So pissed at the CDC

[petesgirl]

I am sorry. I am expecting an email the day after DS2 gets out of 'modified' quarantine next week- after missing a week of soccer and swimming because unlike most in our area we are following the quarantine rules- that our schools will decide not to quarantine anymore for the remainder of the year. They say they will require masks still but I'm not holding my breath on that.

Can someone please start a petition to require masks still for unvaccinated kids? I've had like 3 "friends" on FB share them already including one that's a former teacher and one that works in healthcare so that's great.

Well in my state there have been petitions going around all year to unmask the kids so a petition about keeping masks and quarantines would not work here.

[KrisM]

I'm with you on this. And I'm annoyed Michigan immediately dropped the mask rules for vaccinated too. My district commented that they are "anxiously awaiting" guidance about masks in school and will let us know. I sent an email asking to keep them for the last 4 weeks. Seriously, we are 4 weeks away - let's just finish the year!

[carolinamama]

I'm mad the CDC started it and I'm mad our governor removed the mask mandate yesterday. Similar numbers in the fall meant kids couldn't return to school but now we can remove distancing and masks like it's 2019. I believe one accurate measure of a society is how they care for their young, old and vulnerable. We've failed all three over the last 14 months. It's not just the government though - our fellow citizens are leading the charge, protesting distancing and masks.

Fortunately NC schools are still under a masking mandate and I feel for those of you without. It makes choices so much more difficult.

[sariana]

Me too! My kids are too young to be vaccinated, and now we will have to spend another summer stuck at home, because my youngest is high risk, and too many idiots will go out unmasked and unvaxed. The CDC said fully vaxed can go without masks, but states didn't hear that part. There is no way to tell who is vaxed or not, and many of the no vaxers are also no maskers.

My state is keeping the mask mandate until June 15th. (not sure why that date). The schools have to keep the mask mandate as it is part of the teacher contract, and if the district were to drop it, teachers would be allowed to no longer show up to work due to safety concerns. I'm pretty sure elem schools may still be masked in the fall, because the teacher union will push for it and have it written in to the contract. If the district wants to fully open schools, they may have to give in and agree to masking.

I hadn’t thought about it before, but now I wonder if the June 15th date is because most schools will be out by then.

[belovedgandp]

We have people demanding hearings from the school board to remove the mask mandate. Same people mad about school resources not being used for teaching this year and doing things like contact tracing. But they will require district resources for these hearings when there are FOUR days of school left.

[wendibird22]

Since when do people understand rules and nuance? After a year of this, I think we should have known by now that it would be a free for all in areas like OPs. So sorry to hear that..

So so true.

NY still requires masks indoors for all and outdoors for unvaccinated people. I went to three different garden centers today and while most people were still masked at two of them, at the third the employees were no longer masked and the teen girl employee told my 11yr old daughter she could take her mask off. Um no you don’t get to tell my kid that! Thankfully DD2 is Uber mask compliant and responded no, that’s okay, I’m good.

I live in a very red town and I know parents are already asking the school to do away with masks. And yet these same people have no desire to get their kids or themselves vaccinated.


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[specialp]

Ive heard this too. Dh who is primarily a fiscal conservative above all else (and a former petroleum engineer), feels that the new mask rules are to take attention away from the fact that there is no gasoline on the east coast. He says that because the Biden administration stopped all pipeline production, there is no safe secondary way to get gasoline to the east coast states. Apparently the Biden administration admitted begrudgingly just a day again that yes, pipelines are the safest way to get gasoline to the public. It’s a big mistake and the “good news” about the new mask rules should draw attention away from the gasoline mess. He says if this had happened under Trump’s watch, everyone would have blamed Trump for all the mess.

Except the new mask rules are NOT good news for the most vulnerable members of society.

I think this is regarding DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm 5/11 presser which I watched in real time and one particular news outlet isolated that statement and ran with it, but I personally didn’t take how and what she said the same way. The scope of the question and answer was much more limited to this particular and acute emergency than the headline suggested. You can watch at (min. 19) for that quote and the follow up question she answers next is certainly as important https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyL-kpeAOCw.

It does seem like the new guidelines came out of left field. Our blue state, Illinois, has been much more restricted than you guys, and they still have a mask mandate here. My conspiracy friends feel it is to take focus of of something else the government has cooking up!

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The gas was a big blip in an overall bad news week for the WH starting with the jobs report. GOP blames it on unemployment benefits and WH blames it on a combination of people being fearful to work in a pandemic, not having schools fully open, unfair wages in private sector, and expected ebbs and flow of a recovering economy. But bottom line no matter where you lay the blame: They want a better jobs report and to do that means getting people to work. Two weeks ago, a yougov poll showed 54% of vaccinated people were concerned about getting covid. So while some think this will go a long way to encouraging people to get a vaccine (it won’t), I think a broader message was to those who are vaccinated that you are safe. Now go to work. Kids <12 aren’t apart of jobs numbers (directly, at least) and they already relaxed those school and childcare guidelines. The fact that so many corporations, including ones who were otherwise leaders in mask mandate adherence and who also seem to be struggling with hiring workers, jumped immediately to drop their mask mandates makes me suspect a lot of pressure re: one word: jobs.

But that’s my crazy conspiracy theory because the WH has denied having any push or pull over the CDC and they were just as surprised as anyone.
Something like this coming from the CDC looks odd given the CDC’s position just a mere 2 weeks ago. (Interesting opinion piece on that here and how there was nothing new scientifically in a 2 weeks time frame to justify such a whiplash inducing shift. https://www.medpagetoday.com/infecti...hUJIsdt3HvfrME ) Given the collective BAM! of hundreds of virologists' and epidemiologists' jaws hitting the floor in shock, it’s difficult to see it as anything other than political.

[Kindra178]

Ive heard this too. Dh who is primarily a fiscal conservative above all else (and a former petroleum engineer), feels that the new mask rules are to take attention away from the fact that there is no gasoline on the east coast. He says that because the Biden administration stopped all pipeline production, there is no safe secondary way to get gasoline to the east coast states. Apparently the Biden administration admitted begrudgingly just a day again that yes, pipelines are the safest way to get gasoline to the public. It’s a big mistake and the “good news” about the new mask rules should draw attention away from the gasoline mess. He says if this had happened under Trump’s watch, everyone would have blamed Trump for all the mess.

Except the new mask rules are NOT good news for the most vulnerable members of society.

I just don’t think this is it. I think it has more has to do with Collins et al from the hearing early last week. We can’t go from get vaxed, it’s super protective yet you still have to pretend you aren’t vaxed. Get vaxed and your life goes back to near normal.


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[hwin708]

I just don’t think this is it. I think it has more has to do with Collins et al from the hearing early last week. We can’t go from get vaxed, it’s super protective yet you still have to pretend you aren’t vaxed. Get vaxed and your life goes back to near normal.

Agreed.

The CDC has been facing a lot of pushback - particularly FROM anti-maskers and vaccine-deniers - who say that if the vaccines really work, we wouldn't still have these restrictions. When the truth is that we continue to have these restrictions because the vaccines DO work and not enough people are getting them.

At a certain point, I think the CDC's job is to be honest about the science. They knew the vaccines were incredibly effective. Every day, more studies come out proving that. What they did not know, for certain, was how effective the vaccines were at preventing asymptomatic spread. And the recent studies show that they are, like vaccines typically are, extremely effective in that regard too. A vaccinated person who still gets infected with COVID is likely to have such a low viral load that they cannot spread the disease to others.

It is the CDC's job to make the recommendations based on what the science shows, not how radical state politicians will use this to appeal to a rabid anti-mask base. The CDC is being honest with the science when they say that vaccinated people should be very safe, both for themselves and others around them, without a mask. I think they delayed as long as they could specifically because of those more political issues, and the concerns that the anti-vaxxers would lead to another outbreak of a vaccine-resistant variant. But now the studies are showing that the vaccines are EXTREMELY effective in protecting against the variants as well. At a certain point, the CDC has to deal in the science, not in trying to control a science-resistant political party.

Even before this, many states have loosened their mask mandates. Most states were offering little enforcement of their mask mandates. The anti-maskers were flouting the rules already. This really does not change much for those people.

What I do think this does is offers another strong defense of the effectiveness of the vaccines, and hopefully offers some appeal to people who were still holding out on getting the vaccine. I have been volunteering with vaccine distribution since the very start, and like pretty much everywhere else, we now have way more supply than demand. We went from events vaccinating hundreds to canvassing the streets, trying to get 20 people that day. This past week, we had our most successful vaccination event in ages, with roughly 150 vaccinated. Some of that was landing in just the right community. But we were definitely getting feedback from this population that they didn't want to get the vaccine, but they knew they needed to just get it over with. Like they had accepted this was something they just had to do, like any other distasteful necessary task. This isn't a population that strictly follows the news, but I do think the messaging on vaccine effectiveness is spreading to some of the hesitant. By which I mean hesitant, not crazy conspiracy Gates-chip crowd.

I know this still leaves our youngest at risk, and it is scary. But I am also not sure, based on the science, that it puts them MORE at risk. At this point, given that they have to wait for vaccine approval, what seems best for them would be anything and everything that convinces more adults to get vaccinated. And I personally think this helps.

I have no idea where people would get the idea to tie this to conspiracies about the pipelines, but a quick glance at the news would tell you that only the worst PR director in history would think that wouldn't still get ample news coverage. Because it absolutely did, enough to freak people out into gas hoarding, which then led to the very gas shortage we could have easily avoided.

[Kindra178]

One more thing. A few weeks back, I read an article summarizing a study which involved polling people on the risks of Covid and whether you would be hospitalized. Pretty much the more liberal/progressive the participant was, the greater chance that person assigned a much higher hospitalization rate.

This is absolutely crazy! The chance of being hospitalized remains the same, regardless of political leaning.

I live in a very progressive area. There are people that have barely left their house for over a year. They advocated loudly for schools to remain closed, even this March / April with skyrocketing vaccination rates. They criticized people for going for a run without a mask (we aren’t an urban center, I might see 6 or 7 fellow exercisers in a 2 mile jaunt. It’s easy to cross our wide streets). People here tied their identity to following the guidelines to a T.

The teachers’ union controlled the dialogue. In august 2020, the admin at a local school polled the teachers. 66 percent of the teachers said they had a pre existing condition or cared for someone who did. It was February 2021 before anyone saw the inside of the high school. Even then, 30 some percent of the teachers got to stay home. Teachers here had the opportunity to be vaxed in January 2021. The school districts held vax clinics in February and while many took advantage, there were hundreds of empty spots.


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