Can the arrival of new variants scare Americans for better pandemic behavior?

Is there a way to avoid the worst? Can better mask use, more testing, tighter social distancing help?

President Joe Biden’s very first executive order was a federal mask ordinance – something only affecting federal offices and contractors because it can’t tell states what to do. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating whether recommending double masking might help. Several experts have recommended that Americans start wearing N95 masks – the hospital-grade face coverings that are still so rare.

There is a clamor for more testing. The new administration has issued stricter testing requirements for international travel and is questioning whether it should require testing for domestic travel as well.

New CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky says the arrival of the new variants means Americans need to double down on everything they’re already told to do – but millions of Americans still don’t.

“The emergence of variants underscores the need for public health action. First, get vaccinated when it’s your turn,” Walensky said at a White House briefing this week.

“Second, wear a mask. Practice social distancing and wash your hands. And finally, now is not the time to travel. But, if you have to, be careful and follow the advice of the CDC.”

But public health experts are pessimistic that Americans will change their habits a year after the start of the pandemic. Americans who are going to wear masks are already doing so. Those who can or want to stay at home are already doing so. The lockdowns have been unpopular and local authorities are unwilling to enforce them, anyway.

“We haven’t seen governments take action to apply precautionary measures as quickly as expected, and have incorporated that information into the modeling,” IHME director Dr Christopher Murray said, posting the last gloomy predictions of his team. “Without measures to control the spread of the disease, mobility remains higher and transmission is more likely.”

Deaths would remain lower if Americans simply wore masks and stayed at home longer. If most people followed social distancing and masking guidelines, 30,000 fewer people would die by May 1, the IHME said.

There’s an argument for that, says risk communications expert Peter Sandman.

“It might be easier to sell new precautions than the same old ones. And maybe that’s why double masks are getting so much attention in recent days,” Sandman said.

But Murray doesn’t think people will. Nor is Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

“We have a Category 10 hurricane staring at us. People don’t understand that,” Osterholm told CNN.

Osterholm is skeptical that better masks, or more masks or double masks, will help.

“People assume more is better,” he said. But most people don’t even wear masks properly in the first place, leaving their noses uncovered or allowing air to come in and out on the sides.

“That’s the first thing. Wear them properly. But people think, ‘if I just put on more, then I’m suddenly more protected.’ And that’s just not the case. “

Additional layers can trap more particles, but they also make the mask uncomfortable, he pointed out. “But if you put on a second mask, now the air is harder to suck in. At that point, it just leaks from the sides, ”he noted.

The theory that better masks could slow the pandemic is solid, but it doesn’t work in real life, Osterholm said.

“If we had an N95 for everyone, if everyone was really using an N95 effectively, we could really make a huge impact on that in four weeks. But I’m dreaming.”

There is now a hard core of anti-masks. “There is a group of 25 or 30% or more who see wearing a mask as shameful and they won’t. These are the same people who, if you sent two N95s to their home, they will not use them ”. he said.

The same goes for increased testing.

“The very people who say if we test everyone and do home tests we could really reduce transmission – my answer to that of course is most home testing … do you think the people who go to bars and people exhibiting in large groups will take a test? “Osterholm asked.

“People who don’t leave their homes – they will. They will test themselves every day when they don’t need to.”

As for lockdowns, they’re not just unpopular – they don’t work, said Amesh Adalja, a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

“There is a danger when you do this,” Adalja told CNN.

“You say, ‘No, you can’t eat at a restaurant, so instead it’s’ Let’s all go to Jimmy’s for pizza, sit down and watch the soccer game together. Then they’re all squashed together and screaming and screaming, which probably won’t happen in a restaurant where you’re all spaced out, where you have people watching you, ”he said.

“If you tell people to never let anyone into your home, they won’t follow that.

Much of the spread, research shows, occurs at gatherings such as weddings, holiday celebrations, high school sports, and other community events.

This is where Adalja thinks better, more frequent messaging can help.

“Can we open the windows, can you do it outside, make sure that no one you invite is waiting for the test result to be part of a contact tracing survey. This type of approach is best to never mix with anyone outside your home. They just aren’t going to do that, “he said.

The longer the pandemic lasts, the more reckless people will be. Fear of new variants may be just as likely to freeze or abandon people as it is to react more responsibly, said Sandman, the risk communication expert.

“Like the initial arrival of the Covid-19 virus in the United States, this will, once again, be an exponential change,” he said. “And once again, the inability of the human psyche to truly understand what ‘exponential’ means will condemn us to be unprepared – psychologically and practically not,” he added.

And all it takes is one mistake, Osterholm said.

Like pregnancy – people say ‘well we took precautions most of the time’. With this one, failure is not an option. ‘

And people are going to wrestle with the idea of ​​new variants posing a new threat, Sandman said.

Is vaccination the best and the only hope? Fauci seems to think so. “The best way to prevent a virus from further developing is to prevent it from replicating and you do that by vaccinating people as quickly as possible,” he said.

But the hope of vaccines may, paradoxically, make people relax on other measures. just as they should double.

“The same old precautions – masks, social distancing, etc. – are about to get even more important,” Sandman said.

“Selling it means trying to make people understand how exponential growth works. Somehow we have to get a lot more careful, just like the impending vaccination is causing us to become a lot less careful instead.”