Southern California Cities Rebel Against Mask’s New Mandate, Hinting At Upcoming Delta Variant Drama

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PASADENA, Calif .– Los Angeles County’s new mask mandate infuriates officials in the sprawling region, prompting angry denunciations as some angry local leaders demand resignations and threaten to sever ties and form their own police departments. public health.

“The county cannot handle our current situation,” said Councilor Tony Wu of West Covina, a town of about 110,000 people in the eastern part of the county. “We’re not going to force anything about this BS at all.”

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The municipal mess reflects growing national tension over how to respond to the new delta variant of the coronavirus, which has led to a significant rebound in cases and surprised many government officials and business leaders. It rekindles tensions over vaccination levels and the rules of masks at a time when many Americans believed the virus was behind them.

This particular uproar underscores the volatile politics around the pandemic even in liberal southern California, where patience has run out in some neighborhoods with new demands from health officials. Barely a month after state officials lifted nearly all pandemic restrictions – and even though the White House continues to insist that those vaccinated do not need to wear masks – the biggest County of the country cracked down last weekend, announcing a new requirement for everyone to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status.

The backlash was immediate. Although dominated by the city of Los Angeles itself, LA County is home to around 10 million people spread across 88 distinct cities separated by hundreds of miles. And in some of those places, local authorities got it.

“We have had enough of these policies! We demand that you stop this unique approach to health and health outcomes,” elected officials from half a dozen cities, including El Segundo, Torrance and Manhattan, wrote this week. Beach. a letter to their local county supervisor. “We implore you to modify this recent order, engage with us and establish a policy that better reflects the unique context of our region.”

Torrance and West Covina – and even Tony Beverly Hills – are among the cities that have launched or are exploring efforts to break up and create their own health services that would not be subject to county dictates. To the knowledge of officials involved, no such effort has been attempted in decades, but they are moving forward, starting talks with county and state officials and asking their city’s prosecutors to consider how to move forward.

“I have been advocating for months for Torrance to separate from the LA County Health Department,” said Aurelio Mattucci, Torrance City Council member. “This latest mask mandate is really going to have a terrible effect on businesses, it’s really going to instill more fear in buyers and customers and that’s where I think we need to draw the line.”

Beverly Hills Mayor Robert Wunderlich said he viewed the county’s new mask tenure as “justifiable” given the increase in cases, but asked, “Did they choose the optimal way? I am not sure.

His city is in the process of recruiting an expert to help the authorities understand what the creation of a public health service would entail. The argument for doing so, said Wunderlich, would be “to have things in hand, so that we are able to be decision makers on the requirements and the rules.”

In announcing the new mask mandate, the county highlighted a seven-fold increase in new cases since the state reopened on June 15, driven by the highly transmissible delta variant. In a written response to questions, the LA County Health Department’s communications office defended the department’s decision and suggested that it would be unwise for cities to attempt to create their own health departments. The agency did not respond directly to calls for the resignation of the head of the health department.

“Cities can only establish their own health services with state approval and a demonstrated ability to perform essential public health functions,” the county health service said. “Given the alarming increase in cases and hospitalizations across the county, and the increasing circulation of the more infectious variant of the Delta, we urge city managers and elected officials to support this reasonable public health measure as it stands. This is a relatively non-disruptive action that can help slow the spread of the virus. At this point, working together is the best way to go. “

But some local business leaders have questioned how a mask mandate imposed by LA County would do more than create chaos and confusion, especially since residents in certain areas of the county could drive a block. of homes and shopping or eating in places like Orange County or Ventura County, which have not imposed any new mandates.

“We really want LA County to stay aligned with the state because it creates confusion,” said Nancy Hoffman Vanyek, president and CEO of the Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce. “You could literally go to a neighboring area and that could possibly have a different set of restrictions.”

Vanyek and other critics of the county’s decision questioned whether this would only be a first step backwards towards the kinds of capacity restrictions or even the outright shutdowns that plagued businesses in the first few weeks and of the first months of the pandemic. “This is the big concern,” she said.

Supporters of the LA County decision say it’s quite the opposite – an effort to ensure case rates don’t get so high that the county must consider going back to lockdown. This includes Ying-Ying Goh, head of the Pasadena public health department which, along with Long Beach, is one of two towns in the county that already has its own public health department. While Pasadena is not bound by what LA County does, it does impose a mask mandate similar to one that has already gone into effect elsewhere in the county. Despite very high vaccination rates in Pasadena, cases there have increased 240% since July 1, Goh said.

“It’s not that public health comes and goes with this restriction and restriction, it’s because we’re in a different situation” with the delta variant, Goh said. She asked the audience to be patient but also to “understand how we try to keep our economy open with just a little restriction.”

And while Pasadena has its own health department, Goh questioned the ability of other cities to follow suit. In Pasadena, the health department is 129 years old and predates the county health agency. Public health departments are responsible for much more than making decisions about the types of coronavirus restrictions businesses should follow, Goh noted, which seems to be animating officials in other cities who are exploring the move. “It’s much more than authorizing restaurants,” she said.

In some ways, the debate over which cities are trying to create their own health services resonates with other secession efforts that have rocked California over the years, including arguments over whether the San Fernando Valley should be separate from the rest of Los Angeles or if the state must break up. itself in two or even three pieces. Proponents argue that remote towns with lower infection rates should not be bound by uniform county rules.

But if the goal is to create more certainty for businesses and residents, the result could be even less, as the result could be a haphazard patchwork of different rules and regulations in Southern California, say the researchers. opponents.

“Separation will not be a solution to things like this – it further fragments the approach to ensuring we have healthy communities,” said Maria S. Salinas, director of the regional chamber of commerce. Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who represents Torrance, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach and other aggrieved municipalities, said she would rather see the county act in concert with the rest of California, “but in this cases, they just felt like the cases in LA County were growing so quickly that they just couldn’t wait. ” Cases have also increased elsewhere in California, and other counties have also started recommending the wearing of masks indoors, but Los Angeles County is the only one so far to impose a new mandate.

As for cities that are trying to set up their own health services, “I think most people are unlikely to cross the finish line,” Hahn said. She added, however, that she herself was the target of a recall effort regarding her response to the pandemic.