Los Angeles mask mandate

by Vinay Prasad | Jul 15, 2022

Los Angeles announced that, if cases continue at this rate, in 2 weeks they will reimpose the mask mandate.

Allow me to explain where the train went off the rails….

The mandate won’t apply to gyms or yoga studios. They say they won’t ticket or punish you, if you don’t comply. But all of this is fine for adults. Kids will return to school and there will be no mercy for them. They will be obliged to mask up. Another year of stupidity.

Los Angeles public health officials are morons. They have consistently made bad decisions, and this is no exception.

Remember LA was the district that said they were going to make kids get COVID shots to attend school. I begged them not to, in multiple op eds. I told them it would result is discriminatory exclusions. Then when they realized that was about to happen, they backed down. But it didn’t need to come to that. If they could think, they would have seen it all coming.

Masks. Whenever a smart person tells me that masks have good evidence, I know they didn’t actually read any studies. Either that, or perhaps they are not smart. The evidence base is clear, as we detailed in our working paper. The evidence is very poor. Nonexistent in kids

Continuing a policy with no evidence year after year is madness. But it is even worse here. Because the goal changed

Pre adult vaccines, the goal was to shield older people from Covid till they could get vaxd. To lower risk of death. Now 1 year after vaccination, when it is obvious breakthrough is inevitable, slowing transmission doesn’t make sense. It serves no purpose.

But mandates don’t even slow transmission. It’s like slaughtering a goat. A stupid ritual. Imposing it on kids is particularly pointless.

LA is heavy on virtue signaling and liberal political and soft on brainpower. I just feel bad for the kids of that city.