Wear your mask!

New CDC guidelines are confusing and contradictory

Have you read the big story on the front page of the Washington Post today?  “A viral tsunami:  how the underestimated coronavirus took over the world.”  In a word, it’s chilling.  Even at this point in the pandemic, it’s a wakeup call.  The story can be summed up thusly: the virus overwhelmed the entire world because it was more dangerous than the experts were smart.

The story takes us back to the first days the virus was detected in China and through its early travel to this country.  Just over a year ago, on March 11, 2020, there were 126,250 cases worldwide and 4,720 deaths.  Those numbers sound miniscule with numbers this week reaching 117 million cases and 2.6 million deaths around the world.

But it’s what was happening this time last year that’s instructive.  The country shut down.  The National Basketball Association cancelled its season.  Schools closed. So did restaurants, offices, hair salons, other businesses.  Everyone was urged to “shelter” indoors.  A church choir in Washington state met for a rehearsal.  A week later, the CDC learned that of 61 members of the choir, 52 tested positive after the rehearsal.

There were more instances of the virus being spread through the air, but scientists couldn’t agree on a proper response to the phenomenon other than recommendations to “socially distance” at least 6 feet away from other people.  It would take until July for the WHO to issue a report that airborne transmission indoors in poorly ventilated rooms “couldn’t be ruled out.”  It would take the CDC months more to conclude that the virus could be spread “via airborne transmission under special circumstances.”

On March 25 of last year, with only 1,000 deaths reported from the virus in this country, a meeting of experts was called at the Federal Emergency Management Headquarters in Washington.  In what the Post called “marathon 10 hour meetings,” experts tried to come up with a way to put two patients on a single ventilator.  About 20 scientists and doctors met in a room surrounded by different kinds of ventilators, tubing and other parts of the devices.  The post quotes one doctor describing everyone as being distanced from one another, but only a few were wearing masks.  “In retrospect, we were totally wrong for not being better prepared,” the doctor told the Post.

Now here we are a year later and the severity of this disease has apparently still not sunk in.  States like South Dakota never really closed and never required the wearing of masks.  Texas and Florida have announced they are reopening all businesses at 100 percent capacity, including such known locations of viral spreading as restaurants and health clubs.  Cable news is rife with stories about “virus fatigue,” and more examples of people refusing to wear masks on airplanes and other tightly enclosed areas like Ubers and taxicabs.

The Biden administration is ahead of its goal of vaccinating 100 million people in the first 100 days in office.  More than 2 million a day are getting shots.  Saturday, 2.9 million were vaccinated. 

Yesterday the CDC issued new guidelines for people who have been fully vaccinated and have waited the requisite two weeks after the second shot.  They say vaccinated people can meet with each other “indoors without social distancing” for the first time.  But here is where the CDC gets confusing.  Fully vaccinated people can “visit with unvaccinated people from a single household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 disease indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing.”  They then go on to say that people who have received their vaccinations should continue to “take precautions in public like wearing a well-fitted mask and physical distancing.”

Huh?  You can meet with unvaccinated people indoors without your mask, but when you walk outside, you’re to put your mask back on?

They go on to encourage vaccinated people to avoid large gatherings and to wear masks when visiting with multiple people from unvaccinated households, but something here doesn’t add up.  Media reports are saying the CDC considers these revised guidelines as a “first step” to returning to everyday life.  I’m sure they want people to think that we’re on the verge of something approximating “normal” life, and that’s what governors of states like Texas and Florida clearly want to happen.

But reading today’s story in the Washington Post was all I had to do to remind myself that the virus is smarter than we are.  The CDC has been playing catch-up to the virus for over a year, and the result has been 525,000 deaths in this country alone. 

Everybody wants the vaccines to work miracles, and maybe they will, especially as millions more of us get vaccinated every day.  But there are two reasons I’m going to keep my mask on every time I leave the house.  One, there are millions of Americans who will never get vaccinated.  They have told pollsters this, and I think we should take them at their word.  Two, the coronavirus remains extraordinarily deadly.  Some 2,000 of us are still dying from it every day. 

The virus isn’t stopping its evil spread.  Why should we stop keeping ourselves safe from it? 

Get vaccinated as soon as you are eligible.  Wear your mask.  I need every reader I can get.  I don’t want to lose you.