While the masks come off on nationwide public transit, Los Angeles leftists rejected the pandemic-restriction era’s end with their own mask requirement for buses, trains, and ride-share starting on Friday.
Residents in L.A. County, who saw the first reintroduction of mask mandates after those restrictions were lifted when therapeutics became more widely available, will still be required to wear facial coverings in line with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“They are experts,” Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said of the CDC during an online briefing with reporters, according to a local ABC affiliate. “They made a determination that at this point having that requirement in place is necessary for the public’s health, and that resonates with us.”
Ferrer went on to vent about America’s system of checks and balances, which puts public health officials in their place, after a federal judge in Florida struck down the CDC’s mask requirement on public transit.
“[Ferrer] noted that the CDC never changed its recommendations regarding mask-wearing on public transit,” ABC7 reported, “and said the Florida court ruling was made by ‘a federal judge with little experience in public health’ who questioned the CDC’s authority.”
The Biden administration has appealed the court’s decision, which National Institutes of Health Director Anthony Fauci similarly condemned. Fauci complained the courts had no place interfering with the CDC’s newfound role as a super-legislature run by unaccountable bureaucrats.
“I’m both surprised and disappointed because those types of things really are the purview of the CDC. This is a public health issue,” Fauci told CNN’s Kasie Hunt. “We are concerned about that, about courts getting involved. … It should not have been a court issue.”
L.A.’s reintroduction of a transit mask mandate comes the same day Philadelphia lifted its short-lived, three-day revival of an indoor mask requirement as Americans go on living with the virus.
Recurring restrictions, however, have likely become permanent fixtures of post-pandemic life in left-wing enclaves of the country that are addicted to the supposed virtue illustrated by useless mask-wearing. West Coast leftists wore facial coverings throughout last summer even in the temporary absence of government mandates.
Masks have become more than mere markers of a political stripe, akin to senselessly putting pronouns in one’s bio, but have transformed into talismans that leftists foist onto their neighbors whenever possible.
