Still wear a mask outdoors? Depends on whom you ask
Increased vaccinations, fewer hospitalizations raise the question, and experts disagree
Is it safe to step outdoors without our mouths wrapped in cloth?
A small but growing chorus of health experts think so — and are urging an end to mandatory outdoor mask requirements. But others say it’s too soon to drop our guard.
Last June, confronted by a novel and terrifying virus, California imposed a mask mandate that requires people wear a face covering while walking on sidewalks, in parks and anywhere else outdoors where we can’t maintain a safe 6-foot distance.
Now, with the prospect of a full reopening of the state on June 15 due to increased vaccination and fewer hos
pitalizations, such caution is less necessary, some experts say.
“I believe it is important to re-evaluate and change as you go along in a pandemic,” said UC San Francisco infectious disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi, an early proponent of mask-wearing.
Masks still make sense in some outdoor settings, such as crowded political rallies or music festivals, she added.
Support for a shift is also coming from other prominent physicians, such as Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island; Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla; and Dr. Paul Sax, clinical director of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, among others.
To be sure, enforcement has varied across the state. Some towns rely on residents’ voluntary compliance, while others are forcing violators to pay fines from $100 to $2,000.
The rule has created a dance of “mask yanking” as we quickly hoist our masks whenever passing others walking the dog, hiking through forests or even whizzing by on a bicycle.
But with about 2,400 new cases and more than 100 new deaths reported in California on Wednesday, outdoor masking remains important, according to other experts.
Worried by the increasing incidence of variants and unknown duration of immunity to the current vaccines, they say that wearing a mask outside your personal “pod” of friends and family is a minimal inconvenience.
They add: Now that we finally have widespread maskwearing compliance, why encourage people to stop?
“It’s premature. I think we need to stay the course and hang with what the governor says,” said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco.
Only 25.8% of Californians of all ages are fully vaccinated, he noted. That means almost three quarters of us remain vulnerable. We should wait until June 15 to reconsider outdoor mask mandates, he said.
“As we get closer to having everyone vaccinated, especially adolescents, I think we can start talking about it. But now we need to exercise caution, even if (the virus) isn’t banging on the doors of the hospitals,” he said.
“There are a lot of uninfected people around,” he said. “There’s a lot of transmission around.”
California is one of 23 states that require people to wear masks in public spaces, including outdoors, according to MultiState, a government affairs lobbying group. Six states require masks in certain facilities, and five states require masks for employees of certain industries. Sixteen states have no mask mandate.
This week, Colorado eased its mask mandate, releasing the requirement in rural counties with low rates of infection, except for schools, government buildings and personal services settings. The state’s most populous counties keep some form of mandatory masks in indoor public settings, according to
Colorado Public Radio.
There are two major reasons for California to drop the mandate, according to Gandhi and other critics of the mask mandate.
One is scientific: There is growing evidence that being outdoors is very safe, they say.
A study of 1,245 cases in China found only three people were infected outdoors — and they were in conversation without masks. Of 232,164 cases in Ireland, 262 were associated with “locations which are primarily associated with outdoor activities.”
“Transmissions do not take place between solitary individuals going for a walk, transiently passing each other on the street, a hiking trail, or a jogging track,” Sax wrote in a blog post on the New England Journal of Medicine website. “That biker who whizzes by without a mask poses no danger to us, at least from a respiratory virus perspective.”
The other is societal: Easing rules will give Americans hope and boost trust that public health policies will restore a sense of normalcy.
“I’ve watched the distrust that we’ve engendered by some of our public health measures, such as the massive lockdown, and it worries me for the next pandemic,” said Gandhi. “What this does is tell people who were doubtful of the masking: ‘Hey, we take your concerns into account. We’re looking at the data, and it looks like transmission is lower. So we’re going to release this.’ ”
As the state looks toward reopening, she said, “It’s time to ask: Does this still make sense?”