Ending Mask Madness

A s Democratic jurisdictions move to lift indoor mask requirements, CDC director Rochelle Walensky once again insisted on Wednesday that the agency would only change its national guidance “based on the data and the science.” By that, we should take her to mean the political science.

President Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union address on March 1, in the face of cascading failures and underwater approval in nearly every state, according to one recent poll. It’s clear he wants to be able to go before the nation and at least claim progress in the fight against Covid — with the message that the nation is on the path to normalcy.

What has been standing in his way is that the CDC has stubbornly trailed even some of the most liberal areas in the country, including Washington, D.C., which have lifted indoor mask requirements.

Yet NBC is reporting that the CDC is finally getting ready to ease guidance as soon as next week. The story notes that “senior administration officials have asked Walensky to provide an update on masks before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1.”

Many questions remain as to how any tweaked guidance will manifest itself. The dilemma that the CDC faces is that while there is heavy political pressure to back off the masking regime, officials need to do so in a face-saving way so they can avoid admitting that their guidance never made much sense in the first place.

One question is: How far will the guidance go with regard to indoor masking? Early indications, based on reporting and on comments by Walensky, suggest that the CDC might finally move to a different benchmark, such as hospital capacity, when recommending Covid-mitigation measures.

To date, the CDC has been focused on the arbitrary metric of 50 cases per 100,000 as representing “substantial transmission.” As Phil Kerpen, of American Commitment, has pointed out, this standard of raw case totals was established in the spring of 2020, when testing was a fraction of what it is now, and it has never been updated. Especially given the widespread availability of vaccines, the idea of tying any measures to this arbitrary and outdated standard makes no sense.

The other question is: Will a change in guidance on indoor masking be accompanied by an easing of mask requirements and other measures for school children? Even though CDC guidance is not legally binding, it is heavily influential in liberal school districts.

To date, the trend of de-masking has left children behind in many blue areas, such as D.C. As of March 1, people in the nation’s capital will be able to go into crowded bars and restaurants and even attend indoor sporting events without masks, but school children there will be forced to wear them all day. This is especially troubling given that children are at much lower risk than adults of getting seriously sick from Covid. And it is cruel given the evidence that masking in schools is doing more harm than good.

On this front, recent comments made by Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, may hint where the CDC will end up, given the significant financial and political influence of teachers’ unions on the Biden administration.

Weingarten recently called on the CDC to update its school masking guidance, and she offered an off-ramp, pointing to the standard that has been adopted in Massachusetts and Maryland: Mask mandates may be lifted when the vaccination rate at the county or school level exceeds 80 percent.

If the CDC is going to ease the masking guidance in schools, it seems that they may adopt a similar type of vaccine threshold. The guidance will do little in areas that have already abandoned or are abandoning masking, but it might lead districts that are the most Covid-compliant to back off, because those tend to be the areas with the highest vaccination rates.

Taking such an approach would probably mean that the last remaining bloc of masked Americans would be two- to four-year-olds, who are not eligible for vaccination. Preschoolers have the most to lose from masking, given that the first months and years of a child’s life are a crucial period for language acquisition and social and emotional development. Preschoolers are also the ones who have the least to gain from any mitigation measures, given the vanishingly low risk of severe Covid for this age group.

All told, it seems that we’re finally on the cusp of seeing mask mandates eased or lifted in the coming weeks, even in the parts of the country that have been clinging to restrictions. But the bigger question is: If the removal of mask mandates is tied to improved metrics, will mandates return once metrics inevitably surge again?

Walensky has suggested this is likely, declaring, “We want to give people a break from things like mask wearing when these metrics are better — and have the ability to reach for them again should things worsen.”

The dramatic surge of Omicron in areas with the strictest mask mandates in the country should have disabused us of the idea that covering our faces can change the trajectory of Covid in any meaningful way. But Walensky is directing us down a path of perpetually recurring mask mandates, and we must fight this approach.