More hospitals in Illinois likewise reinstated mask mandates, per a report from WMAQ-TV at the end of last month.
Rush University Medical Center announced that patients and visitors must wear hospital-grade masks in clinical offices, patient registration, and waiting areas.
Mask mandates did not make an annual appearance until very recently.
Of course, face masks have always been used in medical contexts, and they are helpful to prevent the spread of diseases in some cases.
But the broad mandates are taking such precautions to an entirely new level.
Ever since the advent of COVID five years ago, the force of government has been behind broad mandates to mask up, and it appears that those mandates will never entirely end, at least in some parts of the country.
COVID severely broke down our thresholds for what is a tolerable amount of government overreach, to the extent that some state and local governments and even some private entities like hospital systems, are once more ordering us to strap masks to our faces at their request.
As the saying goes, our elites never let a good crisis go to waste.
The question is not whether these mandates will continue, but merely to what extent they will continue.
* Leon Neal/Getty Images ©, The Western Journal,