Shedding Mask Mandates: A Step Towards Life After Covid-19?

Across the country, governors are ending indoor mask mandates, including in schools, while others abandoned mandates long ago. Masks have been a potent symbol of pandemic life, so shedding them would signal a transition to a more normal life. It will be literally a breath of fresh air to throw away our masks, and to see a smile unhidden by a face covering. We are on a very good trajectory and will soon move from a pandemic to an endemic phase of Covid-19. But the CDC is right to argue that masking remains vital for now. Governors are acting prematurely, with cases still high, hospitals overwhelmed, and more transmissible subvariants of Covid-19 looming. We also face a severe shortage of effective treatments to keep us out of the hospital. Now is not a good time to get Covid-19.

Read the op-ed here.