Debra-Lynn B. Hook
Tribune News Service
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Columnist Debra-Lynn Hook shares her relief and fears surrounding the latest mask-wearing guidance from the CDC.
Tribune
Last week, I waited until the end of the day when nobody else was in the salon, and for the first time in 17 months, I got a haircut.
A couple days later, I sneaked inside a smoothie shop and ordered my favorite peanut-butter-cacao concoction.
Today, I hugged my son’s girlfriend for the second time ever. I sat for a few minutes on the back porch with friends.
And I pondered exactly what it is I think I’m doing.
Like everybody else, I just want to be normal again.
Don’t I?
Last week, Americans were suddenly lifted into hopes of normal, when officials proclaimed COVID-19 vaccination efforts a success and said all fully vaccinated Americans could stop wearing masks and social distancing except in health-care settings, on public transportation, in specified areas where masks are required and when local jurisdictions say otherwise. (Schools were later added to the list of exceptions.)
“Today is a great day for America,” President Joe Biden quickly declared after the statement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Then why do I still feel like a sitting target in “The Hunger Games”?
The fact is, a lot of scary uncertainties remain: How effective is the vaccination against the more dangerous variants of the disease? When will the effectiveness of the vaccine wear off? Does the vaccination even work on the 10 million immunocompromised people like me? What about the safety of all the people, including children, who for one reason or another, can’t be vaccinated? If the unvaccinated/unprotected choose not to wear masks, how will we distinguish them from the vaccinated?
At my friend’s office, a directive went out soon after the CDC’s announcement, saying vaccinated employees no longer have to wear masks. Not a peep about the unvaccinated, leaving workers to second-guess who’s safe and who’s not.
The CDC’s hopeful new pronouncement, along with President Biden’s glee, seemed to have created a chaotic muddle in the middle of a population desperate to attach to the slightest bit of good news.
Looking at the bustling, unmasked streets of our college town this past weekend, it was pre-COVID 2019 all over again. And yet, there may be just as many scary unknowns now as there were when COVID-19 first emerged.
“The fear raised by the questions left unanswered by the CDC guidance feels like things did at the start of COVID, when so much was unknown,” Los Angeles physician and professor of emergency medicine Mark Morocco wrote for the L.A. Times in the days following the CDC announcement.
To be sure, great things have come to pass in the past year. We have not one, but three vaccines to counter the pandemic. Almost half of all American adults have been at least partially vaccinated. Numbers of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths are down.
Still, we can’t forget the vaccines aren’t 100% foolproof. People are still getting sick and dying. In India a deadly surge emerged amid a lack of resources, even as we faced many unknowns about new disease variants. Even mild cases of COVID-19 are presenting with long-term symptoms like fatigue and breathing issues.
To say we have come upon a great day in America is like giving a box of firecrackers to a toddler. People in an attention-deficient country like ours tend to seize on the headline and not the story underneath.
CDC’s director ultimately added context, advising that Americans should take into consideration the rates of COVID-19 in their particular communities before going maskless, that businesses should keep encouraging workers to get vaccinated and that the immunocompromised should check with their doctors before ripping off their masks.
Meanwhile, too much hope too soon could be a recipe for complacency, bad decisions and straight-out chaos, which could be a recipe for another COVID-19 surge.
I know I was excited when I heard the CDC news. My visit to the salon had the effect of perking me up for about six hours — until my hair fell flat again as did my confidence about going into places of business.
It’s still a crapshoot in many ways, I have to keep reminding myself, as I go back to erring on the side of not taking risks while I await the results of a COVID-19 antibody blood test to tell me if the vaccination provided me with any immunity.
The COVID-19 roller coaster goes up. The roller coaster goes down. One of the symptoms of COVID-19 is mental confusion. So is managing our response to it.
We are still only fallible human beings with a monster of a puzzle in front of us and a hellbent predisposition to solving it.
In some ways, I suppose, we can’t be faulted if our default is hope.
We just can’t forget reason along the way: We may be safer. But we’re still not safe.
Don’t throw away that mask just yet.
(Debra-Lynn B. Hook of Kent, Ohio, has been writing about family life since 1988. Visit her website at www.debralynnhook.com; email her at dlbhook@yahoo.com, or join her column’s Facebook discussion group at Debra-Lynn Hook: Bringing Up Mommy.)
Tribune Content Agency, LLC
