{"id":19794,"date":"2021-07-20T13:58:05","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T13:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoklahomaeagle.net\/?p=19794"},"modified":"2021-07-20T13:58:05","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T13:58:05","slug":"19794","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/2021\/07\/20\/19794\/","title":{"rendered":"Mask Mandates Make A Return \u2014 Along With Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

www.washintonpost.com<\/a>
\nBy Dan Diamond<\/a>
\n 
\nTwo months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said vaccinated individuals didn\u2019t need to wear masks in most settings, a growing number of experts are warning it\u2019s time to put them back on.
\nFirst, there was Los Angeles County, where the rising menace posed by the delta variant of the coronavirus prompted health officials to reimpose a mask mandate. Then, Bay Area health officers on Friday recommended that residents of seven counties and the city of Berkeley, Calif., resume wearing masks indoors. Mask mandates are being discussed, too, in coronavirus hot spots such as\u00a0Arkansas<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Missouri<\/a>, where cases have sharply increased in recent weeks and many residents remain unvaccinated.
\n\u201cUniversal masking indoors is a way of taking care of each other while we get more people vaccinated,\u201d said Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which last week moved to\u00a0reinstate an indoor mask mandate<\/a>. \u201cIt really doesn\u2019t disrupt any business practices. It allows us to remain fully open \u2014 while we acknowledge that the delta variant [is] spreading like wildfire here.\u201d
\nAnd the nation\u2019s current and former surgeon generals warned the nation should brace for a broader return to mask-wearing.
\n\u201cWe need to prepare the public for what could be, again, a return to some of these mitigation measures,\u201d former surgeon general Jerome Adams\u00a0told Indianapolis TV station WISH-TV<\/a>\u00a0on Sunday, highlighting a resurgence of the virus across the Midwest. Adams, an appointee of former president Donald Trump, called on the CDC to \u201chit the reset button\u201d and once again recommend widespread mask-wearing as coronavirus cases spike.
\nBut the growing calls to reinstate mask mandates \u2014 echoed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which Monday called for everyone over the age of 2 to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status \u2014 renewed a cultural and health flash point a year and a half after the virus landed in the United States.
\n\u201cWe need to be reopening our state, not reimposing unnecessary restrictions,\u201d Kevin Faulconer, the Republican former San Diego mayor now running for California governor, wrote on Twitter last week. The Los Angeles County sheriff last week said he would\u00a0refuse to enforce<\/a>\u00a0the local masking mandate, and Republicans nationally took aim at existing protections.
\n\u201cIn a free [country] people will evaluate their personal risk factors and are smart enough to ultimately make medical decisions like wearing a mask themselves,\u201d Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in a statement last week,\u00a0introducing legislation<\/a>\u00a0that would ban mask mandates on planes and public transportation.
\nThe daily average of confirmed U.S.\u00a0coronavirus<\/a>\u00a0cases has nearly tripled in the past month, from fewer than 12,000 on June 19 to almost 35,000 on Monday, according to The Washington Post\u2019s seven-day average of coronavirus cases. Experts on coronavirus transmission say masks remain a crucial tool to protect tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans \u2014 and even vaccinated people, with growing evidence of breakthrough infections in some fully immunized adults, although health officials have said most people who have died or been hospitalized with covid-19 in recent weeks were unvaccinated.
\n\u201cThe best protection everybody has is masks,\u201d said Kimberly Prather, a professor at the University of California at San Diego who has studied airborne virus transmission and said she \u201cabsolutely\u201d supports the resumption of indoor mask mandates. Prather said she has also grown wary of going without a mask in some settings outside, warning that the delta variant is hyper-transmissable.
\n\u201cWhile delta numbers are going up \u2014 and if I\u2019m in a crowded outdoor location with lots of people yelling \u2014 I would be wearing a mask,\u201d Prather said.
\nBut many Americans say they have stopped wearing face coverings, and experts acknowledge it will be difficult to persuade them to resume.
\n\u201cI think people will be disappointed that folks were having some hope and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel \u2014 and this would be a suggestion that we\u2019re taking a step back,\u201d said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
\nJust 55 percent of respondents to an\u00a0Axios\/Ipsos poll<\/a>\u00a0in late June said they were wearing masks \u201csometimes\u201d or \u201cat all times\u201d in public, down from 68 percent who said the same in early June and nearly 90 percent in February, March and early April.
\nPlescia said he supports the resumption of local mask mandates, given the rise in cases and the growing evidence about the threat of the delta variant.
\n\u201cYou know, recovery from just about anything comes in cycles \u2014 things get better, and they get worse, and they get better, and they get worse. It\u2019s rare that it\u2019s linear. And I think that\u2019s what\u2019s going on here,\u201d Plescia\u00a0<\/strong>said.
\nSome physicians who embraced mask mandates last year said they\u2019re concerned the moment has passed.
\nFormer Louisiana health commissioner Rebekah Gee, who is CEO of Health Care Services for LSU Health,\u00a0wrote last year<\/a>\u00a0that she favored the use of mask mandates to protect public health. But \u201cat this point, I\u2019m not convinced that requiring masks in every aspect of society is effective,\u201d Gee said Monday, warning that many Americans had tuned out public health officials\u2019 calls to wear masks and take other steps to guard against the coronavirus.
\nGee instead said she favors targeted mask requirements, such as mandating use in close quarters or when interacting with vulnerable populations such as children younger than 12, who have yet to get vaccinated. Gee also said she supports private-sector requirements for masks.
\n\u201cThe point now is how do you save lives and get people on the team of science, the team of truth?\u201d Gee said. \u201cForcing people to do things is not the best way to get them to agree with you.\u201d
\nThe CDC on May 13 initially moved to\u00a0relax its mask guidance<\/a>, saying vaccinated Americans could go without masks in many cases. Federal officials also suggested the move would provide an incentive for unvaccinated Americans to get immunized.
\nBut the CDC\u2019s recommendation did not appear to spur a rise in vaccinations.
\nIn a\u00a0Kaiser Family Foundation survey<\/a>\u00a0of unvaccinated Americans following the CDC\u2019s recommendation, 85 percent of respondents said the agency\u2019s new guidance did not affect their decision on vaccination. The pace of vaccinations has steadily declined from about 2 million shots per day in mid-May to fewer than 550,000 shots a day. Health officials\u2019 goal of ensuring that at least 70 percent of adults receive one shot of a vaccine, which President Biden initially targeted for July 4, is unlikely to be reached before Aug. 10, according to The Post\u2019s\u00a0projections<\/a>.
\nFederal officials have defended the CDC\u2019s earlier decision on mask-wearing. In a\u00a0Washington Post Live<\/a>\u00a0interview Monday, National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins said the CDC\u2019s recommendations for fully vaccinated people to remove their masks were issued before the delta variant began broadly circulating \u2014 and before it was clear how much vaccine hesitancy would exist in some parts of the country.
\n\u201cI know people are tired of masks, but it\u2019s not so awful to consider having to put a cloth mask on your face when you\u2019re inside if it\u2019s going to potentially stop what is, right now, looking like a pretty significant surge of infections, especially in places where vaccination rates are low,\u201d Collins said.
\nSurgeon General Vivek H. Murthy said the federal government supports local mask mandates in places where cases are surging or many residents are unvaccinated.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s very reasonable for counties to take more mitigation measures, like the mask rules that you see coming out in L.A.,\u201d Murthy said Sunday on ABC News\u2019s \u201cThis Week.\u201d \u201cI anticipate that will happen in other parts of the country, too.\u201d
\nThe latest debate over masks comes after months of battle over their benefits, including a now-retracted study in JAMA Pediatrics that claimed masks could harm children by forcing them to breathe high carbon dioxide levels. The study was retracted Friday amid \u201cnumerous scientific issues,\u201d the journal\u2019s editors\u00a0wrote<\/a>.
\n\u201cThe science is settled that masks do work, though mask performance can vary widely,\u201d said Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech engineer who has studied airborne-disease transmission. \u201cThe kind of studies that are trying to just debunk masks, so far they\u2019ve all been shown to be completely flawed.\u201d
\nMeanwhile, society continues to steadily reopen, as businesses and entertainment venues increasingly welcome back customers. The Transportation Security Administration said it tracked 2.23 million travelers through its checkpoints Sunday, the highest number of travelers since the onset of the pandemic last year, and movie theater chains have reported millions of patrons this month after a year when cinemas often sat empty.
\nThe highest-rated television program in recent weeks has been the National Basketball Association Finals, featuring thousands of often mask-free fans crowding indoor arenas in Phoenix and Milwaukee to cheer on the teams \u2014 a visual that induced complicated emotions in at least one expert.
\n\u201cI cringe every time I see it,\u201d said Shad Marvasti, a family medicine physician and director of Public Health and Prevention at the University of Arizona College of Medicine at Phoenix, who added he\u2019s rooting for Phoenix to win the NBA Finals \u2014 but wishes fans were required to wear masks. \u201cYou can\u2019t leave this one to the honor system. It just doesn\u2019t work that way.\u201d
\nFrances Stead Sellers and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.<\/em>
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www.washintonpost.com By Dan Diamond   Two months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said vaccinated individuals didn\u2019t need to wear masks in most settings, a growing number of experts are warning it\u2019s time to put them back on. First, there was Los Angeles County, where the rising menace posed by the delta variant…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,111,103,112,104,106],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-19794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-covid","category-featured","category-healthcare","category-local","category-tulsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19794"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=19794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}