I’m hoping by now most of the foot stompers and hair tuggers will have worked the tantrums out of their systems. They have had two days to get accustomed to the idea that once again we should be wearing masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status.
On Tuesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a recommendation that face coverings indoors are advisable because of an increased risk in transmission of the Delta variant of the Covid-19 virus, including to those who are vaccinated—slight as the cases may have been.
The county of San Diego followed the CDC’s lead and issued a similar recommendation, given the region is considered an area of high transmission.
However, wailers and bemoaners should take note: they are only recommendations.
No one is forcing anyone to wear masks.
No one is forcing anyone to be vaccinated.
(And maybe that’s why we’re being urged to wear masks again).
According to county health officials San Diego has a good rate of vaccination. Seventy percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated while 81 percent has at least one dose of the vaccine coursing through their veins. Even I’m impressed.
One recent afternoon I was drinking coffee on a public patio. Cigarette smoke made its way to my table. In addition to making me nostalgic (I miss smoking in bars because a cigar and whiskey in a booth in corner is a simple pleasure for me) it also made me choke. And cough.
The smoker was yards away and for five or ten minutes I involuntarily inhaled the smoke he exhaled and that wafted from his cigarette.
Had we been indoors the smoke would have been much more concentrated.
Had he been wearing a mask while smoking the amount or carcinogens that reached me would have been negligible, especially if I had been wearing one, too.
At any given time among strangers we do not know who is vaccinated and who is potentially blowing disease into the air each time they exhale. We do know that the latest version of this virus is much more transmissible and so we’re being told we should wear masks for our own, and our neighbors’, protection. Seems reasonable to me.
