No more masks?? (What are your thoughts?)

[Caracal]

I'm fully vaccinated and I live alone, so I appreciate being able to ease up on masks a little bit when I'm out in public. It will be especially nice not have to wear a mask outdoors (not a requirement of my city, but a requirement of my employer until this past week).  That having been said, I fully recognize that not everyone is vaccinated and that there are still people who are vulnerable and/or immunocompromised. For that reason, I still plan to wear a mask when I'm in public indoor places like a grocery store or Wal-Mart that lack social distancing. And I'll of course respect any business that requests people continue to mask for the time being.

Yeah, that's what I plan to do, as well. Probably worth remembering that places like grocery stores really aren't where most spread occurs. The places that are most dangerous are bars and restaurants, as well as workplaces.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Have you been out and about since the change in the mask advice? 

Do you feel safe?

Most everyone was still wearing masks at the grocery store two days ago, although I had been seeing a growing number of uncovered faces even before the CDC's announcement the other day and I'm sure that we will see more people dropping masks now.

Personally, I feel safe, and have felt safe, because I'm fully vaccinated. But for now I will continue to wear the mask when at a store or in other indoor establishments.

[pgher]

Very few people were wearing masks around here anyway, and vaccination rates are low. I'm still going to wear a mask. I have zero confidence that people will really only go un-masked if they were vaccinated: the exact people who won't wear masks are the people who won't get vaccinated.

A friend of mine told me that his elderly (90-something) aunt just passed away. She had COVID last year, then was vaccinated, then got COVID again and died. Nothing is 100%.

[Caracal]

A friend of mine told me that his elderly (90-something) aunt just passed away. She had COVID last year, then was vaccinated, then got COVID again and died. Nothing is 100%.

That's very true, and I don't think it is a good idea to judge other people's risk tolerances and decisions, as long as they are within certain reasonable bounds. I'm not really comfortable yet sitting inside at a restaurant or coffee shop and am still going to wear masks inside, for now.

That said, its important to remember that reducing risks should change our decision making process. In theory, my baseline covid risk was relatively low to begin with. Didn't want to catch it, but chances are, I wouldn't have been hospitalized and/or died. Vaccinated, those risks have been dramatically cut, probably to levels that make COVID a risk comparable to the kind of basic risks I face from being alive.

An elderly person, or a person with is immuno compromised is at a higher risk to begin with, and may not get quite the same reduction in risk I get and that might influence their choices, although a person in their 90s is at much higher risk from a cold too.

[Sun_Worshiper]

A friend of mine told me that his elderly (90-something) aunt just passed away. She had COVID last year, then was vaccinated, then got COVID again and died. Nothing is 100%.

That's very true, and I don't think it is a good idea to judge other people's risk tolerances and decisions, as long as they are within certain reasonable bounds. I'm not really comfortable yet sitting inside at a restaurant or coffee shop and am still going to wear masks inside, for now.

That said, its important to remember that reducing risks should change our decision making process. In theory, my baseline covid risk was relatively low to begin with. Didn't want to catch it, but chances are, I wouldn't have been hospitalized and/or died. Vaccinated, those risks have been dramatically cut, probably to levels that make COVID a risk comparable to the kind of basic risks I face from being alive.

An elderly person, or a person with is immuno compromised is at a higher risk to begin with, and may not get quite the same reduction in risk I get and that might influence their choices, although a person in their 90s is at much higher risk from a cold too.

Well said.

Everyone is entitled to their risk tolerance and we're all figuring out how to navigate life in the context of our own tolerance levels. That said,  if we are waiting for 100% certainty then we will never be taking off our masks or sitting inside (and we might as well stop engaging in most other day-to-day activities as well - many of which are much riskier than dying of covid if Vaccinated).

[AvidReader]

Have you been out and about since the change in the mask advice? 

Do you feel safe?

Flew home to visit my Aged Parent yesterday and was gratified to see that the airlines were still politely reminding my fellow travellers to wear masks over both nose and mouth (yay!). I felt safer in the airports and on the planes than I have felt at any point in my rural Southern college town. People in Aged P's town are still very careful despite the lifting of mask restrictions, and most businesses are still enforcing them.

AR.

[spork]

A lot of faculty need a to get a grip. They didn't give a damn about immunocompromised students pre-COVID

Or immunocompromised co-workers.

My state's department of health released a statement that 1 out of 2 unvaccinated local people age 65+ who get Covid are ending up hospitalized. I have no idea how accurate this data is or where it is coming from. But it's not being broadcast by the media, even though it seems to be a persuasive message.

Edited to add: I recently went on an outdoor run with two physicians. All three of us have been vaccinated and none of us wore masks. This activity fell within my risk tolerance. But I will probably be wearing a mask inside grocery stores for another year at minimum.

[apl68]

Still wearing a mask indoors in public, although I've been fully vaccinated for weeks now.  At work I put one on whenever I come out from the staff area of the library.  We still ask people to wear them here, so it's up to us to set the example.  Elsewhere it's just as easy to slip on a mask as to engage in awkward explanations about being vaccinated.

[Cheerful]

Informative article about scientific debates over mask quality and mask impact:

https://www.factcheck.org/2021/03/scicheck-the-evolving-science-of-face-masks-and-covid-19/


Critical Analysis:  "Cloth masks might offer some benefit for people running into a grocery store for five to 10 minutes, but for workers who are there for hours, Brosseau thinks they do little to capture or filter out the smaller respiratory particles, or aerosols, that can linger in the air and build up. That's why she thinks more attention needs to be paid to better ventilation systems and better masks — ultimately, N95 respirators for workers and other standardized masks for the public."

Unknowns:  "...it's not yet known how good is good enough when it comes to masks. And there are still many remaining unknowns about how the coronavirus spreads, including how much virus it takes to infect a person and how that might depend on particle size or the exact route the virus uses to enter the body. "Without that information," he [Volckens] said, "it's really hard to make risk-based decisions."

[AvidReader]

Thanks for posting the article, Cheerful. It has a great collection of links to the relevant studies. My understanding has been that the masks provide little benefit to the wearer but more benefit to the people around the wearer (and that still seems to be the case), but it's interesting to know that there might be greater benefits to wearers also.

AR.

[Hibush]

Very few people were wearing masks around here anyway, and vaccination rates are low. I'm still going to wear a mask. I have zero confidence that people will really only go un-masked if they were vaccinated: the exact people who won't wear masks are the people who won't get vaccinated.

The dilemma facing local mask-refusers now is whether to wear a mask and look like a libtard, or to go without and looking like you got vaccinated like a libtard.

[Descartes]

It should have never been political to begin with, but, like everything in this country it became political.

I wore masks when required and when the advice was that it was helpful, but I never liked them. 

I don't want to contribute to being political about them, but I can't help it; for a year we were screamed at "WEAR MASKS, BELIEVE SCIENCE, SCIENCE IS REAL, I WILL LISTEN TO THE EXPERTS!!!"   

Well all of that isn't aging well with some people.  It kind of makes me want to go up to masked people at Target and yell "Someone doesn't believe in SCIENCE," though of course I won't do anything like that.

[Caracal]

It should have never been political to begin with, but, like everything in this country it became political.

I wore masks when required and when the advice was that it was helpful, but I never liked them. 

I don't want to contribute to being political about them, but I can't help it; for a year we were screamed at "WEAR MASKS, BELIEVE SCIENCE, SCIENCE IS REAL, I WILL LISTEN TO THE EXPERTS!!!"   

Well all of that isn't aging well with some people.  It kind of makes me want to go up to masked people at Target and yell "Someone doesn't believe in SCIENCE," though of course I won't do anything like that.

There's a difference between failing to follow minimum standards designed to keep everyone safe and being more risk adverse than is absolutely necessary. I sometimes see people out walking in my neighborhood wearing those reflective vests. It always seems a little unnecessary to me, since traffic isn't really that heavy and there are plenty of sidewalks, but who cares? Maybe the person takes a route where they have to walk on a more dangerous road than I do. Maybe, they know someone who was hit by a car while walking or they were hit themselves and are particularly attuned to this particular danger. It probably does reduce their risk a little bit and just because it isn't a precaution I'm interested in taking doesn't mean the person is crazy. Besides, it doesn't harm me in the slightest.

I'm still disinclined to go eat in a restaurant inside or go to a bar, and when I do go inside in public spaces I'm still wearing a mask. I'm not sure if those decisions are strictly rational at the moment, but I'm not required to submit all of my decisions on risk and comfort level to some scientific panel as long as I'm not doing anything that is more risky to others around me.

[hmaria1609]

Yesterday, DC Mayor Bowser announced lifting the mask mandate:
https://wtop.com/dc/2021/05/dc-lifts-mask-and-distancing-requirements-for-fully-vaccinated-people/
Posted on WTOP online (5/17/21)

[Mobius]

Re: Immunocompromised

What should we be doing for them? We knew the mask mandate would end sooner or later while the pandemic was still around (Biden telegraphed it with 100 days of masking).

Re: Masks in retail stores

Went to Sam's Club today and noticed most of the workers were still masked up despite company rules saying vaccinated employees can ditch the mask. Vaccine-hesitant or cautious?