Alarming: Mask Mandates Are Making a Big Return in 2025

Conservative News DailyJanuary 3, 2025

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This article discusses the resurgence of face mask mandates in hospitals across various states, ⁢including New York, New⁣ Jersey, California, and Illinois, in response to increasing cases of flu and RSV. RWJBarnabas Health in New Jersey has implemented mask requirements for all patients with respiratory symptoms and for their caregivers, while visitors are also urged to wear masks. New York’s health ⁣commissioner advised unvaccinated healthcare personnel to wear masks. In California, certain counties have instituted mask ⁢mandates for health workers in patient care settings. Hospitals in Illinois, ⁢such as Rush University Medical Center, are similarly requiring masks in specific areas.

The article ⁣reflects on ⁣the past context of mask usage in medical ⁢environments and notes that, while masks were previously utilized primarily in ‌healthcare settings, widespread mandates⁤ are becoming ⁤an enduring public health measure in some regions. It critiques the ongoing government enforcement of mask mandates that emerged during the COVID-19 ⁢pandemic, suggesting that these measures might⁢ potentially ⁢be a form of overreach ‍that is highly ⁤likely to persist in the future. the piece raises⁢ concerns about the⁤ implications of⁤ such mandates ⁢on ⁤personal freedoms and public health policy.

Hospitals and health facilities in certain states are requiring or recommending that their employees, patients, and visitors wear face masks this winter as the flu and RSV spread.

The mandates have so far impacted hospitals in New York, New Jersey, and California to various extents, according to a report from Newsweek published last month.

The outlet noted that RWJBarnabas Health, the largest hospital system in New Jersey, now has mask requirements or recommendations for their facilities.

Masking is required for “all patients who present with respiratory symptoms, as well as all staff members and providers caring for them,” in outpatient and medical group facilities for RJWBarnabas Health, according to a release from the network.

All visitors to the hospitals are asked to “wear an appropriate face mask.”

New York Health Commissioner James McDonald meanwhile announced in a statement that all healthcare personnel in the state “who are not vaccinated against the flu this season need to take extra precautions and wear a mask in healthcare facilities,” Newsweek reported.

Various health officials in California, especially surrounding the Bay Area, preemptively established new mask mandates through the entire winter as early as last fall.

Those mandates in Alameda, Berkeley, Contra Costa, and Napa Counties, for instance, require health workers to wear face masks in patient care areas.

More hospitals in Illinois likewise reinstated mask mandates, per a report from WMAQ-TV at the end of last month.

Rush University Medical Center announced that patients and visitors must wear hospital-grade masks in clinical offices, patient registration, and waiting areas.

Mask mandates did not make an annual appearance until very recently.

Of course, face masks have always been used in medical contexts, and they are helpful to prevent the spread of diseases in some cases.

But the broad mandates are taking such precautions to an entirely new level.

Ever since the advent of COVID five years ago, the force of government has been behind broad mandates to mask up, and it appears that those mandates will never entirely end, at least in some parts of the country.

COVID severely broke down our thresholds for what is a tolerable amount of government overreach, to the extent that some state and local governments and even some private entities like hospital systems, are once more ordering us to strap masks to our faces at their request.

As the saying goes, our elites never let a good crisis go to waste.

The question is not whether these mandates will continue, but merely to what extent they will continue.