The COVID-19 variant, Omicron, has spread beyond baseline so far that our only option is to tolerate it.
This may prompt a need to update masking guidelines in the United States.
Hochul to keep mask mandate in place despite GOP criticism
Why is this happening?
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration has some thoughts. Read more about it here.
He said, “we have a much more contagious variant that is probably going to continue to circulate and you have a population that has much more immunity.”
“We’re going to probably have to tolerate, and probably should, a higher level of baseline spread at the point at which we consider withdrawing some of this mitigation.”
He also shares his opinion on what he thinks this means for masking in schools.
Gottlieb thinks that as country. we shouldn’t wait for the CDC to reach low prevalence of COVID-19 to end the mask mandates in school.
He thinks that prolonging the mask mandate will prevent some normalcy from returning to schools in the spring.
Gottlieb predicts that COVID-19 case numbers are “going to continue to come down as we get into the spring and the summer.”
However, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization thinks we are facing a continued spread.
Omicron infection: why it isn’t severe
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