Maskless protesters storm LA mall

Protesters calls shopper ‘mask nazi’ and masks aren’t required because this isn’t ‘communist China’

A group of maskless protesters stormed a mall in LA causing angry confrontations with shoppers and workers.

They were protesting the COVID-19 health mandates which require everyone in California to wear masks when leaving the home.

It was on Sunday that videos started emerging from the mall of protesters arguing with shoppers and employees with one man calling a shopper a "mask Nazi" and saying that he had tested negative. A masked shopper said that one protester was harassing her with his germs.

A maskless woman tried to slam her cart into man following the health mandates, claiming that he had hit her.

That same woman could later be seen kicking the man in the checkout line.

There were several cases of both physical and verbal abuse.  

LAPD officers were present but a spokesperson could not confirm whether anyone had been arrested, The LA Times reported.

Officers had to keep people apart at some points including when one woman said her mother was in the hospital with Covid and one of the anti-mask protesters responded “People die. That’s life."

Some of the anti-mask protesters called themselves "patriots" and claimed that they had the right to violate the health mandates because they're not in Communist China.

Protests against measures aiming to limit the spread of Covid in the US have been taking place since April.

Five men were arrested in October for their plan to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer because of her actions to try to limit the spread.

Masks have become incredibly politicized during the pandemic. Some aren't convinced they work, others find them bothersome and some believe in conspiracy theories involving Big Pharma, Bill Gates, and Youtube, Vox reported.

President Trump has continually played down the risks of the virus and its effects. He has also been very sceptical about the efficiency of masks. In late October, The Harvard Gazette reported that 12 000 deaths between April 3 and July 21 could possibly be attributed to Mr Trump's negativity towards the practice of wearing masks.

The former CDC epidemiologist Robert Hahn told The Harvard Gazette: “If you assume that 25 per cent of the people who don’t wear masks are doing so because of Trump’s statements about masks, whether they hear it directly or whether they hear it through the media, then we can calculate that more than 4,200 people have died as a consequence of the president’s statements."

If 50 or 75 per cent avoided masks because of the president, the number would rise to 8,356 and 12,202 deaths that respectively could have been caused by Mr Trump's politicization of mask-wearing. Dr Hahn said that 75 per cent was “probably high” and 25 per cent was “probably low.”

Almost 40 states and territories now mandate that people wear masks, according to a report from Axios.

LA County reported over 12 000 new cases of Covid yesterday, according to data from The New York Times.