“Mask, America!” Texas abandons mandate of COVID-19 mask: health experts say it’s a very, very bad idea

Barbara Alexander, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, had three words for people: “Excuse me, America!” “Reports indicating that these reductions have stalled should remind us that our progress is fragile,” he said, referring to declining rates of coronavirus infections.

“Only about 10% of Americans nationwide have been vaccinated (33 million people) and many of those most at risk have not yet received the vaccine. COVID-19 continues to spread and take lives “Emerging and more transmissible variants of the virus pose new risks and increase,” he said.

Austin, Texas ’fourth-largest city, will require masks for people to visit companies. As of Thursday, the death toll from COVID-19 in the U.S. continues to rise and recently topped 530,624. Texas has the third highest number of COVID-related deaths (46,007) in the country after California and New York.

Maintaining social distance, avoiding large gatherings, washing hands frequently, and wearing masks should continue, Alexander said. “Leaving them now will postpone the day we can leave behind COVID-19. We cannot forget the lessons this pandemic has given us, nor its terrible toll.”

The only Americans who should give up masks are those who have already been fully vaccinated and should only do so among other vaccinated people, according to guidelines on how to socialize fully vaccinated people published this week by the Control Centers and U.S. Disease Prevention.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers at the University of Indiana said that even most young people in high school are willing to wear masks to help stop the spread of COVID-19, although they called for more education on how to wear masks correctly and more consistently.

A review of the literature on facial masks published in January by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, peer-reviewed, the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded: “The use of public masks is more effective for reducing the spread of the virus when it is met is high “.

“The preponderance of evidence indicates that the use of masks reduces contact transmissibility by reducing the transmission of infected respiratory particles in clinical and laboratory contexts,” concluded the 19 international authors of the review.

COVID-19 is known to be transmissible between pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals and those with few symptoms. “We recommend that public officials and governments strongly encourage the use of widespread face masks in public,” they wrote.

Masks are likely to play an important role in reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Italy during the first half of 2020 and could have reduced the number of official cases of COVID-19 to 30,000 during the rise in cases. during the spring of 2020, research was found in the peer-reviewed journal Infectious Diseases.

Morten Gram Pedersen, lead author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Padua, wrote in the study: “We did not see this reduction in places that did not introduce any additional local intervention. in that moment. ”

Many previous studies have said that face masks have helped reduce contagion by reducing drops that are sprayed into the air. Masks may also help promote healthy behaviors and encourage people not to touch their face during or after being in public settings.

This study states that N95 medical masks help filter viruses larger than 0.1 micrometers (one micrometer is one millionth of a meter). The coronavirus is 0.125 micrometers long. These products “have been shown to be effective at filtering smaller particles and are designed to fit perfectly on the face.”

When asked last month if Americans will still wear masks in 2022 and when life will return to normal, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN. “It may be like that, and again it really depends on what you mean by normalcy.”

“If normalcy means exactly how things were before this happened to us, I mean, I can’t predict it,” he said. “Viously, obviously, I think we will have a significant degree of normalcy beyond the terrible burden we have all suffered over the last year.”

But he warned that new, more contagious versions of the COVID-19 virus will also determine whether people will still wear masks in 2022. “There are so many other things that would make a projection that I will make you today this Sunday wind will not be the case here at six months “.

Fauci has said that if between 70% and 85% of the U.S. population were vaccinated, that would equate to good “herd immunity” and the country should begin to return to normal in the fall. This, of course, can depend on the age, circumstances and underlying conditions of the people.

In January, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a mask warrant for all federal workers and anyone in federal ownership. According to the warrant, they should “wear all masks, maintain physical distance, and respect other public health measures, as provided for in the CDC guidelines.”

Pfizer PFE,
+ 0.56%
and the German partner of BioNTech SE, BNTX,
-0.63%
and the MRNA of Moderna,
-2.87%
MRNA-based two-shot vaccines are about 95% effective. The J&J vaccine is a vaccine based on adenovirus vectors and only requires one vaccine in the US. It has an efficiency of 72%.

Despite the reluctance of some Americans to get the J&J vaccine, even though people cannot be chosen, all three vaccines can prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death. “Each of them is very effective in preventing clinically apparent diseases,” Fauci said Friday.