Most masks off within City Hall for a pandemic ‘out of the hands of public health’ since the start
Chief public health officer Derrick Neal, left, and City Manager Louis A. DePasquale in a screen capture from Monday’s meeting of the City Council.
A mostly barefaced City Council ushered in the next stage of the city’s Covid-19 response Monday, the first day in almost two years that Cambridge does not require masks in any setting. Only two of the nine councillors at their regular meeting in City Hall, Quinton Zondervan and E. Denise Simmons, wore face coverings. City Manager Louis A. DePasquale and chief public health officer Derrick Neal had no masks as they sat side by side.
The city lifted its indoor mask mandate in city buildings effective Monday, trailing the end of the mandate in other buildings March 14, citing lower Covid-19 cases and levels in sewage. Cambridge first required masks – outdoors – on April 29, 2020. Masks are still required on public transportation and in health care settings.
Neal made a point of explaining why he went maskless at the council meeting, saying he was employing “situational awareness. I know that Louis is fully vaccinated, and I feel reasonably comfortable removing my mask before I enter this room.”
He added a note of caution. “I want to emphasize that lifting the mandate didn’t eliminate masks – it will make them optional,” Neal said. The Cambridge Public Health Department still recommends that unvaccinated residents and those who are “at higher risk for serious illness because they are immunocompromised or have an underlying medical condition” wear a mask indoors in public spaces, he said.
“And lifting the order doesn’t mean, obviously, that Covid has disappeared from our community,” Neal said. “People are going to need to assess their personal and household risk and decide whether – when they will need to mask up.”
“Out of the hands of public health”
Leaving it up to individuals whether to wear a face covering worried one of the councillors still wearing one: Zondervan. “Not everybody has control over their situation where they can or cannot protect themselves properly. We have vulnerable residents, as you point out, who may not have control over that. So I am a little bit concerned about that reframing, because what happens if we have another wave?” Zondervan asked. Would the city reimpose a mandate or continue telling individuals to decide, he continued.
Neal replied: “We are prepared as a public health department to reinstitute the mask mandate, [and] if the numbers so dictate, we will do so.” He added, though, that it would remain up to individuals whether to comply, declaring that “this pandemic has been out of the hands of public health since the beginning” and that public health leaders could only educate the community on “mitigation practices.”
The end of the mandates came as the number of cases among Cambridge residents has fallen sharply from a record-breaking peak in early January from the highly transmissible omicron variant but remains higher than at most other times during the pandemic. Meanwhile, a subvariant of omicron, BA.2, that is even more contagious now predominates in Massachusetts. Neal said that if there is another surge it would be difficult to tell whether that was caused by BA.2 or “behavior,” presumably because masks are no longer required.
The city is also reducing its free walk-in Covid-19 testing program to one day a week next month but will continue joining with the private company CIC Health to offer free tests every day by appointment. DePasquale said the administration is talking with the company about expanding the appointment-only option to more hours.
City survey results
DePasquale also reported that a voluntary survey of city employees in February about their vaccination status showed that 82.3 percent of those who responded were fully vaccinated and boosted.
The 826 employees who answered the survey make up a little more than half the approximately 1,600 city employees outside the school department, where vaccination is required. DePasquale also said “some work groups” among employees “reported lower rates of up-to-date vaccination and would potentially benefit from further outreach about convenient vaccination clinics to receive the booster shot.” He said the city will work with the health department to do so.
DePasquale didn’t identify the “work groups.” DePasquale resisted strong efforts by the council to require city workers to be vaccinated, and the administration took months to carry out the survey after discussions with councillors as far back as last summer, according to Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui. None of the councillors at Monday’s meeting asked about the findings.
If the city was going to be properly cautious, waiting until it was 14 days AFTER the students of MIT had returned from Spring Break (which was later than Harvard’s) would be the safe approach to take to see if there was going to be another surge in the area.
There is a surge going on that the state politicians want to ignore because of the start of tourist season, again. 2,430 new cases reported in the state today on the state covid reporting.
That’s not “safe” levels to remove mask mandates… in some countries that’s enough to lock down a city or an entire country.
^^^^Indeed. Thank goodness we aren’t China…but hope remains alive in the People’s Republik of Cambridge.
I like caution Sam, I also like NOT DYING or ending up in the hospital from carelessness, foolish people who are in denial that a million people have died in this country and abroad and that I like to think we have learned from the mistakes of the past.
Go read up on the Spanish Flu, the cautions that worked and the disasters caused by politicians and greedy sports venue people that were in denial back then. All the same problems we had here, except back then the military wanted to cover up the outbreak for fear it would hurt recruitment.
As for what’s going on right now:
https://boston.cbslocal.com/2022/03/29/boston-wastewater-covid-massachusetts-cases-ba2/
Massachusetts Wastewater Data Shows Slow Uptick Of COVID Levels
Keeping the masks in place is a simple precaution. Do you not wear your seat belt since auto accidents are down slightly on a specific month of the year?
Reinstituting mask mandates would make sense if there was clear evidence they are effective at limiting the spread of Covid. But it’s become quite evident that they don’t really work. Cambridge, Boston, and many other cities around here had mask mandates during the omicron wave, and we still saw case counts surge. States with mask mandates, like California, had case counts similar to those in states without mandates, like Florida.
South Korea, which has extremely high rates of mask compliance, has seen Covid rip through its population, since late January. It’s cumulative case count per million is now higher than the United States’ count.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=USA~KOR
Dan, you’re wrong. There is plenty of medical data the use of masks does reduce the spread, it’s why masks have been standardly used in the medical field for a hundred years.
FL data is suspect at every step, as is that of TX, as anyone who paid attention to the fact that they refused to report to the CDC their actual infection and death rates, and FL went so far as to fire their statisticians that were tracking the data to hide the data from the public.
Mask mandates were not enforced here in Cambridge properly in many situations, including rolling party buses and other events happening in the city.
Same happened in many other cities and states (including Boston). How many fines were issued in Cambridge for skofflaws? How many businesses were penalized for failure to maintain mask enforcement on staff and visitors?
The AMA has advice in regards to masks, from qualified medical professionals:
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/6-things-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-masks
“Masks are vital to preventing spread
It is important for everyone to understand “the very basic level of why they should wear a mask,” said Dr. Srinivas. “A lot of the reasons people aren’t wearing it is because of the mixed messaging we’re getting from our state, local and national leaders.”
“The most important thing that we can get across for our patients is clearing that misconception and those falsehoods and just telling them how masks are effective and that they in fact are safe,” she added.”
High-quality masks, if worn properly, are effective. But mask *mandates* are not.
There are many reasons for this—like you said, there are too many exceptions to the rule. But there will never be mask mandates without holes that you can drive a truck through, because that would do too much damage to our business community.
If you don’t trust data from red states then look at the data from other countries with high mask compliance, like the aforementioned South Korea.
^^^^^ Theater of security is NOT security…..did we learning nothing from September 11th and the stupidity that followed?
Worried about catching the vid or the flu? Fine wear a mask.
But I’m healthy and vaccinated and frankly when it’s my time, I accept that.
And if we are at the point that the environment is that @#$@#$ up that we gotta start protecting ourselves from breathing on each other then pass the BBQ sauce because it’s time to start eating my neighbors as truly the apocalypse is upon us.
Korea had 70% compliance with masks, according to state records, and that includes a large section of the population that used a “nose only” mask and continued to dine in eateries with such since late last year. The inclusion of that as being compliant removes the statistical value since the half masks reduce protection in the situation by between 25 and 50% according to experts, no better than the anti maskers in the US that refuse to cover their nose when shopping etc.
All I was talking about was roughly 2-3 weeks more of caution, Sam.
I’m seeing numbers up locally, in various other cities and states, in Canada (Ottawa has a large surge they have just recognized this week), and various countries around the world.
Have you even looked at the state scoreboard on the state of covid? Or the City Emails that tell us how many cases there are on a day by day basis?
Ignorance is not bliss, its an invitation for disaster. I’ve lost 4 relatives in the past 2 years, and my wife has 2 losses in her family from it as well, plus several friends and acquaintances that have passed from the disease in recent months.
“I’ve got good brakes on my car, why would I need a Seatbelt or an Airbag?” is what your “I’m healthy and vaccinated” sounds like.