How long will we have to keep wearing masks?
Possibly into next year — but for good reason.
“These face masks are the most important, powerful public health tool we have,” CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield said in mid-September. “If we did it for six, eight, 10, 12 weeks, we’d bring this pandemic under control.”
But a vaccine probably won’t be widely available until mid-2021, Redfield said.
Even then, “as we go through the vaccination period … we still need to use masks,” said Dr. Eric Topel, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.
“Remember that vaccines don’t render mucosal immunity — that is, you still could harbor the virus. It protects from the illness. So we could actually get more carriers in the vaccination phase. And a lot of people don’t recognize this.”
If virtually everyone wears face…
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