As I've had time to think about it and read a few more stories about the issue, I've realized that I was actually too soft on the CDC and their new masks off guidance. It's so dangerous and beyond stupid that they need to be called on it, and I'm calling them on it.
https://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-epidemiologists-expected-mask-wearing-140856851.html“It is either you trust the vaccine, or you do not,” said Kristin Harrington, an epidemiology Ph.D. student at Emory. “And if we trust the vaccine, that means an unlimited number of vaccinated individuals should be allowed to gather together.”
Okay, this is just dumb. Even if you did trust the vaccine, that doesn't mean anything because you can't trust this virus. And this masks off approach is dumb even if the virus doesn't mutate and the vaccines work as expected. Too many people are still unvaccinated and it's still entirely possible, even likely, that vaccinated people will get infected over and over again but shrug it off without even knowing while over and over again they go maskless in crowds and can still spread it even to people wearing masks because not only are most of those people not wearing eye protection but also because most of these masks, as we've been over time and again, don't do a whole lot to protect you from virus particles that are in the air around you but instead are there to prevent you from spreading them yourself. That's all even assuming that it's only the vaccinated people who will go maskless. Even with that it's still too dangerous. And then throw in the fact that the unvaccinated will be going maskless too and this policy makes the Biden administration just as dangerously dumb on the mask issue as Trump ever was. And the sad thing is we're very possibly going to make things worse than they ever were when we were making so much progress.
Now maybe it doesn't play out that way. Maybe we go maskless, the virus doesn't mutate dangerously, more and more people get vaccinated, and it all works out in the end. But my analogy would be some kid with the ink still wet on his new driver's license gets a used car and before he even gets it inspected or at least checks the tires, one of which you find out later actually has a slow leak in it that he doesn't know about, he gets out on the highway and drives it around at 120 mph weaving in and out of traffic. Then after twenty minutes of scolding him from the passenger seat he finally takes an exit ramp going 70 mph that has a posted speed of 25 and as the curve in the road comes up you have to scream in his ear, "SLOW DOWN!" and he finally sees the danger and slams on the breaks going into a skid as you feel the rumble of the antilock system kick in, and you barely manage to stay on the road and avoid a catastrophe, so he says with smarmy ignorance see it was okay. No. No, it was not okay. It was extremely dangerous and you just got super lucky.
"Others acknowledged that policy decisions are based on many goals, such as invigorating the economy and incentivizing people to get vaccinated."
And that's part of it right there as you point out LetterRip. Incentivizing people to get vaccinated.
I just looked up the word extortion to make sure I'd be using it right. "extortion:
the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.
"he used bribery and extortion to build himself a huge, art-stuffed mansion"
Yup. So now the CDC is extorting the public, trying to get them to vaccinate under the threat of infecting them with the most deadly virus we've seen in a hundred years, extortion using biological warfare as the theat.
And opening the economy? That can be done while still keeping mask mandates for the vast majority of places like we have now.
"Respondents also said that as long as the virus was still spreading, masks were important to protect high-risk people and those who cannot be vaccinated, like children or people who have underlying health conditions."
And a lot of people cannot be vaccinated because of health reasons like allergies. And a lot more people live with those people so yes the ones who live with them can get vaccinated, should get vaccinated, and do get vaccinated, but when the masks come off those people can still get infected and we're not certain yet but it looks like they could still pass that infection on to the unvaccinatable people they live with. It's a lot less likely and that's great but again we're dealing with large numbers here, hundreds of millions of people in America, so a lot less likely only goes so far.
We have the same sad situation now that we had at the beginning when the CDC said don't wear masks. Even if they come around eventually and change their mind again and say you need to start wearing masks, the mixed messages reduces their credibility and confuses people, and gives the ones who hate the masks but would reluctantly wear them the excuse they need to just say screw it.
https://news.yahoo.com/costco-no-longer-require-fully-213709260.htmlSo it begins.
"Costco said that in locations with no state or local mask requirements, customers who are fully vaccinated can enter the store without a face mask or shield. The retailer said it will not ask for proof of vaccination."
The CDC director says she is following the science. Even if the science says that vaccinated people are safe and won't spread it, real world her policy means that masses of unvaccinated people will immediately be going maskless in crowded indoor spaces like Costco.
Biden and the Democrats had one thing going for them over Trump on the Covid response and that was masks. And now he doesn't even have that. And to top it off not only is he not instituting common sense border controls like the countries that have kept Covid under control, but he actually just diverted billions of dollars that were meant for the Covid response to instead help fund his border (not a) crisis policy of mass international travel via immigration during a pandemic. So he's taking away from resources to stop the pandemic in order to fund efforts that will make it worse. Double whammy. Whereas he was a half failure before on Covid now he just went full on massive epic fail.
So what can Biden do? He should fire the CDC director immediately and get someone in there who knows what they are doing. And he can stop encouraging mass migrations during a pandemic. He almost certainly won't do either.