It’s becoming impossible to keep track of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s many different opinions on COVID-19 and masks.
In early 2020, the agency assured the public that masks weren’t necessary and that they wouldn’t work. A few months later, CDC officials changed their minds and decided masks were one of the best ways to slow down the spread of the coronavirus. They started by recommending masks, but eventually urged states to mandate them both outdoors and indoors. But even that changed when the CDC realized that masks were useless outside, and suddenly, they became necessary only indoors.
The agency’s guidance changed yet again last year when the vaccines became available to adults and the CDC decided fully vaccinated adults no longer needed to wear masks at all. But that lasted about a month before officials announced everyone, regardless of vaccination status, needed to wear them indoors again.
Now the CDC is shifting its recommendation again to push the public away from cloth masks toward nonsurgical N95 or KN95 masks.
“Some masks and respirators offer higher levels of protection the others,” the agency wrote in its updated guidance last week, urging the public to “wear the most protective mask you can that fits well and that you will wear consistently.”
The CDC stopped short of admitting the cloth masks it has pushed on the public for the past two years don’t actually work. At this point, I doubt it’ll ever own up to that error. But, just once, it would be nice to see the CDC admit that it doesn’t really know what it’s doing — on masks or anything else.
