Expert warns against crying wolf over masks

(TND) — Talk of masking has bubbled up as COVID-19 cases rise.

There have been some scattered masking mandates put in place.

Morris Brown College in Georgia recently instituted a two-week mask mandate after “reports of positive cases among students.”

Kaiser Permanente reinstated mask requirements at its facilities in Santa Rosa, California.

And movie studio Lionsgate asked some employees to put back on masks after several workers caught the virus.

Talk of mask mandates returning has generated strong rebukes from some Republican officials.

Gov. Tate Reeves, of Mississippi, released a statement that folks in his state “will not and should not submit to fear again.”

He vowed to “not return to widespread masking or COVID rules” and that “we are never going back to 2020.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, shot back at “COVID hysteria” in a social media post.

And former President Donald Trump told “every COVID tyrant” that he and his supporters won’t “abide by your mask mandates.”

COVID hospitalizations are up in recent weeks. There were over 17,000 new hospitalizations nationwide in the most recent weekly data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That’s up from around 6,000 new hospitalizations in mid-July.

But hospital admissions for COVID are in the “low” category almost everywhere in the country.

And the 17,000 weekly hospital admissions we’re seeing now are a far cry from the nearly 40,000 we were seeing this time last year or the 85,000 we were seeing two years ago.

CDC Director Mandy Cohen said in a recent video that, “We're in a much different and better place in August of 2023.”

“We have stronger immunity and tools to protect ourselves, we have vaccines, at-home tests, effective treatments and common-sense strategies like washing your hands and staying away from people when you're sick," she said.

Virologist Paula Cannon agrees, and she said this recent uptick isn’t anything to be overly concerned about.

It’s to be expected given changing behaviors, such as going back to school, and waning immunity.

New boosters are expected in the coming weeks.

Masking might make sense on a personal level, especially for a compromised person, she said.

But we’re not in need of any population-level requirements.

“There's nothing yet that looks like it's going to be more dangerous, and I think we should probably reserve a re-masking request or mandate for the population for something that's significantly more serious than what we are basically living with,” said Cannon, with the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

She said the reality is people don’t want to mask, and they really won’t take masking requests seriously if they feel like we “cry wolf too many times.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s former top infectious disease authority, shared similar thoughts when asked about the effectiveness of masks during a CNN interview.

The anchor asked Fauci about a study, led by an Oxford epidemiologist, that found no evidence that masks make any difference.

“When you’re talking about the effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong, but when you talk about an individual basis of someone protecting themselves or protecting themselves from spreading it to others, there’s no doubt that there are many studies that show that there is an advantage” to wearing masks, Fauci said.

Omicron has “thrown off ... this alphabet soup of different mutants and variants,” Cannon said.

The most common at the moment are EG.5 and FL.1.5.1.

Another variant, BA.2.86, got people “freaked out,” because it was so different from previous mutations, Cannon said.

But folks should exhale knowing that BA.2.86 is not widespread and that it was found to not be any more resistant to antibodies than other variants.

Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading in England, wrote that “evolution will provide us with a more or less constant stream of new coronavirus variants.”

“The issue of masks, which in reality should be taken as shorthand for face coverings of all sorts, is one that too often creates more heat than light,” he wrote for The Conversation. “There have been overstated claims of their effect and unwarranted claims of proof of ineffectiveness.”

Cannon said there are multiple ways to protect yourself and others.

If “masking makes sense for you on a personal level,” then go for it.

Keep some COVID tests at home, and test yourself at the first sign of symptoms. It might not be COVID, but if it is, you can stay home and keep from spreading the virus.

And getting the new booster when it’s available can help “keep COVID as sort of a manageable public health problem,” she said.

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