Won’t give up mask

The latest COVID19 mask guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not the first retraction in the evolving pandemic.

Not too long ago, the CDC had confidently advised fully vaccinated Americans that they could do away with their masks not only outdoors, but even indoors.

To me, a layman with no medical or infectious disease background, giving up wearing mask is still too early and farfetched idea, especially indoors. In fact, the formidable and highly contagious and unabated delta variant now spreading across America and the world has proved many scientific studies wrong; sadly, it disproved the core contention that fully vaccinated people are not the carriers of infection.

I think wearing mask should be recommended at all times until there’s a marked slowdown of COVID19 for a prolonged period, not just in America but across the world. We don’t want another variant showing us that the world is geographically seamless for the spread of infection, and importantly underscore the scientific truth, no one is safe until everyone is safe.

Let’s embrace this reality by wearing a mask indoors at all times in public settings as a way of life for the foreseeable future.

Atul Karnik, Woodside, N.Y.