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Vaccines Are Great. Masks Make Them Even Better.
h/t Hot Air[The Atlantic] - America’s split with masks turned out to be a brief hiatus. After getting their shots in the spring and early summer, many people figured they could dump their face coverings for good—a sentiment the CDC crystallized in May, when the agency gave fully immunized people its blessing to largely dispense with masking, indoors and out. Yesterday, the agency pivoted back, recommending that even fully vaccinated people wear masks under certain high-risk circumstances, including in public indoor spaces in parts of the country where the virus is surging, Director Rochelle Walensky said in a press briefing. (She specified places where new case numbers exceed 50 per 100,000 people in the past seven days; that currently includes about two-thirds of U.S. counties.) With an ultra-contagious SARS-CoV-2 variant rampaging, face coverings are being called upon to once again supplement the protection offered by vaccines. The CDC’s decision, which many public-health researchers have been anticipating for weeks, might look like a flip-flop or a fumble, some sort of masking mea culpa. But to me, and the experts I talked with, redonning masks (or simply keeping them on, as many people have) is not some shameful regression to the dark ages of the pre-vaccination era. Nor is it an indictment of the COVID-19 vaccines, which are doing an extraordinary job of curtailing the global burden of disease. Instead, it’s a doubling down on two defenses that we know work, and work well together. Masks, after all, are reemerging in response to the fast-changing conditions around us—offering another layer of protection at a time when we need it most, in much the same way we seek out umbrellas when it rains, sunscreen when it’s sunny, and better security systems when our neighborhood crime rates tick up. "With Delta being such a dominant force, we need to include every layer we can think of," Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University, told me. The vaccines are excellent. But while so many people remain vulnerable, and the virus continues to shape-shift, shots can’t shoulder the burden of protection alone. Our understanding of masks is evolving; for now, they still have a crucial role to play, as a partner to the shots we'll be depending on long term. Basically the reason vaccinated people are asked to wear masks is because: while they are safe from symptomatic disease, they can be asymptomatic carries who can infect unvaccinated people. Now, one might ask "So what, is is their [unvaccinated] choice to be idiots - why should I care?" That's because when they get Covid and cannot pay for their treatments (The average cost to treat a hospitalized patient with coronavirus is $30,000*, according to a study: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/09/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-coronavirus-treatment-costs.html), guess where the $$$ will come from? *That's also why your government (and mine) push vaccinations for all they are worth. Costs of vaccination are $47 (https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-to-be-paying-average-of-47-per-person-for-pfizer-moderna-vaccines/) i.e. 1/640 of treatment. Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2021-07-30 |
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