Here we go again.
Alameda County, a county of 1.6 million residents in the San Francisco Bay Area that includes the city of Oakland, reinstated a mask mandate Friday for almost all indoor settings.
In a press release, the county’s health officials announced that the mandate applies to businesses, government buildings, the workplace, healthcare facilities for individuals over the age of two, and transportation and its facilities, including trains, busses, and ride-share apps, train and subway stations, bus terminals, and marinas.
The mandate also requires businesses, venue operators and any entity overseeing an indoor public setting to enforce the masking policy and post signage at establishment entrances, as reported by Breitbart.
One notable exception to the mandate are K-12 schools who are just at the end of the 2021-22 school year. Summer programs will be subject to masking requirement, however. Ultra-leftist Berkeley is not included in the county mandate because the city has its own health authority. Berkeley had wasted no time in issuing its own K-12 public school system mask mandate for all indoor settings.
Alameda County is the first in the Bay Area to reinstate an indoor mask mandate starting Friday amid swelling COVID cases and hospitalizations:https://t.co/06lb0aveIZ
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) June 2, 2022
Why the need for a mask mandate now? Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss said that it is due to a spike in COVID-19 cases leading to hospitalizations. According to the CDC, however, this spike represents a “medium” coronavirus community level as the case rate between May 26 and June 1 stood at 354.33 per 100,000 people. Communities living under a “medium” level are recommended to consult health care providers to see if masking is needed. Masking is recommended in indoor public settings “high” community-level areas.
It is unclear whether the increase in hospitalizations has occurred for unvaccinated or vaccinated people.
It appears that Alameda County is anticipating that the community level will move from “medium” to “high” given the current rate of infection and decided to get ahead of this questionable inevitability.
However, the efficacy of masks preventing the transmission of disease has not been proven, and America’s Doctor-in-Chief Dr. Anthony Fauci has even flip-flopped on the issue. But he would most likely support Alameda County’s reinstatement of the mask mandate as it was informed by public health authorities. In an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto in the wake of a U.S. district court judge striking down the travel mask mandate in April, Fauci said the decision should have been made at the CDC level rather than at the judicial level:
“The point that I was making [was] that this is a public health decision, and I think it’s a bad precedent when decisions about public health issues are made by people, be the judges or what have you, that don’t have experience or expertise in public health,” Fauci told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto.
Kellyanne Conway, President Trump’s former advisor, called out Fauci for not wearing a mask in private settings during pandemic meetings, claiming in her new memoir that he would only put one on when a photographer entered the room, according to Newsweek.
“No masks was standard fare in the White House Situation Room, where Dr. Fauci was more likely to wear ‘Dr. Fauci’ socks than a mask,” Conway said.
Back in California, no other Bay Area County, including crazy lefty San Francisco County, is reinstating indoor mask mandates at this time.