https://www.city-journal.org/article/return-of-the-masks
Regardless of Americans’ preference for seeing each other’s faces and breathing in fresh air, many public health officials are still fond of masks mandates. Accordingly, almost five years after Covid-19 hit our shores, a handful of counties encircling the San Francisco Bay have announced new mask mandates in various health-care facilities. San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, and Napa Counties have all declared mask mandates for health-care workers in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, or both, starting the day after Halloween and extending until early spring.
San Mateo County, which borders the southern part of San Francisco, has announced that its mask mandate in skilled nursing facilities will also cover family members and friends who visit patients. The county’s health officer has asked the local sheriff and chief of police to “ensure compliance with and enforce this Order,” as a “violation of any provision of this Order constitutes an imminent threat and immediate menace to public health.” She declares that such violations are “punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both.”
One of the great lessons from the pandemic should have been that America’s founders knew what they were doing when they separated the powers of government, and when they entrusted policymaking to the legislative branch. Americans shouldn’t be put in the position of potentially being tyrannized by one kingly official wielding largely unchecked powers. Yet the source of the mandates in at least three of these counties, and likely in all five, is a lone individual: the county health officer (joined, in Alameda County, with the city of Berkeley’s acting health officer).
The health officers are dictating medical protocols to doctors. Many doctors don’t want to wear masks because they compromise interaction with patients, because they force people to breathe in unhealthy levels of their own carbon dioxide, and—most importantly—because the best scientific evidence suggests that they don’t work. But, convinced that they know better, the health officers are ordering doctors to obey their commands or else face punishment by law enforcement for being a “menace to public health.”
For the record, cloth masks won’t qualify as acceptable face coverings, at least not in San Mateo, Santa Clara (home of San Jose, Stanford, and Silicon Valley), or Napa (home of the French Laundry restaurant). The good news is that, in all three counties, masks won’t be required in the health-care facilities’ gift shops. So, even if you don’t get to smile at your loved one when you visit, you’ll still get to shop for souvenirs or knick-knacks unimpeded.
