Yesterday the CDC declared that if you’re an individual who has been fully vaccinated you no longer have to wear a mask indoors or outdoors and you don’t have to socially distance. Unless your local laws indicate otherwise. And most local laws are lax to begin with.

As of this writing if you peruse the CDC government site, you’ll find this information under a link that you can click on. There’s also a link that says “find a vaccine” if you are not vaccinated. The remainder of the site has not been updated since April 13 and it still mentions the prior facemask guidelines.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that the statement from the CDC yesterday was clearly their ploy to try to incentivize anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated and mainly to try to entice the ones who have no intention of getting vaccinated. Apparently the CDC doesn’t know that the ones who have no intention wouldn’t get vaccinated if their lives depended on it. They certainly don’t care if the CDC says you can go mask less if you get vaccinated. Because most of them weren’t wearing masks to begin with. And then CNN reported: If the CDC’s announcement isn’t enough to move people to get vaccinated, here’s another reason: Cleveland Clinic said Thursday that more than 99% of people with Covid-19 in its hospitals from January 1 and mid-April were not fully vaccinated. Well, duh. Of course they weren’t. The vaccines only started getting distributed in December, mainly to first responders and medical personnel and the majority of the population didn’t even become eligible for a goddamn shot until April. Also, if you were in the hospital with Covid, you weren’t going to be given a vaccine. Shit, I was eligible for a shot in February but couldn’t get one until the end of March because I couldn’t get a goddamn appointment. So fuck the Cleveland Clinic and their poor reasoning.

Which brings me to the next point, which every health official outside the CDC has also brought up: how the fuck are we going to know who has and who hasn’t been vaccinated? Covid tests at the door? Coughing tests? Facemasks wrapped around our arms? Facemask tan lines?

You can’t trust vaccination cards because so many non-vaxers have already secured fraudulent ones online. And would we expect businesses to stop and ask you for vaccination proof anyway?

Personally I intend to keep wearing a facemask as long as there are Covid cases. Although I am fully vaccinated I cannot afford to take the chance, whether it be slight or not, of getting Covid. Because I’m not going to know when I go to a store, a restaurant, a museum or anywhere that the person next to me who just coughed all over the place, who just spewed their saliva when they spoke, who just touched their mouth and then the doorknob, who is singing, who is laughing, and is standing right next to me, less than six feet away, is vaccinated. There aren’t enough, and at the end of the day, won’t be enough, fully vaccinated people in this country, or even the world, for me to fully believe that the person breathing down my neck is fully vaccinated. There have been so many instances during this pandemic where I have been in a store and the person in front of me has coughed or sneezed and although they were wearing a facemask, never took any other precaution. And I thought to myself “thank Christ I’m wearing a facemask”. In September at CVS I stood behind a man coughing his head off while wearing his facemask below his chin. I really felt bad for the woman standing in front of him.

Yes, I agree that it’s apparent the vaccines are doing something. The cases have dropped considerably and I’m lucky enough to live in one of the most vaccinated states. But, even as it says on the CDC website under the “What We’re Still Learning” section: How long Covid-19 vaccines can protect people. Because we don’t know. A good majority of us have taken a risk at not knowing if there will be any future side effects from these vaccines. But I guess it’s better than possibly dying from Covid. Again, we don’t know.

To me the CDC making their statement yesterday was their way of waving the white flag. They have given up. They know that we are at the end of the vaccine process for adults who want a vaccine, that the only ones left to get vaccinated will be children, if their parents allow them to, which I know many are not. They know herd immunity will not happen. And they know that Covid is not going away any time soon. I’m sure they even suspect another wave. And there very well could be one. But they can’t do anything else. So they tell the ones who have been vaccinated, and inadvertently the ones who have not, to take off their masks and party.

Until the next pandemic hits.