Rush by states, stores and cruise lines to ditch mask rules widens gulf with CDC

Every state that had a statewide mask mandate, except Hawaii, either has lifted it or will let it expire in the coming weeks as coronavirus infections fall to levels not seen since November, before the omicron wave.

Target stores this week said it won’t require workers or customers to cover their faces unless local regulations require it, while Apple stores said customers in many stores would no longer have to mask up. Norwegian Cruise Line, Carnival Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean are lifting their mask rules over the next two weeks.

The dramatic shift leaves the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an outlier as it lags in updating mask guidance while governors from coast to coast say they are longer mandatory.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said the agency will refresh its guidance in the coming days or weeks as it pinpoints the right metrics, such as hospital capacity, to guide the update. For now, the agency says people should wear masks in public indoor spaces in counties with high or substantial transmission, which describes most of the country.

“As always, CDC is regularly reviewing our guidance to ensure we are providing science-based recommendations that are most relevant for each moment of the pandemic,” CDC spokeswoman Jade Fulce said Wednesday. “We will communicate any updates on our mask recommendations publicly if and/or when they change.”

Still, the disconnect is disorienting for Americans who believe CDC guidance ought to dictate the tone for everyone else.

“It is a huge problem for CDC because what states and businesses do should flow from the top experts at CDC, whereas now the guidance amounts to mere background noise. In other words, what’s the point of issuing the guidance if it doesn’t influence policy?” said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine.

Instead, state and city policymakers are responding to a mandate-weary public — a trucker protest is threatening to descend on Washington — in shedding masks as daily reported infections average 80,000 per day, a 90% drop from the mid-January peak though still an elevated level compared to many periods of the pandemic.

“The battle against COVID is ending in the USA,” Mr. Caplan said. “Short of another variant, we are not willing to mask to protect the high-risk population. The message is we are done masking and staying home.”

He said that message also amounts to saying the unvaccinated, children under age 5 and ineligible for vaccines, and the immunocompromised are “on their own.”

Masks remain a central feature of the pandemic fight after vaccines did not rein in viral transmission as much as initially hoped.

But mask mandates also become a symbol of government overreach for some critics, especially when it comes to rules on schoolchildren, and the CDC in January recommended higher-grade N95 or KN95 masks after many people spent much of the pandemic relying on cloth masks.

Proponents of masks have pointed to studies that support their position. Counties that adopted a July 2020 mask mandate in Kansas experienced significantly lower rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths compared with those that did not, according to one study.

A massive study of 350,000 people in 600 villages in rural Bangladesh last year found those randomly assigned to wear surgical masks were about 11% less likely than those living in control villages to develop COVID-19.

Some people in the U.S. say the rush to ditch face covering is premature.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, a major flight attendants’ union, said the Transportation Security Administration’s plan to lift mask requirements on March 18 instead of extending the rule would imperil medically frail passengers and those under age 5.

A plurality of registered New York voters, 45%, said Gov. Kathy Hochul’s state mask mandate should have remained in place, compared to 31% who say it should have ended earlier than Feb. 10 and 20% who say it ended at the right time, according to a new Siena College poll.

A majority, 58%, think New York should wait until it sees early March virus data before lifting a mask mandate on schools.

New York was part of a cluster of blue states, from California to New England, that lifted mask mandates immediately or said they would go away at the beginning of March.

Hawaii Gov. David Ige, the Democratic leader of the last holdout state, told TV station KITV last week he is working with health officials to determine when it is appropriate to lift an indoor mask mandate.

Cases on the island state have plummeted in line with national rates, averaging 325 per day from 5,000 during the January peak.

He said Hawaii has one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the nation “in part because of the indoor mask requirement and other measures that have proven successful in protecting our community from this potentially deadly virus.

“We base our decisions on science, with the health and safety of our community as the top priority,” he said.

Some places have a patchwork of rules.

New York City, for instance, has stringent vaccine requirements at many sites but mask policies are largely set by businesses. People must cover their faces at Broadway shows, in hospitals and medical centers, however.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is pushing for a broader revival of activity to get the city out of the pandemic doldrums.

He said Wednesday that while he understands that the virus has changed society, foot traffic is necessary for the city’s economic survival, particularly for lower-wage workers.

“We have to have human interaction, it can’t be done from home,” Mr. Adams said. “You can’t stay home in your pajamas all day. That is not who we are as a city. You need to be out cross-pollinating ideas, interacting with humans. It is crucial, we’re social creatures and we must socialize to get the energy we need as a city.”

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.