2 Mask 2 Furious

The sequel to the endless mask mandates demonstrates that policymakers are asleep at the wheel

While “COVID is over” for many (most? all but a few?), there is this lingering problem where many have attempted to move forward without addressing the poor policies of the pandemic. We’re starting to see a hint of that now, and I believe this is just the beginning of the next stage of this disaster where leaders haven’t quite figured out how absurd their technocratic approach is.

What prompted me to write this is the declaration from Philidelphia that they are reinstating indoor mask mandates in public places (including schools).

The reason they are doing this is that the city has passed a threshold for masking that is essentially created out of thin air. Their metric calls for mask mandates if two of the following are true:

• average new cases per day are less than 225

• hospitalizations are over 50 but under 100

• cases have increased by more than 50% in the last 10 days

Right now, Philly has barely over 50 people hospitalized for COVID and the cases have increased by more than 50% in the last 10 days so, boom, the mask mandate trigger has been pulled.

These metrics are reminiscent of metrics that we saw in the first few months of the pandemic, when the goal was to hamper an entirely novel virus for which we had no vaccine and zero natual immunity in the population. To maintain these metrics at this stage of the game is absurd.

This is not a tenable way to run a city (or state or university). This is the ultimate abandonment of leadership to an unthinking, contextless technocracy. This is letting robots run your government instead of deciding to make decisions on your own.

Looking at the context just makes things worse. Here is what Pennsylvania’s COVID situation looks like: