After receiving public comment from around 300 people, the Assembly on September 29 decided to pass an ordinance that extends our mitigation strategies until March 1 of next year. Some people have understood this to mean that the ordinance extends the mask mandate. That is not accurate. What it does is extend the authority to require masking, dependent on the community risk level. We are currently in High level risk, due to high cases, high positivity, stressed hospital and the really poor condition of medevac hospital options (and many other metrics).
While we are all frustrated with the dragging on of COVID, I think it is really important to re-focus on the why for the mitigation measures. The many reasons include keeping our schools open, reducing pressure on our hospital so that it is available for all, not unduly imposing burdens on businesses, protecting vulnerable people, and protecting people who are not yet eligible for the vaccine (kids under 12). There is a lot of really crummy data out there, being promulgated by a lot of people who should know better, about how ineffective masks are or about why it might be a good idea to take a dewormer instead of a vaccine to combat a virus. Please don’t fall victim to bad science – if you have questions, reach out to trusted sources that are also valid and reliable like the CDC.
It’s been a long road and here’s hoping that Alaska can get its COVID act together this fall and that we can de-escalate our community risk level. In the meantime, the Assembly gave the authority to keep on with a system that seems to be working.