St. Louis Joins LA, NYC With New Mask Mandate
As many of us predicted years ago, the return of mask mandates is officially here.
Just over the past few weeks, Los Angeles, New York City, parts of Illinois and the San Francisco Bay Area have reinstated mask mandates in various settings and for various populations.
READ: LOS ANGELES AND OTHER BLUE AREAS BRING MASK MANDATES BACK FOR 2024
And now we can add St. Louis to the list of proudly, defiantly, anti-science cities. Somehow, nearly four years after the start of most COVID restrictions, there's still a committed faction of COVID extremists who won't let go of the most visible symbol of their ideological virtue.
City employees in the city of St. Louis are now required to wear masks starting Friday. And in case there's any doubt about how purposefully ignorant and uninformed city leadership is, their justification for the new mandate is unbelievably inaccurate.
According to the letter, the mandate is due to an increase in "flu cases" and "RSV positive tests." Not to mention some inaccurate fear mongering about increasing COVID hospitalizations. But this explanation is, of course, totally disconnected from the evidence base on masks. As well as the situation in St. Louis in particular.
WASHINGTON, DC - Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor and Director of the NIAID, removes his mask to give an opening statement at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022. (Photo by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)
St. Louis Mask Mandate Based On Politics, Not Science
In 2023, the Cochrane Library, one of the most well respected institutions in evidence-based science, published a review of the studies on masking to prevent respiratory viruses. And they found, unsurprisingly, that there was no evidence whatsoever that masks were effective at stopping flu, RSV or COVID.
That reality has been repeatedly confirmed by observational evidence from around the world. Except now delusional, anti-science city officials continue to mandate masks by referencing all three respiratory viruses. That we already know can't be prevented by universal masking.
St. Louis in particular is one of the best examples against mask mandates. According to the county's own data dashboard, the highest period of COVID related deaths in the region took place while they were under a mask mandate. And in the nearly two years after the mandate was finally lifted, deaths have remained low to nonexistent.
Even comparisons in the St. Louis region showed no difference whatsoever in case rates even with diverging policies.
Hospitalizations across Missouri have risen, as you'd expect during respiratory virus season, remain far, far below previous highs. Without the kind of exponential increase during 2021 and 2022.
But none of this matters to the politicians and health officials of St. Louis or other blue areas. An inexcusable devotion to pseudoscience propagated by their ideological allies is what matters.
Reinforcing their unwillingness to admit mistakes or apologize to those who are harmed by their mandates is what matters. And based on these new mandates, it's going to become a permanent theatrical ritual every year.
Fauci and the CDC refused to tell the truth about masks, choosing instead to focus on low quality, debunked "studies" instead of randomized controlled trials. Millions across the country will now pay their price for their ego, arrogance, hubris and profoundly anti-science behavior.