Unmasking the Maskholes: Why the CDC Decision Leaves Me Queasy
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday said masks and social distancing are no longer necessary for people who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. They say the decision was driven by scientific evidence of vaccines playing a major role in curbing both infections and transmission of the virus.
Bravo! Some part of me said. For about two seconds.
Then I started thinking about all those humans whose “feelings” told them COVID-19 was a fraud. Images of a United States Senator demanding that Dr. Faucci respond to easily disproved conspiracy theories played in my head. I remembered how an anti-vaccine story from a known fringe group (sorry, I don't link to crazies) appeared at the top of my daily Google news feed on Health. I realized the CDCs new mask rules are premised on an honor system, one that the cult of Republicans with no honor will never follow.
I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.
And the next level idiocy is already unfolding. The CDC guidance (more on this later) doesn’t tell people NOT to wear masks. It says that those who are vaccinated CAN take masks off and end social distancing except in crowded places.
A staffer for nutcase Congresscritter Marjorie Taylor Greene has already fired the first shot in the next battle in the war on sanity:
https://twitter.com/scottwongDC/status/1393216641341743112?s=20
Then there’s the horrifying Politico lawsuit story demonstrating just how much Republidiots™ really don’t give a damn:
“Well, I don’t care about you guys getting it.” That’s what Rep. Doug Lamborn (R–Colo.) allegedly told a staffer in October 2020, right after discovering that his Capitol Hill office was turning into a hotbed of Covid-19 infections.
The CDC has created a scenario in which fully vaccinated people who continue wearing their masks will be treated as unvaccinated. Only 35.8% of Americans are fully vaccinated. By my calculation, that means almost 2 out of 3 people should still be wearing masks.
Two other huge errors in this decision are immediately obvious:
Affluent white middle class people had better access to vaccines. While California has made good efforts to address this disparity, other states haven’t.
What about workers in high traffic retail environments? Are Kroger’s employees just supposed to suck it up? Are they expected to play vaccine police?
Some major retail chains have already said they’ll continue with policies requiring customers to wear masks while shopping.
It’s only a matter of hours before vaxxer crazies start posting YouTube videos of their adherents harassing customers and employees, even though stores are perfectly within their rights to set safety standards. (No shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service.)
The United Foodservice and Commercial Workers union has been openly critical of the CDC decision:
UFCW said that there had been an almost 35% increase in grocery worker deaths since March 1, alongside a nearly 30% jump in grocery workers infected with or exposed to COVID-19 following supermarket outbreaks.
The union estimated that, since the start of the pandemic, around 462 of its members who were frontline workers had died from COVID-19, including 184 grocery workers and 132 meatpacking workers.
A Harvard University study at a grocery store in Massachusetts last year found that around 20% of staff tested positive for COVID-19, and that employees with direct customer exposure were five times more likely to test positive.
Meanwhile, unvaccinated anti maskers will be treated like they're fully vaccinated.
Here’s Dr. Leana S. Wen, who has a record of criticizing the CDC for being too cautious, in the Washington Post:
The CDC has gone from one extreme to the other, from over-caution to throwing caution to the wind. Its new guidance could have been exactly what we needed to encourage vaccination, but it skipped a key step. It should be revised to say that fully vaccinated people should have no restrictions on their public activities if vaccination status can be verified. That means stores, theaters and restaurants can be at full capacity, without masks, if they check vaccination status. The CDC should also set a level of community vaccination, at which point they can do away with this step — for example, if 70 percent of a community is vaccinated, everyone can take off their masks, vaccinated or not.
We’ve come a long way in the pandemic, but not as far as the CDC has suddenly taken us. The vaccinated may be well-protected, but let’s not forget our obligation to those who do not yet have immunity — and our commitment to end this pandemic once and for all.
Now, back to the science…. Because the science behind the decision is valid. It just doesn’t take into account how politicized basic health and safety measures have become.
The CDC, in announcing its decision, cited three studies.
Excerpted from an NBCNews account:
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was shown to be 97 percent effective at protecting against symptomatic infection and 86 percent effective at protecting against asymptomatic infection. Those results, published May 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, were based on a study of more than 6,700 vaccinated health care workers in Israel.
One study demonstrated that Covid-19 vaccines were 90 percent effective at preventing both symptomatic and asymptomatic infection among nearly 4,000 health care workers and front-line workers. A second study found the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were 94 percent effective at preventing Covid-19-related-hospitalizations among adults 65 and older who have been fully vaccinated.
While it is possible for someone who is fully vaccinated to get infected, these breakthrough infections are considered very rare. Out of the more than 117 million people in the U.S. who have been fully vaccinated, just 9,245 people later tested positive for Covid-19. The CDC has also said illnesses from breakthrough infections are typically mild.
https://twitter.com/emily_hoeven/status/1393061514748186628?s=20
So, yes, I'll have my mask handy for many months to come. Because the cure for stupidity continues to elude science.
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From the Ironic Department of Irony, Faux News Division:
https://twitter.com/thekjohnston/status/1392578753704853504?s=20
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