A remarkable court filing reveals behind-the-scenes negotiations with Twitter.

Last summer, 855 days into California’s grueling Covid-19 state of emergency and just weeks shy of the first day of school, Los Angeles County director of public health Barbara Ferrer warned locals that she would impose a countywide mask mandate, beginning July 29.

“With the continued increase in cases, and now as you’re seeing the corresponding increase in hospitalizations . . . we’re really worried,” she told reporters on July 7, 2022.

Twitter began to simmer and, on July 13, reached a rolling boil. That’s when a video leaked of a meeting of besmocked doctors at L.A. County–USC Medical Center. Their diagnosis directly contradicted Ferrer’s dire assessment. Yes, the doctors said, Covid case counts are up. But serious infections? Hospitalizations?

“We’re just seeing nobody with severe Covid disease,” said one of the doctors. “We have no one in the hospital who had pulmonary disease due to Covid — nobody in the hospital,” said another. It went on like that: “Certainly there is no reason, from a hospitalization-due-to-Covid perspective, to be worried at this point,” “we’re seeing a lot of people with mild disease in urgent care or [in the emergency department] who go home and do not get admitted,” and “a lot of people have bad colds is what we’re seeing.”