It's Time to Mask Up Again Thanks to the Unvaccinated

Like many who did the responsible thing and got vaccinated against Covid-19 I have enjoyed going unmasked in public. Now, however, thanks to the selfishness and idiocy of those mostly on the political right it may be time to mask up again to avoid getting infected with the new Delta variant.  Yes, being vaccinated should avoid serious complications but who wants to become sick at all - especially due to the irresponsible behavior of the ugly Trump/GOP base.  The sad reality is that one cannot depend upon the unvaccinated Trump cultists  to wear a mask when around others and in public places.   The result is that unless you are with those you know well, the only safe approach is to assume you are dealing with some who is unvaccinated.  Hence, I am masking up again when meeting with clients and realtors I do not know.   A piece in CNN looks at why this is the safest course of conduct.  Meanwhile, anti-vaxers need to become social pariahs.  Here are article excerpts:

Less than half of the US population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19 – and with cases on the rise, experts are urging a return to precautions reminiscent of the earlier days of the pandemic.

“What I would say bluntly is: If you are not vaccinated right now in the United States, you should not go into a bar, you should probably not eat at a restaurant. You are at great risk of becoming infected,” CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield.

In 48 states, the rate of new Covid-19 cases in the past week jumped by at least 10% compared to the previous week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. In 34 of those states, the rate of new cases increased by more than 50%.

And hospitals are filling up with Covid-19 patients again, except now, patients are younger than before, said doctors in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Missouri.

Despite many officials’ encouragement and experts warning that the best protection from the virus comes from vaccinations, only 49.1% of the US population is vaccinated, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If a large swath of people remains resistant to vaccination, Reiner said, the US is left with two options to control the spread: shut down businesses – which few people want to do – or return to masks.

“The only way to get the unvaccinated to mask up is to mask everyone up,” Reiner said.

Part of the urgency to control spread and implement precautions is due to the prevalence of the Delta variant, which is believed to be more transmissible than other strains of the virus.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC said that a close contact was somebody that you’re indoors with unmasked for 15 minutes or more,” Dr. Celine Gounder, who served on President Joe Biden’s transition Covid-19 advisory board, said in an interview with STAT published Friday. “The equivalent of that with the Delta variant is not 15 minutes, it’s one second.”

That means people might need to do more than one thing to protect themselves from the more transmissible variant, said Gounder, an infectious diseases specialist at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine.

In addition to vaccination, “Some of the other layers that we should consider would be masking indoors when you’re outside of your household bubble, optimizing ventilation in the home – just opening your window works really well,” she said.

In Florida, state health data shows new case positivity nearly doubled in two weeks, from 7.8% the week of July 2 to 15.1%.

A total of 870 hospitalized patients were reported Sunday in Alabama, according to the state’s public health Covid-19 dashboard. Hospitalizations there have been steadily rising since early July: On July 4 there were just 213 hospitalized patients reported.

And Louisiana now has the highest increase in cases per capita in the US, state officials said Friday.

“We know that more than 80% of these are the Delta variant – that is what’s causing this surge,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said.