I find I’m having less concern for other people catching it now that the vaccines are freely available. I certainly wouldn’t want to pass it on, but if someone is not vaccinated and they catch COVID, that’s more a consequence of their own decision to not be vaccinated rather than the lack of precautions by the people around them. I think of it similarly to how someone may get lung cancer from smoking. And even if someone has some medical reason they can’t get vaccinated, there are now plentiful N95 and N100 masking options available which can provide a very high degree of personal protection from aerosol transmission.
I think it’s still too early to totally do away with masks, but that’s because there are still a lot of unvaccinated people who are unvaccinated by choice. I’m not sure how long we should wait for them to come around. I guess I would say to do away with masks once the weekly vaccination rates taper down and level off.
I’m afraid that the hesitany of vaccinated people to unmask might end up playing into the hands of the antimaskers saying “well, doesn’t science tell you to unmask? Why don’t you? where is your Fauci, now?”
I wore the damn masks for a year. I still wear them in places that require them, but no longer outside. Thanks J&J.
I don’t care, BTW, if you want to be extra cautious. Your life, your choices, your face, but there is nothing wrong or even iffy, generally, about unmasking provided you’re vaccinated.
That’s my thought. The 180 person unmasked event I worked last weekend, I was told about 85% of the guests were vaccinated. Of course some unvaccinated people are going to go unmasked. I don’t assume unmasked people are vaxxed. The CDC said vaccinated people can go without their masks (if they choose and if allowed by the situation.) There was no conditional “if all others are vaccinated.” That conditional announcement was made many weeks ago. We already were at vaccinated people can congregate unmasked indoors when the new directive came out. Like I said before, I’ve gone with their guidance from the beginning and will continue to do so. If it changes, I’ll change. But if they say it’s okay, my risk tolerance trusts them. I still wear a mask if most people around me are wearing a mask so as not to needlessly cause anxiety in others, but if everyone’s or most are maskless, I take it off.
I occasionally wore masks to protect medically vulnerable people before this year. I’ve also worn one on an airplane when I had a slight cold and didn’t want to infect my seatmates. Yes, I believe in masks.
And now I think I can get away with wearing them more often, without freaking people out.
Huh, I did not see that in my state, and I’ve been watching the numbers very closely. But I’ll go back and pick them apart looking specifically for that. May even post the results here, if I decide to out my home state.
Just remember you can be fully vaccinated and catch it from an unvaccinated person. This has been driven home to me because I know someone this has happened to (unavoidable in their case, they were infected by their youngish kids). So although I’d like to be cavalier and say the anti-vaxx crowd can just reap what they sow, unfortunately they still present a risk to the more responsible.
Granted a far less deadly risk thanks to the vaccines. But that could change if the anti-vaxxers continue to circulate the virus among themselves until it mutates into something uglier. I’m afraid the only solution left to us now is to exile all of them to unpopulated ocean attols .
It’d be interesting to see this broken down by state. I know it’s not evenly distributed because a friend in Wyoming, which is, sorry to say, loaded with COVID-denier conspiracy theorists, said after the initial surge, vaccination rates plunged, and the data shows he’s right. There was never a mask mandate there and plenty of anti-mask attitude. It’s good to see that the numbers went up nationally, though.
I was at the salon yesterday. I’m friends with the owner. He said he’s still requiring masks because he doesn’t want tensions between masked and unmasked customers. Good point! After June 30th, when Washington state officially opens completely, he said it’ll be a different ballgame. I hope the tensions dissipate then. Surely we who are vaccinated and unmasked will understand those who opt to stay masked, whatever the reason.
I’ve had a few people give me the stink-eye for not wearing one (only when it’s not required)–so ironic when I was doing that myself before the CDC guidance came out and I did all that research. I wear a big metal button saying I’ve been vaccinated. I don’t like the glares and have thought about wearing a mask just to avoid them, but I believe some of us have to set an example in order for other vaccinated folks who are so inclined to feel OK about ditching masks.
How much further down? Infections here are 5% of what they were in January, and the positivity rate is like 3%.I am starting to ask myself, if not now, when?
Well, my state’s #first vaccinations among those over 15 peaked in the week of April 13. The next two weeks we gave initial doses to about 3/4 as many as that week, and then the week of May 4 it dropped by another factor of 3/4. Anther factor of 80% the following week, and the week of 5/18 it plummeted to have that rate. the most recent week has been just a hair below the prior week.
Fortunately, uptake has been brisk in the 12-15 crowd, so our total first vax’s have only slightly decreased in the past 3 weeks.
So… the by-age data doesn’t quite match what was listed above, but our initial vaccination rate dropped in half in about the time range where the national number went up a tad.
I’m not sure it’s apples to apples – I am looking at first doses, because I believe that’s when people decide to get vaccinated. You’ll naturally see an echo of that 3-4 weeks later, as (at least in my state) the vast majority of people who start the sequence finish it up.
Hmm, I do also have total vaxxes… It’s petty lumpy data, so I don’t like looking at individual days. May 18 happened to be a low day… so was May 22. But total doses the week May 19-May 25 was just a tad lower that total doses the week May 12-18, so total doses for those over 15 must have dropped, too, not just first doses.
According to numbers the CDC released yesterday by April 30th there’d been 101,000,000 Americans fully vaccinated and less than 11,000 breakthrough cases of fully vaccinated people. Two weeks from today I will be considered fully vaccinated, and yes, I could catch it from someone who is not while shopping for groceries. But my odds of having a fatal car accident (40k fatalities annually) on way to the store are higher. Not higher than getting a fatal case of covid from the dangerous unmasked & unvaccinated stranger, but higher than getting a case significant enough to even test for.
Exactly. It’s just not necessary to wear the mask once you’re fully vaccinated, especially as number of vaccinated people increase. The “I’ll keep my mask on” are playing, IMHO, into the anit-mask camp’s hands.
“Until it’s 100% safe means never”
I think the “I’ll keep my mask on” folks are just doing what they want to do. The “everyone should keep their mask on” is playing into the anti-mask hands.
We will NEVER get everyone vaccinated. Vaccination pretty much protects yourself. So at this point, its “do what you need to do to be comfortable.” And while each of us can judge others (I’ll negatively judge the non-vaccinated by choice - particularly those that also don’t mask.) we have reached the point at which its difficult to justify controlling others. I can protect myself through vaccination. Shortly we can protect children (who are at low risk of serious illness) through vaccination. But I really can’t force you to protect yourself.
And yes, there may be new variants - will be new variants. And its possible that some of these will bypass the vaccine. But we could also get a different novel virus out this fall. Epidemologists have been warning for years.
I think this is a dangerous way to look at it. We had a horrible, horrible spike over the holidays. Comparing current rates to the absolute worst we had is not a useful comparison.
The current national rates (in the US) are worse than they were last June in the middle of as much shutdown as we ever had.
500 people in the US are still dying of COVID every day. At that rate we’re talking close to 200,000 deaths a year. If we want that number to drop we need to continue recognizing we are still in the middle of a horrible, deadly pandemic. Getting yourself vaccinated is a huge step, but it doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility to act safely.
The CDC says it’s ok for vaccinated people to not wear masks, but unvaccinated people need to wear them. Without some sort of halo that hovers over vaccinated people’s heads it’s impossible to know at a glance who falls in which camp. When I’m fully vaccinated I will be happy to spend unmasked time indoors with other people I know are vaccinated. If I’m around people I don’t know are vaccinated, well…I’ll still try to avoid it when possible, and wear a mask otherwise.
Says who? In what world is there any evidence that vaccinated people need to do anything further to “act safely”? There is no acting safely at that point. They’re at maximum safety level. You want more safety, you act.
Just popping in to say it’s absolutely disturbing to see so many people in this thread think that truth cares whether it’s convenient to you or not. If vaccinated people are perfectly fine without masks, then it doesn’t really matter how you feel about that fact. It’s true whether you believe in it or not. I cannot fathom a reason why anyone should be against informing the public of known facts. Are you truly advocating deception?
People are going to choose whatever is the most convenient to them. Unless there’s some sort of vaccine passport requirement, you’re never going to know if someone’s really been vaccinated even if they say they have. There are many reasons someone could lie, not the least of which they don’t like following rules. Your best bet is to get yourself vaccinated as well as those you care about. Can’t do much about anti-vaxxers. Deniers gonna deny.
And really it comes down to “the vaccinated should wear masks for the comfort of those that are so anxious they can’t deal.” But there are other people who are anxious wearing masks, or anxious when other people wear masks.
Because if you are vaccinated, you chances of getting seriously ill from Covid go way down.
There are people who can’t be vaccinated, but those people have lived with the issue that the kid in the cart at WalMart is spewing out whooping cough or measles for years. And kids can’t be vaccinated - their risk of serious illness or complications is pretty low.
What I mean by “everyone should keep their mask on folks playing into the anti-masker’s hands” … there is a real political calculus at play. Very few pro-vaccine pro-mask folks are going to die or get seriously ill from here on out. But left of center politicians who want to keep their jobs need to move forward and remove mask mandates because at this point they are easily cast as overreach. And I, a liberal woman, need those politicians to keep their jobs because I really don’t want to live in White Male Christian Libertarian Utopia-land.
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It’s good to see that the numbers went up nationally, though.