Sonoma County’s new mask recommendation provokes concern, anger
Astride his bicycle and on his lunch break, Drew Merritt went zipping past the Plaza in downtown Healdsburg on a recent afternoon, bound for the takeout counter at El Farolito.
The mercury was pushing 90, yet Merritt, the head mechanic at nearby Spoke Folk Cyclery, was rocking a mask as he rode, almost as if he’d forgotten it was there. “I’ve been wearing it for so long,” he explained, “it’s just not that big a deal anymore.”
Merritt made that observation six days after Sonoma County — along with six other Bay Area counties and Berkeley — took the eyebrow-raising step of recommending masking indoors for everyone, vaccinated or unvaccinated. While that “high recommendation” is less urgent than an actual health order, it’s still a regressive, concerning step, coming merely a month after California governor Gavin Newsom reopened the state.
Sonoma County health officer Dr. Sundari Mase and her Bay Area colleagues issued the recommendation to stem the sharp, recent rise of the delta variant, a mutation of the coronavirus that’s up to 50% more transmissible than COVID-19.
Where Sonoma County in mid-June was averaging about four new cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents, per day, said Kate Pack, the county’s lead epidemiologist, that number has more than doubled, to 9.5, with most of that spread taking place among the unvaccinated.
While Sonoma County has seen 500 “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people since January – less than 1% of the county’s fully vaccinated population, said Pack – 173 of those came in the last three weeks, as community transmission has ticked upward. COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, however, remain largely among the unvaccinated, she noted.
“You can have COVID, even after vaccination,” said Mase. “You can be asymptomatic, and spread it to other people.”
By following the recommendation, by masking up in public places, indoors, “you can protect yourself, and your family, and your community.”
That recommendation has been met with a range of reactions, from outrage at the perceived heavy hand of government — “That’s ridiculous!” declared an 18-year-old getting his hair cut at the Plaza Barber Shop, just north of El Farolito — to anger at those primarily responsible for the backsliding.
“Absolutely, I have resentment,” Gerri Schultz had said, on her way out of the Sebastopol Community Market, “because I think this is going to get worse.”
“We’re all going to go backwards, including those of us who’ve done everything we’re supposed to do, because some people won’t get a damn shot — a shot that’s scientifically proven to work.”
Schultz’s concern about going backward is well founded. In consulting with her fellow Bay Area health officers, Mase said, they decided to “go ahead and start with this” recommendation, “and help people understand why we’re doing it.
Mase and her staff will “watch our trends, and watch where we’re going.” She didn’t rule out the possibility that if those trends become too alarming, the recommendation could be replaced with a health order.
Jorge Smith fervently hopes that won’t be necessary. He’s a floor manager at the Sebastopol Community Market, which lifted its mask mandate for customers earlier this month. While the majority of the store’s customers have no problem donning masks, he said, “there’s some that don’t like it at all.”
Enforcing the mandate, asking people to put on a mask, was often difficult. “I’ve had a lot of aggression, almost fights, when we had the mask mandate,” he said. “I’d be telling people, ‘I’m just doing my job.’”
“Just when we were feeling like, finally, we can breathe again,” said a woman named Kat, cleaning her grocery cart with a disinfecting wipe before heading into Oliver’s Market in Windsor, “the folks who didn’t want to get vaccinated pushed us into this mess.”
“They don’t really look at the science,” she said of the anti-vaxxers making up the vast majority of new COVID-19 cases. “They look at social media.”
While Merritt the bike mechanic expressed similar exasperation with the rise in case numbers, he seemed mystified, more than anything, by the fuss some people make over having to wear a mask.
“I mean, it’s not that hard. It’s the least I can do. We’re still in a pandemic. People are dying, and other people are like, ‘Oh, I can’t wear a mask, it’s uncomfortable.’ Well, at least you’re not dead,” he said.
“My grandma died of COVID and we couldn’t even have a funeral for her. She’s just dead.”