While it's encouraging that the CDC caught up with the science enough to acknowledge that "if you are fully vaccinated, you are protected," and thus has relaxed mask mandates.
That being said, Reagan acknowledged in her reporting that "Fully vaccinated individuals are still required to abide by local, state, and federal mask-wearing mandates."
Of course, but if you still wear a mask after you've been fully vaccinated, that really should be your only reason for doing so.
It's frustrating, then, that Thursday night's most recent live update from the New York Times' reporting on the CDC's announcement would be that "C.D.C. Guidance Prompts Caution in Some States." From the NYT reporting, with added emphasis:
On Thursday, the governors of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Virginia, and the mayors of New York City and Washington, D.C., all Democrats, said they were taking the new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under advisement before adopting it. In deference to local authorities, the C.D.C. said vaccinated people must continue to abide by existing state, local, or tribal laws and regulations, and follow local rules for businesses and workplaces.
Particularly rich was the quote attributed to embattled Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY). "Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said that the state had “always relied on the facts and the science to guide us throughout the worst of this pandemic” and that he would review the new federal guidelines with the state Health Department and health experts in neighboring states."
The numerous scandals which have led into different investigations Gov. Cuomo is facing suggest it's something other than "the facts and the science." This includes when it comes to the cover-up of accurate reporting of nursing home deaths from the virus and that the governor may have given his friends and family preferential access to COVID tests in the early days of the pandemic.
It's not merely states, but companies:
The new policy seemed to catch many retailers and their workers by surprise. Macy’s, Target and the Gap said they were still reviewing the new guidance, while Home Depot said it had no plans to change its current rules requiring customers and workers to wear masks in its stores.
The United Food and Commercial Workers union, representing thousands of grocery store workers, criticized the C.D.C. for failing to consider how the new policy would impact workers who have to deal with customers who are not vaccinated. “Millions of Americans are doing the right thing and getting vaccinated, but essential workers are still forced to play mask police for shoppers who are unvaccinated and refuse to follow local Covid safety measures,” the union’s president, Marc Perrone, said in a statement. “Are they now supposed to become the vaccination police?”
The Retail Leaders Industry Association, a trade group, said that the policy complicated matters in states that still have mask mandates in place that retailers must follow. “These conflicting positions put retailers and their employees in incredibly difficult situations,” the group said in a statement.
The update also claims that the commonsense, backed up by science update "was a sharp turnabout for federal health officials." People have been wearing masks for so long, and still have to even while fully vaccinated, would beg to differ.
The CDC has been super slow when it comes to updating their guidelines. What more time do states and companies who refuse to jump on board need, then? If they're not going to be listening to the CDC, who are they going to be listening to? What left is there to review?
It's time to embrace not only science, but freedom.
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