I agree this may be a tad premature, and tying it to community vax rates may have been wiser, but it’s become clear that there is a pretty decent segment of the population that will not get vaccinated without a carrot/stick situation. So I think this guidance does 2 things.
Make it very clear that the safety standards between vax and un-vax are significant. This allows, for example, private businesses with membership (thing gyms or even summer camps) to request vaccination status and adjust policies based on it. If my gym requires my COVID vax card for me to exercise maskless but requires everybody else to mask up then that may be an incentive. Some of these things may require court victory (cruise ships, for example). This is the stick.
Rewards those that got vaccinated with a sense of freedom going into summer. Recognize that the vaccines are awesome and that we have reduced the highest risk outcomes for the majority of the vaccinated public. If you are a high-risk individual that still refuses to get vaccinated then I’m really not sure what to do - we can’t really make the other 60% of the population wear masks just to save them. This is the carrot.
Maybe the carrot will work; or maybe the stick of having to mask up when nobody else does will. Or maybe nothing will…
The good news is that all of the data indicates that vaccinated individuals are both very unlikely to get symptomatic COVID and are very unlikely to spread it to somebody else.
I have mine here at school but am not wearing it unless administration tells me to put it on. The only people here are staff, and we are all vaccinated.
Problem is, this all relies on a degree of compliance (and honesty) that I don’t think actually exists in this country at this time.
Vax cards are a joke. Absent a workable national system for proving one’s vaccination system, all we’ve really got is people’s word that they’re vaccinated. We know that a significant percent of the population will flat-out lie about this, just like they’ll lie about having a medical condition that prevents them from wearing a mask.
And we’re not going to get such a national system. I don’t like that, but it’s just not going to happen.
Maybe I’m a cold bastard (I’m fairly sure I’m not), but at some point, I just can’t let the actions of others I care about affect my mood too much. My parents are not vaccinated. They are in their late sixties/early 70s. They have no intention of doing so. My father for good reasons (he had an anaphylactic reaction to a wasp sting two or three years back – but the way he talks about vaccines, I’m all but certain he would not have anyway.) My mom because she doesn’t want to, though she believes in the virus and takes precautions. They listen to right wing radio, both in English and Polish. There’s not much I can do to alter their behavior. I don’t want them to get the virus; I don’t want them to die, but I’ve stopped worrying and stressing about them, because that doesn’t do me and my family any good. If they get it and die, it will be sad; it will be unfortunate; but I will not feel guilty. They’re adults; they make their own choices; they have all the informatoin they need – we’ve told them in many ways; they do not have to listen to me or anyone else in our family.
I can’t help it. What can I say, I worry about my brother even more because he’s a Trumpist loon. There’s another sibling who’s a bit estranged from the family (or at least from me) who I also suspect is anti-vaxx (anti-this vaxx, anyway). I worry about her, too.
I worry about my father for different reasons. Since he’s not competent, I’m responsible for his health care, so the vaccination status of visitors is something I have to worry about. It’s a responsibility, not a choice.
Were he competent, he would have enthusiastically chosen to be vaccinated. I know this. I know this because, before he became incompetent, he would get absolutely furious at anti-vaxxers (this is pre-COVID). He’s old enough to remember polio (and FDR). He knows what vaccines accomplished.
Yes, my brother is an adult, and can make his own choices. But his choices affect others. And, of course, I really, really don’t want him (and his family) to get COVID. I especially don’t want his 90-something year old MIL, who lives with my brother and his wife, to get it. Not to mention his wife.
That is all understandable. It’s hard. You are doing a great job with your father; you are absolutely entrusted to inquire the vaccination status of his visitors and I absolutely would be a hawk about not letting unvaccinated visitors see him.
What I do hope is a lasting mask legacy such that wearing masks has become normalized, so that when people do have the sniffles and the such going forward, whether it be a cold or flu or whatnot, they mask up for the protection of others; I don’t expect any high level of compliance here with that directive, but if a percentage of the population do, that’s helpful.
You think we’ll be dealing with this pandemic for another 20 to 30 years?
Personally, I just ordered up my Seahawks tickets, games start in September. I expect we’ll have put this behind us by then.
I understand the concern but I think it is mitigated by the fact that these people are being vaccinated as we speak. So in a month’s time, or so, they will be in the vaccinated population. In the meantime, the risks they face are decreasing. So while the CDC could have waited another 30 days, it can also be argued that they could have waited 60 days because maximum effects of immunity don’t kick in for 3 weeks after the second shot. And of course there’s the 10-20% who are on the fence but can be convinced to get the vaccine, so why not wait for them as well before removing mask restrictions… etc. And that is how the lifting of masking restrictions becomes an ever moving set of goal posts.
Yes, that is probably true. But ultimately at some point the responsibility for misbehavior has to fall on the actor. It’s one thing to not get a vaccine and then casually disregard mask mandates. It’s another to actively mislead another person about your vaccine status in order to bypass business rules.
I would imagine significant liability would attach to a person that lied about vaccination status to board a cruise ship, for example.
I guess I just believe that soon, if not now, we have to reach a point where the risk to the un-vaccinated doesn’t compel the vaccinated to dramatically modify their personal behavior. But your situation where you have an at-risk individual that is potentially harmed by exposure to non-vaccinated individuals is clearly a problem area. I suspect (and hope) that places like LTC facilities, hospitals, etc will continue to requires masking of all people for exactly that reason.
I wouldn’t be surprised if everything went back to “normal” over the next year.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if some mutation of the COVID19 evolved that was unaffected by the current vaccines, leading to the worldwide response starting over from scratch.
I hope it doesn’t come to another major pandemic event, but I think we can expect for covid variants to become part and parcel of the “seasonal flu vaccine” scenario.
I don’t think there would be any appetite for “starting over from scratch,” at least in the U.S. We did it this time, barely, but I think there would be huge resistance to another year of lock down, no matter how dire the situation. I’m not expressing my view here, as I have had it pretty easy and could keep this up for another year or two without serious complaint. I don’t think people with school aged kids, for example, feel the same.
I am very, very glad this didn’t happen, and I hope it never will, but I do wonder how the reaction to the situation would have been different if COVID had, like most diseases, impacted the very old and the very young about the same: if babies and toddlers and elementary students had also been high risk. I know I’ve taken it pretty damn seriously, but nothing like I would have if I’d felt my son was at serious risk. I feel like even the worst Trumpists would have felt differently if their kids were in real danger. I hope to hell we never find out.
It’s none of the above, so I’d add a #4: we can’t tell who’s been vaccinated and who hasn’t, and since we haven’t yet reached herd immunity, wouldn’t it be better to continue mask mandates? If there were a sure, legal way to determine in all circumstances who’d been vaccinated, I’d be overjoyed at the CDC’s news. As there isn’t, I’m concerned and confused.
What happened to the importance of herd immunity? And is it quixotic to believe enough never-vaxxers and vacccine-hesitant people are honorable enough about mask-wearing that the honor system will work?
Just went to my local park district to pick up a race packet, the library, and Staples. I didn’t wear a mask, and nobody asked me to put one one. Everybody else was wearing a mask. Even saw a person walking by my office alone who was wearing one earlier today.
But why would it be better? Is it to keep you safe, despite your vaccine, or is it to keep others safe from you, because despite your vaccine, you may be spreading it, or is it just so that the anti-vaxers can’t get away with not wearing their masks, and this will keep them safer from each other? I’m sincerely asking.