What's with the mask mandate in 2024?

My letter to the Santa Cruz County Health Officer questioning her masking mandate for healthcare facilities Nov 1, 2024-March 31, 2025

On September 18, 2024 the Health Officer of the County of Santa Cruz, Ca issued an order requiring all personnel, patients and visitors 2 years old and above to wear masks at all times while in healthcare facilities. I have some questions I would like answered about such a policy at this time.

Here is a link to the Order:

https://www.santacruzhealth.org/Portals/7/Pdfs/News/HO%20Order%20Masking%20in%20Acute%20Care%20Facilities%20091824_signed.pdf

Here’s my letter:

October 30, 2024

Dr. Lisa B. Hernandez MD, MPH

Health Officer of the County of SantaCruz

Dear Dr. Hernandez,

  As an RN with 26 years in the Emergency Department I have concerns regarding your mandate requiring face masks be worn by all humans over the age of two years while indoors at healthcare facilities from November 1, 2024  to March 31, 2025, a time period you are calling "Respiratory Viral Season".

  I'm sure you are aware of the high numbers of patients and staff testing positive for Covid-19 during the Summer months this year.  Yet there was no pressure to wear masks at that time.   Are you able to provide data that demonstrate a significantly heavier burden of Covid-19 positive individuals during the months November- March?  I have not observed such a seasonality during the last 4 years.  Oddly there has been an inverse seasonality in my experience.  The surges in cases have curiously followed a few weeks after the rollouts of "Vaccines" and "Boosters".  Please provide data showing a significant increase during, "Respiratory Viral Season" that would support a mandate that masks be worn between those dates.

  I am also asking for transparency in your methodology of reviewing available high quality studies that would lead you to impose a mask mandate.  Any studies or meta-analyses you are able to provide are much appreciated.  I did a records search with Santa Cruz County "Next Request" requesting records pertaining to such studies and data but was informed no such records exist:   "After a review, the County has determined that it does not have responsive records to your request. The Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency does not utilize studies; however, it does use the California Code of Regulations, Title 8, Section 5199. Aerosol Transmissible Diseases", is what I got in response to my request.   Is that correct?

  Since that first request came up blank I requested records pertaining to data comparing healthcare worker sick days between counties that mandated masks and those counties that did not.  I just received the response that no such records exist.  In other words Santa Cruz County has no records that would demonstrate a significant benefit from implementing such a policy, nor any data from which such a comparison could be made.

  As a person directly affected by your diktat I believe my peers and I are entitled to your data.  My understanding of the Cochrane review of mask studies determined that mask wearing during Covid-19 was inconclusive.  "Inconclusive", is not a strong enough positive finding for your department to demand unquestioning compliance to a hard mask wearing policy.  You even threaten police action, fines and imprisonment for, "The violation of any provision of this order",  asserting such heavy handed authoritarian abuse of power is justified because you say that non-compliance, "...Constitutes an imminent threat and menace to public health, constitutes a public nuisance...".  So you say, but where is your hard proof?  I ask you, How is it that the health officers of other California counties Do Not impose a masking mandate and Do Not consider their decision, "An imminent threat and menace to public health", Do Not consider their decision as contributing to, "A public nuisance"?

  Perhaps you are familiar with Dr. Vinay Prasad MD MPH hematologist-oncologist and professor in the department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF.  He is pretty merciless in his critique of Santa Clara County's decision to impose a mask mandate at this point in time.  I can only guess he would entreat you and your decision to the same blunt rebuke.  Here is a link to his Substack piece on the matter: 

Public health should be distrusted

  Have you taken into consideration the negative effects of face mask wearing for 8 or 12 hours at a time?  Here is a study that may have guided you to a different approach than what you have imposed:   https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9483963/   This study only deals with the inhaled CO2 of mask wearers as measured by Capnography.

There are other downsides to wearing a mask, especially in the case of being told you have to do it in that absence of any data showing benefit. Does your policy take into account the potential harms of mask wearing and balance them against the assumed benefits?  Have you considered the industrial chemicals used in the production of masks that can be harmful to human health?  Are you aware that particles and fibers become dislodged from the mask during extended wearing and that these particles can be inhaled into the lungs where they stay?  Did you consider that the moisture in the exhaled air creates a breeding ground for bacteria which, if present (and it is ever-present as colonization on the skin) can multiply on the inner surface of the mask?  Have you considered the effect on morale that imposing a mandate of questionable or unproven value will have on the workforce?   

  What are we to do with this information:  On the box that the masks come in, the ones provided to staff by the hospital, it clearly says the masks are not designed to and do not prevent spreading viruses and disease.  I've inserted a photo of a panel on the box from one of the suppliers of masks we have worn.  It is at the end of this letter.

  Last years mask mandate only required the workers to mask up, but left patients and visitors free to decide for themselves if they wanted to cover their faces, thus setting up a bizarre double standard and calling into question the sensibility of having anyone wear masks at all.  Any number of non-staff were unmasked and undoubtedly spreading viral particles into the shared airspace.  Most of the people I spoke to certainly didn't see the sense in imposing a policy with gaping holes built into it that pretty much assured it had no value.  There was a shared impression among many of us that the masking decree  revealed a haphazard approach by the health department in making policy and gave the distinct impression that we were conscripted into a form of performative theater.

  I have to wonder if any more reason has gone into producing a cogent policy this year.  For instance you state that, "Regardless of vaccination status all personnel and visitors must always wear face masks during Respiratory Viral Season...".   Does this mean you have no faith in the vaccines for Influenza, Covid-19 and RSV?  It would seem that way, yet you go on to make this propagandistic statement, "Getting Vaccinated Is the Best Way to Reduce Risk...".  When you refer to reduced risk I can only assume you mean some sort of risk associated with viral respiratory disease.  Is that correct?   Then I am going to ask you again to provide the data you rely upon to make the grand claim that vaccination is the best way to reduce risk.    

  As such proclamations always do,  your statement on risk reduction ignores anything to do with personal health and immunity optimization by the individual.  Nutrition, exercise, Vitamin-D level, adequate sleep and stress reduction are all recognized as crucial to an adapted and functional immune system.  The susceptibility of the individual is ignored.  The flu shot is known to have effectiveness down into the teens percentile most years and rarely achieves anything above a 50 % mark.  (Keep in mind that those are only measures of effectiveness in producing antibodies to the influenza virus.  That antibody production does not equate to actual immunity) The Covid shots have been acknowledged as Not preventing contracting nor transmitting Covid-19.  In fact one of the most commonly listed side effects of the shots is getting Covid-19.  Is that really "The Best" protection?  As soon as you begin to tinker with the balance of your immune system with injectable (vaccine or gene therapy) products you open a Pandora's Box of known and unknown downstream adverse consequences.  Therefore  you are remiss in not mentioning the adverse reactions of the shots.

  The flu shot has a long list of adverse events in the package insert.  The Covid shots are an unmitigated disaster.  One quick look at the VAERS data will make that evident. I believe it is like a tsunami that is continuing to build and will go down as the worst medical catastrophe in human history.   Despite what the CDC claims, there is a mounting pressure around the world to pull the mRNA injectable products from the market.  There is a growing call to investigate the plasmid DNA contamination in the Pfizer and Moderna products and its implications for human health.  There is an increasing demand to investigate the explosion of cancers, blood clotting problems, strokes, pulmonary emboli, kidney failure, liver damage (multiple organ dysfunction syndrome), cardiac arrests, chronic fatigue, VAIDS,  autoimmune neurological disorders, reproductive harms and sudden deaths associated with the mRNA covid injectable products.  Governments are even starting to take action to halt the use of these products and perform independent evaluation of their risks.

  Maybe the health department can spare thirty-five bucks so you can get a copy of Naomi Wolf's new book, "The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer's Crimes Against Humanity".  It represents the work of 3250 volunteer investigators combing through 450,000 pages of Pfizer's own documents from the clinical trials of it's CV-19 mRNA injectables.  These documents only became available for review after FOIA requests were ignored by the FDA and a lawsuit was won against the government resulting in the judge demanding the release of the records.  Pfizer had requested the documents be sealed for 55 years and FDA wanted them locked up for 75 years, but the judge understood the public's compelling interest in immediate access to these documents and now the book is available so everyone can learn of the dangers that have so far been exposed.   Although I am just beginning the book, Naomi Wolf and The Daily Clout have been publishing their revelations for months and they are devastating.

  In light of the rapidly increasing evidence of the harms of the CV-19 shots and their acknowledged failure to prevent illness from SARS-CoV-2, I ask how you can make the claim they are "The Best" protection.  In light of such a provably false claim, I feel it is my duty for myself and all the healthcare workers of Santa Cruz County to question your masking mandate as a best policy.  Do you have any more reliable data upon which to rest your demand that masks be required?   My faith in the institutions that are entrusted to safeguard the public has been severely eroded over the past four plus years of incongruous, nonsensical and arbitrary public health policies that many see as having caused more harm than they did good.  Please show us with documentation your proof that requiring everyone inside healthcare facilities to mask up is going to produce a significant measurable benefit to the community.   Failure to substantiate your order with concrete high quality evidence will only serve to widen the credibility gap between what public health tells us and the truth borne out of our lived experience.

Sincerely yours,

Michael J. Hudson, RN

End of letter:

So, what do you think? Am I going about this the right way? Does anyone have ideas for a fruitful approach in corresponding with a bureaucratic agency that assumes the power to fine and jail you for not complying with their diktat, but they apparently have no solid evidence to demonstrate that their policy is the best, or even makes logical sense?

If you have labored through reading this please share your thoughts.