‘Public has had it’: As Kansas City committee votes on masks, dozens decry health advice

Nearly 100 people, most maskless, filed into an auditorium in the Northland Wednesday evening to sound off opinions and concerns about Kansas City’s mask order and its proposed extension.

In a special sitting of the City Council’s Transportation, Infrastructure, and Operations Committee, members voted unanimously to send the ordinance, which would extend the mandate into late September, to full council on Thursday.

Attendees were required to put on masks to enter the Kansas City Regional Police Academy, where the meeting was held. As two women entered, reluctant to mask up, a security officer handing out masks told them: “If it happens to slide down, it happens to slide down.”

By the time many attendees took their seats in the auditorium, their masks had all but disappeared. Very few people kept their face coverings on.

The only item on the agenda for the evening was ordinance 210694, which would extend Kansas City’s mask requirements to Sept. 23.

Kansas City’s mandate, which went into effect on Aug. 2, applies those over the age of 5 in indoor spaces regardless of vaccination status, with some exemptions. Currently, it’s set to expire on Aug. 28, but needs full council approval to be extended.

Due to a new Missouri law that requires public health restrictions to be reviewed by the council every 30 days, the same process would happen in September if the council decides it needs to be extended.

Before the mask order, 10 Kansas City health agencies — prompted by rising COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and low vaccination rates — issued a joint public health advisory recommending unvaccinated people wear masks.

St. Louis also previously issued a mask mandate that was met with a lawsuit from Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. That mandate was later overturned by the St. Louis County Council. Schmitt has also sued over Kansas City’s order, alleging the mandate is unconstitutional.

Days after Kansas City’s mask mandate went into effect, anti-mask protesters gathered outside City Hall. Anti-mask protesters also gathered in downtown Kansas City, Kansas, to protest the mask mandate implemented by the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas.

Local and national health experts alike have continuously heralded masks and vaccination as the most promising path toward controlling the pandemic, which has seen a major surge in the last month due to the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant.

Over the last week, according to data tracked by The Star, the number of new COVID-19 cases across the Kansas City metropolitan area declined slightly while the tally of deaths grew substantially.

The metro added 730 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday. The weekly average as of Wednesday was 652. One week ago it was 703 and two weeks ago it was 681.

Five new COVID-19 deaths were reported on Wednesday, bringing the total number of deaths in the metro to 2,450.

Masks and vaccines recommended to fight COVID

As interim health director Frank Thompson presented data the department had gathered during the pandemic, some participants in the crowd laughed.

Based on the health data, it would be close to December 2021 before the vaccination rate was where it should be, Thompson said.

He pointed to data that shows unvaccinated people are driving the current outbreak — to more laughter.

“The only way to protect them is for everyone around them to be vaccinated,” Thompson said.

People burst out saying “fascism” and “marxism” as he spoke about why masks help slow the spread.

Thompson then addressed several myths of COVID-19 and masks, including the false claims that the Centers for Disease Control is hiding breakthrough infections and that masks violate OSHA regulations, he said.

Mayor Quinton Lucas, who chairs the committee, said that while they appreciate those who came from other jurisdictions, they would prioritize letting Kansas City residents speak.

The first speaker received a round of applause as she alleged the mask mandate violates the Fourth Amendment, which, among other protections, prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. The second speaker spent much of his two minutes asking the committee if anything the first woman said was not true.

“We’re trying to hear you but you’re trying to make this difficult,” Councilman Kevin O’Neill, District 1 at-large, said.

The second speaker responded: “I’ll just say this ... my family and I have never once followed this [expletive] and we’re not going to keep doing it.”

Another speaker likened the mask mandate to segregation, an oppressive system that separates people by race, class or ethnicity, saying the order has become “illegitimate in the eyes of the public.” Another person recommended taking vitamins C and D instead of putting on masks, which are proven to mitigate spread from person to person.

Someone in the crowd yelled “tyrant” to the committee and another speaker said the mandate was a “disproportionate” response to the pandemic. A few speakers mentioned communism and that their freedoms were being stripped away. Another speaker, who said he was a certified nurse, called on businesses to defy the mask order: “They can’t stop all of us.”

Another woman said she spent several days in the ICU last year with COVID-19 and that her husband died of COVID-19, but she believes the mandate takes away her constitutional rights.

Another woman in the crowd yelled out: “You’re provoking a civil war.”

‘Be quiet and let us say it.’

One woman, one of the few in the crowd to keep her mask on, thanked the committee members for their work before the crowd interrupted her. She called the “general tenor” of the meeting “disappointing.”

Two children also spoke against the mandate.

Lucas said they had received written testimony from the health commission and other public groups in support of the ordinance.

After the public comment part of the night, the committee would have discussed making any changes to the ordinance.

“If you want to hear what we have to say, then be quiet and let us say it,” Councilwoman Teresa Loar, District 2 at-large and vice chair, said. She said they may have looked at the ordinance to make adjustments based on the evening’s commentary.

Lucas told The Star after the meeting that they may have discussed reducing some of the penalties for violating the mask mandate.

But when the crowd kept talking over the council members, they entered a motion to advance the ordinance and recommended council pass it.

One speaker, 56-year-old David Garrett, told The Star after the meeting that he was impressed with the speakers at the meetings, saying that the country is “sick and tired of this.”

“The public has had it,” Garrett said. “We will vote at the ballot box.”

Lucas told The Star the mandate is “based on the best public health advice that we have at this time ... I think there were folks that wanted to have somewhat radical arguments heard. They had a chance to have their voices heard.”

“I’m proud that we took that step,” Lucas said. “I don’t love masks. I don’t want to have to wear them forever but I also don’t want Missouri to be on the top of the list of deaths per capita.”

After the vote, members of the crowd began yelling at the council members, calling them “tyrant” and using profanities, as the council members left the auditorium.

The ordinance approved today now heads to the full City Council on Thursday at 3 p.m.

Clarification: Kansas City police said no KCPD officers were working door security.

This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 9:57 PM.