Will The CDC Announce Another Mask Mandate?

The CDC will have a briefing today at 3pm eastern time to, once again, discuss masks and if we should be wearing them. It’s expected that they will be advising all people, vaccinated or not, to wear their mask in public whether indoors or outdoors. It’s likely that it won’t be a mandate, but rather be a strong recommendation that all people should wear their mask when in public. CNBC states, “The updated guidance comes ahead of the fall season, when the highly contagious delta variant is expected to cause another surge in new coronavirus cases and many large employers plan to bring workers back to the office. In mid-May, the CDC said fully vaccinated people didn’t need to wear masks in most settings, whether indoors or outdoors.” Although more than 161 million American’s have been vaccinated, the vaccine has proven itself to not be immune to the delta variant, which is a big reason that masks might be making a comeback.

Should we be worried that masks will once again be mandated? This is following the same pattern as we saw in the beginning of COVID where masks were not required originally, but then masks were mandated for all people not too long after that. This is certainly not what anybody wants to hear, especially after we had a small taste of freedom once many people received the vaccine.

It seems if though we are taking steps backwards in the fight against COVID, and with school right around the corner, it will be interesting to see what happens. Many schools are requiring vaccines, and it’s probable that all students will have to wear masks on campus if school is allowed to be in person. With the growing cases, it’s not unlikely that schools are at the least a hybrid format, if not all online.