California officials, especially the unelected ones, just can’t help themselves. Just as we are about to ring out the old, and bring in the new … the mask mandates are starting again. Yes indeed California, your Happy New Year orders have been given. Mask up!

Los Angeles County has reinstated a mask-wearing requirement for staff and visitors at all licensed health care facilities in light of an upswing in coronavirus metrics, officials said today.

The county recently entered the “medium” level of COVID-19 hospital admissions, as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Over the past week in Los Angeles County, there have been notable, yet not unexpected, increases in COVID-19 reported cases, hospitalizations and deaths,” the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a statement. “While recent increases are significant, they remain considerably below last winter’s peak and common-sense protections are strongly recommended to help curb transmission and severe illness as the new year begins.”

The threshold for the CDC’s medium level is between 10 and 19.9 new COVID hospital admissions per 100,000 population over seven days. The CDC reported 10.5 new COVID hospital admissions per 100,000 people in Los Angeles County for the week ending Dec. 23.

Read that third and fourth paragraph again. Mask mandates are being reimposed even as the numbers of Covid cases are considerably less than last year and, in fact, are barely above the CDC’s minimum threshold. Yet, LA County with Barbara Ferrer (who is NOT a medical doctor) at the helm is once again imposing a mask mandate on the county.

This is the woman who wanted the mask mandates to be reimposed in the summer of 2022. Multiple municipalities within LA County looked at her and emphatically said NOPE.

Beverly Hills city council voted unanimously Monday against mandatory masking just as LA County Public Health Department officials are set to reissue the edict, unless COVID-19 cases and hospitalization numbers improve significantly.

~Snip

However, Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse said there should be a choice in the matter.

“I feel it is our job to lead and I support the power of choice,” Bosse said in a statement. “Our job is to be proactive and public about what we believe. This is a united City Council and community that cares about health. We are not where we were in 2020, and now we need to move forward as a community and be part of the solution.”

That was in 2022. As we know from 2020-2021, LA County was one of the most rabid areas in terms of mandates. Skate parks were filled in. Solitary paddle boarders were arrested. Businesses and churches were shut down, with some businesses going bankrupt because of these outrageous non-scientific mandates. Per Bill Melugin on X:

LA County is reinstating a mask mandate in healthcare facilities, w/ @lapublichealth
citing rising “COVID hospitalizations”. Context: L.A. County is averaging 10.5 weekly hospital admissions per 100,000 people. If you come in w/ a broken leg & test positive, they count you as a “COVID hospitalization”. @lapublichealth had the strictest COVID mandates in the country, shut off comments on their social media, used taxpayer money to pay millions in no bid contracts to PR firms for their messaging (which was amongst the worst in the country), and is still led by Barbara Ferrer, an unelected, non-medical doctor who has her PhD in social welfare and decides the mandates for a county of 10 million people, which once included forcing restaurants to turn their TVs off during the pandemic – and being the first county in the country to ban outdoor dining – without a shred of medical evidence to support such a move. 

Yet, here she goes again. And LA County isn’t the only one in California to impose mask mandates over these last few weeks.

Marin County announced this month its mandate beginning on November 1, 2023 would extend through March 31, 2024. The health order will require all visitors, staff and patients to wear masks in all hospital settings regardless of vaccination status.

The intent of the order is to protect individuals in these high-risk healthcare settings and limit the spread of seasonal respiratory viruses including RSV, influenza, and COVID-19,” the county wrote. “It will apply to all individuals within the facility while they are in patient care areas. Children under age 6 and those with a valid medical reason are exempt.

One may presume these mandates will show up every winter because some of these viruses, like the FLU, are you know, a seasonal virus. Oh wait, maybe she’s using Newsom’s data sets from Saudi Arabia again. 

The order states the healthcare mask mandate will expire when the County re-enters the CDC's Low Level for Covid hospitalizations + stays there for 2 consecutive weeks

As of Fri., L.A. County is avg. 10.5 weekly hospital admissions per 100,000 ppl. That # needs to fall below 10

— MarlaTellez (@MarlaTellez) December 30, 2023

One can only infer from that that Barbara Ferrer knows better than the CDC as to when the county will be “safe” from Covid. Evidently the minimum threshold of 10 cases per 100,000 people is too high.

I can completely understand if someone is immune compromised then they may choose to wear a mask. But that’s the key word here. CHOICE.  

The issue here is this. We are seeing more and more evidence that masks really didn’t and don’t work at stopping Covid or any other virus. Not even N95 masks. Yet, LA Public Health evidently has their heads firmly in the sand and once again chooses to take away American citizen’s choice to make their OWN decisions about their health. 

Feature Photo Credit: Original artwork by Victory Girls Darleen Click