The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Tuesday that it is, once again, flip-flopping on its mask guidance, returning to recommending masking indoors, even for fully vaccinated individuals, in certain circumstances.
The CDC also announced that everyone in K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status, should wear a mask.
“People in areas with high or substantial Covid-19 transmission should resume wearing masks,” the CDC said.
The new CDC guidance comes as the government is balancing trying to convince people that the vaccines work, while simultaneously launching a new wave of COVID fear-mongering.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky later said in a call with reporters that the decision to issue new guidance “was not something we took lightly,” but comes amid “worrisome” new science.
“In recent days, I have seen new scientific data from sequenced outbreak investigations showing that the delta variant behaves uniquely differently from past strains of the virus that cause COVID-19,” Walensky told reporters over a call.
“Information on the delta variant from several states and other countries indicate that in rare occasions, some vaccinated people infected with the delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others.”
The CDC’s mask guidance is designed to inform state and local governments, though Walensky did say that individuals “need to be wearing a mask to protect yourself and others around you” from the Delta variant at a CDC press conference held last week.
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s office blasted the CDC over the new mask guidelines, specifically for suggesting that all individuals in K-12 schools should wear face masks.
DeSantis’s spokesperson criticized rebuked the CDC and reiterated the Florida governor’s long-held position, opposing mask mandates for children.
“It isn’t based in science. There is no indication that areas with mask mandates have performed any better than areas without mask mandates. In fact, this policy could actually backfire,” DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw told Fox News on Tuesday.
“Mandating masks for vaccinated people erodes public trust and confidence in the effectiveness of the vaccines. To me it appears that the government wants to be perceived as ‘doing something’ during a seasonal infection surge, even if their policy does not necessarily make people safer,’” Pushaw added.
DeSantis himself has been vocally opposed to mandating masks for children who attend school in person, telling a roundtable event on Monday that “our view” is that “this should absolutely not be imposed.”
“I think our fear is that seeing some of those rumblings, that there be an attempt from the federal level or even some of these organizations to try to push for mandatory masking of school children. And so our view is that this should absolutely not be imposed,” DeSantis said at the event. “It should not be mandated.”
“[I]n Florida, at this point, our school districts have proposed the mask [as] optional,” DeSantis noted. He even went so far as to say that the Florida legislature is “interested in coming in, even in a special session to be able to provide protections for parents and kids who just want to breathe freely and don’t want to be suffering under these masks during the school year.”
The CDC appears to have followed recommendations made by the nation’s largest teachers unions — the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association — in suggesting that “everyone in K-12 schools wear a mask, regardless of their vaccination status,” according to CNN.
AFT president Randi Weingarten, who, according to reports, had a direct influence on CDC policy regarding a return to classrooms for in-person instruction, has continued “to push for face masks to be worn in schools,” even though nearly 90% of teachers who belong to the AFT are vaccinated.
Author: Jameson Stein
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