Mask Mania in LA – Did Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer Just Backtrack? – Opinion

The LA Times reported Thursday that mask mandates are likely returning to Los Angeles on July 29—but did rogue Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer just walk that back a little in her press conference Thursday afternoon?  She’s a bit of an enigma, and desperately wants to mask up every human possible, but she’s also been under pressure from RedState and other national news outlets questioning her decision-making.

Ferrer isn’t a woman who offers much that resembles hope but she said it on Thursday.

…should we start seeing steep declines in our [case]Next week’s numbers will be different because hospitals are the lagging indicator. It is likely that we will want to halt moving on indoor universal masquering too quickly. Because if our cases start a steep decline, it’s likely that our hospitalizations will take a steep decline. (Emphasis mine.)

This is not the Barbara Ferrer we know and don’t love. She added:

All of you look at the exact same numbers as I do. You can see we’re at the cusp between medium and high. It isn’t going to take much to move us back into that medium community level if we can get our case numbers to go lower.

Also, she admitted to citing wastewater figures

It is possible that we are seeing a plateauing of even slight declines at the plants serving the west portion of the county.

The usefulness of wastewater testing is that many people test at home without reporting the results to authorities. Wastewater don’t lie.

RedState has closely been following Ferrer’s story. On Wednesday, Jennifer Van Laar exposed the previously-undisclosed fact that Barbara Ferrer’s daughter was a co-author of the study that both the CDC and the LA County Health Department used to justify mask mandates. Jennifer O’Connell followed up with the story of how an underground moms group exposed Ferrer’s plan to return to mandates in opposition to medical data.

Wait, there’s more: yours truly wrote about a leaked email showing that LA County Health has already issued its marching orders to mask enforcers. Lastly, Cameron Arcand showed Barbara Ferrer at the All-Star Game—maskless and dancing around like it’s Mardi Gras despite claiming that we’re in a “high concern” COVID environment.

Phew. Ferrer truly is the gift that never stops giving.

Businesses meanwhile are also pouring on the heat, as an LA County business group on Thursday pleaded with health officials to call off the mandate after businesses small and large—but especially small—suffered tremendously during the endless lockdowns and mask mandates in the City of Angels.

“This is not a debate about choosing between lives and livelihoods,” Tracy Hernandez, founding CEO of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, or BizFed, said in a statement. “This is a discussion about educating and empowering Angelenos to make smart choices about protecting their health, our workers and the region’s collective ability to weather this latest wave of infections. We can do better than a heavy-handed mandate at this stage of pandemic recovery and endemic recalibration.”

Those in blue states reading this thinking, “who cares? The idiots in California deserve what they get,” think again. J. Illinois Governor if Ferrer succeeds with reintroducing mask mandatory. B. Pritzker to take notice, along with Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, and local health authorities nationwide. They’ll be telling you to mask up in no time.

We can only hope the pressure from businesses, media like RedState and Fox News’ Bill MeluginBarbara Ferrer was forced by Susan Shelley of the LA Daily News and others to think again. It is possible that today’s statements will signal a shift from her usual grim, depressing, mask-wearing approach. Los Angeles—and most importantly, our kids—cannot again undergo the trauma that we suffered since COVID arrived on the scene. We will continue fighting for the removal of mask mandates.

Because if there’s one thing we know for certain about the “authorities” in these last two long years, if they get one mandate… they will soon go for another.

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