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Los Angeles County residents – even those vaccinated against COVID-19 – are now required to wear masks indoors, and residents of nine other California counties are recommended to do the same.
When health officials from seven Bay Area counties released a statement encouraging those vaccinated to wear masks indoors as the delta variant spreads, they specifically said the recommendation did not not been issued to protect the health of vaccinated persons, who are very unlikely to suffer from severe disease of the delta variant.
“As a precaution, people are recommended to wear masks indoors in environments such as grocery or retail stores, theaters and family entertainment centers, even if they are fully vaccinated as a layer of protection. additional for unvaccinated residents, ”the statement said. .
For many vaccinated Californians, talking about new restrictions to protect unvaccinated people elicits frustrated reactions such as “Why should we care about what happens to unvaccinated people?” They have had plenty of time to get the vaccine, and when we try to persuade them, they tell us that they will take their chances with the virus instead of the vaccine. They are on their own. “
Dr. Bernard Lo, bioethicist at UCSF, points out that while it is true that most unvaccinated individuals do so voluntarily, there are still a significant number of individuals who cannot be vaccinated.
“I think most of the restrictions in response to the delta variant are not intended to protect people who are intentionally unvaccinated, but rather to protect those who cannot be vaccinated, so people with no immune response, cancer patients or ineligible people like children, ”he said. mentionned. “We didn’t get a good estimate of how many of these people, but the people who are undergoing chemotherapy, people who have had organ transplants, people on immunosuppressants for IBS and rheumatoid arthritis, these are the people. which we want to keep in mind if we want to protect the most vulnerable in the community.
Children are generally at low risk of serious illness from COVID-19 – even from the delta variant. And guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and California still require unvaccinated people to wear masks in public, as there is strong scientific evidence that masks protect the wearer and not just those the wearer comes into contact with. contact.
So what’s wrong with having no mask warrant while strongly encouraging those who cannot get the vaccine to wear masks – or even a double mask for extra protection – at all times. ?
“It might work here where people wear masks in places like BART, but you hear stories in other parts of the country where people wearing masks are subject to name calling and things like that,” Lo said. . “We could try to just let the immunocompromised protect themselves, but then you open up the debate on whether we should put the health burden on people who already have disease instead of saying, ‘The rest of the ‘between us has an obligation to protect the most vulnerable.’ “
Lo agrees that if every unvaccinated person did it voluntarily, the conversation would change and there was not much to do.
“I would say we have used all of our options to reach out and persuade them, and unless there is a change in the information they receive, there is nothing more we can do,” he said. “It’s not feasible to think about forced vaccination, we can’t hold them back and give them injections. It would be really, really hard to justify socially. Even if we had a vaccination mandate, how do we enforce that mandate? ? The people who choose not to be vaccinated are the ones who resist the other warrants. “
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