Personal Responsibility
Please note Gov. Herbert announces statewide mask mandate, social gathering limit amid COVID-19 surge.
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert issued a statewide mask mandate Sunday night as part of emergency orders directing Utahns to limit social gatherings to their own household to combat the state’s current COVID-19 surge.
“We must do more, and we must do it now,” he said. “This is about much more than just mandates. This is about personal responsibility.”
Both orders, which go into effect Monday at 1 p.m. MT, and will remain until at least Monday, Nov. 23, represent the governor’s widest measures of reform to date as Utah hit an all-time high in the spread of the virus, including new cases and hospitalization rates, in the same week.
“I ask you now, and I implore you, to do everything within your power to stop the spread of this disease. It is time for the divisiveness to end, and for all of us as Utahns to unite in making whatever sacrifice is necessary to help our neighbor and to bring healing back to our state.”
Key Points
- A statewide mask mandate for all Utahns in public, where six feet of physical distancing is not possible, which will “be extended for the foreseeable future,” state officials said.
- The mandate is enforceable in all business settings, requiring employees to wear face coverings, promoting mask-wearing among patrons, and posted signage to the same effect. Any business that fails to do so will be subject to fines, the order says.
- Limiting casual social gatherings to household-only through the length of the order.
- A two-week hold on all extracurricular activities, including athletic and intramural events, with the exception of intercollegiate athletics and practices, and games and training associated with high school championships that follow instructions for testing and limited crowd sizes.
- Mandatory weekly testing for COVID-19 by all higher-education students in public and private institutions who either live on campus or attend at least one in-person class per week, with a plan that must be established as soon as possible but no later than Jan. 1, 2021.
Final Point and a Question
Governor Herbert is a Republican in a state that voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
Did he purposely hold off this announcement until after the election?
Mish
Looking at data from Nebraska, the state has no mandate, but one county, Lancaster, instituted a mandate on July 20th. A second county, Douglass, instituted one a month later, after seeing the positive results from Lancaster Country (despite threats from the Governor to sue over a mask mask mandate).
So, how are the results? In cases per million in the last two weeks:
Lancaster County – 7252 cases/million
Douglas Country – 9256
Rest of the State – 11,561
How about cumulative deaths/million?
Lancaster County – 157
Douglas Country – 433
Rest of State – 389
The case data is clearly better in the counties with mask mandates. The death data is mixed, dramatically better in the county with the longest mask mandate, but not in the other county with a mask mandate. Is compliance higher in Lancaster County? Is there some other factor at work? I can’t tell you.
Good data coming in from Tennessee. Chris Martenson covers it in the beginning of this video.
Its important to understand that until recently , whatever you were told about the efficacy of mask-wearing was inferred from other diseases…or was observational data from some country with a mandate.
This isn’t.
Trump takes credit for Pfizer vaccine. Company did not take part in “Warp Speed”
Had they been part of Warp Speed would the have faced price controls? It sound like they are hinting these shots are going to be expensive.
Anyone commenting on the Pfizer vaccine. This is a two shot vaccine, with critical populations starting to get the first shot it in January. So they will probably protected, as much as the vaccine can, into February. For the general population it is probably a mid-2020 event. It is likely with the magnitude of the wave coming over the next several months that much of the population will be burned through anyways so it will diminish in the spring anyways. For those countries that actually controlled the virus though the vaccine will work out well for them.
THey haven’t proven much by my reading. Unless one of the groups agreed to be exposed to the virus, this test proves nothing.
One group got the vaccine, one didn’t. Then both groups went about their lives. Maybe some ran into the virus in different strengths, maybe others didn’t.
Those dumb experts, should have asked social media how to design the testing.
Market up big on vaccine. Looks like Mish was too pessimistic yet again.
Also on the loss of Trump, which will hopefully return some degree of sanity to world.
A little reality check on those who think tariffs don’t impact jobs (though I admit it’s not clear yet if any of these jobs will flow back to the US. But then…the US isn’t really doing what it could/should do to complete the process of getting them back, is it?):
“As reported in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), Stanley Black & Decker has closed its Shenzhen factory, “[laying] off all of its 1,000 workers after 25 years of operations.” This, according to the SCMP, “reflects the changing business environment in the world’s second-biggest economy.” In reality, however, it highlights long-standing, ongoing China risks.
Stanley Black & Decker’s departure is being spun as further evidencing “Shenzhen’s transition from a manufacturing base, which relies mainly on relatively cheap land and labour, to a technology hub – i.e. China’s answer to Silicon Valley.” Yet “the entrance [to the Shenzhen factory] was swarming with human resource managers and labour agents who were trying to persuade laid-off workers from the closed factory to join other ones.” One human resource manager quoted in the SCMP said, “Shenzhen factories are facing a sudden labour shortage … as many factories have orders pouring in and shifting from overseas.”
1. China Problems
Shenzhen is changing and moving up the value chain, but its old-school manufacturing sector is alive and kicking, as shown by the demand for the laid-off Stanley Black & Decker’s employees. Looking closely at the story, it appears Stanley Black & Decker’s decision was not the result of falling out of place in the brave new Shenzhen – but rather of the same old China problems, including the following:
A. Tariffs and AD/CVD Duties on China Products
According to a worker, “the Shenzhen factory focused on supplies to the US market, but in the past couple of years, we had been producing semi-finished products and shipping them to Vietnam’s plant for assembly.” There may be a variety of reasons for this shift, but it’s hard to imagine the tariffs imposed on a broad range of Chinese products by the United States didn’t play a role. Though a new Biden administration might provide some tariff relief, it’s worth remembering there are also numerous antidumping and countervailing (AD/CVD) orders against certain Chinese products, some far predating Trump’s trade war.”
One week after the election which Trump loses and Pfizer announces their vaccine works. Coincidence or is Pfizer currying favor?
Donald…is that you?
No, Donald is out banging your wife.
Re: Utah mink–they’re special…
Thousands of minks at Utah fur farms have died because of the coronavirus in the past 10 days, forcing nine sites in three counties to quarantine, but the state veterinarian said people don’t appear to be at risk from the outbreak.
The COVID-19 infections likely were spread from workers at the mink ranches to the animals, with no sign so far that the animals are spreading it to humans, said Dr. Dean Taylor, the state veterinarian, who is investigating the outbreak.
“We genuinely don’t feel like there is much of a risk going from the mink to the people,” he said Thursday.
Thar was on 10/2
Conspiracy theories still from some?
How’d they rig filling up the hospitals after a Biden win?
I thought it was all going away after November 4.
Hey, stay away from the vaccine, ya know, it has nanites.
With Trump out of the way, Republican leaders can start being responsible again. Nice to see “personal responsibility” re-enter the conservative vocabulary after 4 years of “it’s the liberals fault!”
“record infections and deaths in THE LAST WEEK”
Could that have something to do with it? I know it’s hard to believe but sometimes politics aren’t in the equation.
They are being reactivate instead of proactive. Covid will explode after Thanksgiving.
““Things are completely out of control in Utah right now, and they’re not really doing anything about it,” Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah, said about government officials in his state, which has seen record infections and deaths in the past week and where hospital administrators have warned that clinicians might have to start rationing care because of the crush of patients.”
That’s it. Record infections and especially deaths are good reasons . Rationed care is a good one too.
You know what would have been even better? Preventing the record infections and deaths in the first place by doing this months ago.
Spelling correction:
Mish, you live there now so you tell us why. I assume that you have talked to people there to get their views. Do they see it that way?
Mish, you live there now so you tell us why. I assume that you have talked to people there to get there view. Do they see it that way?
Why hasn’t this be done elsewhere and earlier. This isn’t high tech and it shouldn’t be controversial
It’s only non-controversial in YOUR mind. If you had been paying attention for the last 8 months, you should have seen numerous articles and studies referenced that disagree on the general value of masks and to which populations they might be useful. Like below for example.
But I am confident that neither you nor Biden & his new advisory team will change your set-in-stone minds. So what will happen will be that many people will wear the masks fitting poorly, never changing them and below. And it won’t matter at all because the virus will just peter out on its own eventually.
Excerpt:
Open Letter from Medical Doctors and Health Professionals to All Belgian Authorities and All Belgian Media
– September 20, 2020
“Masks
Oral masks belong in contexts where contacts with proven at-risk groups or people with upper respiratory complaints take place, and in a medical context/hospital-retirement home setting. They reduce the risk of droplet infection by sneezing or coughing. Oral masks in healthy individuals are ineffective against the spread of viral infections. 29 30 31
Wearing a mask is not without side effects. 32 33 Oxygen deficiency (headache, nausea, fatigue, loss of concentration) occurs fairly quickly, an effect similar to altitude sickness. Every day we now see patients complaining of headaches, sinus problems, respiratory problems and hyperventilation due to wearing masks. In addition, the accumulated CO2 leads to a toxic acidification of the organism which affects our immunity. Some experts even warn of an increased transmission of the virus in case of inappropriate use of the mask.34
Our Labour Code (Codex 6) refers to a CO2 content (ventilation in workplaces) of 900 ppm, maximum 1200 ppm in special circumstances. After wearing a mask for one minute, this toxic limit is considerably exceeded to values that are three to four times higher than these maximum values. Anyone who wears a mask is therefore in an extreme poorly ventilated room. 35
Inappropriate use of masks without a comprehensive medical cardio-pulmonary test file is therefore not recommended by recognised safety specialists for workers.
Hospitals have a sterile environment in their operating rooms where staff wear masks and there is precise regulation of humidity / temperature with appropriately monitored oxygen flow to compensate for this, thus meeting strict safety standards. 36″
Suggest paying attention to how people wear masks. Many are poor fitting (like mine) with spaces at the side and top.
And then there are us who wear the mask below our noses. I am seeing more and more of this daily.
Further, there are some people wearing actual mesh masks.
A buddy of mine reported seeing a woman with mouth hole cut out of her mask so that she could smoke! [lol]
So let’s follow along and hopefully see if there is any sort of measurable decline in UT Covid stats with the implementation of this dictate.
People don’t understand how viruses work. At the grocery store people wear masks and they wipe down the carts and have plexiglass. But everybody touches the same items on the shelves, and when you take bread, you need to use tongs, but everybody touches the same tongs. Don’t even start about mask-wearing.
People do not realize that viruses always find a way. The measures you need to actually stop a virus go way beyond effort — viruses don’t reward people for good intentions, they are absolutely binary. They always manage to find a way to spread.
Different viruses work in different ways. Turns out this one does not spread much by touch. Pretty much by air. People don’t realize that the game is percentages. Reducing the odds. It is not absolute prevention.
And yet all the local libraries have been physically shut for the last 8 months, primarily, as told to me by a library executive, because of fear of virus transmission on book handling!
People create their own realities which are essentially unchangeable, regardless of how wrong they may be.
This is why comparisons between ‘mandatory mask’ and ‘no mask required’ charts look fairly identical (never mind the lack of any real data). Even without specific statutes, many people wear masks anyway, and for sure high-risk people are avoiding risky situations as much as practical. In places where one can be fined, especially in places where the fines are very high, enforcement is probably not worth the effort unless the offender is belligerent or has committed other crimes. But when looking at the data from afar and from the top of the pyramid that doesn’t show.
Well i have a beard so aa mask doesnt make a proper seal for me. So i wear a neck gator. Doubled up. Since the goal of a mask is to keep my funk away from you. And your mask keeps your funk away from me. I think it works. Instead of my breath going out through the area close to the mouth with force the beard acts as a muffler spreading my breath over a larger area of the mask with less force. Plus they say i have a face for radio anyway.
I would assume the election played a role in the timing. Probably wise for the UT governor to delay until a few days after the election. Fallout should be minimal while the rest of the country yells at each other for a few more weeks.
Just hope the Mink version doesn’t turn up.
High alert in some geographies.
A whole new variant with no societal immunity.
The ease with which it has jumped fro-to-mutated-fro species is weird.
Thousands of mink have already died in Utah farms from CV.
State said “don’t worry” last month.