Our 15-month experience with wearing masks in public to avoid the coronavirus was never popular, and it is headed for extinction. If the virus continues to disappear as the masks come off, we can give each other high-fives (without those annoying plastic gloves). But if COVID-19 turns its retreat into a nasty counterattack, the Centers for Disease Control will have some explaining to do.
That’s because last week the CDC said masks and social distancing are no longer recommended in most places for people who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. There are some qualifiers, like a recommendation for vaccinated people to continue wearing masks in confined places with unvaccinated people, but those nuances are going to get lost in the exhilaration of going mask-free for the first time since March 2020.
A lot of people will simply hear the following message: Masks are no longer necessary. That’s not what the CDC said, but that’s how many unvaccinated people will react — even though covered mouths and noses would still be in their best medical interests. This may be why the CDC was so reluctant to take this step.
And let’s be honest here: Mask compliance lately has been about common as people who drive the speed limit on I-10. You can go to a lot of places in Southeast Texas — and, by appearances, the rest of the nation — and not see many masks in public settings. If you think all of those people have been vaccinated, I have a new cryptocurrency you need to invest it.
Sure, some businesses are still trying to hold the line, but this is a losing battle. Even during the depths of the pandemic, some folks just didn’t want to put that section of paper or cloth across their face.
So today, even though only about half of Texas adults have been vaccinated, there is of course no way to tell that if you see someone strolling around with a mask. You could ask them if they have been jabbed, and they might have a card in their wallet or purse showing that they have been. But they could also say, falsely or not, that they were vaccinated but just don’t have the card with them.
Bottom line: less and less mask-wearing as the summer wears on.
Again, if virus numbers continue to drop anyway, none of this will matter. More people should have gotten vaccinated, but it’s possible that just enough did, even if we don’t achieve true herd immunity. In this quest, close enough is apparently OK.
If the virus rebounds this fall or the flu outbreak is especially severe, you might see more masks. More likely is that fewer and fewer people will wear them, and many of these non-maskers won’t bother with the vaccine either.
As in any large-scale public effort, from wars to recovery from natural disasters, some people carried more of the load that others. If you dutifully wore your mask, social-distanced and got vaccinated, you helped end this crisis a lot more than your neighbor who did none of those things. You helped him even though he didn’t ask for it — and won’t thank you.
But you did the right thing, and if a pandemic ever threatens us again, please do it one more time.
Thomas Taschinger, TTaschinger@BeaumontEnterprise.com, is the editorial page editor of The Beaumont Enterprise. Follow him on Twitter at @PoliticalTom