Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, officially ended his state’s face mask term this week and allowed businesses to reopen, despite opposition. Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, described the move as “extraordinarily dangerous” and said it would “kill Texans.”
As the coronavirus pandemic officially enters its second year after being officially declared a “pandemic” by the World Health Organization, health professionals have criticized measures by the nation’s second-largest state to allow people visit businesses without wearing a mask.
Barbara Alexander, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said three words to the people: “Mask, America!” “Reports indicating that these reductions have stalled should remind us that our progress is fragile,” he said, referring to declining rates of coronavirus infections.
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‘COVID-19 continues to spread and claim lives. Emerging and more communicable variants of the virus pose new and greater risks. ‘
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“Only about 10% of Americans nationwide have been vaccinated (33 million people) and many of those most at risk have not yet received a vaccine. COVID-19 continues to spread and claim lives. Emerging and more communicable variants of the virus pose new and greater risks, ”he said.
Austin, the fourth-largest city in Texas, will require masks for people to visit businesses. As of Thursday, the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the US continues to rise and recently surpassed 530,624. Texas has the third highest number of COVID-related deaths (46,007) in the country after California and New York.
You should continue to maintain social distance, avoiding large gatherings, frequent hand washing and wearing masks, Alexander said. “Abandoning them now will postpone the day when we can leave COVID-19 behind. We cannot forget the lessons that this pandemic has taught us, or its terrible price ”.
The only Americans who should forgo masks are those who have already been fully vaccinated and should only do so among other vaccinated people, according to the guide on how fully vaccinated people can socialize published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Diseases of the USA
In a recent study in the Journal of Adolescent Health study, Indiana University researchers said that even most high school-age youth are willing to wear face masks to help stop the spread of COVID-19, although they asked more education on how to wear masks. correctly and more consistently.
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A review of the literature on face masks published in January by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded: “Public use of masks is most effective in reducing the spread of the virus when it is true. is tall.”
“The preponderance of the evidence indicates that the use of masks reduces contact transmissibility by reducing the transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical settings,” the 19 international authors of the review concluded.
COVID-19 is known to be transmissible between presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, and those with few symptoms. “We recommend that public officials and governments vigorously encourage the widespread use of face masks in public,” they wrote.
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“Public use of masks is most effective in reducing the spread of the virus when compliance is high.”
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Face masks likely played a role in reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Italy during the first half of 2020, and could have reduced the number of official COVID-19 cases by as much as 30,000 during the surge in cases during the spring. of 2020, found research in the peer-reviewed journal Infectious Diseases.
Morten Gram Pedersen, lead author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Padova, wrote in the study: “We did not see this reduction in places that did not introduce any additional local intervention at that time. “
Many previous studies have said that masks have helped reduce contagion by reducing droplets that are sprayed into the air. Masks may also help promote healthy behaviors and encourage people not to touch their faces during or after being in public places.
This study says that N95 medical grade masks help filter viruses larger than 0.1 microns (a micron is one millionth of a meter). The coronavirus is 0.125 microns. These products “have been shown to be effective in filtering out smaller particles and are designed to fit the face perfectly.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
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When asked last month if Americans will continue to wear masks in 2022 and when life will return to normal, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, told CNN. “That may be the case, and again, it really depends on what you mean by normality.”
“If normalcy means exactly how things were before this happened to us, I mean, I can’t predict that,” he said. “Obviously, I think we are going to have a significant degree of normalcy beyond the terrible burden that we have all been through in the last year.”
But he warned that the new and more contagious versions of the COVID-19 virus will also determine whether people will continue to wear masks in 2022. six months “.
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“I think we are going to have a significant degree of normalcy beyond the terrible burden that we have all been through in the last year.”
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Fauci has said that if between 70% and 85% of the US population were vaccinated, that would amount to good “herd immunity,” and the country should start to see a return to normalcy by fall. That, of course, can depend on the age, circumstances, and underlying conditions of the people.
In January, United States President Joe Biden signed a mask mandate for all federal workers and anyone found on federal property. They should, the mandate said, “everyone wear masks, maintain physical distance, and adhere to other public health measures, as provided in CDC guidelines.”
Pfizer PFE,
and BNTX from German partner BioNTech SE,
and the MRNA of Moderna,
Two-shot mRNA-based vaccines are approximately 95% effective. The J&J vaccine is an adenovirus vector-based vaccine and requires only one injection in the US It is 72% effective.
Despite the reluctance of some Americans to get the J&J vaccine, although people have no choice, all three vaccines can prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death. “Each of them is very effective in preventing a clinically apparent disease,” Fauci said Friday.