Los Angeles Mayor: Masks Required Now to 'Get More Freedoms'

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has ordered every Los Angeles resident – except small children and the disabled – to wear a face mask to get “more freedoms” during the COVID-19 outbreak. His update was more Orwellian than anything t hat nutty Michigan governor has ever said.

Garcetti, in his soft sing-song, criticized people who complain about his strictures, such as shutting down businesses and requiring masks.

All Los Angeles residents were initially promised that “flattening the curve” was all they were being asked to do. That’s been achieved. Now the goalposts have been moved.

The mayor—whose family trust, which he helps oversee, has given thousands if not more to Planned Parenthood and joins with the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) in political fundraisers—said people who don’t agree with his rules don’t care about saving lives.

This isn’t about government doing this to us, this is about our collective decision and whether we think lives are worthwhile; that they’re worthy. We will go through many more deaths.

Though LA hospitals have not been remotely overwhelmed by coronavirus cases, Garcetti insisted that protecting frontline medical workers was part of his rationale for the mask order.

When I hear people talk about throw everything open and I talk to nurses who say we are still scared to death some of us don’t even go home because they work in an emergency rooms and we haven’t seen our kids in weeks and months.

Remember them please and let that inform you when you’re about the run out without the mask that’s sitting there by your front door thinking maybe i can skirt the rules and nobody else will see.

This is about our collective caring and our collective health together.

But his presentation grew more surreal as he explained that face masks actually represent more “freedoms” to come.

Have your mask with you leave your house and, as long as you’re not doing a solitary activity, or with your own household, put that mask on always now and that is a requirement. That will help us get more freedoms. Open up more parts of our city and know that the numbers won’t go up with the spread of the coronavirus.

I’m glad LA led that movement in the country to require face masks

He explained that people “honking horns” and complaining about the government’s heavy-handedness in the lockdown orders will not sway him. Compliance is bravery.

We won’t take steps forward just yelling or complaining it’ll be when we’re hopeful and responsible and when we own our collective health together. This should be an exciting week, not a depressing one. And I hope that you feel some of those brave steps forward.

He said that the face mask orders are indefinite until he feels they can be lifted.

We can’t stop physical distancing so that needs to be in an order. We can’t take off our facial coverings so that needs to be in an order. We can’t just say we care about our nurses and our doctors and medical professionals, we have to make sure we are protecting them and that has to be in an order.

In the televised LA County Public Health Department coronavirus update on Wednesday, Barbara Ferrer, Ph.D., said that “50% of the deaths in LA County occurred” in institutional settings with the “vast majority” residing “in our skilled nursing facilities.”

Nevertheless, the mask order requires all LA residents, except the small children and the disabled, to wear masks – even on the beaches.

While there’s no end date in sight to get rid of the modified lockdown and no apparent hard criteria that would lead them to lift the “safer at home” order, Ferrer did allow some businesses to offer curbside service – except in shopping malls – and opened up outdoor courts, such as tennis and pickleball courts.