I am in opposition to a local emergency mask mandate. The ability to enforce the mandate challenges: 1)restaurants/bars folks are able to remove their face coverings with eating/drinking so the horse is out of the barn there. 2) Quality of face coverings: recommended KN95 or N95 are hard to find/expensive for some. 3) Kids are exempt and can be carriers of the virus. 4) Responsibility to minimum wage workers to enforce a mandate. Let’s give a shout out to better public health policy, accept individual action to accept outcomes for the better of the greater good, promote the vaccination benefits and move on.

I am opposed to a local mask mandate at this time. I was unable to attach a document to the comment here, so I sent further detail via email. Thank you.

While reading Councilwoman Resiter's proposal, it appears there are only certain aspects of the science being used to support her claims, while leaving out very important aspects that need to also be considered. One aspect needed to be considered is that we as a state are still lagging in our Omicron surge. Looking at the DNA sequencing data, most of the variant in Minnesota is still being sequenced as Delta, thus the hospital surge is still from Delta. Second, the hospitalizations in the parts of the country with the most Omicron infections may be labeled as Covid hospitalizations, though most people are actually hospitalized for other reasons and happened to test positive for Covid during routine testing. Science data is showing that even among the most vulnerable, hospitalizations are staying mostly steady. At what point are we going to realize that this is a virus we are going to have to live with?