As CDC Holds the Line, Doctors Debate Lifting Mask Mandates

Feb. 10, 2022 — New COVID-19 case numbers within the United States have dropped practically two thirds from simply weeks in the past, and the drop has set off heated conversations throughout the United States on when and if masks mandates ought to cease.

On Monday, governors from 4 states — Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, and Oregon — stated they might finish necessary masking in faculties by the tip of February or March. Pennsylvania determined to take away its statewide mandate final month.

In Illinois, Gov. J. B. Pritzker is preventing in courtroom to maintain his masks mandate for faculties in place. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York allowed a statewide masks or proof of vaccination mandate for all indoor public places to run out on Thursday.

Some medical doctors say now’s the proper time and that adults and kids have endured the mandates lengthy sufficient and the nation has to get used to residing with COVID-19 as an alternative of preventing it each day.

But the CDC disagrees.

At a White House briefing Wednesday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, stated the company nonetheless recommends masking indoors in public settings.

“We are engaged on following the tendencies for the second. What I’ll say, although, is our hospitalizations are nonetheless excessive, our demise charges are nonetheless excessive… Though we’re inspired by the present tendencies, we aren’t there but,” she stated,

Not everyone seems to be on board.

Leana Wen, MD, emergency physician and public well being professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., stated on Twitter Wednesday that the “CDC wants to vary their college masks mandate steering, ASAP. Pandemic restrictions had been at all times meant to be non permanent—there must be a transparent off-ramp that is reasonable & takes into consideration widespread availability of vaccines for five+.”

Nicole Saphier, MD, a radiologist and director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering in Monmouth, NJ, tweeted, “The masks & vaccine mandates are doing much more hurt than good. It’s time to ‘let’ anyone who wants to move on from the pandemic do so. I was criticized for saying this when Omicron began. Now, I’m doubling down as millions more have gained natural immunity and been boosted. “

In an interview, Saphier says that “parents and children have been traumatized by fear-based tactics manipulating data.”

“The bottom line is, there are no good, quality data showing cloth masks in schools offer any benefit,” she says. “The science on masks has not changed. There has never been reliable data supporting mask mandates in schools to lessen the already low risk in the lowest-risk population.”.

What has changed, she says, ” is there is now a less severe variant circulating, and the majority of children have some level of vaccine, natural or combination hybrid immunity.”

Amesh Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, said schools must have paths out of COVID-19 mitigation.

“This is especially the case as more and more people are vaccinated, antivirals are available, and rapid tests become more ubiquitous,” he says. “Children are the lowest risk for severe disease. In Europe and the U.K., school masking is not the norm.”

Adalja says eventually COVID-19 will be treated like other respiratory infections without specific mitigation measures as people become used to the fact that “it will always be with us and much tamer because of our immunity and medical countermeasures.”

As to whether dropping masks now may make it harder to mask up again if there’s another outbreak down the road, Adalja says, “When the likelihood of severe disease is greatly diminished, due to a high degree of immunity and availability of antivirals, masks are not going to have the same importance.”

“For those who wish to wear masks, no one is stopping them, and one-way masking works,” he says. “There will never be a time when there is not some level of COVID-19 circulation.”

The Timing Is Not Right

Other experts agree with the CDC, though, saying it’s not time and that dropping the mandates would be reckless.

Maxine Dexter, MD, an Oregon state representative, tweeted, “I get it, (VERY clearly) that people are done with mask mandates. I do not have control of making a decision about when that will end. What I do know is I just spent the weekend in the ICU caring for very sick people, most with COVID and more being admitted. This isn’t over.”

Mercedes R. Carnethon, MD, of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says masks mandates “shouldn’t be pushed by impatience or politics.”

Rather, she says, reevaluation ought to be based mostly on metrics, together with charges of neighborhood unfold, proportion of the neighborhood that’s vaccinated, and hospital capability in a given area.

She says the timing isn’t proper to take away college masking necessities.

“Hospitalization charges from COVID-19 stay excessive and our expertise over the previous 2 months with Omicron demonstrates that it might evade even our vaccine safety,” she says. “While most cases are mild, particularly in children, the effects are still substantial for community members who contract the illness.”

Carnethon noted that rates of vaccination are low among 5- to 11-year-olds and even 12- to 17-year-olds.

“We are far from where we need to be as far as being able to rely on vaccination alone to stop transmission,” she says.

Stanley Weiss, MD, professor of biostatistics and epidemiology on the Rutgers School of Public Health in Newark, NJ, says the frenzy to drop the masks mandate comes partly from strain on politicians from a public reeling with COVID-19 fatigue and a public pissed off with altering tips as scientific info evolves.

He says the choice ought to be based mostly on the science and that science says it is too early to finish the mandates.

“There’s hopeful pondering that it has gone away, when that is clearly not true,” Weiss stated. ” In locations like New Jersey, the brand new instances have been happening, however the variety of clusters of instances in faculties had not but declined.”

Lindsay Kalter contributed further reporting for this story.