Some not ready to give up masks
Head of the CDC defends decision to ease guidance
Like more than 120 million other Americans, Jan Massie is fully vaccinated against COVID19 and can pretty much give up wearing a mask under the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But she’s still covering her face, even as the temperature rises in her native Alabama, because of benefits she says are too great to give up.
The retired educator didn’t catch the illness caused by the coronavirus, and she also didn’t get the flu or her twice-yearly colds while masked during the pandemic. Unlike some, she’s not gotten any hostile blowback in public for wearing a mask. So why quit now?
“I’ve worn a mask where it really wasn’t required,” Massie, who lives in suburban Birmingham, said Saturday. “Many people, more than I expected, still are, too.”
With COVID-19 cases on the decline after more than 585,000 deaths and with more than a third of the U.S. population fully vaccinated, millions are deciding whether to continue wearing face masks, which were both a shield against infection and a point of heated political debate over the last year. People have myriad reasons for deciding to stop, or continuing to wear, a mask.
Many are ready to put aside the sadness, isolation and wariness of the pandemic. Ditching face masks — even ones with sequins or sports team logos — is a visible, liberating way to move ahead. Yet others are still worried about new virus variants and the off-chance they might contract the virus and pass it along to others, though the risks of both are greatly reduced for those who are fully vaccinated.
Denise Duckworth was among the unmasked as she strolled through a revived French Quarter in New Orleans, where jazz musicians and tourists have returned to the streets.
“I’ve always been against masks, and I think all their rules have been hypocritical, and they’ve been confusing,” said Duckworth, visiting from Kansas City, Missouri.
Alex Bodell, of Ithaca, New York, stood out in the crowd because of the black mask covering his nose and face, but he was more at ease that way.
“I certainly feel a lot more comfortable, and I think I’m enjoying myself a lot more here being fully vaccinated and feeling that, you know, kind of regardless of my mask that I’m covered,” he said.
The CDC last week said fully vaccinated people — those who are two weeks past their final dose of a COVID-19 vaccine — can quit wearing masks outdoors in crowds and in most indoor settings and give up social distancing. Partially vaccinated or unvaccinated people should continue wearing masks, the agency said.
The guidance still calls for masks in crowded indoor settings including buses, airplanes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters. But it clears a path toward reopening workplaces, schools and other venues that went dark during the pandemic.
The head of the CDC on Sunday defended the decision to ease mask-wearing guidance, stressing that increasing political pressure had nothing to do with the abrupt shift in guidelines.
“I’m delivering the science as the science is delivered to the medical journals. And it evolved,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I deliver it as soon as I can when we have that information available.”
Yet concerns have been raised from those who say there’s no easy way for businesses and others to determine who is fully vaccinated and who is not. Instead, many will have to rely on an honor system as many states and communities have already been lifting mask mandates amid improving virus numbers and as more Americans have been shedding face coverings after getting shots.
“I would imagine within a period of just a couple of weeks, you’re going to start to see significant clarification of some of the actually understandable and reasonable questions that people are asking,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the U.S. government’s pandemic response, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
The timing of the change has also faced questions. Just days earlier, Walensky had defended the agency’s strict mask guidance in front of a Senate committee where some Republicans on the panel described the CDC’s guidance as “unworkable.”
When pressed about the quick turnaround on the agency’s stance on mask wearing, Walensky said the agency was not giving in to pressure but instead needed time to review evolving science.
“I can tell you it certainly would have been easier if the science had evolved a week earlier and I didn’t have to go to Congress making those statements,” she said.
But Raquel Mitchell, who recovered from a bout of COVID19 in December, is adamant against getting a vaccine as she doesn’t trust it because of the quick development. She’s still wearing a mask and taking other precautions, like dining outdoors near her home in New York’s East Harlem section and either asking for plastic utensils or bringing her own.
When will she feel safe? “I don’t know. Never,” Mitchell said. “It’s going to be really difficult for me.”