In Washington, D.C., where 3 in 5 adults and 3 in 4 seniors are fully vaccinated, just four of the 375,000 people vaccinated died from coronavirus, all of whom were elderly or had serious medical conditions.
We have the empirical evidence: The vaccines work. Not only is the threshold of effective herd immunity for the fully vaccinated much lower than some experts initially feared, but this level of vaccination also allows us to return to the pre-pandemic normal — masks and social distancing fully discarded.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky rightly noted that even with the more transmissible delta variant, the vaccines have rendered this “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” However, new guidance assumes otherwise.
Even the fully vaccinated must wear masks in indoor public spaces, the CDC has now declared, in places where the level of community transmission is deemed high. That includes Washington, D.C., where the seven-day average of deaths is zero. And why? Because, Walensky said, “In rare occasions, some vaccinated people infected with a delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others.”
To recap, the CDC is asking vaccinated people to put masks back on in the dead of summer to protect those who have chosen not to get the free vaccine available in every corner pharmacy in America. As it turns out, the CDC guidance isn’t just disastrous public policy that disincentivizes vaccination — it’s also based on bogus science.
The crux of the CDC’s new guidance rests on a single Indian study on coronavirus transmission among vaccinated hospital workers. Not only is the study not properly peer-reviewed, but it also models the effect of vaccines not even authorized in the United States. In an anonymous comment to STAT, an administration official confirmed that “health experts do not have studies proving that fully vaccinated people are transmitting the virus.”
In other words, the unvaccinated aren’t infecting or seriously sickening the vaccinated, and the vaccinated are not infecting the unvaccinated. The notion that the onus is on the vaccinated to protect those who refuse to protect themselves is maddening enough. But given that the CDC doesn’t even have the evidence to prove the vaccinated could infect the unvaccinated, the new mask guidance is just ridiculous.
Public health officials started by lying about masks in the early days of the pandemic. Then they turned “15 days to stop the spread!” into a forever pandemic, requiring us to keep masking two-year-olds, even though, no vaccinated person is dying of COVID-19 in the nation’s capital. These people are not competent or trustworthy.
Luckily, for those of us who trust science, the pandemic appears to be over for those who are vaccinated, regardless of what the so-called experts say now.
