The gross incompetence of Barbara Ferrer
“MASKS DON’T WORK. Masks have NEVER been shown to appreciably decrease the spread of respiratory viruses, and we have hundreds of published scientific studies proving their ineffectiveness to do so. Additionally, real-world data from this pandemic PROVE that masks are ineffective.” -- Dr. Kelly Victory, Board Certified Physician for 3 decades, and former Chief Medical Officer for Continental Airlines, Walgreens, and Harrah's.
"No matter the quality, no matter the compliance, masks are entirely ineffective at preventing transmission or infection." -- The Brownstone Institute
7/26/2022 - The notion that face masks help to stop the spread of COVID-19 is a mere unproven hypothesis. We can now say that the data is clear that mask mandates have either no effect on or have no meaningful effect on COVID spread (as detailed further in this article). Yet, the Director of Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Barbara Ferrer, who is NOT a medical doctor, continues to double down on a public mask-wearing policy that is based on medical misinformation. Drunk on power, she insists that public mask mandates 'work' to help stop COVID-19, and she postures as if this is some sort of settled science. What did she cite as her 'proof' during a conference today? She summarily asserted that universal mask wearing in public ‘works’ to help stop the spread of COVID simply because medical personnel wear masks in hospitals.
"Universal masking is used inside healthcare settings because we know masks work" -- Barbara Ferrer
Not only is the efficacy of mask wearing in hospitals to stop respiratory viruses refuted, but her assertion is nothing more than a laughable apples-to-oranges anecdote! Furthermore, her silence on the numerous data studies which debunk the efficacy of mask mandates is deafening! Accordingly, Ferrer has demonstrated that she is incompetent, and has no business serving as the Director of Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Adding insult to injury to the people of Los Angeles county, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors refuses to remove Ferrer from her post, and all of its members continue to assert that masks help in stopping the spread of COVID-19.
HOSPITALS AND ICU'S ARE A GHOST TOWN: Even if you have been conditioned to believe that masks 'work', there is no justification for a mask mandate under current conditions. The number of intensive care admissions (meaning, people with severe COVID) in Los Angeles is tiny. This was revealed by Dr. Brad Spellberg, the Chief Medical Officer at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California (LAC+USC) Medical Center. He says that 90% of hospital patients (not ICU patients) are not there because of COVID. In actuality, they are there for other reasons (car accident, heart attack, etc) and just happened to also test positive for COVID. Spelberg also says that "None of [the hospital patients] go to the ICU, and when they do, it is not for pneumonia." He says that they have not seen a single incubated patient since February, five months ago!
FERRER MOVES THE GOAL POSTS: Here lies Barbara Ferrer's next glaring act of incompetence. She keeps citing increased cases as her strawman cause to bring back mask mandates. Once upon a time, at least the intent of lockdowns and masking was to protect hospitals from being overwhelmed and people from dying in droves. So, if people are no longer getting severe illness, who should care if cases are high? The virus has mutated into a mild illness, unlike the alpha variant from back in 2020. Barbara Ferrer is clearly oblivious to this or perhaps something else is at work -- Politics? Control freak? Denial? Cognitive dissonance?
Ferrer‘s claim that masks (alone) work outside healthcare settings flies in the face of findings by both the New England Journal of Medicine and the Brownstone Institute...
“We know that wearing a mask outside of health care facilities offers little if any protection from infection”
- New England Journal of Medicine, 5/21/2020
“Surgical and cloth masks, used as they currently are being used (WITHOUT other forms of PPE protection), have no impact on controlling the transmission of COVID-19. The body of evidence indicates that face masks are largely ineffective.”
- The Brownstone Institute's 12/20/2021 conclusion based on 150+ studies
So, Ferrer is making an apples-to-oranges comparison. She is CONFLATING highly detailed hospital protocol with the public wearing masks. In hospitals, they wear medical-grade masks, gowns, gloves, and eye protection, and follow detailed protocol. For example, they change out their gear after each encounter with a new patient. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the notion that masks help to stop respiratory viruses in hospitals is refuted. Independent research has concluded that masking healthy people achieves no appreciable benefits.
FERRER STILL APPROVES OF USELESS CLOTH MASKS: If you choose to believe Ferrer’s false claims about mask mandates, why are cloth masks acceptable?
“Coth masks are little more than facial decorations”
- Leana Wen, CNN medical expert
"A cloth mask is not going to protect you from a virus that spreads through airborne transmission"
- Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner
Even the politicized CDC admitted in October 2020 (6 months after recommending masks) that there is no conclusive evidence that cloth masks protect against COVID-19. They may actually increase the spread of the virus, as well as worsen other health conditions. [1, 2]
PHOTO: Barbara Ferrer's ignorance was on full display as she wore her useless cloth face diaper, and wore it outdoors where there are zero documented cases of COVID spread according to the NY Times.
And finally, here is just a partial body of evidence against public mask mandates:
11/29/2022 - Not even N95 masks work to stop COVID.
7/29/2022 - Mask mandates had NO impact on COVID in Alameda County, CA.
4/19/2022 - A study published in the Nationial Institutes of Health found that use of face masks in Europe either had no effect or caused higher death rates! So, Barbara Ferrer might actually have killed people with her past mask mandate recommendations.
11/30/2021 - Oxford Professor Jim Naismith: Official Data shows face masks “made no meaningful difference” to infection rates.
12/21/2020 - According to a study conducted by the University of Louisville, masks had zero effect in Florida or nationwide. In the state of Florida, counties with mask mandates actually did worse than counties that refused to implement mask mandates. The trend was even worse in other states (27 cases per day in states with mask mandates VS 17 cases per day in states without statewide masking orders. The study concluded that "Mask mandates and use are not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among US states".
11/18/2020 - A Danish mask study of 4,800 found little statistical difference in infection rates between a group that wore masks and a group that didn't. 42 of 2,393 people (1.8%) in the mask group and 53 of 2,470 (2.1%) in the no-mask group became infected.
7/29/2020 - "From a medical point of view, there is no evidence of a medical effect of wearing face masks, so we decided not to impose a national obligation" -- Dutch Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark
10/6/2020 - “We see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport. The evidence is weak. Countries that have masks are not doing the best right now. It is very dangerous to try to believe that masks are a silver bullet." -- Anders Tegnell, Sweden's top infectious disease expert
4/20/2020 - "Masks and respirators do not work. There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles." Dr. Denis G Rancourt, PhD. He further explains that aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm) are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective-dose is smaller than one aerosol particle.
UPDATE: During the week of 8/8/2022 the Torrance City California Council gave Barbara Ferrer a vote of NO confidence.
On Dec 3, 2020 the Lancaster City Council gave Barbara Ferrer a vote of no confidence.
West Covina voted 4-1 to create their own health department so that Barbara Ferrer would no longer call the shots for their city.
Beverly Hills, Whittier, and Hawaiian Gardens either announced they would create their own health departments, or at least stated their displeasure in being roped into the countywide measures imposed by Barbara Ferrer.
UPDATE: Dec 15, 2022. Barbara Ferrer continued to spread medical misinformation by mincing words. Regarding the efficacy of masks, she said "Nothing is 100%. What the mask does is add a very important layer, but nothing is 100%". We note that it is true that zero percent qualifies as 'not 100%'.
BOMBSHELL UPDATE: Like a Soviet tyrant, Barbara Ferrer tried to censor free speech. Barbara Ferrer (@lapublichealth) attempted to have Twitter remove 'misinformation' such as: "Barbara Ferrer is a fake doctor" and "masks are not effective." As previously discussed, Barbara Ferrer is NOT an actual medical doctor, and masks are indeed not effective at stopping COVID. She also falsely claimed the statement that "LA County is lying about hospitalization numbers" is 'misinformation'. As previously discussed, Dr. Brad Spellberg exposed LA County as having lied. So, Barbara Ferrer (through her Chief Communications Officer) was trying to suppress the truth.
In violation of the law, Barbara Ferrer's office also cut off public comments on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. To this day, you cannot post comments to fact-check Ferrer's lies or medical misinformation.
In response to shutting down public comments, a member of the Alliance of Los Angeles County Parents created a Twitter account to simply re-Tweet all @lapublichealth posts, so that the public could actually comment on those Tweets in an open forum. After a week or two this account was permanently shut down at the request of none other than Barbara Ferrer's Chief Communications Officer!
BELOW: You may not fact-check the tyrant. Debate in the public square is over and The Science™ is settled.
CONCLUSION: Unfortunately, the damage has already been done and cannot be undone. The people of Los Angeles were oppressed and silenced for over 2 years. During and after the entire pandemic, a Director of Public Health had free rein to impose tyrannical mandates that were soundly refuted by science, and she was able to silence fact-checkers on social media. Barbara Ferrer will be able to retire off into the sunset, having earned $613,692.00 in total pay and benefits in just 2020 alone.
In 2021 Barbara Ferrer had an annual salary of $637,066. This salary is 378% higher than average and 446% higher than median salary in Los Angeles County.
In 2022 Barbara Ferrer had an annual wage of $661,336. That's $13,226.72 per week, assuming two weeks of vacation!
Get the truth about studies, data, and facts about masks, lockdowns, and more -- Not Barbara Ferrer's medical misinformation!