Anti-COVID groups distribute masks and air purifiers faster than LA government amidst fires

Groups that popped up to respond to the government's abandonment since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic are distributing resources across the city

On Monday, January 13, Mayor Karen Bass tweeted that hundreds of thousands of N95 masks would be made available across the city of LA at libraries, senior centers, and recreation centers. The tweet came nearly a full week after the fires began to consume entire neighborhoods on January 7, and six months after Mayor Bass herself proposed a mask ban for protestors during this summer’s sustained COVID surge. (She went on to catch the virus herself mere days later.)

As local Long COVID activist Angela Vázquez put it, “government has finally entered the chat”.

While the AQI spiked across the region throughout the preceding week, mutual aid groups rushed to fill the gaps left by state and local government. Among them were anti-COVID organizations run entirely by small groups of committed, largely disabled people who’ve been distributing masks, air purifiers, and public health education in place of the government for years now.

On January 10th, Mask Bloc LA announced that they had already distributed over 14,000 N95 respirators to Angelenos during the first two days of the crisis. By the end of Monday, the day of Mayor Bass’s tweet, Mask Bloc LA had already distributed over 43,000 respirators across the city.

Clean Air LA quickly acquired 180,000 N95s, which were en route to California to replenish their supply by the 9th.

On the 11th, that same group was setting up air filters in evacuation centers in collaboration with Clean Air Club and Smarter HEPA.

Also on January 11th, Mask Bloc Seattle, another anti-COVID group based up in Washington State, brought 2,000 respirators down to LA.

On the 12th, Clean Air Claremont was building air purifiers for people displaced by the Altadena fires.

All of these actions took place before the LA government had distributed a single mask to people living in the region- a government, mind you, that takes in millions of taxpayer dollars, yet would rather target disabled people with mask bans than assist the public by providing basic PPE.

Crises compound, and anti-science propaganda compounds crises.

Over the past several years, masks have been increasingly stigmatized as the press has pushed to erase them from public view, while pushing those who now depend on them to access public life into social and physical isolation.

This campaign may have started with libertarian billionaires and MAGA bullies, but it quickly wormed its way into mainstream media outlets, then the mouths and press releases of ostensibly progressive politicians.

As stigma built, nominally apolitical bodies like the CDC became terrified of the words “mask”, and “respirator,” apparently preferring the easier route of siding with fascists targeting disabled people to stepping between the fascists and their targets. The CDC Director herself refused to be photographed in a mask, even during COVID and flu surges, in crowded indoor spaces like an international airport.

Public service messages and media articles about avoiding respiratory viruses commonly mentioned handwashing and surface cleaning- which do little to control the spread of airborne viruses like COVID and the flu- while assiduously avoiding mention of what actually works well, masks and indoor air purification. All of this supported the state’s agenda of “moving on” from the pandemic without confronting the infrastructure upgrades needed to reduce record illness levels.

HICPAC, the infection control advisory body to the CDC, still refuses to update guidance to reflect confirmed airborne transmission of COVID and other common viruses. This decision has led to a refusal to normalize masking even in medical settings, and a refusal to implement other airborne infection control measures like high quality ventilation and filtration, even in medical settings.

These entirely political decisions go a long way to explain how LA, a city well-acquainted with fires and well aware that those fires will continue to worsen, had no plan to distribute masks of any kind to the public when PPE was needed. They go a long way to explain why it seemingly took LA a full week to recall that masks are a critical public health tool that prevent the inhalation of pollutants, not just a political football.

Additionally, as the federal government pushed to normalize unending COVID infections, it purposely suppressed conversations about cleaning indoor air. Anti-COVID groups have been advocating for new legislation to improve ventilation and filtration, but few advocacy groups- even on the left- have taken up the mantle, as the state has been so successful at pushing the narrative that COVID is “inevitable” and constant illness “the new normal”. A city- and nation- that had treated poor indoor air quality as a real issue would not now be rushing to construct and distribute HEPA filters and Corsi-Rosenthal boxes under emergency conditions.

The Coris-Rosenthal box itself is a community-oriented DIY solution to air quality issues in homes, schools and businesses. Developed early in the pandemic by environmental engineer Richard Corsi and filter manufacturer Jim Rosenthal, the boxes can quickly be built out of 4-5 HVAC air filters (MERV13 or higher) taped into a cube with a box fan. Anti-COVID groups have been pioneering projects to build the boxes, which are 10 times cheaper than an equivalent air purifier, in schools, homes, businesses, shelters, and wherever needed. Clean Air Claremont reported building and distributing 40 of the boxes between 1/12 and 1/14, while raising money to cover the costs at a price point of $39.31 per.

When it comes to wildfires in urban areas, smoke is not just smoke; these fires contain toxic chemicals, as the blazes consume homes, cars, businesses and industrial materials of all kinds. Reuters reports:

Carlos Gould, an environmental health scientist at the University of California San Diego, said the concentration of fine particulate matter in the Los Angeles area reached alarming levels between 40 and 100 micrograms per cubic meter earlier in the week before declining to around 20 on Friday.

The WHO recommended maximum is 5 micrograms per cubic meter.

"The levels of wildfire smoke we've seen in LA these past few days imply between a 5-15% increase in daily mortality," Gould said.

Chemical byproducts from the fires, particularly those stemming from burned man-made materials, penetrate deeper into the lungs and can even enter the bloodstream, said Dr. Afif El-Hasan, a spokesperson for the American Lung Association.

"If you're working harder to breathe and your body is being challenged that way, it can also put a strain on the heart. And that's why you see an increase in heart attacks," said El-Hasan.

The piece goes on to mention a humanitarian group, CORE, has also been distributing tens of thousands of N95 masks at the Pasadena Convention Center.

N95s are much better protection than nothing at all; they protect against particulate matter, smoke, and ash. But the ideal PPE in case of toxic fires like those blazing in Southern California right now would be P100 masks. Joseph Allen, an Associate Professor at Harvard and the co-author of Healthy Buildings, tweeted his respirator hierarchy, noting his top pick would be, “P100+organic vapor (all the prior ones only capture particles, not gas-phase toxics.) If you're frontline reporter/responder, this is what you should be wearing.”

There’s no reason the state should not have been prepared to supply frontline workers and responders with the proper PPE called for in a wildfire. Yet most of the reporters we’ve seen on screen, if they’re wearing masks at all, lower their masks to speak. This impulse, again, represents how the public has been trained to prioritize vanity, social acceptance, and the preservation of the appearance of “normalcy” at all costs above health, labor rights, solidarity and the uncomfortable shared acknowledgment that normal may be gone.

Perhaps most shocking is the footage we’ve seen of firefighters, 783 of whom are prisoners of the state, some of whom are even underage. Not only are these prisoners being paid $5.80-$10.28/day for backbreaking labor (with wages going up to $26.90 for a 24-hour shift according to The Guardian) not only are they engaged in life-threatening work, but they are seen without proper PPE, like a P100 mask. There’s no doubt that the prisoners working under these conditions have not been educated about the risks of toxic fires and the burning of heavy metals, lead, asbestos, fuel, and more.

It’s highly likely that more people will ultimately die of exposure to toxic chemicals during these weeks than end up dying during the acute crisis of the fires. Already, people are drawing comparisons to the air at ground zero after 9/11, which first responders were famously told was safe to breathe. The BBC reported this past September that:

As of December 2023, 6,781 of those who were registered with the [WTC Health Program] have died from an illness or cancer linked to their time near or at Ground Zero after 9/11. It is more than twice the number of people who died on 9/11. In September 2024, the FDNY announced more than 360 firefighters, EMT and department members have died from World Trade Center-related illness – more than the 343 people it lost on 9/11 itself.

The state’s disdain for the lives of vulnerable people, be they disabled, imprisoned, homeless, medically vulnerable, poor, elderly, or in any way outside the power structure, is seen in its continued disdain for lifesaving PPE. To watch the weak die is not an ugly side effect of the world they want to build but a cherry on top of the “reimagined LA” Gavin Newsom speaks of. Let the homeless choke on smoke, that’s no loss. Let the disabled inhale COVID, they were such a drag. Let the prisoners work without a P100, why protect the lungs of a criminal? Let the elderly cough without air purifiers, they cost the city money, don’t they? And how much time did they have left anyway?

How much time do we have left, anyway?

In LA it’s clear that we keep us safe; that we need one another, that we need to help one another, and that great things are possible through cooperation and networks of care. It’s also clear that the city can be pushed to act, but only with sufficient public pressure. Over the past week, Angelinos, with extraordinary resilience and care, worked to secure their own health and safety, then pushed their government to do more.

Abby Mahler, a member Mask Bloc LA, expressed pride in the group’s work since the 7th. “Everybody has contributed something. Many hands make light work, everybody has their expertise, people know what they’re good at. Somebody’s making sandwiches, somebody’s doing art, somebody’s got a big box truck they’re bringing- everybody’s bringing something to the table and that’s the kind of mutual aid that gets things done and it’s happening.”

She went on to reflect on how the organization’s work to date prepared them for the acute crisis of the past week.

I’m so grateful for the communities in LA that were interested in utilizing COVID mitigation and mitigation techniques in the period of time leading up to this crisis, because if we hadn’t had masked drag shows, if we hadn’t had mitigated events, if we hadn’t had these places where volunteers showed up and put masks on faces and had those conversations, and understood what it took to get purifiers and masks to a location, what convinced people to put them on, what kind of displays spoke to people, if all of those things hadn’t happened, if the connections hadn’t been made, we would not be able to do what we are doing now. Relationships are the most valuable commodity, and we built them…

We had enough practice throughout 2024 to be able to make this happen 7 days into 2025. To do what we’ve done - it wouldn’t have happened without that foundation. I am so beyond grateful to folks who have never tapped out, who have never succumbed to denial, because those folks are who built this network. I’m so proud.

We’re here in the Southland and we’re taking care of each other, in this unfathomable crisis.

Denial begets denial, fighting back begets fighting back.

Discarding people begets discarding people, caring for people begets caring for people.

As Anderson Cooper inhales smoke on the news to demonstrate nothing has changed, to show us the face of a man who isn’t scared, are we brave enough to know when things have changed? Are we brave enough to put our masks on?