LA County Issues Indoor Mask Order

On July 15, LA County imposed an indoor mask requirement, which took effect at midnight Saturday. Media reports like this one have been incoherent, describing on one hand the usual "sharp increase" in cases, while saying as well they're "a far cry from the winter peak that saw an average of more than 40,000 per day". Nevertheless, CNN reported that every patient now in the hospital for COVID is unvaccinated.

An issue that so far nobody has raised is that, with compliance in LA County near 100% on masking and social distance in late 2020, it had no effect, even with partial new lockdowns, on controlling the pandemic, with case rates declining only after the introduction of vaccines. If the problem is actually the unvaccinated, any type of masking, or the reimposition of any other former controls, will have no better effect than they did last year. But reimposition of former controls is exactly what the county has in mind:

[Health Officer Dr Muntu] Davis said L.A. County’s order doesn’t have an end date, and will stay in place “until we begin to see improvements in our community transmission of COVID-19."

. . . Davis said physical distancing requirements and other public health measures could also be reinstituted.

"Anything is on the table if things continue to get worse," Davis said.

The problem remains that the pandemic is essentially limited to the unvaccinated, but the entire population is being inconvenienced by ineffective controls, more of which are now pretty much guaranteed to be reimposed. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said on the Sunday talks,

[A] reimposed mask mandate in indoor public spaces is “not punishment,” but “prevention.”

. . . At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not changed its policies to require those who are vaccinated to wear masks in public settings indoors, and the Los Angeles decision has been met with some controversy.

As shown above, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva posted an announcement that he will not enforce the order. (Villanueva is an elected official and able to issue policy statements in opposition to other county departments.) In addition, Ric Grenell, a former Trump operative, has filed for a temporary injunction against the order. So far, I haven't been able to find any update on the status of this case. It's being handled by Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco public-interest attorney who has been involved in other COVID related legal action.

The Health Officer Order impermissibly restricts the liberty of fully vaccinated individuals without rational basis or legal authority. Since March 2020, County residents have had their liberty restricted in unprecedented ways. Businesses, schools, and houses of worship have been shuttered or had to follow other onerous restrictions in an effort to stop the spread of COVID19. Those restrictions have loosened as the result of rising vaccination levels, but now the County seeks to again restrict the rights of vaccinated County residents, yet this time based on a minuscule risk of COVID-19 contraction or transmission.

The overall conundrum is that the county, early this year, went out of its way to reach the most vulnerable populations, focusing especially on poor and minority communities. Vaccine doses and vaccination sites were allocated in ways that were specifically intended to reach those groups, with vaccines given free of charge. Those who didn't get the vaccines, despite these exhaustive efforts, are now the ones suffering from those choices.

There needs to be a better solution. As things stand, LA County is trying to reimpose draconian controls like Australia, while its overall statistics will undoubtedly be no better than places like Texas and Florida with no controls. This will likely have to be resolved in the political arena. Recent moves by Sheriff Villanueva may indicate he intends to have a political future as well.