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Date: 12/27/2021
I believe in vaccines. That includes the COVID-19 vaccine.
I believe it significantly reduces the chances of severe illness, hospitalizations and death. I believe it reduces the chance of spreading the disease.
The data bears this out. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced the results of a review of breakthrough COVID-19 cases in the commonwealth, which stated that 97 percent of those cases did not result in hospitalization or death. For those of us under 60, 99.9 percent of breakthrough cases did not result in death and none have been found in our younger people ages 30 and under. For those over 60, 97 percent of the time, death was avoided. When you put that into the proper perspective with the fact that unvaccinated individuals are five times more likely to become infected than those who are fully vaccinated and 31 times more likely than someone who had received a booster, the efficacy is simply staggering.
That’s why I have such a hard time reconciling why Gov. Charlie Baker and his administration are at this point pushing vaccinated individuals to mask.
In case you missed it, Baker’s office announced a series of measures in response to the fact that cases of COVID-19 are on the rise in Massachusetts, as predicted. Among those was new mask guidance that does not mandate, but recommends all individuals wear face coverings, regardless of their vaccination status.
A day after showing how effective vaccines are, the governor stood in front of the commonwealth and said we all need to mask while almost simultaneously doubling down on vaccines, saying, “The evidence is overwhelming that these shots work.”
To Baker’s credit, he has continued to resist calls to reinstate a statewide mask mandate but consider me puzzled by the contradictory messaging. Vaccines work. Pushing masking among vaccinated individuals muddies the water and fuels skepticism of them.
I don’t particularly have an issue with masks. Neither does my wife, who wears one all day in a classroom, or my unvaccinated 3-year-old daughter. I adhere to all local mandates and frankly often wear one in situations where an unvaccinated person should in order to set an example for my little girl, though she’s also kind of accepted the idea that her parents won’t always wear one when she does because “mommy and daddy have had medicine.”
Masks in and of themselves are not the problem. The problem is the crutch they have become and how there has become a public perception that they are anywhere near the same plane as vaccines in terms of illness prevention. They’re not.
There was a time pre-vaccines when they were our best line of defense. They’re not anymore for most of us and continuing to fall back on them in such a fashion creates a troubling perception regarding the need for people to get vaccinated. Let’s push vaccine equity instead.