Anonymous
Source: Santa Barbara County Public Health Department
The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department has extended a Health Officer Order which requires the use of masks in indoor public settings. This order requires all individuals, regardless of vaccination status, to wear face coverings when indoors in public settings, with limited exceptions. This Order 2021-10.6 is effective 5 p.m. November 4, 2021 and continuing until 5 p.m., on December 4, 2021 or until it is extended, rescinded, superseded, or amended.
As of October 28, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has categorized the COVID-19 community transmission level as Substantial in California and Santa Barbara County. As of October 23, 2021, the County has a case rate of 10 per 100,000 and a test positivity of 2.8%. The CDC recommends fully vaccinated individuals wear a face covering in public indoor settings in areas with Substantial or High community transmission rates.
In order for local health officials to consider rescinding the indoor mask mandate, the county case rate should be 6.0 cases per 100,000 people or lower for two consecutive weeks. When reaching this level, transmission is classified as Low.
“We are heading in the right direction as our case rate continues to decrease and vaccinations increase,” shared Dr. Henning Ansorg, County Health Officer. “Community transmission does remain at a substantial level. The upcoming Holiday season has the potential to cause a significant increase in cases and hospitalizations. Wearing a face covering while indoors is an important and effective strategy to reduce transmission in the community.”
This Health Officer Order is consistent with the guidance from the CDC as well as the California Department of Public Health, which recommend that fully vaccinated people wear masks while in indoor public settings. The full Health Officer Order can be read here: https://publichealthsbc.org/health-officer-orders/.
Visit https://publichealthsbc.org/vaccine to learn where you can find a vaccination site near you or call 2-1-1.
I quit.
So we are literally at 00.001% transmission rate and that’s not good enough? This will never end. If you’re worried about this now, especially if you’re vaccinated, you are irrational. I still see countless people driving around by themselves with masks on.
Relax everyone… it’s only going to be forever… (or until we come up with something new to freak out about… remember plastic straws…?)
They can keep extending the order forever, but compliance is rapidly diminishing. By the time they finally let the order expire it will be a moot point. Per usual, that decision will come far too late.
You are not alone
Not happening.
Andrea – thanks for the FOREVER and ever argument… fun fun!
I’ve been doing that anyway. No skin off my back! What’s it going to hurt to stay vigilant?
You’re welcome to wear a mask as long as you like. There will always be the common cold to protect yourself against. People get sick, that’s what happens. I got Covid a few months after being vaccinated, so did every vaccinated person in my workplace. I wouldn’t have even stayed home if it wasn’t the Covid. I can’t stop anyone from wearing a mask, but I gotta wonder about the sanity of someone living in one 24/7 just because the County tells them to and no other reason.
When the mandates are unreasonable, people lose faith in their leaders and they stop obeying. At my gym, half the people take their masks off once they get to their station. At the store, I regularly see multiple people with no mask and no concern. I refuse to vaccinate my otherwise safe children until they promise that the masks will come off.
Done with the mask…. haven’t put one on in months. Out at the bars, restaurants and stores at least 3 or 4 days a week. No one cares!!
A year ago , during the campaign someone told us that he was “going to CRUSH the virus”. Where is he now ?
I don’t understand why anyone cares, or cares enough to comment, about another person wearing a mask in their car or walking around. There are plausible reasons that they could choose to wear it without them being fearful or panicky. Maybe they are driving from one place to another where they’ll need to wear a mask so they’ve left it on. Maybe they just started driving and haven’t taken it off yet when you see them. Maybe they’re walking on a street with cars going by and realize the masks help with car exhaust or allergies. My point is why do YOU care so much that you have to name call people as fearful when you are just making assumptions about them. Seems to me you are the fearful one…fearful of mask wearers.
Good points, Madhatter. Even if you are anti-mask, why do you care so much about other people wearing them. Get over it and keep to yourself.
Because it leads to this perpetual state of forever masking… regardless of time and place and logic. You need to wear a mask as you enter a restaurant or bar… then sit and can take it off and eat and drink and laugh about the charade you just did. Tell you what… I won’t complain about anyone wearing a mask ever again as soon as we drop the charade of putting on a mask, gaiter or bandana to order a coffee and then sitting down mask off to drink the coffee. There is no sense or logic to 99% of the masking in Sb… and yet it continues on.
So yeah… once you stop caring about that the four steps from doorway to seat in a restaurant he masked, I’ll stop caring if you drive around, bike around or run around by yourself masked forever.
Agreed! And on the flip side keep it to yourself when I order my coffee mask less before sitting down and taking off my mask to drink (just skipping that whole 8 step charade of masked entering before sitting and taking off mask).
You have the choice and ability to stay masked forever. But when you do it in your car or on your bike or on a jog on the beach… do realize… it is silly. Which is ok… it is ok to be silly.
I could care less if people want to wear a mask, and I’ll happily keep to myself. I wish the mask authoritarians would do the same. Wear your mask if you want to, but leave the rest of us alone.
The problem with people driving around IN THEIR OWN CARS BY THEMSELVES while wearing a mask is that it’s paranoid and irrational behavior, and represents an unfounded endorsement in the bs that’s being fed to all of us currently. And these solo car masks wearers are gobbling ‘that meal’ right up without thinking logically. That IS a problem, and many of us find it very frustrating.
A S, I’m vaxed and got super sick for a couple of days too. Got tested and no Covid. Just a cold… Was told it’s worse because our immunity has been lowered due to all the Covid protocols we’re all following. The first cold I’ve had in a couple of years, so it makes sense.
This shit’s not gonna go away.
People. Just relax! We just need to flatten the curve and everything will be fine…
It’s pretty funny reading how upset people get when they see others driving around solo in a car with a mask on. I frequently forget to take my mask off in my car when I am out running errands. Then when I notice I still have it on, I wonder how many people I have freaked out by forgetting to take it off. Getting people all worked up just by forgetting I have a mask on my face.
VOR: SB case rate: with mandatory masking and reasonably high vaccination rates: 11
My home town, trump loving incredibly rural county: no masking and 40% vaccination rate: 70 (and 3% of all the people who have had COVID have died from it).
Yeah, um, okay! Just because you keep saying it doesn’t mean it’s true.
LETMEGO – Excellent. Problem is, VOICE is such an “independent thinker,” that even cold hard facts put right in his face are still somehow “media bias” or some other lame excuse for him being flat out, verifiably, 100% wrong.
Fond – Taking another nap.
VOICE – there you go again, calling anything contrary to your opinion “anecdotal,” as if 90% of what you say isn’t. Hey, explain to us the results of your map for Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Utah, Arizona, Nebraska, etc and the other Republican led states where covid is rampant compared to CA? You can’t keep blaming the Dems for failing, when it’s clearly not a partisan phenomenon.
“Masks can help reduce your chance of #COVID19 infection by more than 80%.” this was an actual tweet today by CDC DIRECTOR ROCHELLE WALENSKY, MD, MPH !!!
https://twitter.com/CDCDirector/status/1456645731691925518?s=20
This is why so many don’t trust what’s coming out of these bureaucrats mouths! There is zero data to support this and they have access to ALL the data. The best mask works study put forth shows a 2-3% reduction in the rate of spread, at best, and here we have the CDC Director sayin a mask reduces your chance of catching Covid by 80%. 80%!!! If masks worked that well the pandemic would have been over last summer. If she’s basing this off real data and studies, show us! If she wants more people in masks, and the 80% is true, share the data that backs this up and the amount mask wearers will increase dramatically! If this is true there is no need for vaccine mandates, because between getting yourself vaccinated and wearing these 80% prevention supermasks, Covid is a non issue.
“I gotta wonder about the sanity of someone living in one 24/7 just because the County tells them to and no other reason.”
I have to wonder about people who make such blatantly false assertions. The people caring about others wearing masks “too much” are extremely sick in the head, largely from consuming Tucker Carlson and similar poison.
Andrea – IMO you can’t use COVID of a paramedic as an argument to keep the mask on, fully vaccinated or not. Paramedics have significant more contact with the general and (ill) population. Continuing to wear the mask if BIKEWOMAN’s numbers are accurate is nuts. We have Fauci’s twin bro in CA.
Chip – The circus clowns in DC will determine in the spring/summer of ’22 the mask is no longer needed, for sure/maybe due to the upcoming election. Based on his ever changing opinion’s and position, Fauci is the poster child for the “Small Man Syndrome” of the world organization.
Andrea, then just get the booster. Mix and match manufacturers. They’re all readily available for those that want them and there is no shortage of pharmacies willing to dole them out to anyone that walks in. The shots have proved efficacy, the masks do not in nearly all the settings they’re currently used.
If wearing a mask is really hard for you, I am happy to offer a tutorial.
(I haven’t found it to be that tricky; I also cover my mouth when I sneeze . . .)
Honesty though it doesn’t really bother me… I find public displays of silliness rather humorous. Perhaps these people are also wearing a life jacket and parachute while clutching bear spray as they drive…
Sac, I think the main problem is the marketing. Think of every other vaccine that we have all taken. There’s no partial polio or measles etc. So people expect to be good when in fact it’s like the flu shot and will continue forever. Helping, but not eliminating. People who are vulnerable need to take note and do all the sheltering, masking, distancing etc. Why should the 99% alter for the 1% at this point?
BR3220 – “they offer no protection against airborne viruses. NONE” – Wrong. Here’s some proof that you’re wrong:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3306645/
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mSphere.00637-20
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-face-masks-what-you-need-to-know
BR3220 – Backpedaling champion of that day! You said “they offer no protection against airborne viruses. NONE.” The government has said over and over they do provide some protection. There is mounds of evidence showing they provide some degree of protection. So who is lying?
If you are vaccinated and the vaccine is effective, why are you worried about the unvaccinated? No one can answer this question logically, but please try.
Yep 6 in the ICU out of 250,000 on the South Coast. I call that almost no one.
I visited Vienna a few weeks ago where they require the equivalent of N95 masks at indoor public spaces. The strictest rules in Europe. They went to a level 4 rating for the USA(do not travel there due to high rates of Covid 19) while I was there. People were compliant with the masks, that don’t seem to have made a difference. It did seem less of a political issue.
In restaurants and hotels, proof of immunity or a recent negative test were required. No masks worn then. Sensible.
I don’t mind anyone at risk or wanting to protect themselves or others wearing their masks. N95 if you are serious about it.
I want to be treated as an adult about the vaccines and masks. I’m vaxxed and boosted and prefer to let the mask theater go. I am in the age group at higher risk and have lowered that risk. Although the odds of hospitalization or dying of Covid 19 remain low for most healthy individuals.
It is nice that the states hasn’t closed down the restaurants and stores this year. Fear is subsiding slowly.
Seasonality is the main driver for the spread of covid, not whatever mandates specific states want to put in place. FL, with no restrictions, no masks, no mandates, currently has a case rate over the past 7 days of 52.9/100k. CA, with our restrictions and masks, has a case rate over the past 7 days of 108.7/100K. This difference will only increase as our respiratory virus season gets started and theirs ends (just like last year…) How could that possibly be!!!! An entire state with no mask mandates or restrictions yet has half the case rate of ours? Now the result of those cases is different due FL having a higher portion of elderly and was hit much harder early in the pandemic. Vaccination rates are similar FYI.
Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days
Backpedaling again, VOICE. You refer to “when those car-maskers push mask use on everyone else and their kids” – no one on this thread is talking about kids. Therefore, your statement is attributable to all people, not just here on this thread or in this town, which you never said anyway.
And you know darn well, people here in town mouth off to those wearing masks. I’ve seen it plenty, thankfully not violently. Even here on this thread there are people who “cares when others wear masks.”
Look, we both know you are wrong but will never admit it. Just accept that people DO care when others wear masks, it’s an indisputable fact.
I may be one of the “countless people” you see driving alone with a mask on. I put on the mask with clean hands; I drive to the first store; I leave the mask on and drive to the next store. Repeat until I’m done with my errands. Then I take off the mask, throw it away, and wash my hands. Why would I constantly touch a mask with (probably) dirty hands…..
12:46 – Good for you, for being vigilant. Don’t let the haters that VOICE says don’t exist get you down. You take care of yourself however you want. It’s sad that so many are obsessed with other peoples efforts to protect themselves. It’s funny, since most of these anti-maskers are also gun lovers. They want to be able to “protect themselves” with a deadly weapon, yet fly off the handle when others want to put on a piece of cloth to protect THEMselves.
Just more punishment by our local officials. Science lacking, masks mandates will never be lifted.
Not too long ago Biden said he would never mandate vaccinations- that changed almost immediately after he got elected.