mask mandates getting re-instated

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Ours never stopped.
I haven't seen unmasked people since before Covid.

Huh, guess I've missed some news... well, personally I don't mind if it happens here. I mean, of course it'll be annoying to wear them and the masks aren't free, but the health care system here is already overwhelmed, so if everyone having to wear masks can prevent it from getting worse even a little, I think it's reasonable.

Well, that and I already wore a mask at work before Covid anyway due to the nature of my work, so I'm used to it more than an average person.

Nearly every adult ICU bed in Oregon is occupied, driven by an uptick in respiratory viruses. Portland-area hospitals are operating at a “crisis” level for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. The dire picture has prompted state health officials to implore people to slap their masks on, once again, to protect against a triple threat of covid, flu and RSV as people travel and gather indoors this holiday season.

But like nearly every community confronting a third pandemic winter, the entreaty is just that — a plea. Not a mandate. Health officials in a state that was among the last to end an indoor mask requirement in March now characterize mandates as a distraction. Instead, they are counting on Americans to voluntarily don one of the most effective tools for avoiding sickness.
Mandates “have been extremely politicized, polarized and divisive,” said Rachael Banks, director of the Oregon Health Authority’s public health division. “We’re really trying to focus on the behavior and not getting caught in the crossfire of that particular mandate.”
Officials in New York and Los Angeles are also strongly recommending people cover their faces, without new requirements for anyone to actually do so. New York Mayor Eric Adams (D), who has resisted bringing back mask mandates, put on a mask Tuesday as he urged others to do the same.

A community college on Long Island attempted to issue a mask mandate this month but has since pulled back. Just a handful of public institutions are reimposing such mandates, including the Philadelphia school system, Passaic schools in New Jersey, the State University of New York at Purchase and Oakland, Calif., for government buildings.

The hesitancy follows years of politically generated controversy surrounding mask mandates, with Republicans in several states gutting powers to implement them. Health officials even in heavily Democratic areas say mandates are harder to justify with the widespread availability of vaccines and antivirals that help keep the infected out of hospitals. Nor are hospitals clamoring for mask mandates as they did during earlier stages of the pandemic.

Interviews with three dozen residents, workers and business owners across the United States show that Americans remain deeply divided on masking, with many unaware of the recent burden respiratory infections have put on hospitals.

Masks are recommended but not required. For me, I’m like, ‘What does that mean?’” said Lamer, who sometimes masks while attending community college in Bend. “I’m just trying to go to class.”

Only 3 in 10 Americans say they consistently wear masks when leaving the house, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll published in early December, the lowest rate since spring 2020. But 65 percent also said they would probably wear masks again if coronavirus cases rise in their communities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has touted masks as one of the best ways to avoid respiratory illness but stopped short of advocating for mandates.
“You didn’t see a lot of people walking around with masks in a bad flu season pre-pandemic, and as you know, not everyone is amenable to wearing a mask,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky recently told The Washington Post.
The CDC’s new covid warning system emphasizes hospital admissions over positive tests for the coronavirus, a shift that acknowledges the pandemic as less deadly given widespread immunity from vaccines and previous infections. Those living in counties with a high number of covid cases in hospitals — about 11 percent of all counties this week — are urged to wear masks indoors. But those recommendations do not take into account the strain on hospitals from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and flu, which experts say declined drastically in 2020 because of masking and other covid containment measures.

Several studies have found that mask mandates can be effective, including an analysis showing that counties without school mask requirements had higher pediatric covid rates after the start of the 2021 school year than those who did. But challenges remain in implementing mandates because businesses often do not enforce them and many people do not comply.

When Nassau Community College on Long Island attempted to reinstate a mask mandate this month, it faced immediate blowback from the county’s top elected official. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, insisted there is little value in mandating masks. The college quickly reversed course and recommended masks instead.
Blakeman said he has no problem with a recommendation but said a mandate would go too far when other public places are not requiring masks.

“For most people, there’s covid fatigue and they want to move on,” Blakeman said in an interview. “I’m not against masks. I’m against mandating masks.” The college’s media office would not make administrators available for an interview on the decision to rescind the mask mandate.

Masked students interviewed on campus last week said they wanted to protect themselves and their families ahead of the holidays, but lamented that many of their classmates would not mask unless compelled.

“They will wear masks again if they are told to,” said Quinn Pabon, an 18-year-old mortuary science student who estimated that about 60 percent of his classmates regularly wear masks.
Philadelphia public schools plan to require masks for 10 days after students return from winter break, making it the largest school system to reinstate a mask mandate — albeit temporarily. In April, following an uptick of an omicron subvariant, the city had scrapped one of the country’s only indoor mask mandates at the time, just four days after it took effect.

Where I live nobody wears masks any more except a very few people. If you wear a mask now people stare at you.

It's true about children needing to be exposed to the invisible germs in the air in order for their immune systems to build up effectively.

I think wearing a mask should be a choice and nobody should have the right to stare at those who choose to wear one. Most of the people I work with have poor hygiene and often come into work with colds, coughing and sneezing everywhere without putting their hands over their mouths or washing their hands, and I often wish I could wear a mask when working around them, because I hate getting colds. But because nobody wears masks at work at all (they barely did during the pandemic), I'll feel like I'm overreacting. Well I suppose I am. I just hate getting colds because I suffer with my sinuses anyway and when I have a cold nothing clears it, not even steam or obas oil or nose spray or antihistamines. When you have a cold you just have to let it take its course, which in reality it's only about a week or less but it feels like an eternity at the time.

Every winter, there's a cold/flu season. Yet every winter of our lifetimes before 2020, we functioned totally fine without mask mandates.

I'm something of a mask agnostic. I don't think they make much of a difference compared to vaccination or social distancing, but I don't make a fuss if the local rule is to wear one. It bothered me more during the earlier days of Covid when people (self included) were far less immune to it and it was more dangerous to more people, but even then I just complied. I just had to be very careful about avoiding the inherent dangers of handling a mask etc.

It's interesting that the power to make rules about masks has been privatised in some places. I suppose that helps the gov to avoid applying direct control, which seems to put a lot of people's backs up. It puzzles me why anybody worries more about an elected government pushing them around than they worry about unelected business leaders doing the same thing.

You're not the first one I've heard use the argument "the healthcare system is already overwhelmed"

But what about pre-pandemic? Somehow the healthcare system functioned back then. Without mask mandates.

Duh, because the pandemic wasn't there to overwhelm it along with all the other things back then. Isn't this a given?

The pandemic has ended. Even Fauci said so.