“We know the vaccines authorized in the US are extremely effective and safe — but not perfect — at preventing Covid-19 illness. Newer data suggests they are also very good (though also not perfect) at keeping people from getting infected, thus likely drastically reducing the chances they could spread it to others.
Even with the small risks of these “breakthrough infections,” there are much more pressing reasons to keep masking in public — especially indoors in places like gyms, stores, and airports — and, according to the new CDC guidance, in most outdoor gatherings as well. Masking remainsone of the least intrusive interventions we can take to keep putting the brakes on Covid-19 spread.
From variant wild cards to protecting unvaccinated kids, the reasons we should keep masking in crowded public spaces at least into the summer are strong. We talked to experts to better understand them and to get a glimpse of when we might finally be able to leave our masks at home.”
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“The majority of people in the US are still susceptible to infection from Covid-19. “There are folks around us who will not or cannot get the vaccine, and we have to keep thinking, as a community, of ways to protect them, too,””
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“a subset of people — roughly 3 percent in the US — have compromised immune systems that might do a poor job of mounting a robust response to the vaccine, leaving them vulnerable to infection even after getting shots.
There are also some people who aren’t able to wear masks to protect themselves in public. This includes some adults and children with disabilities or rare health conditions, as well as babies and toddlers”
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“Although the vaccines authorized for use in the US appear to be very effective against the variants that are circulating, it is possible future strains will be better at evading vaccine protection (as the B.1.351 variant, first detected in South Africa, is against the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine). Vaccine companies are working to keep pace with variants, testing their vaccines against them and formulating potential boosters. But, says Guthrie, “it may be a bit of a game of whack-a-mole as new variants come up.””
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““These variants — especially ones that have mutations that make them more transmissible — can pop up and then spread quite quickly,” Guthrie says. “If you combine that with a variant that could evade the current vaccines, you’re not going to get a lot of advance warning.” Which means a widespread outbreak, including some people who had already gotten their shots, could get going before we were able to contain it.
Masking can not only prevent a new variant from spreading but could also help prevent new variants from emerging, as the more people the virus infects, the greater the opportunity it has to mutate.”
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“Even if we can’t drop our masks indoors for a little while longer, outdoors is a different story. The rates of public outdoor transmission of Covid-19 are incredibly low, and most known cases of outdoor infection spread have occurred from long conversations, yelling, or exercising together.”