No longer the 'mask police': End of mandates brings relief for (some) business owners
FULLERTON, Calif. — With mask mandates being relaxed Tuesday in most of California, you are still unlikely to see Adan Ortega’s uncovered face in many indoor public places.
Tucked into a red-leather booth for happy hour at The Continental Room bar here, the government affairs executive says that the coronavirus taught him a lesson not only about how to avoid COVID-19, but the common cold as well. So he plans to keep wearing a mask even though it will no longer be required.
Now it's going to be up to customers like Ortega to make decisions on masks as business owners in California and the other states deal yet another twist in the pandemic saga.
“There are so many mixed messages going on out there,” said Rachel Michelin, president of the Sacramento-based California Retailers Association.
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'Time to move on'
But she expressed relief that the mandate is being diminished, saying it’s time that we all learn to live with coronavirus and like Ortega, make our own decisions on precautions to stay safe.
“It’s time to move on. It’s a big signal that in California, we are turning a corner,” she said. It will be a relief to store clerks who will no longer be forced to be the “mask police,” and besides, “In lots of places, people aren’t wearing masks anyway.”
Mask freedom still won’t apply to certain settings, whether it’s riding mass transit or visiting a prison or nursing home.
Teachers and schoolchildren will also have to wait after the state decided to keep the mask mandate in place for schools through the end of the month, when state officials will reassess the need, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said Monday in an online announcement
And the Golden State’s version of the pulling back on the mask mandates for vaccinated people left it up to individual counties whether they want to participate.
In the south, populous Los Angeles County, and in the north, Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, aren't budging on their mask requirements for now.
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Store owners relieved at mask relaxation
Besides California, other states retreating on mask mandates in various ways include New York, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Delaware and Connecticut.
Walmart also announced on Friday that the retail giant was dropping the mask requirement for its 1.6 million employees in the U.S., providing the workers are fully vaccinated and local regulations don't override Walmart's rules.
Patrons and store owners were welcoming the change in Fullerton, a tidy, diverse Orange County city close to Disneyland yet part of the whole Los Angeles metropolis.
In the streets, about half of shoppers and passersby were wearing masks one day last week. Signboards on passing Orange County Transportation Authority buses flashed the warning “No mask — no ride” along with the destination.
But indoors, masks are not always in evidence.
At a barber shop with an unusual name, the Shape Shifters Social Club, neither four busy hair cutters nor their youthful customers were wearing masks.
Patrick Conklin, a tattoo artist on the other side of the wall from Shape Shifters, was killing time between customers watching a video. For him, mask rules can’t disappear fast enough.
"There are constitutional rights in this country,” he said. “I think any kind of tyranny is too much.”
Employees can still wear them
His views were echoed in more subtle terms in shops around the city’s downtown. The consensus among customers and shopkeepers was overwhelmingly in favor of ditching masks.
“Everyone is over wearing of the mask,” said David Dial, general manager of Heroes Bar & Grill. But don’t expect them to disappear entirely. He added that any employee that wants to keep wearing a mask will certainly be allowed to do so. “We’re all for choice — it’s their comfort level.”
In revising mask rules, the California Department of Public Health stipulated that employers must continue to follow the state workplace agency's rules, which say that any employee who wants to wear a mask should be allowed to do so.
Florencio Blanquel works alone. He has built wooden furniture and sold Mexican-themed art at his downtown shop for 21 years. He greets a visitor without a mask, but keeps one behind the counter in case he needs it. There seems little need since the store this day is devoid of customers. When they do come in, he said he deals with them one-on-one — no crowds.
Also much of his time is spent working outside in the open air.
Back at the Continental, Ortega considers mask wearing and how it has cut down the spread of infectious disease of all sorts to be one of the few positive outgrowths of the pandemic. He is impressed at how Europeans and Asians were wearing masks even before the coronavirus pandemic to ward off germs, a habit he plans to emulate.
“I’m going to be practical about it,” he explained.
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Includes information from the Associated Press