Frustration grows over mask recommendations

MADISON, Wisconsin – Dane County public health officials want to go on the offensive when it comes to COVID defense.

This is the main reason they go above and beyond what the CDC recommends for our region when it comes to reverting to wearing masks indoors.

The latest recommendations may suggest that we have taken a step back to overcome the pandemic, and with that comes the frustration of the people we spoke with on Wednesday.

“If we all got vaccinated, we wouldn’t even be here right now. It would all be behind us right now, ”said Kenneth Clary, owner of Clary’s Gourmet Popcorn.

The latest recommendations from the CDC and Madison and Dane County Public Health serve as a hostile reminder of how the pandemic hurt Clary’s results.

“The weekdays are always slow, everyone is still working from home and they just don’t come here during the week,” Clary said.

This week, Dane County surpassed 70% of all people with at least one dose of the vaccine, and the CDC does not currently list the county – or surrounding areas – as having high or even substantial levels of COVID.

But the director of the PHMDC, Janel Heinrich, takes this recommendation even further.

“We would like to avoid reaching a higher transmission zone, which is why we are publishing this notice, to encourage mask wearing to give us more and better tools to further reduce the spread of this disease,” said Heinrich when announcing the recommendation on Tuesday.

The PHMDC further explained its reasoning on Wednesday, saying that although Dane County is currently experiencing a moderate number of cases, it is seeing a rapid increase in cases.

Doctors like UW Health’s Nasia Safdar understand this thought process and agree that it’s best to step back now to avoid falling back completely in the near future.

“If you are continually confronted with a circulating virus, it will escape the vaccine in the sense that it will cause mild symptoms, which these breakthrough infections are,” Dr Safdar said. “So if you have that extra mask protection, I think we can help drastically reduce that risk.”

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