Oregon Officials Consider Making Mask Mandates Permanent

The following report is from the Epoch Times:

Officials in Oregon are considering making masking and social distancing requirements permanent.

The requirements, first introduced in 2020 amid the spread of COVID-19, are set to expire on May 4.

Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Division (OSHA) is proposing rules with no end date that would require a mask or other face covering for any person entering a business or a housing facility provided by employers. The rules would also require maintaining distance between people.

As the Governor’s Executive Order is set to expire, the public health emergency remains a substantial concern in Oregon. As a result, it is necessary to extend the provisions from the Executive Order with a permanent rule. The unique exposures created in the labor housing environment, particularly in working situations requiring large numbers of workers, make these rules necessary to reduce risk to individual workers.

The division stated in a summary of one of the proposed rules.

The office said the masking rule for businesses will likely be repealed “once it is no longer necessary to address the COVID-19 pandemic.”

During the public comment period on the proposals, OSHA received a record number of public comments, mostly critical, and nearly 60,000 residents signed a petition against them.

The petition’s author, Jack Dresser, said that an unelected public agency shouldn’t be allowed “‘indefinite’ authority over any facet of public life.”

These rules would continue to impose intrusive, burdensome, and unnecessary reach of government into Oregon businesses, their employees, customer and client privacy, and customer freedoms to conduct commerce without government interference.

Jack Dresser

Opponents also are upset that government officials won’t say how low Oregon’s COVID-19 case numbers must go, or how many people would have to be vaccinated, to get the requirements lifted in a state that’s already had some of the nation’s strictest safety measures.

When will masks be unnecessary? What scientific studies do these mandates rely on, particularly now that the vaccine is days away from being available to everyone? Businesses have had to play ‘mask cop’ for the better part of a year now. They deserve some certainty on when they will no longer be threatened with fines.

State Sen. Kim Thatcher

Michael Wood, administrator of Oregon’s OSHA, said he’s reviewing all the feedback to see if changes are needed before he makes a final decision by May 4, when the current rules lapse.

Oregon, a blue state, has been among those with the country’s most stringent COVID-19 restrictions and now stands in contrast with much of the rest of the nation as vaccines become more widely available.

At least six states—Alabama, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, and Texas—have lifted mask mandates, and some never implemented them. In Texas, businesses reopened at 100%t capacity last month.

Make no mistake, COVID-19 has not disappeared, but it is clear from the recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations, and safe practices that Texans are using that state mandates are no longer needed.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced last month.

Read more about it here:

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.

Ecclesiastes 5:8

And the nonsense continues to get worse as there is little resistance to the oppression. Instead of turning to the Lord and returning to righteousness, the people just accept it or they are trusting in government to save them from government. It’s quite pathetic. So we’ll see where this goes, but the proposal alone is asinine.

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