Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government officials have been advising Americans to wear masks, saying they save lives.

However, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky published new guidelines May 13, saying individuals who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear masks.

The CDC’s newly published guideline, “When You’ve Been Fully Vaccinated: How to Protect Yourself and Others,” states “Fully vaccinated people can resume activities without wearing a mask or physically distancing, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal or territorial laws, rules and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.”

Is it really safe to remove your mask if you are fully vaccinated?

How are you supposed to know what the guidelines are if they are different from place to place, state to state and business to business?

On NBC’s Meet the Press with Chuck Todd May 16, Walensky defended her decision to drop the mask mandate for fully vaccinated Americans.

Todd played a film clip from May 11 during which Walensky stated, “We still have a third of the counties in the country that have over 100 cases per 100,000, very high transmission rate and many counties in areas of this country that have less than 20 percent vaccination rates, so in that context we are keeping our public health guidance to recommend masking for people who are vaccinated.”

After playing the film clip, Todd asked Walensky what changed between May 11 and May 13 when the CDC published the new mask guidelines.

Walensky stated, “Now we have science that has really evolved just even in the last week, and a paper that was published as recently as Friday (May 14) that demonstrates people who are vaccinated are protected.

“This vaccine is working in the real world, just as it did in the clinical trials and it’s working against the variants, and if you get an asymptomatic infection after you have had the vaccine that you really can’t give it to somebody else, so just really in the last two weeks we have a lot of evolving science.”

In a May 13 news release titled, “Department of Health Mask Order Reflects Latest CDC Guidance for Fully Vaccinated Individuals,” Pennsylvania Department of Health Acting Secretary Alison Beam states, “On March 16, the DOH amended the commonwealth’s mask order by adding language directing the CDC’s guidance for fully vaccinated people to allow for no face coverings.

“That means that today’s CDC guidelines automatically go into effect in Pennsylvania. Masking requirements will still be in place as otherwise provided under the CDC guidance and for unvaccinated individuals until 70 percent of Pennsylvanians age 18 and older are fully vaccinated.”

How are you supposed to know if the person sitting next to you in a restaurant or standing next to you in the grocery store without a mask on is fully vaccinated?

Will you continue to wear your mask once you are fully vaccinated?

Susan Bryant

editorial assistant

Parkland Press

Northwestern Press