Kiessling Continues to Call for End to Mask Mandate; Other Health Board Members Disagree

Growing Covid-19 case counts in Bedford and throughout New England have not defused disagreement between Ann Kiessling and fellow members of the Bedford Board of Health on the best ways to address the ongoing pandemic. But there were hints that a few weeks from now, the picture could change.

The debate continued at Monday’s virtual meeting.

Kiessling continued to take the position that “to judge disease burden by case numbers is not realistic anymore. We need to talk about risk with people getting sick.” Data don’t indicate that masks are making a difference, and breakthrough cases indicate that vaccine effectiveness is limited, she said.

But her motion to relax the indoor public mask mandate to a recommendation was again defeated, 4-1.

“We are at a pivot point here,” said member Maureen Richichi. “Our kids are not fully vaccinated yet, our rate is not as high as it could be, and there’s the unknown of the omicron variant. We should be wanting to keep transmission as low as possible, there are rising hospitalization rates in the state, we are in the middle of holiday season. There’s lack of easy access to testing. I’m hoping beyond hope that by early 2022 this will be endemic.”

Richichi added, “A reconsideration in January could be very different.”  Member Susan Schwartz said, “What I am hearing from the board is there may be an appetite to do it, but not now.” Member Bea Brunkhorst remarked, “We have more tools now. If we use all of those tools right now, we will get through this.”

The regular debate on the board’s indoor public mask mandate continued Monday. “I think the mask mandate sends the wrong signal for safety,” Kiessling declared. “The best public health messaging is people need to get tested.” Brunkhorst and Richichi said they have seen studies on the effectiveness of wearing masks.

“We never said masking will keep you 100 percent safe, We always said it’s part of our toolkit,” Richichi said. Kiessling called for making the Bedford mandate a recommendation, which is the term used by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Richichi pointed out that the federal agency doesn’t have the power to mandate.

The Assistant Health Director, Katharine Dagle, noted that the state Department of Public Health says vaccination is the best means of self-protection. Health and Human Services Director Heidi Porter added that the DPH epidemiologist also advocates face covering, and some area towns that relaxed their mandates are reconsidering.

Kiessling also moved that the board relax the mandate on residents younger than age six, but the motion was not seconded.

“I have not been able to find any reports on the value of masking children. I know of no report that justifies masking little people and it is not done anywhere in the world,” she said, adding that the requirement could qualify as an “experiment”  and thus is illegal. “If we simply follow CDC guidance and recommend masks that would be just fine.”

Member Anita Raj said “one of the big reasons” for face covering is “not exposing other people.” Richichi agreed: “One of our goals is also to keep transmission as low as possible in our community.”

Porter summarized local Covid-19 data for the period Nov. 14-27. There were 54 cases, the highest since the period ending Sept. 2. This includes 19 children, 25 breakthrough cases, and eight households with at least two infections.

Over five months, her data showed there were 122 local cases, five known hospitalizations, and two deaths.

“Cases are amplifying because of household contact,” Porter commented. “When folks are at other people’s houses, after school, weekends, holidays, we’re not getting the sense that they are masking. They feel protected by vaccine.  But we need all layers of protection. My goal is to prevent folks from getting this disease.”

Porter presented a spreadsheet with current data, indicating that overall, 18 cities and towns in Middlesex County that require masks in indoor public places have lower Covid positivity than 21 cities and towns where masks are optional. There also are 15 municipalities in the county that require masks only in government buildings.

Schwartz noted that Bedford’s full vaccination percentage is 71. Burlington and other mask-optional places with similar vaccination rates have greater positivity, she said. Raj observed that higher vaccination rates seem tied to higher-income localities. Porter said other variables seem to be access to vaccination sites.

But Kiessling presented data from a 90-day period that drew different conclusions. She also pointed to declining hospitalizations and deaths in the county from November 2020 to November 2021, even as case counts were close to the same.

“Case numbers will go up as vaccine effectiveness wanes in the population. The CDC now estimates that 40 percent of the U.S. population has had this virus.” She said. The CDC, working with blood banks and large laboratories, estimated that 150,000 persons in the U.S. already had the virus and are “antibody positive.”

Nationally, Kiessling said, “the death rate is now at flu level, so countrywide it’s 0.8 percent, in children 0.0002 percent.” She added that it’s higher for persons older than 64. “The big picture is that we are as a nation, we are much more immune than we think. We are immune to disease; we are not immune to infection. To continue to judge what we do as a community based on case numbers is not realistic.”

Resident Doug Horton addressed the board at the start of the meeting, seeking relief from the masking requirement for young children playing recreation sports indoors. He called for “specific evidence to conclude that masking children’s faces while exercising is beneficial to their overall well-being.”

Porter pointed out that the Bedford schools require face covering for all activities in school buildings.

Mike Rosenberg can be reached at [email protected], or 781-983-1763