What a stupid thing to tell the public. The idiots have just been given the go-ahead to de-mask, and every business out there that is trying to the right thing has been kneecapped.
Are you able to say what MfM means in this context? I’m guessing it’s not “Man for Man”.
ETA-- Maybe you meant Measure for Measure? Pretty obvious after I thought of it, but why be ambiguous when you don’t have to be? I prefer not having to puzzle over random initialisms; it’s a drag.
Initials of poster’s name, presumably. A bit odd for it to show that way on the link, maybe something auto-generated from somewhere.
Yeah, I’m really scratching my head over this. If we had some kind of vaccine passports, I could see the logic of holding out the carrot. You can do all this if you get vaccinated. But now - it seems like we’re just declaring victory and throwing caution to the wind when half the country is unvaccinated and has no intention of getting vaccinated. The only “consolation” is that the vast majority of subsequent serious illness and death will probably be among the unvaccinated, but I don’t wish death on people for being idiots. And I’m still worried about the rampant spread of variants.
Well they do have a carve-out for private business, FWIW. Since businesses won’t know who is vaccinated and who isn’t, everyone will need to carry around a mask for a while. Just as well, IMHO.
I Love Me: Fair enough. I plan to still use the initials MfM moving forward (it’s worked ok in the past), but I’ll try to double-check for lack of clarity (not to mention corniness to be honest). I was trying to emphasize my lack of medical background when recommending that article. My first edit simply said, “Recommended”.
But it’s difficult enough already for businesses to enforce masks. This will just embolden the idiots. I think in short order most business will just say “CDC says its ok, masking is optional now”.
I trusted the CDC before, when they told us to put on the damn masks and stay six feet apart, so why wouldn’t I trust them now? Sure, my gut says it feels a little early, but I’m not a disease control expert, so if they feel they have the science and data for this guidance, I’m cool with it.
Yeah, I’m not sure why nobody believes the CDC all of a sudden. They seem to be following the best science and it looks like Fauci is on board. That’s pretty good expertise right there.
I believe the CDC in their assessment of the risk for vaccinated people, in a hypothetical community where the great majority of people are vaccinated.
What I don’t understand is how they have factored into their advice the fact that half the country is not vaccinated, and has no intention of getting vaccinated, and have absolutely no intention of following the CDC’s quite different recommendations for unvaccinated people.
They did not factor in the deliberately ignorant.
Things that I personally repeatedly saw over the last year:
People pointing at the sign on the front of the store and saying “It says I have to have a mask-it is right here in my pocket”
People wearing Trump masks
People wearing masks on their chins and saying “See? It is on my face!”
People putting on their masks when the store insists, suddenly gasping as if being choked by a gorilla, then falling to the floor…sometimes accompanied by someone yelling "You are killing my (wife/husband/child/friend)
People deliberately coughing in someone else’s face
And so much more. If the CDC puts out a thousand word document and the three words “no” “mask” and “required” are anywhere in that document, even if the words are nowhere near each other, all they will see is “No Mask Required!”.
Perhaps continuing statistics in the coming weeks showing that the vast majority of serious and disease and death is now among the unvaccinated might encourage more people to get vaccinated? But who am I kidding, that would require that people are not irredeemable morons.
How do you know this? There’s probably no one who’s experienced the deliberately ignorant more than Fauci over the last year.
The disease and death has been among the unvaccinated all along and they still didn’t get vaccinated. How will this encourage anyone who wasn’t already inclined to get a shot?
The unvaccinated are not going to say:
“Hey neato!! The CDC says I can go without a mask if I get vaccinated!”
They are going to say:
“Hey neato!! The CDC says I can go without a mask!”
This is my thought as well. I get the feeling that CDC is basing their recommendations in environment where everyone is doing the right thing–both vaccinated and not. In this chart of mask recommendations:
I’m pretty sure the vaccinated column allowances on the right is dependent on the unvaccinated people in the left column also following the recommendations. Like the last line of the chart for group exercise showing unvaccinated people wearing masks and vaccinated people without. But what if there are unvaccinated people not wearing masks? Is it still safe for a vaccinated person to go maskless?
I think it’s correct that the risk to a vaccinated person from the early strains is minimal. We have definitive data that almost nobody gets seriously ill or dies once fully vaccinated.
But we are nowhere near herd immunity, this policy will surely exacerbate irresponsible behavior among the willfully unvaccinated, and extend and increase community transmission and serious consequences among the unvaccinated. And continuing community transmission will inevitably lead to potentially more dangerous variants becoming widespread in the U.S. sooner rather than later. And those variants may put even vaccinated people at some risk again. Get ready to line up again for your modified booster.
I think I’d have been much more comfortable with this if we had at least waited until everyone who is willing to get vaccinated (including kids) were vaccinated, which might be only a month or so away? That would both protect all the non-idiot people, and bring us closer to herd immunity.
Two reasons. The first is that we have other sources of data, We can see, for instance, that dropping mask requirements seemed to increase in infection numbers in several places. We’ve been told we didn’t reach heard immunity. We know that the vaccines are less effective on variants. We know that children can still die. And we know that wearing a mask protects others, so talk about saying some of us can continue wearing a mask doesn’t make sense.
The second is listening to what the CDC didn’t say. They didn’t say that they considered the aspect we’re. They talk only about what is good for those who are vaccinated. By itself, that might not mean much, but with the previous paragraph, it heavily implies they weren’t considered.
It seems obvious that you would need to reassure people about the concern of antivaxxers if you’re going to make an announcement like this. That they didn’t do so communicates that those concerns were not considered. The CDC already seemed naive with how many people they thought would get vaccinated.
Everything up until now has been suggesting that we still need to wear masks. A sudden reversal needs a lot of explanation for those of us who have been following the data to accept it. On the other hand, those who haven’t will now be treating us like garbage to be skeptical.
I mean, will that guy who won’t let his aunt interact with him seem normal? How is he going to push said aunt to actually get vaccinated now that the CDC has pulled the rug out from under everything?
So you’re saying you know better than Fauci and all the other doctors at the CDC. Isn’t that the same line conservatives have been taking for the past year?
Who here has said they know better than Dr. Fauci? There’s some logical apprehension about a trust-based system during a time when so many Americans have not been trustworthy:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/14/politics/joe-biden-cdc-mask-guidance/index.html
At the root of the trepidation and consternation is the fact that the CDC’s new policy relies almost entirely on trust. It depends on unvaccinated people, who could harbor the new variants circulating within the US population, continuing to wear masks to protect themselves and to protect others who may not be able to get the vaccine, either for medical reasons or because they’re too young.
When asked how store or restaurant owners will know whether their customers are safe without masks, Fauci acknowledged that it will be a difficult challenge in the months ahead.
“They will not be able to know. I mean, you’re going to be depending on people being honest enough to say whether they were vaccinated or not, and responsible enough to be wearing… a mask, not only for their own protection, but also for the protection of others,” Fauci told Tapper.
Bolding mine.
Fauci is absolutely correct. He does not, however, control those Americans who are irresponsible and unvaccinated. Hence our consternation.
I have absolutely no intention of ever unmasking, for a couple of reasons;
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I work in a customer-facing job and I no longer have to force myself to smile all the time.
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It conceals my eczema and missing teeth, and noone can tell if I haven’t shaved for a day or two.
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I haven’t caught so much as a common cold since last May.
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I have a chronic cough and am often congested and I don’t have to worry about sneezing or coughing on others this way, plus I can protect them from any other pathogens I might be exhaling.
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I’m rather proud of my collection of masks at this point and I like that when I leave the house in the morning I can pick a face that suits my mood.
No, I’m not. I pointed out why we have questions. At no point did I claim we think they’re definitely wrong, that we know better. It’s very possible that the CDC did take all of this into account.
Yes, there is an aspect of deferring to the experts on a subject. But you seem to miss that I was talking about facts that came from other experts. Right now, the CDC appears to be disagreeing with them. Maybe they aren’t—maybe we just misunderstand. But, until we know that, it is entirely understandable for us to think the CDC might be wrong.
It’s not like it’s the science part of what they said that’s being question. No one doubts that the risk to vaccinated people is indeed low. The question is about the wisdom of the policy aspect. It is about the people they didn’t mention: the unvaccinated.
When you make a sudden reversal of policy, one that was not predicted by the facts at hand, it is understandable that there are questions. I am hopeful that everything was considered. I hope to understand the decision. But I also know that Australia just seemed to come to the opposite conclusion.
Republicans were listening to fearmongers, and not facts. That’s why we were telling them who they should listen to. The situation here are people who are listening to the facts but are confused by them. These are not directly comparable situations.
I very much want to believe that we have actually turned the corner this much. But it is the nature to question that which we don’t understand. That is how we increase understanding. The problem only comes when you listen to those who ignore the facts.
Right now, it seems too good to be true. It’s not wrong to be skeptical at first.