The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has changed its guidance once again to recommend that fully vaccinated persons continue to wear masks in certain situations.
Apparently, this reversal was made out of concern for the delta variant, which appears to be more transmissible, though not at all more deadly. That last part is key: Vaccinated persons are not falling seriously ill or dying from the delta variant because the vaccines work. Out of the tens of millions of people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19, less than 0.037% have been hospitalized with the virus. So, vaccinated persons are at no more risk of dying from the coronavirus or one of its many variants than they were 18 days ago when the CDC agreed that vaccinated teachers and students don’t need to wear masks. The science has not changed, but the CDC’s risk assessment has.
Unfortunately, we went from trying to contain the virus’s damage and to protect people from falling seriously ill to trying to get rid of the virus and its spread completely. The former goal has already been achieved, thanks to the vaccination. Coronavirus death rates are now the lowest they’ve been since the start of the pandemic:
In USA, #COVID mortality is now the lowest since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. pic.twitter.com/bc3zRxIAiO
— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) July 28, 2021
The latter goal — to stop the spread of the coronavirus altogether — is completely unrealistic. The coronavirus is now endemic. It will always be with us, just like the flu or the common cold. But as long as the vaccine is doing what it is supposed to do and protecting recipients from the virus and its variants, we should not care.
The only people who are at risk of being hospitalized and dying from the delta variant are the unvaccinated. But even among the unvaccinated persons who have contracted the delta variant, a familiar trend has appeared: the vast majority of those who have fallen seriously ill are older and have underlying health problems. In England, for example, there were 117 deaths from the delta variant between February and mid-June. The vast majority of those deaths were in the over-50 age group, and most suffered from other comorbidities. This is good news for the United States, where the most at-risk group — older people with underlying health conditions — enjoys extremely high vaccination rates.
What this means is that the same people who were most at risk before are the same people who are most at risk now. Will there be exceptions? Yes. But we have largely accomplished what we set out to do: We have protected the most vulnerable.
So, what exactly is the point of this guidance change? According to the CDC, it’s to protect the unvaccinated population, the majority of which is made up of young adults, who are statistically much, much less likely to die from the virus, and children, who rarely even contract it.
Again, it is time to change the way we think about this virus. The vaccines have been widely available to most age groups for months now. We as individuals are responsible for the choices we make. Anyone who wants the shot can get it. The vaccinated are not responsible for the unvaccinated, and vice versa.
Some might contest this point and argue that vaccine hesitancy could someday result in a variant the vaccine cannot protect against. But early studies prove this concern is overstated. The vaccines have thus far proven effective against every single variant that has appeared, and there is no reason to believe this will change any time soon.
The CDC’s guidance change is unnecessary and counterproductive. People need to stop listening to an agency that lost all its credibility long ago. Our public health officials’ constant flip-flops make them seem more interested in political hysteria than in evidence-backed reasoning. This guidance change is no different.
