Double-Vaccinated and Mask Free

Free at last, free at last. I have had my two shots and waited two weeks.

There are new social norms being created. 

I believe in vaccines, and I now feel entirely differently about COVID. Before, I was at risk of dying and infecting others. I was worried. Now I am not. 

I don't imagine COVID vaccination-safety as a continuum of greater and smaller risks.  I think of it as a light switch, on or off. 

Now I am off. I am safe now.

Mask Free

In early childhood I had whatever vaccines are given to young children, including smallpox. Millions used to die horribly from it; now they do not. They are vaccinated. Early in my youth I stood in a fast-moving line along with my parents and siblings, and walked into the Hedrick Junior High gymnasium, approached a large tray of sugar cubes, picked one up and put it in my mouth, and left the room and walked home. Before, I was at risk of polio, something my parents said was very, very bad. Now I was safe, they said, and I could go swimming at the local pool. There was a payoff.

I happily wear a mask at Costco, the neighborhood grocery store, and a farm-hardware store, still the primary public indoor places to which I go. I did finally get a professional haircut last week, and wore a mask throughout it. The mask models good behavior. It is the rule of the stores and the direction of the government, plus it is polite and respectful to others. I am 71 and vaccinated but not everyone has qualified for the vaccine under Oregon's priority rules. Therefore, there are people at risk of getting the disease who are counting on the general public to help protect them by mask-wearing. We have an obligation to them.

It is important that mask-wearing be normalized. If half the people walk around mask-free because they are vaccinated, then mask-wearing becomes inconsistent, which communicates the idea of voluntary-haphazard-unnecessary. No one says aloud that inconsistent equals voluntary-haphazard-unnecessary, but that is the body language signifier, the unspoken message of what is acceptable behavior.

Until everyone who wants a vaccine can be vaccinated, I consider mask-wearing in public the right thing to do. Not everyone agrees. Ted Cruz in the Senate, Jim Jordan in the House of Representatives, and Tucker Carlson on Fox all dismiss this as mere "performative" and "theater." They call it liberal virtue-signaling, and argue that mask-wearing after vaccination removes the incentives for vaccination. Moreover, they consider it a signal that Democrats, the public health profession, and Dr. Fauci are really motivated by the desire to control and regulate; they hate freedom. Therefore, they reject mask-wearing after vaccination as flag waving by the blue team, and they are on team red, the freedom team.

Jordan: "When do Americans get freedom back?"

They have a point. It is indeed performance and theater. That is also my point.  Performance and theater are how people communicate right and wrong. It is a version of the "broken window" argument for crime reduction, an idea widely circulated on the political right. Attention to small crimes demonstrates a social norm that crime is not acceptable behavior. It is street body-language. Mask-wearing is performance demonstrating that the COVID epidemic is still with us, and that the vulnerable  public is counting on all of us. COVID is real. I have spoken with people who became deathly ill from it--immobilized for a week--and are still weak and easily fatigued a month later. (I don't know anyone personally who got it and subsequently died.) Since there are still significant risks of the disease spreading--even if not to me personally--the polite thing to do, the lawful thing to do, to protect the unvaccinated.

When a small group of vaccinated people get together, there can be a different set of performances, an agreement by the people in the group that, hurray!, we are all vaccinated and masks can come off. That is the new social norm, too. 

A third social norm is apparently taking place, mostly out of my sight--people are ignoring use of masks and distancing, whether vaccinated or not. It is showing up in rising caseloads of new variants.

Apparently some 20% of Americans tell pollsters that they have no intention of getting vaccinated. They say they aren't worried about getting the disease and apparently aren't worried about spreading it. This is a group heavily skewed toward White Republican Evangelical Christian Trump supporters. They consider vaccinations some mixture of unnecessary, dangerous, or a submission to their political opponents. For now, I hope they continue to mask-up in public.

My own sense is that in another 90 days or so, everyone who wants the vaccination can have it, and therefore the government guidance and social norms will evolve. The masks will come off everyone because the general understanding will be that everyone will have had a chance to protect oneself. Some people will get the disease and die from it, but the responsibility will have shifted from public health to individual choice.