One night in January I sat at my laptop stressing over which masks to order. The aggressively contagious omicron variant was surging, people I knew of all ages and vaccination statuses were testing positive, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was urging Americans to get serious about high-grade masks.
I’m probably about to waste a hundred bucks on counterfeit KF94s, I thought as I clicked “buy” on my screen, but at least I’d found some semblance of a respirator mask that wasn’t sold out. I also felt relieved to locate a box of kiddie KN95s for my children, brutally expensive but still in stock.
Now here we are, not even three weeks later, and I’ve apparently Rip Van Winkled my way into a whole new reality. Everywhere I look, it’s off with the masks. Time to get back to bare-faced indoor parties, time to get rid of mask mandates and vaccine checks.
Those kiddie KN95s? They’re on sale now.
States Are Lifting Mask Mandates
As of this writing, every U.S. state except Hawaii with mask mandates in indoor public spaces is lifting these rules, and many of those states are eliminating mask mandates in schools, too. My own state of New York is ditching the mask-or-vaccine requirement indoors starting in late February. One private school in the left-leaning Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope even tried to lift the mask rule for its students ahead of New York State’s own loosening policy.
I understand the impatience. My fantasies these days involve giant bonfires that burn up every mask, every at-home test and nasal swab.
But still, I can’t help thinking: Acting like the pandemic is suddenly over seems a little premature, no?
Is the Pandemic Really Over?
The good news is COVID cases in my state have dropped by 94 percent in the past two months, and hospitalization rates by nearly two-thirds. Studies confirm that omicron causes less severe disease than earlier variants.
But I’m struggling to forget what happened last June when the delta wave crashed through, just when everyone was breathing a sigh of relief and getting ready for a hot vax summer. Or when just as delta had finally waned, omicron showed up in time to ruin the holidays. We all sense the pattern here, right?
As omicron recedes, the next variant could be getting ready to muscle its way in, or it could even be here already. Call me paranoid, but the World Health Organization (WHO) recently said that the evolution of the COVID-19 virus is “expected to continue” and that omicron is unlikely to be the last “variant of concern.”
In an interview with the BBC’s Science Focus magazine this month, Nicholas Timpson, PhD, a professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Bristol in England, said new variants “could couple increased transmission with vaccine escape or worse disease,” adding, “There isn’t a guarantee of lessening severity.”
The shift to what’s called an “endemic” state is coming, experts say. That’s when we’ll finally be able to treat COVID-19 like another flu-like nuisance, not a world-destroying disaster.
But we’re not there yet. So what’s the big deal about wearing masks for just a little bit longer until we’re closer to that promised land?
A Lot of People Are Still Getting Infected
Even now that COVID-19 rates are plummeting and death rates are finally leveling off around the country, many people are still getting sick.
Some triple-vaccinated folks I know recently suffered COVID bouts that left them feverish for days and wiped out for weeks. Was that omicron or the remnants of delta? Who knows, but whatever it was, it sucked.
Now in the late winter of 2022, the coronavirus is still knocking people down and wrecking plans. Even for those who get only mild symptoms or none at all, a positive test still means missed days of school or work, routines upended, and the anxiety that you’ve infected others who may be more vulnerable to severe illness.
The director of an outdoor program that my children love tested positive two days ago; he’s doing okay, but now his activity is on hiatus. Yesterday my kids played in a park with a 7-year-old buddy who went on to test positive. The kid is fatigued, his parents are worried, and now my family will be testing constantly, our long-anticipated visit to relatives next weekend up in the air.
As for the millions of people in this country who aren’t vaccinated, or who aren’t well protected by vaccines because they’re immunocompromised, going anywhere still means rolling the dice.
The CDC, faulted last spring for rushing to eliminate indoor masking recommendations for the vaccinated, agrees this time that it’s too soon to lift its indoor mask rules, as director Rochelle Walensky, MD, said on February 9. (However! NBC News reports that the agency is expected to relax its indoor masking policies next week.)
A CBS News poll released last weekend showed 56 percent of respondents across political parties favor keeping the mask mandates for now — and of those, 66 percent of fully vaccinated people agree with holding on to the mandates.
No, Thanks — Too Soon
As for me, I’m not waiting for those free N95 masks that the Biden administration promised every American. (A friend joked that she’ll know the pandemic is truly over when those masks finally arrive.)
I’ve just ordered yet another batch of KN95s online, although I hope my family won’t end up needing all of them. If no other “variant of concern” pops up for a while, I’ll be ready to stuff that box into deep storage. (Bonfires are illegal in my building.)
But for now, I can deal with a few more weeks of an annoying thing strapped to my face. My kids are used to wearing masks, too, and don’t complain about them anymore, even if my 6-year-old daughter keeps finding ways to poke her nose out of her purple child-sized KN95.
Meanwhile, vaccinated and boosted friends who’ve had breakthrough COVID and now feel bulletproof are hosting indoor dinner parties again. My husband and I sound like wet blankets every time we say, “No, thanks, too soon.” I’m getting weirdly nostalgic for the days when people around us were still wary of each other and playing it safe.
For the rest of this winter and maybe into spring, I plan to keep my own personal mask mandate, and I’ll skip mask-optional indoor hangouts until further notice. I’ll be the one over there in the corner, looking hopelessly uptight and unfashionable in a mask. If I’m lucky it might not even be counterfeit.
