Two Paso council members walk out over mask mandate, and one points a finger at Newsom

You blew it, governor.

Posing unmasked with Magic Johnson at Sunday’s NFL playoff game may have seemed harmless enough at the time.

It wasn’t, and now we have evidence of that right here in San Luis Obispo County.

On Tuesday night, two members of the Paso Robles City Council announced at the start of the meeting that they would not comply with the indoor mask mandate. They then walked out of the session.

One of them alluded to Newsom’s behavior at the game as an excuse for violating the mask rule.

‘I respect everybody’s opinion to do what is best for them. But when the maker of the mandate doesn’t do it himself, and we don’t have a lot of science behind this, it’s time to get over this COVID issue that we are having,” Councilman Steve Gregory said.

After leaving the meeting, Gregory and Councilman John Hamon rejoined the session remotely. That’s an option under the council’s hybrid meeting policy, which allows for both virtual and in-person attendance.

Those who choose to attend in person are supposed to mask up, but as we pointed out in a recent editorial, the city has been lax about enforcing that. Gregory and Hamon have not been following the rule, and some audience members have been violating it as well.

But the mandate was followed on Tuesday; Mayor Steve Martin made a point of noting that everyone who remained inside council chambers was masked.

Question ‘so-called authority’

Before exiting the meeting room, Hamon took aim at government mandates: “We are at a point where government control has become more important than a cure. After 13 months of available vaccine, it is clear that mandates are causing more harm than good to both our economy and our children.”

Actually, what’s clear is the harm done by a lack of mandates.

As Hamon noted, vaccines have been available for many months, yet 26% of SLO County residents eligible for the shots have not been vaccinated — a figure that has barely budged over the past several weeks.

That’s not great, especially when you consider that unvaccinated people are much more vulnerable to serious illness and death from COVID.

That’s borne out by statistics from San Luis Obispo County Public Health: Since June 15, 2021, 65% of cases, 78% of hospitalizations and 74% of deaths occurred in people who were not fully vaccinated.

It’s heartbreaking to think that many of those hospitalizations and deaths might have been avoided if those individuals had taken the shots. And that might have happened had more groups been required to do so.

Absent such mandates, elected officials should be using their bully pulpits to urge people to follow the science, especially when it comes to vaccines, instead of spreading disinformation and urging the public to question authority.

Hamon, for example, told council listeners that he feels masks provide little protection from transmission, even though he is neither a doctor nor a scientist.

He also shared that he has been vaccinated and boosted, and isn’t worried about getting seriously ill from COVID.

“Nor do I worry about others who are not vaccinated and out in public and unprotected, where they may contract the virus by just simply touching a knob and then a face, or maybe from somebody else who is vaccinated and might be carrying the virus,” Hamon said.

“In my opinion, more people should question so-called authority on health issues, especially when government won’t allow proven therapeutics like monoclonal antibody treatments to be used on high-risk positive cases.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently announced that it was pulling authorization for emergency use of monoclonal antibodies because research data showed they are not effective against the omicron variant, which is estimated to account for 99% percent of current cases in the U.S.

The FDA is not a “so-called authority on health issues.” It is among the best regulators we have to keep us safe, providing guidance based on bona fide science, which is also the basis for the mask mandates.

Because of the highly transmissible nature of omicron, health authorities have been stressing the importance of masks and have been urging use of medical-grade masks, rather than cloth face coverings.

Newsom’s missteps

And that brings us right back to Gov. Newsom.

Is it a big deal that he briefly removed his mask to pose for an outdoor photo?

Not really. If it were anyone else, it would probably be overlooked. (Notice hardly anyone is picking on Magic.)

But Newsom should recognize by now — especially after the French Laundry fiasco — that his every move is scrutinized.

Any violation leaves him open to accusations of hypocrisy — and gives science deniers a self-righteous excuse to violate the mandate and to pontificate about personal rights.

To compound the problem, instead of admitting his mistake and apologizing, the governor gave a huffy response when questioned.

“I was very judicious yesterday, very judicious, and you’ll see in the photo ... in my left hand is the mask,” he told reporters. “The rest of the time I wore it, as we all should ... and I encourage everybody else to do so.”

Such hubris.

You blew it, governor. Don’t let it happen again.

This story was originally published February 4, 2022 at 5:30 AM.