Adding to confusion, the CDC now says that even fully vaccinated people living in high infection zones should wear masks again. Seems like a classic example of punishing the entire class for the sins of a few. Wouldn’t it make more sense to only force those who refuse to be vaccinated to wear masks?
Getting Rid of an Important Incentive
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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I wish it could be that way! But the unvaccinated would just lie so they could “enjoy their freedoms”, so I mask everywhere still.
Vaccine manufacturers only promised from their product, upon contact with SARS-CoV-2 by vaccine recipients, much reduced 1) symptoms of infection 2) need for hospitalization and 3) chance of death. NOTE, they never claimed, however disappointingly, that infections would be totally blocked.
As the vaccines were being rolled-out, the delta variant was already well established in India. Now, we are well into the vaccine administration drive and the delta variant is infecting both vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. The claims for the protections afforded by vaccines to recipients, as above, are holding true. Both vaccinated and unvaccinated are being infected but the unvaccinated are virtually exclusively suffering the effects.
The delta variant is much more transmissable than previous strains of the virus. That means even the vaccinated persons who get infected can harbor high levels of the virus in their respiratory systems. As such they are excellent spreaders of the virus even though it is causing them little or nosymptomatic problems.
Therefore, the vaccinated are being asked, as previously were “asymptomatically” infected persons, to wear a mask to protect OTHERS from infection. Of course, being aware of, and acting to maximize, the welfare of others is, in the USA of “rugged individuals,” is a woeful sign of weakness.
In summary, the vaccinated were NEVER promised freedom from masks. Its expectation is unfounded. That there still exists a widespread petulance about wearing masks serves to illustrate the basic infantile approach to life so richly established, cultivated and exhibited (often with the assistance of automatic weap-ons) in the US of exceptional revulsion to empathy.
That masklessness rates anywhere close to an incentive for vaccination, compared to not suffering symptoms, hospitalization or death, is profoundly tragic.
Fully vaccinated people are extremely less likely to die if the subsequently get the virus. So that’s a huge plus.
But fully vaccinated people are shedding Covid (incl. Delta) virions at equal rates as unvaccinated people, which means that they can essentially be asymptomatic carriers.
That’s why I still wear a mask around other people.
That says it!
Don’t forget the religion exemption. If I have a “sincerely held” belief, I don’t have to get the vaccine. (Got that? The building’s on fire, you’ve spotted an exit, and the “believers” hold you down as the flames bear down. “Faith will protect us! We’ve prayed on it.”) The kowtowing to religion that has gone on in this country (since the 1950s in particular) is the virus we need to eliminate. Reagan thought the Second Coming was just around the corner. And the same attitude has informed U.S. policy in the Middle East for decades because the fundamentalists need Israel to exist so that Armageddon can happen.