Just Say No to On-Ramps

As California Lifts Its School Mask Mandates, The State Prepares to Reinstate It.

So we finally got the policy change we expected from Governor Newsom on school mask mandates, but this news doesn’t come without a few concerns as well.

San Francisco Chronicle @sfchronicle

BREAKING: California will stop requiring masks in K-12 schools as of March 12, leaving it up to counties and school districts to keep or ditch the pandemic mandate as tension mounts among parents.

trib.alCalifornia to lift school mask mandate along with Oregon and WashingtonState health officials will no longer require masks in schools effective just before...

First, if California’s Public Health Betters now believe it is okay for all adults to go unmasked in basically all indoor settings tomorrow, why do kids have to wait an additional 11 days to enjoy the same privileges? That doesn't seem very Scientific...

Second, there's already some evidence confirming my concerns regarding mandates being reinstated as soon as there's another Covid case surge:

Meet the New Metric, Same as the Old Metric

During the presentation from CA HHS announcing the mask policy changes, it was explicitly stated that there will be "on-ramps" to reinstate required Covid mitigation policies based simply on testing positivity and community transmission metrics (aka cases!)

This is all but guaranteed to trigger at some point in 2022. All part of Gavin's S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Plan...

On the Inherent Lunacy of California's S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Plan

CA HHS Secretary Dr. Ghaly explained that the state will continue to monitor for future surges and new variants. If (when) these surges come he explained the state will track test positivity and community transmission rates and:

“with that data in mind, we will continue to see what tools are in are toolkit, what are the appropriate tools to apply to that situation, and it may not only be framework that the CDC [recommends].”

It’s all but certain that Ghaly and Public Health bureaucrats like him believe that masks and vaccine mandates are “an appropriate tool” for Covid surges. If they haven’t figured it out yet they never will.

Eric Ting @_ericting

Pandemic restrictions are definitely not over in California Per Ghaly, there will be an "on-ramp" for policies such as mask mandates based on case/test positivity data (and we will have future surges) Contrast this with Marin County, where the on-ramp is hospitalization-based

These people actually believe their own BS. Ghaly’s presentation runs through all the bunk science put out over the last two years attempting to prove that strapping a piece of cloth to your kid’s face can prevent a highly infectious respiratory virus from spreading.

Examining the Junk "Science" Keeping Masks on Kids

They threw up graphs showing CA having lower child hospitalizaiton rates than other large states, claiming masking kids was the reason, even as states with similarly strict masking rules, like Pennsylvania and New York, topped the chart. There’s little chance of reasoning with people who have follow this hard for “The Science”.

If masks worked so well in CA, why didn’t they work in IL, NY, and PA?…

The way I see it, every single politician running for office in 2022 should be asked directly if and under what conditions they would be in favor of reinstituting mandates. The correct answer is that the mandates were ineffective at preventing Covid while invasive to personal liberty and under no circumstances should they be considered again. Voters should be wary of any candidates who equivocate or dodge this question.

Just Say No to On-Ramps

Anyway 0 and 2...