Last week the CDC announced that ‘fully vaccinated Americans don’t need to wear masks or social distance indoors or outdoors’ which lead to many Americans immediately throwing away their masks and businesses lifting their mask requirements for people who’ve gotten their Covid-19 shots.
Not so fast. Many experts — including doctors and dismayed hospital workers — say the agency’s new guidelines came too soon and that it’s putting some of the population at risk.
“I think the CDC meant to say something really good, which is these vaccines are really protective,” emergency physician and CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen told CNN on Sunday. “The thing is though, there were unintended consequences of their actions.”
And Dr. Gupta said the CDC “made a critical error here in surprising basically everyone with a very significant change.” He added that just days before the announcement was made, he spoke to senior leaders at the CDC who told him indoor masking would probably be the last thing to be lifted because “it is so effective and it’s not that hard to do in most situations — just to put a mask on.”
In turn, the CDC has hastily clarified their recommendations:
The agency is asking people to “take their health into their own hands” and get vaccinated so they don’t continue to be at risk, Walensky said, adding “For the unvaccinated, our policy has not changed,” she added. “We were going to get to a place in this pandemic where vaccinated people were going to be able to take off their mask. We’re lucky to be there with the science that we have, and now we have to take this foundational step that is completely based in science and understand what it means as we open the entire country.”
Unlike other countries, the US has steadfastly refused to create a vaccination database, where people could show they are vaccinated just by showing a ‘pass’ on their phone.
So that means we are relying on an honor system.
Asked Thursday how people will know if others had been vaccinated, Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said they wouldn’t.
“You’re gonna be depending on people being honest enough to say whether they are vaccinated or not,” he told CNN.
Unlike other countries, the US has steadfastly refused to create a vaccination database, where people could show they are vaccinated just by showing a ‘pass’ on their phone.
Would you trust your health to your fellow American considering that a large swath of the country believes the virus is ‘just like the flu’ and still believes Trump won the last election?