For two years, we all have been waiting for a return to “normal.” But even with the end of mask mandates drawing near, our “normal” has been altered. Coronavirus is here to stay, and the goal is to live with it as best we can while working to protect each other.
Gov. Jay Inslee on Monday announced that mandates in Washington will be lifted March 12. That will apply for schools, child care facilities, grocery stores, gyms, bars and other public establishments. Notably, private businesses still may require masks; customers should respect that.
For much of the country, masking guidelines were eased Friday when the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that most Americans may forego the wearing of masks indoors. Under previous guidelines, masks were recommended in communities where transmission rates remained “substantial” or “high.” That covered about 95 percent of U.S. counties.
Officials said immunity is increasing — from both vaccinations and infections.
“Anybody is certainly welcome to wear a mask at any time if they feel safer wearing a mask,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky added. “We want to make sure our hospitals are OK and people are not coming in with severe disease. … Anyone can go to the CDC website, find out the volume of disease in their community and make that decision.”
In Washington, for now, indoor mask mandates remain in place. Marissa Armstrong of Clark County Public Health said: “While CDC recommendations may have changed, we’re still under that mandate, and masks will be required indoors until it is lifted. Those new recommendations provided by the CDC will be helpful after the mandate is lifted to help people make decisions about what to do based on their counties’ risk level.”
Meanwhile, Walensky touched upon the crux of the issue when she noted that people can “make that decision.”
In truth, that is what we have been doing for some time. Any visit to the grocery store in recent months has been likely to reveal some residents who choose to eschew mask mandates. We believe that people should follow the advice of experts, but expecting unanimity in a diverse and expansive society is not realistic.
Since COVID-19 arrived two years ago, with the first U.S. cases being reported in our state, there has been much debate over government-dictated protective measures. When it comes to the efficacy of wearing masks, there also has been confusion over changing recommendations from the CDC as experts tried to learn all they could about a previously unknown disease.
Most Washington residents have willingly followed the advice of officials, and the results are evident: Our state has had among the lowest infection and fatality rates since the outbreak of the pandemic.
When indoor mask mandates are lifted, it will represent a turning point in the fight against the virus. It also will represent a journey into a new state of normal. As a California professor told The Associated Press: “There will be more waves of COVID. And so I think it makes sense to give people a break from masking. If we have continual masking orders, they might become a total joke by the time we really need them again.”
We probably will need them again. Variants of COVID-19 have produced ebbs and flows in infection rates, and that is likely to continue. Whatever the status, we would be wise to follow the mandates of the experts.
