‘We won’t have to be mask cops’: Reaction to Sonoma County’s soon-to-lapse mask mandate

Melody and Greg were on a date. Aglow with good health, and a bit of perspiration, the two Santa Rosa Junior College students had just emerged from the 24-Hour Fitness in Petaluma Wednesday morning, but hadn’t yet heard the news:

Earlier that morning, health officials announced that, starting Feb. 16, and in concert with other Bay Area counties, Sonoma County will lift indoor masking restrictions for vaccinated groups in public spaces.

That rule change follows the California Department of Public Health’s decision to not renew the statewide mask mandate that was enacted in mid-December as transmission of the omicron variant began to surge.

“I’m definitely looking forward” to ditching his mask, said Greg, who assured a reporter that even though it’s a nuisance and hindrance when he’s pumping iron, he’s been good about keeping his mask over his nose and mouth — even when he sees others cheating.

“People have the mask on, but they’ll pull it down to here,” he said, pointing to his chin. Or they’ll wear it over their chin, “and just pretend they’re drinking water all the time.”

Melody, likewise, can’t wait to work out sans mask. A few days earlier, during an intense set of squats, she suddenly felt lightheaded, unable to get sufficient oxygen. “It was bad,” she said. “I almost threw up.”

Not surprisingly, and for a variety of reasons, people are delighted by the prospect of leaving their masks at home. There was less consensus, however, on how optimistic we should be, and what the rule change will mean in the long term.

As Ky Boyd, director of Sebastopol’s Rialto Cinemas, put it, “I think this is something we’re just going to have to live with.”

Tamara Stanley, the general manager of Snoopy’s Home Ice in Santa Rosa, was “thrilled,” she said, by the expiring mandate, and the milestone it stood for, of “positive progress” against the virus.

The rink was fortunate to remain open during the county’s recent health order banning certain large gatherings, “and still offer our athletes a place to skate,” said Stanley — even if the number of skaters allowed in the building was reduced by half.

This latest ray of light from the health department “will help us get more people back on the ice and having a good time.

“And that’s what it’s all about,” she concluded — clearly borrowing from the Hokey Pokey.

Toraj Soltani fervently hopes that lifting the mask mandate will help propel his business, Mac’s Deli & Café on 4th Street in Santa Rosa, from its deep winter doldrums. Traffic was brisk through the holidays, he reported, but fell off a cliff after the health department issued a 30-day ban on large gatherings on January 12.

“It was like flipping a switch,” said Soltani, who noted that county also urged people to stay home, if possible.

People had started to “slowly migrate back to work, back to the office,” he said. The emergency order ended that momentum. “We went down about 30 percent if not more, almost immediately.”

The lifting of the restrictions, the good news about transmission rates and declining hospitalizations — all this makes him “super hopeful,” said Torani.

But his is a cautious optimism. He’s in no hurry to return the restaurant’s previous capacity. It’s now around 55 seats, down from 100 seats, before the pandemic. At this size, he’s able to get by with one fewer servers, and “two or three” fewer cooks — as long he’s on the line in the kitchen every day, “which I didn’t used to do, for a long time, but that’s OK,” he said with a smile.

Once he sees his old customers flocking back, “and we need more tables, and more help, we’ll slowly do it.”

In the meantime, Wednesday’s good news notwithstanding, “it’s still nerve-wracking.”

Natalie Cilurzo, co-owner of the Russian River Brewing Company, cheered the upcoming lapse of the mask mandate for the hopeful signal it sent: the possibility that the worst of the pandemic is over.

As omicron transmission spiked in the county, her company had its own “internal surge,” she said. So many employees fell ill with the virus that both establishments — the pub in Windsor and the pub in Santa Rosa — closed for several days in early January, because of staffing issues.

Cilurzo — whose 92-year-old mother-in-law recently contracted the virus and recovered — spent weeks, she said, delivering rapid tests she’d purchased online to the homes of employees sick with COVID-19.

Her staff is healed, the pub’s doors are open. “Everybody’s doing OK, we’re back on track,” she said and gearing up for the company’s March 25 release of Pliny the Younger. That hugely anticipated event, originally scheduled for Feb. 4, was postponed due to the omicron surge.

To ensure the health of her staff moving forward, said Cilurzo, employees will still continue to wear masks, even after the mandate expires, “just because of the nature of the business, with servers waiting on people who are not wearing masks.

“We need to keep our team healthy.”

Another reason to celebrate the new rule: Cilurzo and her staff “won’t have to be mask cops,” she said, citing what had become one of the least appealing aspects of their jobs. Ninety to 95 percent of the time, she estimated, customers had simply forgotten to put on their mask.

Every so often, however, a patron would respond to a request to put on a mask with a stream of “vitriol,” said Cilurzo, who has instructed staff that if someone gets particularly belligerent, to walk away, and not engage. “It’s not worth being called terrible names, or worse,” she said.

“I’m really glad the mask mandate’s going away.”

Just because the county says it’s OK to ditch the mask mandate doesn’t mean all businesses intend to do so.

In a Wednesday statement, Boyd, the Sebastopol’s Rialto Cinemas director, wrote: “Out of an abundance of caution, Rialto Cinemas will continue to require proof of COVID vaccination and the wearing of masks in all of its facilities to protect both our patrons and our staff.

Cinephiles who disagree, he noted, are welcome to watch movies at other theaters.

While he and his staff might be “very adventurous when it comes to programming” — which explains, he said, “why we’re not doing five screens of Spiderman” — they tend to “err on the side of being conservative when it comes to public health.”

While there’s “a lot of cause for hope,” said Boyd, “I think we need to be intelligent and stay the course. I don’t think we’re going to wipe out COVID the way we wiped out polio. This is not gonna go away.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.