6/6/2023 0 Comments Once more crossword![]() ![]() A strategy that prevents you from enjoying the things you love most is not sustainable.īoth Lakdawala and Popescu were willing to go so far as to suggest that masking should indeed become a seasonal fixture-just like skiing and snowmen, only potentially lifesaving and politically radioactive. Those activities pose a risk of infection, but Lakdawala’s goal is to reduce her risk, not to minimize it at all costs. Lakdawala masks at the grocery store, at the office, and while using public transportation, but not when she goes out to dinner or attends parties. That doesn’t mean masking everywhere all the time. “Should people be masking? Absolutely yes, right now,” Seema Lakdawala, a flu-transmission expert at Emory University, told me. All of this is playing out against the backdrop of low COVID-19-booster uptake, leaving people more vulnerable to death and severe disease if they get infected.Īll of which is to say: If you’re only going to mask for a couple of months of the year, now is a good time. Kids have been hit especially hard by the unwelcome return of influenza, RSV, and other respiratory viruses. COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all rising nationally, possibly the signs of another wave. We haven’t yet been slammed this winter by another Omicronlike variant, but the pandemic is still here. Some steadfast maskers have started feeling awkward: “I have personally felt like I get weird looks now wearing a mask,” Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at George Mason University, told me.Įven so, masking remains one of the best and least obtrusive infection-prevention measures we have at our disposal. ![]() In its most recent national survey of health behavior, the COVID States Project found that only about a quarter of Americans still mask when they go out, down from more than 80 percent at its peak. But even many Americans who diligently masked earlier in the pandemic seem to have lost their appetite for this sort of intervention as the pandemic has eased. Predictably, the few recent mandates have elicited a good deal of aggrievement and derision from the anti-masking set. ![]() Regardless of what public-health research tells us we should do, we’ve clearly seen throughout the pandemic that limits exist to what Americans will do. These questions don’t have simple answers. What role should masking play in winters to come? Is every winter going to be like this? Should we now consider the holiday season … masking season? But as we trudge into yet another pandemic winter, they do raise some questions. The reinstated mandates are by no means widespread, and that seems unlikely to change any time soon. A New Jersey school district revived its own mandate, and the Philadelphia school district announced that it would temporarily do the same after winter break. That same day, the Oakland, California, city council voted unanimously to again require people to mask up in government buildings. On Monday, one of Iowa’s largest health systems reissued its mandate for staff. But with cases once again on the rise and other respiratory illnesses such as RSV and influenza wreaking havoc, some scattered institutions have begun reinstating them. After last winter’s crushing Omicron spike, much of America did away with masking requirements. Winter is here, and so, once more, are mask mandates.
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