Last Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released an update to its mask guidelines, which suggests fully vaccinated people can go without masks outdoors and in most indoor situations. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, championed the CDC decision to relax mask mandates, saying the situation in the United States had changed amid a vaccination blitz and plummeting numbers of COVID-19 infections.
While masks became a symbol of medical tyranny for many, they also became a vital layer of safety for others. While many experts cheered the news, and argued the decision was overdue and in line with the science, others expressed shock and dissatisfaction, warning of the looming threat of a new wave of infections.
National Nurses United, the largest registered nurse union in the United States, denounced the CDC guidance, saying it put patients, front-line workers, and nurses at risk of getting COVID-19. They stress that “no vaccine is 100 percent effective,” and that “there are still many unknowns about vaccines, including how long immunity lasts, whether they work against the proliferating number of Covid variants circulating, and if they prevent transmission by vaccinated, infected people with mild or asymptomatic cases.”
“The CDC should have followed the science and the precautionary principle and maintained their Covid guidance on masks, testing, and isolation for vaccinated individuals further,” Jane Thomason, the union’s lead industrial hygienist, said.
Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University and a CNN medical analyst, said she was “shocked” by the update, and implied the CDC went “one step way too far” and should have limited its update to what fully vaccinated people can do around other fully vaccinated people because they’re more protected against contracting COVID-19. In an op-ed for the Washington Times, Wen argues the CDC shouldn’t have removed the restrictions without requiring proof of vaccination.
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CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, believes the CDC “made a critical error” and called the new guidelines “ridiculous.” He also stated that “CDC is not following science on mask mandates.”
Another TV personality, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, said she would need to “rewire” herself not to think of unmasked people as a “threat.” “I feel like I’m going to have to rewire myself so that when I see someone out in the world who’s not wearing a mask, I don’t instantly think, ‘You are a threat,’ Or you are selfish or you are a Covid denier and you definitely haven’t been vaccinated.”
The Los Angeles Times posted a letter to the editor titled “Is it still Trump’s CDC? The new mask guidelines make no sense.” One of the letters goes: “The vaccination rate for the country is below 50%. It is faulty reasoning to expect vaccine-hesitant people to be encouraged by this change to get vaccinated. Just the opposite will happen.”
The focus regarding COVID has apparently shifted from “low infection rate” to “high vaccination rate,” which are not the same thing. For example, when Dr. Fauci was asked which exact infection level would be considered “low,” he answered that his goal was to “get as many people vaccinated as we possibly can.”
However, CNN’s Richard Galan, like many others, points out that there’s no outward way to tell who has been vaccinated and who has not.
Regardless of the CDC’s latest guidance, some people are still not ready to trust one other, and think that anyone not wearing a mask may still pose a threat. This thought is bothersome for the liberal observers. In order to achieve a higher vaccination rate, they believe, bribing, among other methods, may help to persuade people to get a jab. CNN’s David M. Perry writes: “From doughnuts to marijuana, beer to cash, private and public entities have been appropriately creative when it comes to persuading people about vaccines. But all of those are carrots. We also need a stick,” likely implying the mask mandates should remain in place for those who refuse allow themselves to be injected with unapproved, experimental gene therapy.
Following the CDC announcement, nearly every state is dropping restrictions on mask-wearing. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) and Hawaii Governor David Ige (D) are keeping the indoor mask mandate in place for now, and California postponed a lift of its mask order until mid-June to prepare residents for the adjustment. While Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) lifted the state mask restrictions, Baltimore City is only planning to follow suit when 65 percent of adults get at least one dose of the vaccine — again, regardless of the infection rate in the community.
