Mandates are a double edged sword, at least, for the strain on the HC system. This piece centers around an interview with a head nurse of a Mississippi health system. The guy is clearly pro-vaccine, and he is in one of the most lightly vaccinated states in the country. And he is not anti-mask. His system is under tremendous strain, but not due to a shortage of ICU beds. In fact, they frequently can’t support all the beds they have, and need to take them offline. The problem for them is staffing shortages.

So, my point is that mask mandates around the country generally don’t reduce strain on hospitals, because people don’t comply properly - they don’t wear high quality masks and/or they don’t wear them properly, so there’s no value in that. They work great in a lab. But with something this contagious? How many people keeping their masks below their noses will make all the other properly masked people in their space sick?

So what’s the point of keeping the mandates, if they can’t be shown to really work in real world settings, but they very clearly drive another wedge into our society, when we have more than enough of those?