Cities across the United States are returning to normal following the CDC’s new mask guidelines that came out over the weekend. According to the agency, vaccinated Americans no longer need to wear masks at indoor or outdoor gatherings, but not everyone is excited about this news.
CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen told CNN on Sunday that “the CDC meant to say something really good, which is these vaccines are really protective,” but, “there were unintended consequences of their actions.”
“We’ve seen governors and mayors and business owners drop mask mandates, and as a result of that we’ve now made life much less safe for people who are unvaccinated, for immuno-compromised individuals and for young children who cannot yet be vaccinated.”
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told CNN that just because the guidelines say vaccinated people don’t need masks, they can still be worn. “Not everybody has to rip off their mask because our guidance changed,” she said. “If you are concerned, please do consult your physician before you take off your mask.”
Walensky also went on ABC News and stated that “For the unvaccinated, our policy has not changed.”
“We were going to get to a place in this pandemic where vaccinated people were going to be able to take off their mask. We’re lucky to be there with the science that we have, and now we have to take this foundational step that is completely based in science and understand what it means as we open the entire country.”
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, after sending tens of thousands of elderly New Yorkers to their graves, announced on Monday that the state will adopt the CDC’s guidelines starting on Wednesday.
Here are the new guidelines from the CDC’s website:
Governor Cuomo also stated that Radio City Music Hall is going to open at full capacity and the audience will be mask-free, but 100% of the audience will be required to be fully vaccinated. The concept of how this would be enforced was brought up on CNN by Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University.
“If we had had a very simple electronic system from the beginning, basically you have a pass on your phone that turns green after you’ve been vaccinated, businesses and venues all over the country would be able to say, ‘Good news, if you have a green pass you don’t need to wear a mask.,” Reiner said. “We don’t have that, so how do we go forward?”
Major retailers like Target, Walmart, and CVS have rolled back mask requirements for vaccinated customers, but with no way of knowing who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t, many question the timing of the CDC’s announcement.
Conservative Daily Update 