🧵1/ Well, life comes at you fast, amirite?! 😂😩*sigh* cnn.com/2021/05/13/hea…
🧵2/ I’ve still been processing the response to CDC’s change in guidance about *outdoor* masking! Remember that?! npr.org/sections/healt…
🧵3/ In that case, I thought guidance was pretty sound bc that’s basically how I’d been living even before I was vaccinated. Outdoor transmission risk so low. My family wore masks outdoors when close to people (playgrounds etc) or long face-to-face talking or just as a courtesy
🧵4/ but otherwise, I didn’t worry about outdoor masking v much esp after fully vaccinated. Mostly I’m modeling outdoor masking as a habit to my unvaccinated kids and in solidarity with them
🧵5/ But several of my friends were perturbed by change in outdoor masking guidance. And I really sat to think about that & talk with them about it. I landed on what an unsettling time this is...
🧵6/ I feel very safe re: #COVID19 in my community, but then I realized that my county is in top 20% of the most vaccinated counties IN THE COUNTRY 🤯usatoday.com/in-depth/graph…
🧵7/ in my county, not only are 84% of seniors vaccinated but 60% of adults 18+ are *fully* vaccinated, with more in their 2-week waiting period. And people are great about masking in my little university town. The upshot is that I feel v safe here & move about with ease
🧵8/ But I know that’s not the case for everyone. If I lived in a place where most people weren’t vaccinated or people refused to mask even as a courtesy or anti-mask protesters were outside my kids’ school like this, I’d be more jittery — even knowing the science. This is hard!
https://twitter.com/awalkerinla/status/1387266254717677568
🧵9/ So, yeah, that’s what my thread on CDC loosening *outdoor* mask guidance was going to say. Reassuring but empathetic to those feeling stressed and worried... but *that’s* old news now! 😬
🧵10/ on to the matter at hand! Here’s a good summary of the state of things: nytimes.com/2021/05/13/us/…
🧵 11/ First impression: This feels like it’s coming out of nowhere! It’s a sharp detour from recent guidance. And it’s confusing bc has little practical guidance on how this affects day-to-day life in different settings. Once again, avg people wondering, How will this affect me?
🧵12/ The retail and other front-line workers. 😟 What a 🤬 headache for them! Again the lack of specific guidance and messaging to help businesses respond to this big announcement is very upsetting! Don’t leave them high and dry!
🧵13/ (Past week had seen lots of hand-wringing over finding enough workers to take low-wage jobs. I wonder how this will affect things. What’s the wage to make it worthwhile to deal with aggressive people who refuse business rules?)
🧵14/ And I’m more worried about the logistics of my planned beach trip to South Carolina this summer with my unvaccinated kids to finally see relatives. But we shall see. I won’t borrow that worry for today.
🧵15/ Here’s my attempt to understand what’s going on: I think they are taking a big swing! A big, risky, high-risk, high-reward type swing...
🧵16/ Adult vaccinations trickling to a stand-still far below levels needed to avoid bigger outbreaks in fall & winter. Infections and hospitalizations are not explosive now (although still too high in my opinion) but they’ll go up again bc that’s what #COVID19 does
🧵17/ one of the big themes from focus groups of unvaccinated people is that there’s a large group who say they are not getting vaccinated bc they will still have to mask. I believe, this is most prominent among White folks on the political right and some younger folks
🧵18/ I’ve been skeptical about whether this stated reasoning will actually translate into behavior change (this is no slam against young people and those on Right - it’s human nature that what we say in surveys doesn’t always match what we do in practice)
🧵19/ So I think CDC taking a big risky swing that this change will actually move people to get vaccinated
🧵 20/ And honestly I hope they are right. 🙏🏾 Bc we are in kind of a desperate situation. Globally #SARSCoV2 here to stay for foreseeable future...our low vaccination rates as a country leave us vulnerable to big outbreaks, esp in low-vax areas, esp in coming fall and winter
🧵21 / re: the timing - vaccines are most effective at getting to herd immunity when transmission is low. Best case scenario is a fast vaccination effort during a period of very low transmission
https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1379292835799654404
🧵22/ intutuion: It takes a lot more energy to stop a speeding train that it does to keep one from accelerating from a standstill. The @CT_Bergstrom thread above was excellent for helping me get an intuition for this
🧵23/ And maybe CDC noticed that cases and hospitalizations have stopped declining. With more people preparing to travel and vacation (opening up infection networks), we may be passing the period of lowest Rt in the US if nothing changes
🧵24/ Each vaccination during a low transmission time period is worth a lot more bang for the buck then the same vaccination during a period with higher transmission
🧵25/ Last tweet bc I’ve hit max thread length: My big disappointment is Biden/CDC failure to apply similar intensity and out-of-box thinking to the many who still want to get vaccinated but no easy access. How about we take some big risks for them?
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