At this point, it’s safe to say that people have dealt with the inconveniences of wearing a mask for long enough, but should we really stop wearing them?
On March 22, the mask mandate in Fargo technically expired, which was probably a relief to anti-maskers, but many schools and businesses still require people to wear masks and follow other Covid-safety guidelines. The bill to ban mask mandates has been approved and takes place in North Dakota; but schools, businesses, counties, and cities are allowed to decide whether masks are required within their business. Therefore, this bill would only prohibit state officials.
While there have been people complaining about wearing masks since the start of the pandemic, I say we continue to keep wearing masks at least until more people have gotten their second dose of vaccinations. Many people are using their vaccinations as a reason to stop wearing masks, but with just two clicks of a Google search, I found that Dr. Fryhofer of the AMA Board of Trustees says that people should continue wearing their masks even after being vaccinated to protect others. According to recent data, only about 28% of the population of North Dakota have been fully vaccinated, and about 37% have had their first vaccination.
California as of now has a fully required mask mandate everywhere, and around 65% of the population has had at least one or more doses of the vaccine. Around the same percent of the population between the two states has had one or more doses of the vaccine, but California seems to be getting less and less positive cases, while North Dakota has been slowly growing each day since the end of March… I don’t know if that just happens to be the same time when the mask mandate was lifted or what, but information about percentages weren’t talked about that much in articles regarding when the upper chamber was voting for the bill.
Now, the CDC says it’s fine to go outside without a mask if you have been fully vaccinated. For people skeptical about the vaccine’s effectiveness, of course that still plays well with them continuing to wear their masks.
Personally, I’m not bothered by wearing masks. Unless you’re selfish, wearing a mask to protect others’ health shouldn’t be a problem, especially to state officials. Thinking about what would happen if we all stopped wearing masks or something and pretended everything was normal before everyone was vaccinated sounds intriguing, but I’d rather not have a third wave of Covid here. There has already been a harmful impact on the economy globally due to the pandemic because of absences at work, death, being out of stock of items, and overall a slow activity of things everywhere.
Especially at school this year, students in general feel much slower than usual, because of different online learning tools. If the world hit another big wave of Covid, it would be difficult to catch up, especially with how unproductive things already seem to feel regarding the flow of work and school and just daily tasks. Everyone, just wear your masks and keep practicing social distancing. It’s been over a year and I think we can keep wearing our masks properly to guarantee the virus will not get worse again.