The New CDC Guidelines

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I feel a bit ambivalent about the new CDC guidelines — that fully vaccinated people can go without masks in indoor spaces, including highly populated ones. On one hand, that feels exciting. On the other hand, it becomes very difficult to make community decisions. It remains important to protect the health of one another.

Celebrations:

— To begin, it makes me excited to get to this point. The science is showing us that fully vaccinated people are unlikely to contract COVID, and especially not with dangerous outcomes, and the science is showing is that fully vaccinated people are unlikely to spread it to others (we didn’t know at whether this would be true at first. I’m glad the data is showing this).

I also hope this will incentivize vaccination for those who can receive it.

Concerns:

— These new guidelines are based on the data about fully vaccinated people. The CDC guidelines say that unvaccinated people still need to protect themselves with masking and social distancing. I’m nervous that we seem to be going on an honor system here. We know that a lot of unvaccinated people are going to go mask-less, something that’s not only dangerous to them but others who have health conditions that make them vulnerable. This is additionally true for children who cannot yet be vaccinated.

I’m also concerned that this passes on the decision making for masking guidelines and in-person gatherings to communities and businesses rather than federal stakeholders. Do leaders of houses of worship want to be pressured to make decisions that could turn their congregations into super-spreaders? Do community event holders want that responsibility? Restaurant managers? Grocery store managers?

Some places may still have high COVID transmission numbers and low vaccination rates. This isn’t uniform. It would be very helpful to have some advice concerning benchmarks to make these decisions.

What are your thoughts?

–Renee Roederer