Dr. Ashish Jha, White House Wuhan Coronavirus Response Coordinator, advocated for the return of state and local mask mandates during a Sunday morning media appearance.
With the rise of the BA.5 subvariant, the usual suspects are again peddling the same tired "solutions" they've hawked for more than two years. Among the tiredest are mask mandates, which have consistently been shown to have negligible effects on transmission rates when areas with mandates are compared to those without them.
This time around though, with deaths and hospitalizations remaining fairly low and the vast majority of cases being something akin to a common cold, the public doesn't seem to be buying into the media hysteria.
It's a pattern reporter Martha Raddatz lamented when interviewing Jha on ABC's "This Week," saying: "You know, I have to say I’ve been traveling again this week, on airplanes, in airports. So few people wearing masks, and in New York City, where they have a 15% positivity rate, The New York Times described it as kind of a 'meh' reaction to this variant. So what do you do?"
Dr. Ashish Jha, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, advocates for the return of state & local mask mandates:
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) July 17, 2022
"It really will make a difference."
Riiight, just like the "difference" they made over the past two years. ???? pic.twitter.com/f5KRtTbPOy
Jha responded by claiming, without evidence, that wearing a mask indoors "reduces your risk of infection and reduces your risk of spreading it to others."
Raddatz brought up the fact that Los Angeles County is again considering an indoor mask mandate before asking Jha if that is something he would "support."
"Should other states look at this?" she asked.
"Yeah, my view on this has been for two years, well before I came into this current role, my view on this has been very clear, which is local jurisdictions, cities, counties and states should make decisions about mask mandates because communities are different and their patterns of transmission are different," he responded.
"That said, C.D.C. has clear guidance on this as well through their Covid community levels and the CDC recommendation is that when you’re in a high zone, that sort of orange zone, as l.a. county is, people wearing masks indoors in really important and it really will make a difference."
Finally, if you somehow missed the memo that mask mandates have more to do with politics than any actual attempt at stopping Covid, consider this tidbit about Los Angeles County's actual 'from' Covid hospitalization rate:
L.A. update: "As of this morning we have no one in the hospital who had pulmonary disease due to COVID. Nobody in the hospital. We have 24 people who have tested positive for COVID but nobody, nobody who had COVID-19 diease as we would see in the past."pic.twitter.com/MirjFS8iYd
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) July 16, 2022