Consider This from NPR - The CDC's Mask Guidance Created Confusion. Could It Also Boost Vaccinations?

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

A week ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance that vaccinated people can safely return to most activities without wearing a mask. But the announcement caught many local officials and business leaders off guard. One of them was Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. NPR's Andrea Hsu reports on the confusion among businesses, which now have to decide what to do on their own. NPR's Yuki Noguchi interviewed behavioral scientists about whether the new guidance may encourage more people to get vaccinated. Additional reporting in this episode came from NPR's Allison Aubrey and Pien Huang. Read more about what the new CDC guidance means for unvaccinated kids — and their parents. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Americans are misinterpreting the CDC's guidance on masks. That's what Dr. Anthony Fauci said this week. People are misinterpreting, thinking that this is a removal of a mask mandate for everyone. It's not. It's not their fault, Fauci told Axios. People are not exactly sitting down with their morning coffee to read the fine print on CDC.gov. People either read them quickly or listen and hear half of it. They are feeling that we're saying you don't need a mask anymore.

That's not what the CDC said. What the CDC said is that vaccinated people can feel safe without a mask in most places. But the practical effect of that announcement one week ago was a sense of liberation. Oh, man, every bar in New York City is going to feel like St. Patrick's Day fell on Cinco de Mayo. You know what I'm saying? And the change was covered as a big deal. Tonight, the major turning point of the COVID pandemic in the U.S. The first step towards some semblance of normalcy.

President Biden called it a great milestone. After a year of hard work and so much sacrifice, the rule is very simple. Get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. It's a simple rule, but it raised a lot of questions. Like, how do we know who's vaccinated? Who should verify that? Where does this leave unvaccinated children?

What if everybody stops wearing a mask everywhere? This was not permission to shed masks for everybody everywhere. This was really science-driven, individual assessment of your risk. Days after the new guidance, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky had to clarify in an interview with NBC News. And now we all need to work together, and CDC is hard at work now, saying what does this mean for schools, for travel, for camps, for businesses? Consider this. The new CDC guidance left some people more confused than relieved. But the agency is also gambling that it could lead to more shots in more arms.

From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Thursday, May 20th. This message comes from NPR sponsor Amazon Prime Video with The Underground Railroad, a new original limited series from Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins, chronicling Cora Randall and her desperate bid for freedom. Watch The Underground Railroad now on Amazon Prime Video. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Keep. Grow your business with sales and marketing automation

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To Quentin Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, this was a no-brainer. The city would not eliminate its mask mandate. Well, at first I was in some ways thinking that obviously we're not getting rid of mask mandates. They're still important. That was his initial reaction to last week's CDC guidance. So many of us are not vaccinated. I am, but I think 70 percent or so, 60 percent of my community is not vaccinated. So I first thought nothing changes. But Lucas told NPR, as he looked around his community since then, he saw how people were interpreting the news. We were getting more pressure from our public, from many others, to say, hey, you've said listen

to the CDC for the last 14 months. You should listen to the CDC. We should have more freedom. And we recognized we were in a position where we couldn't force the local shop, the local convenience store, to keep up a mask mandate when everyone thought they'd been in a way freed. So in the space of 24 hours, he changed his mind and dropped the city's mask mandate. In the last week, plenty of cities, states, and businesses have made the same call. But Mayor Lucas wished the CDC had consulted more with local leaders around the country before all this happened. Because for those of us, particularly here in the middle of the country, like where I am, we had trouble even with getting people to wear masks when it was the law and the rule, and you saw incidents around the country of Walmart clerks being harassed and attacked,

and other stores. We didn't want another protest at Trader Joe's over masks, and so thought it wiser to move to a different phase of our coronavirus response locally. Of course, a confrontation at Trader Joe's is not the only risk here. To be fair, daily cases are lower than they've been in almost a year, but more than half of the adult population isn't fully vaccinated, and many people are still learning about vaccines and how to get them. In fact, a survey out this week from the New York Times found 9% of Americans say they're not getting a vaccine because they're worried about the cost. They're free to everyone, for the record. Others are still vulnerable, including millions of immunocompromised people

in the U.S. for whom vaccines may not work fully. Not to mention, we know that Black and Hispanic people still have received a smaller share of vaccinations. People from those communities also make up a disproportionate share of our quote-unquote essential workforce. I think that we could have waited another couple of months before we did this. Mark Perrone is president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. They represent about 1.3 million frontline retail and grocery store workers. I think that if you had large numbers of people that the guidance should be is that,

you know, people should wear masks, at least until we get to that herd immunity number. We're not there yet. But public health officials say it's unclear whether the U.S. will get to that herd immunity number. We're not there yet. But public health officials say it's unclear whether the U.S. will get to that number. Scientists aren't even positive what that number is. So the bottom line, while you are well protected if you're vaccinated, many people still are not. And now the burden of navigating that risk has shifted, from society at large to individuals. Of course, all of this has left businesses in a confusing situation. With mask mandates dropping

fast, business owners have to decide whether to make their own rules and how to enforce them. NPR's Andrea Hsu took a look at how that's going. On the sidewalk outside Jenny's Ice Cream in Alexandria, Virginia, Rhea and Mark Woodcock wait for their turn to go inside. They're regulars here, so they already know what flavors they're getting. Oh, the only one there is Texas sheet cake. Is that what you get every week? Every week, and he gets gooey butter cake.

The Woodcocks are vaccinated vaccinated and they're wearing masks. Jenny's has signs all over their doors saying masks mandatory. That's why I'm wearing a mask. Yeah, we're ready to burn them. We never liked them to begin with. Another customer, Christine Wohl, also walks up with the mask on. She says she'll be wearing hers for the foreseeable future, even though she's also vaccinated.

She's got two toddlers at home. I mean, there's no reason why we shouldn't. It does nothing to harm me to have a mask on, and it could help somebody else. As of this weekend, there is no longer any state or local law requiring vaccinated people to wear masks indoors here. But Jenny's itself can still require it, and that's what they're doing. Some of the biggest retailers in America are going the other direction. Target, Walmart, and Costco all drop their mask rules for vaccinated people, except where state or local laws apply. Of course, all of this falls to an honor system, which is a lot to put on a small business owner like Nicole McGrew.

My fear is that people will say they're vaccinated when they're not vaccinated and then just walk around unmatched. McGrew is the owner of Threadleaf, a boutique clothing and accessories store in Old Town Alexandria. She is fully vaccinated, but has an 11-year-old son who's not. So she still wears a mask. Today, it's a beautiful blue and black print made by a Ghanaian designer. I ordered these last summer. I did not think that we would be wearing masks 13, 14 months later, or I would have ordered a lot more. She says her customers have been pretty considerate about masks. And up until last weekend, she could just tell people, hey, state law says

you have to wear one. Now that Virginia's lifted its mandate, it's up to her to decide what's best for herself and her customers. You truly are just taking people at their word and having to navigate people's comfort levels. That will be trickier. So for a little while longer, she's sticking with masks. In Fayetteville, Arkansas, Richard McGinnis, owner of Richard's Country Meat Market, has already had some tricky conversations. His governor lifted the state mask mandate at the end of March, but his city, Fayetteville, still requires them.

But that's expected to change soon, and he says that's a relief. I want everybody happy when they're coming in. And there's still, you know, there's people that makes them mad when they have to put a mask on. But he's not worried about those people. He and all of his employees have been vaccinated. And he says it's about time the CDC made clear why that was important. But if you still have to wear a mask and do this and do this after you get the vaccination, then why are they telling us we need to do it?

So with the mask wars finally, maybe, on the way out, he's turning his attention to a more pressing issue. Business was great in the pandemic because restaurants were closed. How do you keep customers cooking at home now that they can eat out again? We're doing everything in our power to keep that business now. Including making curbside service permanent. NPR's Andrea Hsu. One upside to the CDC's new guidance, according to some public health experts, it could encourage more people to get vaccinated. Here's a former FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, on CNBC.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bump up in the number of people going out to get vaccinated because now being vaccinated provides more value. You can go around without a mask in an honest fashion. But some behavioral scientists who study human motivation aren't as optimistic about that. Here's NPR's Yuki Noguchi. Katherine Milkman is an economics professor at Wharton School of Business. She wrote a recent book about how to change people's behavior. So she's also thought a lot about how people might react to the CDC's rollback of its mask guidance. What the CDC is betting on is that people care about their own health and they're going to be nervous. Holy schmoly, you know, I better keep my mask on because I didn't get the vaccine and maybe I'd better get a vaccine. But it's a gamble and one without historical precedent. The risk, of course,

is that unvaccinated people will no longer feel compelled to wear masks at all. But Milkman says the new mask guidelines put the incentives on the unvaccinated, and that's the right place. The only people who are hurt by this change are the people who aren't doing the right thing and aren't getting the vaccine. I do think it's going to move people toward vaccination. Swarthmore College assistant professor Sion Benot says he thinks relatively few people are ideologically opposed to vaccination.

Most of the people hesitant to get the shots are likely willing, he says, if not exactly eager. A lot of the early data was people just kind of waiting and seeing. So what's the best way to motivate them? Is this change in guidelines the best incentive? Benote says probably not. He says a local bar offering free drinks to those with proof of vaccination is a stronger sell. Dude, they're giving out free beer, right? That's a little bit easier to point to as justification. Not just beer. Retailers and employers are giving away donuts, burgers, cash, or paid time off.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine even announced a lottery awarding a million dollars every week to a vaccinated resident. Since then, the number of Ohioans vaccinating increased, though it's not clear it's related. Duke University professor Dan Ariely says just offering rewards alone won't get everyone to get their shot. I think it would help the people who are on the fence, but it's not going to be enough. He says it leaves room for people to pretend they're vaccinated, even if they aren't. The logic of this easing the constraints is predicated on the fact that people would be honest. And if people stop being honest, we will not get the

benefit of it. Basically, Ariely takes a dimmer view of mankind. It's not enough to trust that people are fully vaccinated, but not verify that they are, he says. The fastest path to ending this pandemic is to require and enforce proof of vaccination, as they. The fastest path to ending this pandemic is to require and enforce proof of vaccination, as they do in Israel, to board a plane or to go into a movie theater. And it's not that I don't understand that it's a violation of privacy. I would much prefer to have the honor system. But at the same time, I don't think we're there. It wouldn't be popular, he admits, but at least it eliminates the potential for lying. NPR's Yuki Noguchi. By the way, if you are a parent or caretaker, you want to know more

about what that CDC guidance means for unvaccinated kids, well, we've got a link to a story about that at NPR.org. You can find it in our episode notes. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Audie Cornish.