“I don’t wear a mask when hanging out with other people who have been vaccinated,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, Dean of Brown University School of Public Health. “I don’t even think about it. I go to the office with a few people and they are all vaccinated. I’m not worried. “
But once you venture into closed public spaces, where the chances of encountering unvaccinated people are greater, a mask is probably a good idea. A full vaccination remains the strongest protection against Covid-19, but the risk is cumulative. The more opportunities you give the virus to challenge the antibodies you made with your vaccine, the higher your risk of exposure to exposure so great that the virus breaks the protective barrier created by your vaccine .
Because of this, your community’s fall and immunization rates are among the the most important factors influencing mask requirements. For example, in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, more than 70 percent of adults are fully vaccinated. In Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, fewer than 45 percent of adults are vaccinated. In some counties, overall vaccination rates are far lower.
“We are currently two Covid nations,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital. In Harris County, Texas, where Dr. Hotez is alive, case numbers are up 116 percent in the past two weeks, and only 44 percent of the community is fully vaccinated. “I wear a mask indoors most of the time,” said Dr. Hotez.
Finally, masking is more important in poorly ventilated indoor spaces than outdoors, where the risk of infection is extremely low. Dr. Jha notes that he recently stormed into a cafe unmasked because his area of the country has low infection rates and high vaccination rates, and he was only there for a few minutes.
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