go to would greatly appreciate my wearing a mask in their buildings because some of the people in there are seriously infected. I also put one on while on a plane if I sit near someone who will not stop coughing and sneezing. I also wash my hands before leaving a restroom.
I beg your pardon. Common sense and common courtesy are not allowed in public policy discourse. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.
Of course you don’t know why they’re sneezing. I have rather chronic allergic rhinitis and get some nasty sneezing fits, but that is not communicable.
““What Can It Hurt?”
*****
The “Hurt” most often cited is “Risk Compensation” AKA the Peltzman effect. As a example for Covid/Masks, people who are at higher risk and think masks provide protection, will expose themselves in environments that they otherwise wouldn’t enter without a mask. ie in store shopping vs delivery,
Plus if transfers power to the very sort of folks who will misuse it; Karen. Any mask mandate is ultimately enforced by armed agents of the State aka LEO. Reducing interactions with LEO seems like a better idea.
Only the most advanced masks have the ability to filter out viruses, and certainly not 99.9% of the masks (and bandannas! 🤣) that were used during the “pandemic”.
The requirement to wear masks was *never* about stopping the spread of the mOsT DaNGeRoUS viRuS eVEr but rather the government’s insistence that you *submit* to their authority over you. Chances are that the person you see masking up today is a far left progressive that is virtue signaling.
It was plain as day to anyone with an IQ over 100 that the “pandemic” was a psy-op to deny Trump a 2nd term. To that end, we have yet to reconcile what our governing class did to us in 2020 but, as the old saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold.
Even with the top shelf masks the person must:
1. Fit it correctly
2. Place it on without contamination
3. Not adjust it based on discomfort which breaks the seal
4. Properly maintain the mask
5. Properly remove the mask
6. Properly dispose of the mask
7. Replace it with a new mask every few hours.
No one outside a well trained set of folks, monitored for compliance with those protocols and located in an environment hazardous enough to scare them into keeping their focus on protocol is gonna do all that 100% of the time.
How many of the mask mafia Karens pull it down? Have gaps? Use a BS surgical mask? Use the mask then take it off and put it their glove box then use it on their next stop? Did they properly scrub and sanitize their hands before touching the inside or even outside of the mask?
The masks are ineffective to start with. The average person lacks the discipline to follow any sort of protocol on a regular basis even if they had access to an effective mask instead of the placebo masks they bought 12 for $3 at the gas station.
The study said even n95 were ineffective
That’s what a real n95 is, fitted in a secure environment
Those fake n95 were show and tell
It go ahead and wear 2 for dr fake
Such fuckery
Yep. The masks are a placebo no more effective than the security blanket that Linus had. It also works as device to virtue signal and as a form of political identification ….but the masks ain’t gonna stop a virus.
Please identify for me an over-the-counter, off-the-shelf, publicly-available mask that’s rated by NIOSH to protect the user from airborne viruses. I’ll help you out – there are no such masks. Period.
Why do you think workers in bio safety level 3 labs wear respirators (with forced air), and not just masks?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Influenza_virus_research.jpg
It strikes me that we need an absolute quarantine against the Bay Area counties, no one in or out. My ancestors had some effective means for such in the form of a certain Great Wall.
Subotai Bahadur
One of my all-time favorite South Park bits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uvmC12b9cw
Pre Covid – at least 3/4 of the mask studies showed masks dont work
During covid 90% of mask studies claimed masks worked
the the cochrane study came out showing masks dont work
Almost instantly every advocate tried to discredit the Cochrane study as a study rife with errors
The cdc website has links to approx 60 pro masking studies. I personally scanned approximately 20 studies and did a reasonably detailed review on 3 of the studies. Those three studies I reviewed has serious flaws, the other 15-18 made no effort to account for cofounding variables..
Fwiw – every medical study has issues with cofounding variables. That is simply the nature of the beast in medical studies. Good researchers make an effort to account for those cofounding variables. They may not properly account for the other variables, but the try and acknowledge the limitations.
None of the masking studies made any effort to account for the variables.
I’d bet that the majority of the “pro-mask” studies were mechanistic studies, not clinical studies.
it worked the first time why stop
the masks DID STOP THE “DISEASE”
the left says we are the disease and it kept us at bay
we all know it
admit it
they controlled america like a 9 11 hijacker on an american airlines flight
the demvid19 scum is in control
Anyone still in doubt that the scamdemic was nothing more than a government training exercise?
Good Lord, why are we arguing about masks controlling the spread of viruses instead of masks being a means of controlling the people.
My family didn’t fall for this crap during the Plandemic™ and we’re sure as hell not going to comply this time, either.