CNBC anchor Shepard Smith asked Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director Dr. Rochelle Walensky whether face masks would be "with us for a long, long time" during a Monday afternoon interview on "The News with Shepard Smith."
With a rise in Covid-19 cases despite almost two-thirds of the entire U.S. population over 12 years of age being fully vaccinated, several blue states and local jurisdictions have again turned to mask mandates in an effort to control the spread. Meanwhile, Republican-controlled states like Florida, Texas, and others have either never had mask mandates or ended theirs in the spring, with policymakers pointing out that such mandates did little to nothing to produce an actual difference in Covid results, which generally tends to follow geography and seasonality.
Discussing the effort to get kids vaccinated against a virus that poses little to no statistical risk to them, Smith opined that the current process "still leaves a lot of little kids, and it still leaves a lot of elderly people and people with underlying conditions who we're all, if we're not crazy, concerned about."
"And that means there are masks here, there and everywhere," he said. "Are masks with us for a long, long time, years, forever?"
Shepard Smith to Dr. Rochelle Walinsky: "Are masks with us for a long long time? Years? Forever?"
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) September 27, 2021
Response: "I do hope ... we will one day be able to get rid of those masks."
One day ... ?? pic.twitter.com/WIHTXcLfw6
Walensky responded by pushing for more people to get vaccinated in the "hope" that people could "one day" live mask-free.
I think the really important thing to emphasize here is the best way you can protect people with underlying conditions, immunosuppression and people who are unable to get vaccinated is to get vaccines yourself. To surround them by people who are vaccinated which puts them at much lower risk of disease.
What we do know right now from the delta variant is for people who have had two doses of the vaccine, they still need to wear their masks in the rare case that they might be a breakthrough infection. We absolutely are having studies that are starting now so that we can assess if after your booster shot if you were to get a breakthrough infection, whether you can still transmit.
Our hope is no and we'll absolutely be doing those studies. Once we have those studies I do hope that with disease transmission coming down, community transmission coming down, we will one day be able to get rid of those masks.
Earlier Monday, President Joe Biden speculated that upwards of 98% of the population would need to be vaccinated in order for things to return to normal.
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