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The Biden administration could be in a stronger position if the CDC had not told vaccinated Americans this spring that it was safe to remove their masks. Instead, the turnaround is providing fodder for critics and conspiracy theorists who say they are proof that vaccines are overrated and the government is taking flight.
Polls and field experience show that it will likely take more deaths and illnesses to convince people that public health precautions are still a necessity.
This complicates the role of the Biden administration in reducing the spread of the disease amid new evidence that even vaccinated Americans can be unintentional spreaders of Covid-19 – and could be partly responsible for viral outbreaks threatening systems local health. In the fragile political environment, more government warnings to reach people who do not take the pandemic seriously are likely to trigger further pullback.
“It was politicized and it made it very difficult for public health officials to fight this thing the way they had to,” said Umair Shah, Washington state health secretary.
Biden’s senior health officials have spent the past few days debating what they can still get Americans to wear masks again – and acknowledge the fact that they have not been able to break through into them. more rural and conservative regions of the country.
“We’re not there yet,” said a senior health official involved in the conversations. “We need to do a better job of talking to them and making sure their questions are answered. “
The CDC’s advice prompted some of the country’s largest companies to reconsider their policies. Apple and Disney World have both implemented indoor mask requirements in accordance with the latest CDC recommendations.
That, in turn, could prompt segments of the public to consider the dangers of Covid-19, said Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a member of the Biden Covid-19 transition advisory board. “It’s the companies that change their policies that will influence the behavior of people,” she said.
But local health officials and doctors are skeptical that significant numbers will resume wearing masks without a clear mandate.
“In our previous surges, what we’ve seen is that when you deploy a mask warrant and limit the capacity, you stop the surge,” said Catherine O’Neal, Chief Medical Officer of Our Regional Medical Center. Lady of the Lake in Baton. Red, Louisiana. “Money orders actually grab people’s attention and they change their behavior. “
CDC director Rochelle Walensky said on Tuesday that the agency was leaving it to state and local authorities to find “motivating” ways to convince people to get vaccinated and adhere to public health measures.
It’s going to be a challenge, especially in the more conservative parts of the country where mandates are a political no-start and the CDC’s shifting stance on masks is reason enough to ignore its recommendations.
CDC leaders earlier this year believed that telling unvaccinated Americans they could unmask would encourage more people to get vaccinated. This is not the case. And now it complicates efforts to get people to put their masks back on.
“The problem in May was that the recommendations weren’t about science,” said Ali Khan, dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “It was about the desire to use unmasking indoors as a means of getting people vaccinated.”
William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, expects some people who have always taken Covid-19 seriously to mask themselves again, but said the majority of the local population would not, although the number of hospitalizations in Tennessee has more than tripled since the beginning of the month.
“There are parts of our state that are not only indifferent to masks, they are hostile,” he said.
That shouldn’t stop public health officials from trying, said Karen Landers, Alabama state health official.
“If we look at the data, it shows that we have to wear masks again,” she said. “If people don’t want to take my advice, I always have to provide it. “
What seems to have an effect is the large number of hospitalizations, which can frighten some resistant to being vaccinated, as well as their families. In Louisiana, where hospitals have had to cancel elective surgeries, the number of vaccinations per day has quadrupled in the past two weeks, said Joseph Kanter, the public health official.
Missouri and Mississippi, two states where hospitals are inundated with Covid patients, are administering injections at their fastest pace in nearly three months.
An investigation by Frieden’s Resolve to Save Lives group found that the description of the long-term symptoms of Covid that plague some patients motivated around a third of vaccine-hesitant respondents to consider getting vaccinated. After watching video testimonials from “long Covid” patients, this proportion rose to 39%.
“There is no doubt that there is a real phenomenon,” Frieden said. “We are at a crossroads where people realize that Covid is not over and that there is an increased risk that it will kill you if you are not vaccinated.”
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