Why It’s Time To Resist Any New Mask Mandates From Los Angeles County Public Health Officials

For most Americans, and much of the world, COVID is a thing of the past.

Even in mandate-obsessed Los Angeles, people are celebrating weddings, gathering for the holidays, attending large-scale sporting events and concerts, and doing their holiday shopping in busy shopping malls, while children are attending school, participating in music and sports — full-time, in-person, with zero or limited restrictions.

Despite this global return to normal, something common to every pandemic throughout human history, one person remains determined to remind citizens that their freedoms exist only as long as she wants them to.

Barbara Ferrer, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (a person who has inexplicably been bestowed with limitless powers accompanied by no accountability whatsoever), announced that because the county may soon reach the arbitrarily-set Centers for Disease Control (CDC) “high” level of COVID transmission, she is likely to reimpose an indoor mask mandate on all people. This will apply to public transportation, schools, businesses and any public spaces.

All this even as China begins to depart from its failed, draconian zero COVID policies.

When news of this announcement began to spread on social media, I received messages such as “this is a joke, right?” or “China, here we come!” But this was no joke, and there is a very real possibility that Los Angeles will become one of the only places on earth with an indoor mask mandate.

How can this even be possible today?

This past July, Ferrer and her team decided at the last moment to pull a planned countywide indoor mask mandate after significant outrage by numerous key stakeholders.

First, a group of local physicians and epidemiologists spelled out clearly in a widely circulated op-ed why new mask mandates are unjustified due to a lack of differentiation between patients hospitalized with COVID and for COVID, a flawed and arbitrary CDC “Community Levels” metric, and mountains of new published clinical evidence from around the world which demonstrated that real-world use of masks had minimal impact on the spread of COVID, at best.

Second, independent municipalities throughout Los Angeles County like Beverly Hills, whose city governments prioritize healthy and happy residents over strict adherence to Ferrer’s zero COVID agenda, voted not to enforce a new mask mandate should it be imposed.

Finally, a group of very observant local parents and activists unearthed an internal video made by senior physicians at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center (the largest medical center in the county, which happens to care for the poorest and sickest population) that shockingly revealed no patient had been intubated for COVID in months, forcing the county hospital to admit that only 10% of COVID-positive patients had been admitted “due to illness caused by COVID.”

What happened when Ferrer finally caved under international media attention and citizen uproar and decided against imposing a mask mandate? Did hospitals fill up with dying residents? Did schools have to close due to outbreaks of COVID? Did we need to bring in refrigerator trucks to store countless corpses? No. 

The COVID cases magically crashed, on their own, without the need for a mask mandate, as cases always do with coronaviruses. Had Ferrer masked us all, she would still be taking credit for this crash, but because she caved, it is obvious that a new mask mandate would not have helped.

We effectively had our first scientifically controlled situation, enabling us to do an apples-to-apples comparison between how COVID surges behave in Los Angeles County both with and without mask mandates. And we discovered that there is no difference. Masks wouldn’t have helped, and masks have likely never helped in a real-world situation.

What was valid last July is equally applicable today. Since then, nothing has meaningfully changed.

The Omicron variants we have in circulation are nowhere near as deadly as the Delta and original variants. COVID-related deaths are relatively low and occur in elderly and/or those with numerous medical comorbidities. Schools remain fully open, mask-free, without major COVID outbreaks or any student deaths. Vaccines are available for those who want them, we have excellent medications on the market, and most importantly, we have widespread and robust natural immunity that can exceed what can be achieved with a vaccine, with many having been infected numerous times, even the vaccinated.

Moreover, we now have an overwhelming body of evidence regarding the social, academic, and psychological harms of masking children, with no meaningful clinical benefit.

It is now obvious to anyone with a brain that this is not about COVID, and it was clearly never about COVID. Rather, this is about Los Angeles County weaponizing its Department of Public Health, led by Ferrer, to control the people — including our most vulnerable humans, our children. How else could anyone explain this fanatical reliance on meaningless CDC Community Levels and a belief that the known harms of mask mandates (particularly for children) are somehow outweighed

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