Coronavirus vaccine means the masks can come off. Eventually; Masks will become a new norm after coronavirus pandemic ends, and other C-Virus Updates

Coronavirus vaccine means the masks can come off. Eventually:

The coronavirus vaccine is leading to hope that precautions such as wearing masks and social distancing might be forgone.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted in November that the United States wouldn't return to normal until the very end of 2021 and hinted that it might not be until 2022.

But vaccines could speed up that timeline.

Once enough people are vaccinated, coronavirus cases will decline, according to Mark Slifka, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Oregon Health and Science University. Once they decline enough, wearing masks and social distancing may no longer be necessary.

“People will still have to wear masks until, and this is the good news, all of the vaccinations have reduced incidence of the coronavirus, and all of these other measures have reduced incidence. We can then finally go back to not wearing masks,” said Slifka.

But don’t expect that to happen in the near future.

“It will take time,” Slifka said. “But it won’t be each individual vaccinated person’s choice. It will occur when the community is immune, then the transmissions go down, and then communities can drop the mandates.”

Slifka noted that the process will not occur uniformly in the U.S., as it may take longer in urban and suburban areas than rural ones. --->READ MORE HERE

AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File/AP

Masks will become a new norm after coronavirus pandemic ends:

Masks. Get used to it.

The mask remains politically polarizing, but they aren’t a weird sight anymore. Health experts predict they will be a post-pandemic norm in fighting the flu and even the common cold.

“Maybe the cough is the new smoking-in-public. If you’re doing it without a face mask, maybe you’ll be looked at awkwardly,” said Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and physician of pulmonary and critical care medicine.

Wearing a mask is already a common practice in many East Asian cultures. Transit riders from Seoul to Hong Kong often wear them if they’re coming down with something, a public-health measure borne in part from the SARS outbreak in 2003.

Routine mask-wearing might be asking too much of Americans, a land of rugged individuals. But doctors see ample room for targeted use, especially during flu season.

“I think there will be some carryover among the people who are mask-committed already. They see the logic, they feel the logic of that protection. I think doctors might even recommend it, particularly to high-risk patients,” said William Schaffner, an infectious-disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. --->READ MORE HERE

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