Thread by @MonicaGandhi9

Wanted to tweet on masking as getting a lot of interest in this today (I am not a ventilation scientist; I am just an epidemiologist/ID doctor who can see from epidemiology studies how low risk outdoor transmission is). #1, Indoor masking is important when case rates high; wrote

many papers on this over the pandemic including with experts like @linseymarr. But study after study showing how low risk of outside transmission is which led to CDC recommendation of not masking outdoors when vax & many experts to not mask outside at all unless in large crowd.

Those studied summarized by multiple people in multiple threads & we summarized some in this WSJ article below which is why so many now calling on @CDC to remove mask requirements for unvaccinated children outdoors.
wsj.com/articles/take-…

In terms of inside masks, think removal of those mandates should be linked to adult vaccination rate since increased adult vaccination rate decreases case rates in community:
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Indeed, that is the concept of what herd immunity is- we protect the unvaccinated (in this case children) by getting more & more members of the public around them immune. Children protected by low case rates; we are protected by vaccination

So, when should CDC remove recommendation for indoor masking which will lead to states removing mask mandates who haven't? 3 possibilities
1) Can link it to hospitalizations for COVID-19 + certain vax rate
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…

2) Or can link it to when everyone >16 has chance to get their 2nd dose of vax + a low case rate (2 cases/100K or 20/million?)
3) Or can link it to 70% 1st vaccination rate in adults per President Biden's speech May 4 + low case rate
Clear metrics helps motivate public to vax