The CDC is now warning that even those vaccinated against coronavirus might be contagious and must now wear a face covering, signifying their reversal on the topic.
QUICK FACTS:
- U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters during a briefing on Tuesday afternoon that coronavirus is transmissible even among the vaccinated.
- The CDC now says that “fully vaccinated people” need to “begin wearing masks indoors,” according to CNBC.
- “Some vaccinated people infected with a delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others,” Walensky said during the press briefing.
- “Vaccinated individuals continue to represent a very small amount of transmission occurring around the country,” Walensky said.
- The CDC is now “revers[ing]” its mask guidance, recommending that “everyone in areas with substantial or high levels of transmission—vaccinated or not—wear a mask in public, indoor settings,” according to ABC News.
- “The public health agency also recommended schools embrace universal masking, departing from guidance released earlier this month that suggested vaccinated students and staff were safe to go without a mask,” notes ABC.
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday defended the CDC’s guidelines reversal over wearing masks, apparently contradicting statements made in the past.
- “[E]ven though you are vaccinated, when you are in an indoor public setting in an area…then you need to wear a mask even though you are vaccinated,” says Fauci.
TRUMP’S RESPONSE:
- “We won’t go back. We won’t mask our children,” said President Donald Trump. “(President) Joe Biden and his administration learned nothing from the last year.”
- “Brave Americans learned how to safely and responsibly live and fight back. Don’t surrender to COVID. Don’t go back! Why do Democrats distrust the science? Don’t let this happen to our children or our country,” he went on to say.
BACKGROUND:
- The CDC had said in May that “fully vaccinated Americans can return to life without masks,” according to ABC News.
- “If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic,” Walensky had said at the time. “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing.”
- “If you were vaccinated, you don’t have to wear a mask outside,” said Fauci in a morning interview with CBS’s Gayle King in May.
- “[T]hose who are vaccinated…can feel safe, be they outdoors or indoors,” Fauci told Axios days later.
- The studies that prompted the to change their mask guidance for vaccinated persons are not available, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times on Wednesday. “They have not been published yet,” they said.
