CDC’s mask guidance spurs confusion and criticism, as well as celebration

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/05/14/cdc-mask-update-decision-confusion/

 

Key quotes:

 

More than a dozen physicians interviewed Friday expressed concern that the decision was premature, coming only days after regulators cleared a vaccine for 12-to-15-year-olds and while so many are still unprotected. They feared the guidelines could undercut two of the simplest and most effective tools — masks and physical distancing — for stopping the spread of a virus still infecting about 35,000 people in the United States every day.

 

 

“The guidance shifts all the burden onto individuals to be ‘on their honor’ and choose the appropriate actions when deciding whether to wear a mask,” said Lisa Maragakis, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “There is no way to know who is vaccinated and who is not in most scenarios. The likely result is that almost no one will wear a mask.”

 

The risk for people who have not yet been vaccinated, including millions of adolescents and children, “is going to dramatically increase as the rest of the population abruptly drops masking,” Maragakis added.

 

 

[S]ome of the lowest immunization rates in the country are in communities without mask mandates, calling into question the effectiveness of the change in federal guidance as an incentive for the unvaccinated.

 

 

On Twitter and other social media, teachers, parents of children under 12, people with immune-system problems and other vulnerable groups expressed frustration that the guidance might leave them with less — not more — freedom. That’s because the CDC’s announcement did not suggest any way to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.

 

“I feel like everyone just forgot about all the unvaccinated little kids and their parents,” one parent tweeted.

 

Another quipped: “CDC Guideline: Don’t have a kid under 12.”

 

 

“The CDC, which is supposed to be our steady force based upon science, is lurching from extreme overcaution to abandoning all caution,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “And this all happened in a matter of weeks when the science really hasn’t changed.”

 

Gostin also cast doubt on the notion that the move would spur more people to get vaccinated.

 

“There’s zero behavioral evidence that a move like this would encourage people to be vaccinated,” he said. “It’s much more likely to encourage people to take their mask off.”