When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Thursday that those vaccinated for COVID-19 could largely stop wearing masks, I was hoping the Greenwood City Council would follow suit and drop its mask mandate a month early.
That doesn’t appear to be likely.
Shucks.
It creates a dilemma for folks like me who have tried to do the right thing by obeying the city law and by getting vaccinated. It leaves us either bearing with the nuisance for at least 30 more days, or ignoring an ordinance that the mayor herself has said is not going to be enforced.
From what I could tell even before the CDC announcement, most people in this community have opted to ignore the Greenwood mandate, as well as a similar one adopted by Leflore County. The CDC’s updated guidance is almost certainly going to accelerate noncompliance.
As I’ve said before, I became a convert to mask wearing as the death counts from COVID-19 mounted last spring and summer. The city’s mandate, first instituted in July, helped nudge me in that direction, as did the earnest pleadings of most state and federal health officials to wear the facial coverings in order to protect not only myself but anyone else with whom I might come into contact.
With infection numbers now so low, and with mask wearers shrinking dramatically in number, I’m starting to feel a little silly to still have one on.
Most of the members of the City Council polled by our newspaper after the CDC’s latest guidance came out said they weren’t ready to lift the mandate yet. They want to wait until vaccination numbers get higher. One member of the council, Andrew Powell, said he’d like to see at least 75% of Leflore County’s population inoculated against COVID-19 before the masks come off. If that’s the standard, we’ll be wearing the masks for the rest of our lives.
The vaccination rate is just not going to get there. As of Friday, 35% of Leflore County had been fully vaccinated, according to the tracking by the Mississippi State Department of Health. That’s one of the higher rates in a state that badly trails the national vaccination average.
Certainly those numbers are going to rise as the vaccines — one of which is now approved for those as young as 12 — start being given to younger and younger children. But there’s still too much vaccine resistance — whether out of fear or politics — to expect this county to see even a majority of residents get the shot.
Those who wouldn’t get the vaccine for themselves are unlikely to have their children get it. And even some of those who are vaccinated are going to decide that they’d rather risk their children getting COVID, since the virus tends to be mild with younger ages, than risk having complications from the vaccine.
Although I welcome the CDC’s change on mask wearing, I understand the hesitancy of the City Council to join those state and city governments that quickly relaxed or dropped their mask requirements following Thursday’s announcement.
For one, some of the infection experts don’t agree with the CDC. They say, even if you are fully vaccinated, you should wear a mask in any indoor area where there’s a crowd of people — for example, all the graduation ceremonies that are taking place this month and next.
Also, there’s no practical way to enforce the new rules — maskless if vaccinated, masked if not. Employers may have the right to require their employees to prove they’ve been vaccinated, but few if any will ask that of their customers. Even if they did, people will lie.
Thus, if you want to fully protect the unvaccinated, there’s really no way to do it without inconveniencing the vaccinated and making them follow the same restrictions. The problem with that approach, though, is it creates what we have now: a mandate that is roundly ignored, unenforced and unenforceable.
The longer the city sticks with a requirement that people either resent or believe is unjustified by current conditions, the harder it will be to flip the switch — should there be another surge in COVID-19 cases — and get people to mask up again.
Masks have their health benefits, reducing obviously the transmission of all kinds of viruses, and not just the coronavirus. But they are also bad for the psyche.
They put us in a foul mood. They impede communication and social interaction. They block our smiles and fog up our glasses. They cause us to whine more than normal.
Masks have been a necessary evil for the past year or so, but for many and in most situations, they now seem more evil than necessary.
City Council, can we please take them off?
- Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
