Masks unequivocally mitigate the spread of airborne pathogens. When the havoc being wreaked by COVID is still rampant, it is dumbfounding why universal mandatory masking would be removed in health-care settings — especially acute-care hospitals filled with the vulnerable sick, the immunocompromised, and those with significant pre-existing illness.

Why now? All other public-health measures have disappeared. Immunity has waned in the general population, who are suffering from severe vaccination fatigue. We are still learning of potentially severely detrimental systemic ramifications of repeated COVID infections and the impacts and rates of long COVID. In Alberta, hospitalizations have currently plateaued, at an unacceptably high level of 450 patients, around five per cent of all acute beds.