LOS ANGELES — Mask mandates have endured as a political battleground as California grapples with whether to release schools from the obligation to cover up.
“We don’t plan at this moment to set a threshold at which or below which something happens,” said California Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Mark Ghaly, at a recent news conference.
Children are amongst the least vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19, but constant contact in densely populated spaces makes them ideal spreaders.
Some advocates have called for an end to mask mandates in schools, citing the valuable social skills children learn by reading the expressions of their peers.
“I’m not dismissive of that argument, I just think we can go four more weeks,” said Andrew Noymer, a University of California professor of population health and disease prevention.
California has largely lifted mask mandates except for schools and Los Angeles County.
“I am ok with the widespread lifting of mask requirements. The timing is a little premature relative to what I would have done, but I don’t think we can have 12 month masking mandates because people are going to start to chafe against it,” he said.
While Noymer suggests four weeks as a safer timetable, Cecilia Tomori, director of Global Public Health and Community Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, said it’s impossible to say what has to happen before an end to masks can be properly advised.
For Tomori, it comes down to coordination. She said there needs to be a conversation at the national level that establishes benchmarks that various regions across the country can follow.
But the biggest missed opportunity, she said, has been how leaders at the federal level have managed pandemic messaging. If the messaging focuses on the lives people will save by wearing masks, Tomori thinks people won’t tire of wearing them.
Pushback over masks, vaccines and shutdowns have been a consistent theme throughout the pandemic. Huntington Beach was anointed the home of the anti-mask movement. Gov. Jim Abbot, R-Texas, resisted shutdowns early on along with Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla. Political resistance continues to make its way into the national debate and, increasingly, into policy. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., is advocating for a bill to ban all mask mandates in the state while a Georgia bill wants to flatten future vaccine mandates.
Tomori said all this hurts the broader message that there are still vulnerable people out there who need protection from infection.
While the pandemic began as a key public health conversation, politicians across the country have used it as a device to discuss liberty, the economy, and the innate rights of Americans to do what they want when they want.
The medical community has, largely, bristled at the idea that mask mandates and vaccinations are an affront to American freedoms.
The undying debate has again resurfaced as California schools eye the dismissal of mask mandates.
As summer approaches and mask mandates are almost entirely gone, Tomori stresses populations like cancer patients remain vulnerable.
“We’re not talking about a few people. We’re talking about millions of people who remain vulnerable,” she said.
These are the people, she said, who need to be regularly described in masking and vaccination messaging.
Masks have been popular amongst California adults since a Spectrum News/Ipsos poll from October 2020. She worries that a vocal minority who defies mask mandates are confused as a majority of the population.
Tomori pointed to recent efforts by the White House to send out masks and rapid tests and the massive demand for them.
“People want to protect their families,” she said. “People want access to tests and high-quality masks.”