gearing up for Mass Respirator Thnaksgiving

Louisiana to lift state mask mandate
[thehill.com]

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) announced Tuesday he is lifting the state’s mask mandate Wednesday.

“After sustained improvement across the state in new cases, test positivity & hospitalizations, I will lift Louisiana’s statewide mask mandate in all settings except for K-12 schools, which may opt out as long as they continue implementing existing CDC quarantine guidance,” the governor said in a tweet.

Louisiana was one of the states hit hardest by the delta variant earlier in the fall, and Edwards implemented the statewide mask mandate toward the end of August.

COVID-19 cases in the state have been on the decline since then, with Louisiana State University announcing earlier in the month it was rescinding its policy to require coronavirus vaccines to go to football games due to the drop in cases.

While Louisiana now has one of the lowest infection rates in the country, according to The Associated Press, the state has one of the lowest vaccination rates as well.

Probably like FL and not reporting the numbers truthfully.
Worldmeters hasn't listed any deaths in FL in two days,
yeah right not with the number of active cases they have.

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Grateful11

I'd keep the mask mandate going a bit longer but their numbers are reasonably good in most of the state.

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Soylent Gumbo ?

Yes, I heard about this earlier today.

A few corollaries:

1) Just because the Governor does that, doesn't mean that NOLA has to follow suit. Though because she is up for re-election, I wouldn't be surprised if LaToya caves in.

2) The lifting of the mask mandate doesn't include some settings, including schools (as mentioned in Steve G.'s post) but also places like public transportation, etc.

3) Some places (such as sporting events, etc.) will require proof of vaccination, in lieu of masks.

However, there are some "flip sides":

1) Yes, the rates are declining here, but that's only because we were already at high numbers, and yes -- we still have a very poor vaccination rate.

2) This past weekend, we had the Krewe of Boo parade, and the Louisiana Department of Health is using crowdsourcing data from that parade to figure out if we will have a problem with Mardi Gras. I'm not sure you can extrapolate from one to the other, but I noticed on the news and also on my Fb newsfeed that a lot of the parade participants and spectators were maskless. (Ironic, considering what the event is!) I am not sanguine about what we might be facing, come the holidays or thereafter. The parades are tentatively on for 2022, but I can imagine that they'll turn into superspreader events like what happened in 2020. [www.nola.com]

3) The biggest problem is that I don't think people here were taking the mandates seriously to begin with ... I just came from Lowes, where a lot of people inside the store were completely without masks.

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2021 09:24PM by PeterB.