Alameda County should end mask mandate

The recent decision by Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss to re-implement the country’s only countywide indoor mask mandate is as baffling as it is worrisome. The mandate, which took effect June 3, requires face coverings be worn in nearly all indoor public settings, including stores, restaurants, bars, theaters and summer school. But the policy is coming at a time when daily COVID case rates, hospitalization and deaths plateaued in Alameda County and are in fact now dropping from a peak of over 1,000 cases per day at times in May. Moreover, that spike in cases last month did not overwhelm our hospitals and intensive care

units, demonstrating that contracting the virus is increasingly less likely to lead to hospitalizations.

The move to require masks has left some county officials, like District One Supervisor David Haubert, wondering what the rationale is behind the policy. As residents of Alameda County, we too are curious.

The mandate is a broad overreach by an unelected public health official and it does not bode well for the next school year, or for next winter, if we are already hitting the panic button heading into summer.

The Bay Area is a large metropolitan area, with many people commuting between counties on a daily basis. It is senseless for one county to enact a policy that no adjacent counties are adhering to. This absurdity is apparent to any of the thousands of Warriors’ fans traveling from Alameda County to San Francisco’s Chase Center to watch games, which they are able to do indoors and maskless. Yet these same fans must don a mask for that quick stroll from the door of a restaurant to a table in Oakland or upon entering a grocery store in Hayward, but not in Berkeley (which has its own independent health department).

Several recent articles have shown that while high-quality masks can reduce transmission, mask mandates do not work at a large population level . Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that everyone will eventually encounter this virus. National public health leaders have now pivoted to a vaccination focused message, understanding that we cannot control transmission, but only the severity of the disease.

The fact that children in Alameda County will now have to mask again for summer school and camp is frustrating for parents and incredibly unfair to students, as it is the third summer of masking in hot weather, despite children’s low risk of serious illness. Masking has worsened the isolation our kids have felt since the beginning of the pandemic and impacted language development, especially for English language learners and those struggling with speech challenges (the very populations most likely to seek out summer school).

Our kids only get one childhood, and yet anyone under 10 in Alameda County has had the majority of their elementary school years dominated by fear-mongering about this virus — having to learn reading and phonics first via computer screen, and then from a masked teacher, as well as socializing with masked friends and not being allowed to attend field trips or assemblies, with parents never having been allowed to set foot in their classrooms.

Contrast that with a child in Idaho, Kansas or Florida, who has reaped the benefits of a normal childhood for the past two years. How is that equitable?

After two hard years of social restrictions and after achieving a high vaccination rate in our county and region, enough is enough. A healthy high school student should not be living in fear of this virus, especially now that over 75% of kids have already been infected, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. In fact, a vaccinated 60-yearold shouldn’t be living in fear of this virus, either. High vaccination rates, high levels of natural immunity and changes in the virus itself now mean that the case fatality rate for COVID might end up lower than that of the flu for all ages — as a Financial Times analysis of data in England found.

We are a social species, relating to each other through facial expressions. Limiting our ability to interact with one another and perpetuating fear are extreme measures that should have robust, data-driven justifications. And yet there are no studies showing that mask mandates have protected Californians better than, say, Texans, particularly since the onset of omicron variant. The mental health of our children has reached a crisis state, and all efforts should be made to overcome the damage of the past two years, instead of mandating additional disruptions and limitations on their summer break.

The Alameda County Public Health Department needs to put an end to this indefinite indoor mask mandate. Furthermore, to prevent the implementation of future unsubstantiated health policies, Gov. Gavin Newsom can end the state of emergency that allows unelected public health officials to make decisions uninformed by data and without oversight.

In the meantime, we trust that Dr. Moss will claim that this latest mask mandate was a success — which will be easy to do since case rates were already dropping throughout the Bay Area on the day it was reinstated.

Dr. Jeanne Noble is an emergency physician and director of COVID response for the UCSF Emergency Department. Megan Bacigalupi is the co-founder and executive director of CA Parent Power, a statewide parent advocacy organization. Laura Chinnavaso is a parent advocate and a registered nurse in Alameda County.