The CDC announced shortly before I got my second dose of vaccine that vaccinated people no longer had to wear masks. I was a little cheered by the announcement. I mean, hooray for normalcy! And it’s great to know that vaccinated people are unlikely to spread the virus. But I was also a little dismayed, and the more time I have to think about it and see the way people are reacting, the more dismayed I become. So I’m going to share an updated version of the journal entry that I wrote about the announcement at the time it was made, because I need to get these feelings off my chest.
The first thing that bothers me is that I can’t trust the CDC anymore. Does anyone? This pandemic was their chance to shine, and boy, did they not. So, when they tell us something that is at odds with what we’ve been hearing from other epidemiologists, it just makes me question the CDC’s credibility even more.
Second, I may not be a doctor, but I do know that the vaccine works well against some variants and less well against others. I know that there may be variants already in existence or soon to arise that could evade the vaccine entirely. The virus may be flagging here and, to an extent, under control, but it is spreading rapidly in other places, and new variants are popping up all the time. It’s important to note that some of those other places had seemed to have the virus under control, only to face a devastating new wave of infection later. So, we would be foolish to think that our vaccines are bullet-proof and that the pandemic is over for us.
Then there are the social and political issues that go along with masking. You just know that the people who don’t want to be vaccinated are going to give up masking too, and indeed there are already reports of that happening. The majority of people are probably going to go unmasked now. Those who want to continue wearing masks could face ridicule, or worse, from both the extreme Right and the extreme Left. And though individual states, towns, schools, and businesses may have their own mask mandates, those mandates have lost the strength that the CDC backing gave them. There are those will ignore them now, saying, “The CDC says I don’t need to wear a mask, and I’m not going to.”
Looking at it from another angle, it’s unwise to ask some portion of the population to wear something distinctive that the other portion doesn’t have to wear. None of us ought to be branded that way. That’s been done before, as any student of history can tell you, and it’s a bad idea. That alone ought to be enough reason for all of us to continue to wear masks. Besides, WTF happened to “we’re all in this together”?
And let’s not forget how hard it was to get people to wear masks to begin with. If they’re told later down the line that they need to start masking again, how will they react? I can just imagine. They were mulish enough the first time. They might refuse entirely next time. We’re all weary of this pandemic, and none of us would want to mask again. It would feel like a step backward.
Lastly, there are some people who cannot be vaccinated, either because of age (like our children) or because they have medical conditions that prevent it. What protection do they have now from the unvaccinated who refuse to mask? Very little. Most of them will continue to wear their masks, for the small amount of protection that that offers. But, we have been told all along that masks are more effective at blocking the spread of the virus at its source. That is, we wear masks for other people, not ourselves. Now, that protection is gone.
So, the CDC announcement seems premature at best and full-on stupid at worst. They should have waited. A few more months of masking weren’t going to hurt anyone. The more I think about it, the less optimistic I am. But done is done, and all we can do now is hope that the CDC hasn’t just made yet another blunder. I will continue to wear a mask myself, if only to encourage others to do the same.
