When would infectious disease specialists feel comfortable dining in, teaching and shopping without masks? They shared their personal risk calculations with NPR.
A masked-up family walks through Union Station in Los Angeles in early January. Nearly two months later numerous states and cities have dropped their mandates. from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes as many states and cities across the U.S. are starting to — or already have — ease up on mask mandates.
But infectious disease specialists surveyed by NPR say they’re not ditching their masks just yet. Many still plan to wear them because they live in a part of the country where the coronavirus is still spreading widely — at least for the time being. “I just don’t want to be out of work. I don’t want to be spreading it to my family and making them have to miss work and school,” he says. “And so from that perspective, cases actually matter more than hospitalizations”says he’s waiting for daily case rates in his community to drop to 10 cases per 100,000 people per day.