St. Louis health director considers mask requirement as coronavirus spreads again
Source: STL Public Radio
St. Louis is seeing rising numbers of coronavirus cases, and the city’s health director is again considering recommending public health measures, including mask requirements, to protect people from the virus.
The number of new reported coronavirus cases is as high as it was during last summer’s delta variant surge, Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis said during a virtual town hall meeting Wednesday. An average of 212 cases per 100,000 people has been reported in the past week. However, the number of cases is difficult to tally as fewer people are getting tested.
“We’ve been in the high transmission level for some time when we talk about cases and positivity rate,” Hlatshwayo Davis said. “We’re definitely in a surge right now.”
The Board of Aldermen would have to enact requirements based on the health department’s recommendations.
Read more: https://news.stlpublicradio.org/coronavirus/2022-06-02/st-louis-health-director-considers-mask-requirement-as-coronavirus-spreads-again
the level was low last week, how did it move from low to high this week?
= new reply since forum marked as read
fucking morons, THEY are why it is spreading again 
They will be harassed and bullied and shamed by the media like they did to Philly, causing our Health Director to surrender and ditch the whole mitigation plan that the media earlier demanded we put into place. They have become their own death cult.
CDC's map shows St. Louis (County) at a "high transmission" rate - https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view?list_select_state=Missouri&data-type=CommunityLevels&list_select_county=29189
We're right there with ya here in Philly - https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view?list_select_state=Pennsylvania&data-type=CommunityLevels&list_select_county=42101
What is sadly deceptive is that just like the Delta wave over the summer last year, this wave is "looking smaller" because the graphs are so skewed by the obscenity that was the original Omicron variant, so it dwarfs all other waves, even though they were ALL "valid waves".
Omicron (and its variants) are very contagious and this time of year you have the proms and weddings and some graduations where you have more opportunity to spread.
And I just grabbed this week's variant chart from CDC and this is interesting -
I.e., an earlier variant that had eventually been crowded out back between February - April (B.1.1.529) is slowly making a comeback as the original BA.2 starts to fade, and is being replaced with BA.2.12.1.
ETA and belated congrats on the 10K posts after all these years! https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181664395
compared to the earlier one is that it is moving "slower". So it's not doing a quick spike and then right back down again. It's more lower level and drawn out.
When we started first seeing an uptick back in March, we tried to institute the mask mandate and were hounded unmercifully - "they're the ONLY big city"... "the ONLY big city to..." "the ONLY big city to... " like a broken record.
We had bottomed out to around the mid-60 cases/day about mid-March and our original mask mandate had ended March 2. But then when it started ticking up again with the BA.2 variant, we announced that the mask mandate (April 11, 2022) would take place a week after the announcement, but then later ended it a few days after it went into effect. 
By Sophia Schmidt Updated Apr. 22, 2022 5:14 pm
(snip)
The city is ditching not only the mandate, but also the risk assessment system — known as “response levels” — that triggered it in the first place. The city’s response system was stricter than the CDC’s, which put more emphasis on hospitalizations, and made Philly the first major U.S. city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate this week, sparking fierce blowback, including a legal effort to get the mandate thrown out.
https://whyy.org/articles/philly-mask-mandate-reversed/
Since then, it has been a sloooowwwww rise, not like the quick spike in a month that we saw in fall and winter. The city is now only updating the figures once a week
so it's hard to get a true handle where they are but the last time it was updated (and they didn't bother this week due to the holiday), we were averaging about 400 cases/day over the 7 day period the week before last.
So it's like a "simmer" vs a "full boil" and may dip to below or rise to just to the threshold for "medium" vs "high". And as a note, our own surrounding 'burbs have been "high" for awhile now before we reached that (mainly because a number of places still require masks even though there is no city mandate) and I think that with all the events going on between counties, we've finally seen the spread come here to the city fully.
By Liam Reilly, CNN
Updated 9:51 AM ET, Mon April 18, 2022
(CNN)The City of Philadelphia was sued Saturday by a group of business owners and residents alleging its upcoming mask mandate is illegal, court documents show. Philadelphia is the first major US city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate, which went into effect last week, with enforcement beginning today.
The new mandate comes as the city announced Level 2 Covid-19 response levels, which were triggered when the city saw an increase in confirmed Covid-19 cases more than 50% than the previous 10 days. Level 2 precautions mean masks are required in all public indoor spaces in Philadelphia, including schools, businesses and restaurants. Businesses can stay mask-free if they require everyone to provide proof of vaccination.
The city's Public Health Department issued the mandate by emergency order April 11. The group filing the lawsuit says the mandate violates the state's Constitution and flouts guidelines established by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"The regulations imposed by Philadelphia are arbitrary and capricious," the attorney representing petitioners, Thomas W. King III told CNN in an interview Sunday. "Philadelphia jettisoned the CDC regulations and is inventing its own. Philadelphia violated the Pennsylvania Constitution. Things that apply in Philadelphia must apply statewide, but that's not what's happening."
(snip)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/18/us/philadelphia-mask-mandate-lawsuit/index.html
And the irony is that the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers only want to cite CDC if what they are doing goes along with their narrative of the day.
Luckily so far, the courts have upheld the vaccine mandate for city employees, where the city's firefighters union were the last to be resolved (by a neutral arbitrator) and they were the least vaccinated of all the city employees, just barely below the police.
