DC Residents, If You Hate the Mask Mandate, We Have More Bad News for You

Well, if you’re a DC resident and are sick of the mask mandate, we sort of have some bad news for you. You’ll still have to wear masks for weeks. Vaccination rates in the city have remained stagnant while new cases are rising, which is the explanation the city’s health officials offered recently. The Delta variant is the latest chapter in our COVID saga. DC said they expect to keep the mask mandate in place as long as Thanksgiving if things don’t shape up (via NBC Washington):

DC #maskmandate to stay in place for at least “a few more weeks” and possibly through Thanksgiving @_dcHealth official tells @nbcwashington “we’re hopeful that on Thanksgiving we’ll be in a different spot, but that relies on people getting vaccinated”
— Mark Segraves (@SegravesNBC4) August 9, 2021

D.C. health officials hope the indoor mask mandate can be dropped by Thanksgiving — but that may not be possible if the numbers don’t improve.
As D.C. enters its second week of a new mask mandate and the delta variant spreads, the number of people getting tested at pop-up testing sites has jumped. The number of new cases is rising daily, though, and the number of people getting vaccinated is stagnant, at about 1,000 people per day.
Patrick Ashley, a senior deputy director of the D.C. health department, said the mask mandate is likely to be in effect for weeks to come.
“We’re very hopeful that we’ll get back to normal around the holidays,” he said.

“Back to normal by the holiday?!” This is ridiculous. First, most of the masks being worn right now do nothing to curb the spread of COVID. Anthony Fauci even admitted this so we’re just going back to the same tired and failed containment policies that didn’t work prior to the vaccine rollouts. Delta is hitting the unvaccinated hard. If the government wants to truly curb the spread, then reach out to these people, most of whom are still on the fence about the long-term health side effects of the vaccine. Sure, others don’t want it and are skeptical, but denigrating everyone in this unvaccinated category as a country bumpkin does nothing to address the issue of boosting vaccinations. That’s the goal, and the Biden administration has been exceptionally poor at messaging. The experts have also been equally incompetent in trying to sell the vaccine. No wonder why scores of people have been rendered immobile; these so-called experts cannot keep their stories straight. And now, DC will have masks until late November.