CDC Mask Guidance

“In a major step toward returning to pre-pandemic life, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased mask-wearing guidance for fully vaccinated people on Thursday, allowing them to stop wearing masks outdoors in crowds and in most indoor settings.” (AP News)

Both sides highlight the political implications of the new guidance:

“The political implications of today’s announcement were inescapable. The president needs the pandemic to end, but he also needs the public to see that his policies and leadership have helped make it end. So far, his success has been measured mostly in numbers—in the falling infection rate and in the hundreds of millions of vaccinations…

“Liberating the people from their face coverings is a far more visible step—one that Americans will feel, physically as well as symbolically, in their daily lives. It will also ease one of the most polarizing issues of the pandemic. The harsh political reality is that people might be more willing to credit Biden for ending the mask mandates than they are for keeping them healthy.” (Russell Berman, The Atlantic)

“What changed scientifically over the last two weeks? Nothing at all, but plenty changed politically. Congress and the media have pressed hard on the CDC’s assumptions that the vaccinated are still at risk in the pandemic, arguing — logically — that either the vaccines work or they don’t…

“And voila! Suddenly the guidance has changed, and not just for outdoors — where the risk of transmission is beyond microscopic even for the unvaccinated — but now for indoors as well, with exceptions for high-density situations. This new guidance has nothing to do with changing scientific data, but is the result of political pressure being brought to bear on the CDC and White House to quit undermining vaccinations by pretending they don’t matter.” (Ed Morrissey, Hot Air)