For more than a year, public health officials have repeatedly told us that masks save lives. They’ve warned us to keep our distance from our neighbors, who’ve morphed into disease vectors before our eyes.
Now they are telling us that if we’re vaccinated, we no longer need to wear masks or physically distance ourselves in most cases — even indoors. To many people, myself included, this seems hard to reconcile with so many long months of masking and physical distancing and sacrificing our social lives for fear of covid-19.
What is an anxious, pandemic-weary (and wary) soul to do?
First, it’s important to stress that the dramatic rollback of mask-wearing and physical distancing recommended last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a policy California has adopted starting Tuesday as part of a broader reopening — applies only to people who have been fully vaccinated.
Even if you are vaccinated, though, you don’t need to change your behavior one iota if doing so makes you uncomfortable.
“Nothing in the CDC guidelines says to stop wearing a mask,” says Dr. José Mayorga, executive director of the UCI Health Family Health Centers. “It’s a recommendation, but if you choose to wear one, that’s OK. You shouldn’t be stigmatized.”
Mayorga has lost five relatives to covid, including a favorite aunt, and he knows from personal experience how hard it can be to rush back into so-called normalcy.
“Many people have not been directly impacted by covid,” he says. “But for those of us who have been, it’s natural to have concern or fear, thinking, ‘Oh, I can take my mask off? But is it really safe?’”
Some people are just cautious by nature and won’t be rushing to jettison their masks and rub elbows with unmasked strangers. “I know that, realistically, I can do pretty much anything once I’m fully vaccinated, but mentally it’s scary,” says 36-year-old Sacramento resident Shannon Albers, who got her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine on May 27. “It’s going to be weird, after a year of them drilling into us ‘Wear a mask, wear a mask, wear a mask,’ to be around a bunch of people who aren’t wearing masks.”
Early in the pandemic, the CDC said masks were not necessary. Then, it changed its guidance so emphatically that masks became an indispensable part of our wardrobes. Now the advice has changed again.
“For scientists, it is very understandable that there is this revision of recommendations based on new research,” says Roxane Cohen Silver, a professor of psychology, public health and medicine at the University of California-Irvine. “But for the general public, that could sound very confusing.”
Early on, many people feared catching the coronavirus from surfaces and even disinfected groceries before putting them away. Now, the virus is believed to spread mainly through the air, and the notion of spraying or wiping down everything you bring into the house seems silly.
We don’t know how long the vaccines’ protection lasts, but it is increasingly clear that being vaccinated reduces the risk of infecting others.
“Vaccinated people have very little risk of infection; they can do what they want to do,” says Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California–San Francisco. “I think we’re in pretty good shape, and I think it’s going to be pretty much a disease-free summer.”
In California, the rate of positive covid tests has dropped from a seven-day average of over 17% in early January, at the peak of the winter surge, to under 1% now. The number of hospitalized covid patients statewide has fallen from over 22,000 to below 1,300 in the same period.
Around 46% of Golden State residents have been fully vaccinated, lagging behind numerous other states but ahead of the national rate of just under 43%. Some millions more have built up immunity after a covid infection.
As more people get protection, the covid virus finds fewer susceptible bodies, further reducing transmission and producing a downward spiral in the number of cases.
If you are indoors with other people you know to be vaccinated, you can dispense with masks. Want to cook dinner for a group of vaccinated friends you haven’t seen for several months? Carpe diem — and don’t worry about wearing masks or sitting spaced apart.
But if you are in a mixed crowd — say, a grocery store — and don’t know who’s vaccinated, wear a mask, even though your personal risk is low. If the workers are wearing masks, it’s a matter of respect to wear one yourself. Some people may be nervous about being there — those who are immune-compromised, for example, or can’t get vaccinated for some other health reason — and they won’t know if you’ve had your shots.
“Forget about the medical benefit,” says Bradley Pollock, associate dean for Public Health Sciences at the UC-Davis School of Medicine. “If you are wearing a mask, people who are not vaccinated don’t need to feel uncomfortable around you. So, it’s kind of a courtesy issue.”
The presence of children is another good reason to mask up. Most kids ages 12 to 16 haven’t been vaccinated yet, and those under 12 can’t be, yet. They’ll probably have to wear masks in school this fall.
And though children have not been hit by covid nearly as hard as adults, and are not efficient transmitters of the virus, thousands of kids have been hospitalized with it nonetheless — including about 4,000 nationwide diagnosed with a frightening multisystem inflammatory syndrome.
Mayorga, who is fully vaccinated and has young children, says he wears a mask “to protect them and to model good behavior.”
Public health experts agree that vaccinating as many people as possible, including children, is the way out of the pandemic.
But the rate of vaccinations has slowed recently. One of the biggest contributions you can make to the public good right now is to get vaccinated — and help others do the same.
Some people aren’t vaccinated because they lack mobility and can’t get to an appointment. Check in with elderly neighbors, and if they haven’t been vaccinated and need a ride, offer to drive them. You can also check with your local department on aging, community groups that serve the elderly, public health agencies or hospitals to ask if they are seeking drivers.
Perhaps the biggest impact you can have is persuading friends and loved ones to get the vaccine – and then urging them to persuade others.
If they think the vaccines were rolled out too fast to be safe, tell them that related coronavirus vaccine research has been going on for more than a decade. Point out that hundreds of millions of covid shots have now been given and serious side effects are rare — and are being carefully monitored by officials.
You might also need to rebut the widespread notion that the vaccine could suddenly produce some terrible, unforeseen health impact a few years down the road. “That just doesn’t happen,” Pollock says.
Expect to encounter resistance at first, but be persistent. It can take numerous conversations to assuage anxieties, but your close friends will listen.
“If your best friend tells you they did this, that’s highly influential — more than some talking head,” Pollock says.
–Bernard J. Wolfson, Kaiser Health News
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation. This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
Steve says
I choose to not get sick and fight for my Life due a compromised Respiratory condition. I’ve been Vaccinated and still mask up. It’s what I do each to their own and Good Luck
Jimbo99 says
At some point you will eventually come off like a germophobe, but it’s you life, wear whatever you want, for reasons that only matter to you. Anyone need to justify their own personal wardrobe to another ? The pandemic, whether real or imagined, by the numbers there had to have been what the experts/scientists call herd immunity already. 600K deaths, 33.4 million cases in a population of 330 million USA. That’s 10% of the population was a case, 1.7964% fatality rate for anyone that was coded as a case. That .182% of the population. Most anyone that ever got it, asymptomatic, did they have the sniffles for a few hours, a headache they usually had ? Even the flu, there are asymptomatic to severe cases.
Tell me, that’s really a pandemic ? It was hyped hysteria. Science doesn’t have the math to justify shutting down America over the fire drill for pandemic & government grant that was 2020. Follow the money trail, the frauds were the one’s that didn’t skip a beat. They’re the Chicken Little’s among us, will anyone ever believe them ever again when they tell us the sky is falling down the next time ? I was skeptical in 2020. Still am to this day. Time has proved anti-maskers & anti-vaccers right on this. Pat yourself on the back, you did better than Fauci on this one for expertise. Sad that he gets paid $ 418K to be wrong and to have the trilogy of handed down from generations advisories for a cold & virus. Too many were uncompensated or we got that stimulus covid package that didn’t amount to having a real job & benefits.
My point is, I won’t chastise anyone for wearing a mask, just like I wouldn’t if they were or weren’t mowing their lawn with a mask to eliminate dust, pollen & dirt from being inhaled. You’re free to mow your yard, go anywhere you want masked or maskless. If any of us are sick, myself included, hope any of us has the decency to avoid situations to spread whatever it is any of us has.
Anonymous says
Sorry my governor says different 🇺🇸 🖕🏼
Mike Cocchiola says
I wear my mask. There are always unvaccinated Republicans skulking about. Maybe they’ll all move to Idaho where they can only infect themselves.
Denali says
The real issue here is differentiating between the vaccinated and non-vaccinated. It should be simple, those not wearing a mask would be the vaccinated and those wearing a mask would be the non-vaccinated. Sure, simple as pie; until you throw in the fact that a large number of non-vaccinated folks are not wearing masks. (No politics here, science only, please.)
Six months ago the world was a simpler place, you could not walk into Publix, Lowe’s, Home Depot or wherever without wearing a mask – “Keep your germs to yourself” was the mantra. Made a lot of folks breathe easier, so to speak. Today, we have a non-regulated mix of people wearing and not wearing masks. Who is who?
Has that guy/gal who is ramming her cart into your heals at Publix been vaccinated? Is the person pushing by you to grab a grossly over-priced 2 x 4 at Lowe’s vaccinated? How is an immunocompromised person to know? A good guess based on community immunization rates would be that 55% are not vaccinated*. I’ll repeat that fact, over half of the people you will interact with in public places have not been vaccinated. Lousy odds. Unfortunately, even a transplant patient, a cancer victim, or a rheumatoid arthritis patient needs to go to the grocery or a box store for the necessities of life and now they are confronted with hardly anyone wearing a mask and half of them are non-vaccinated.
I bring up the millions of people in this category because despite have received two doses of Moderna or Phizer and maybe a third shot of the J&J vaccines the vast majority of these folks will have little to no antibodies to the virus. The latest study from Johns Hopkins shows that 46% of these folks might have some immunity to covid, the balance, none. To date we do not know if those 46% have enough to fend off the virus or if they will still get sick and die.
Please, if you have not been vaccinated, show some compassion for your fellow man, wear a mask and save a life; better yet, get vaccinated.
For months my catch-phrase was that ‘Real men wear masks’, I am changing that to “Real men keep their germs to themselves.”
* Based on June 03,2021 vaccination numbers issued by the Florida Department of Health.
Carol says
Masks collect more bacteria wearing them all day, so if masks save lives, then how come people wearing masks still got COVID? What’s the sense of getting an experimental drug (not FDA approved, so it isn’t a vaccine), if you still have to wear a mask. Fauci said we didn’t have to wear them if we got the shot. Its a bunch of political bs to control the people. None of you know what youre talking about, because if you did, you wouldn’t keep changing your minds.
Denali says
It is not often that I respond to an article more than once so please bear with me;
Imagine if you will, a virus sweeping our country; during a ten year period, it attacked 331,919 children under the age of 15. killed 18,825 and permanently maimed another 122,502 of those same kids. Then imagine two doctors working independently for a vaccine to stop that virus and they find that vaccine. Lastly imagine almost every healthy kid being given that vaccine in school gyms and churches throughout the country. Parents drug their kids by their ear to get the shots or swallow a sugar cube. No kid was left behind, so to speak. The vaccine was mandatory to attend public schools. By the 60’s the numbers were less than 100 cases per year and by 1979 it was officially eradicated in this country and by 1988 effective eradication in the world.
In case you have not figured out what the virus was, it was Anterior Poliomyelitis, also called Infantile Poliomyelitis but mostly it was simply Polio. I am willing to bet that almost every anti-covidvax person out there was was given the Polio vaccine starting in the late 50’s because their parents were scared out of their minds by a disease which would start with a headache and an hour later lead to paralysis. During the next weeks of the infection the virus moved up the spinal cord determining the prognosis for the victim; crippled from the waist down, life in an iron lung because the chest muscles quit working or will it creep into the brain and kill the patient? If you were a kid between 1946 and 1956 your chances of getting Polio were not extremely high but your chances of being crippled or killed were very high if you got it – nothing any parent wanted to think about.
I lost two friends to polio. One a childhood buddy in 1958 in upper New York State and a second high school friend in 1968 in the Lilly White northern suburbs of Chicago. After my grade school friend got sick we kids were not allowed to see him again – our parents were afraid we would catch the virus from him, none of us really understood. It was different by 1968, we got to visit our friend in the hospital. I had seen pictures of an iron lung in Life Magazine and then faced the one which held my friends body, helping him to breathe. We visited many times before he died, I will never forget that sound of that machine.
My point of all this is simple. Two doctors set out to find a vaccine to stop the virus and they did. Our parents fearing a virus which was crippling and killing my generation with promises to kill and maim many more, reacted by getting that vaccine in our arms or down our throats. Keep in mind, Polio attacked just 330,000 kids and killed less than 20,000 during that ten year period (1946 – 1956). Covid has infected about 3.5 million people in the US and killed 600,000 in just over a year.
Now, imagine a country where its citizens remembered the Polio crisis and acted with the same urgency to get themselves and their families vaccinated against a virus shown to be 300 times more deadly to our society. Imagine; Imagine . . . .
GR says
@Mike Cocchiola – So there are no unvaccinated Democrats? LOL.
Steve says
Well presented and really a credible believable comparison. It happened and even a President was afflicted with Polio. What confounds me is the Control argument continuously emoted and the Idea that trying to ward off a deadly Virus Globally would be subject to Static prrocess and procedure versus one that is Dynamic, changing, with ongoing tweeks to the System so to speak as more Information is brought about by Science. Afterall it is a Virus which changes and mutates.
Steve says
Obviously Noone will change your mind so dont get Vaccinated or wear a mask.
Richard says
Thank you Denali for bringing the severity of this virus back down to earth and the reality of its deadly consequences. Now where are all of the scientists in this world that will come up with a proven vaccine that will eradicate the virus and its mutations for the sake of our world population?
Fredrick says
I am glad all the Democrats got the Trump Vaccine…. Please tell him thank you.
Fredrick says
More fear porn…. please stay home and wear two masks and thank the previous admin for the vaccine.
Sherry says
Thank you so much Denali for reminding us of the better days when our citizens believed in scientific facts instead of conspiracy theories, dangerous political lies and nonsensical gossip on social media.
Steve says
I Thanked PFizer
Steve says
I thank the Scientists and Labs that did the Work.
GR says
Sure you can thank the scientists and labs but without Operation Warp Speed you still be waiting to get vaccinated. The Truth about Trump’s Operation Warp Speed https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-truth-about-trumps-operation-warp-speed/ar-BB1glnEj
Steve says
I’ll pass that along to the Folks in India. I am sure they will agree. So what you are saying is C19 is a Global Conspiracy not just Domestic.
Steve says
Yup 600000 casualties and Families would like to thank mr warpspeed
capt says
“” conspiracy theories, dangerous political lies and nonsensical gossip on social media.”” Yes there is a lot of that on this site from both sides of the line.
Pogo says
@The truth would indeed be nice
about the character who concocted the “…/news/opinion/…” you’re peddling:
Former Pa. Gov. candidate Paul Mango at center of Trump effort to block extra funding for vaccine rollout
“After an unsuccessful run for Pennsylvania governor that ended with the 2018 Republican primary, Pittsburgh-area business consultant Paul Mango joined the administration of then-President Donald Trump. Mango, a Gibsonia resident and Republican, joined the Department of Health and Human Services and was even promoted a year later.
Now, as revealed by health news site Stat, Mango’s role in the Trump administration has shown to have some serious consequences for the country’s vaccine rollout…”
https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/former-pa-gov-candidate-paul-mango-at-center-of-trump-effort-to-block-extra-funding-for-vaccine-rollout/Content?oid=18851640
From the aforementioned:
Trump officials actively lobbied to deny states money for vaccine rollout last fall
“WASHINGTON — Top Trump officials actively lobbied Congress to deny state governments any extra funding for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout last fall — despite frantic warnings from state officials that they didn’t have the money they needed to ramp up a massive vaccination operation.
The push, described to STAT by congressional aides in both parties and openly acknowledged by one of the Trump officials, came from multiple high-ranking Trump health officials in repeated meetings with legislators.
Without the extra money, states spent last October and November rationing the small pot of federal dollars they had been given. And when vaccines began shipping in December, states seemed woefully underprepared…”
https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/31/trump-officials-lobbied-to-deny-states-money-for-vaccine-rollout/
“Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to get the truth back.”
― Gore Vidal
Concerned Citizen says
The biggest confusion from the Mask issue has come from our own Government.
How do we trust a CDC that can’t even make up it’s own mind. Wear the mask if you feel you need to. Don’t wear it if you don’t want to. It’s your choice. That’s supposed to be one of the wonderful things about living in this country.Right?
I wear it in doors only when social distancing isn’t practical. It’s neither my place or yours to get into someone elses busniess and try to make them wear one. People are getting killed over that.
You all need to take a step back and look at all the hate and division this is causing. Some of the nastiness in this commentary is just plain sad.