WASHINGTON, D.C., (LifeSiteNews) – Biden administration Surgeon General Vivek Murthy suggested last week that vaccinated Americans continue wearing masks as an “extra step” to prevent bringing COVID-19 back home to their children, despite evidence that masks were largely ineffective at containing COVID-19.
“So the people that we’re most concerned about are the unvaccinated,” Murthy told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell last Wednesday, Fox News reports. “For example, if you happen to have a lot of interaction with folks who are unvaccinated, let’s say you’re a parent like me who has young children at home who are not vaccinated, that’s a circumstance where we’re being extra cautious and wearing that mask even if you’re fully vaccinated, wearing it outside, when you’re in indoor public locations, is an extra step to protecting those at home.”
“I want to emphasize though that if you are vaccinated the likelihood of having a breakthrough infection is still low because, again, the vaccines are working to help prevent infection, particularly serious infection,” he continued. “But in the unusual event that a breakthrough does happen, we know transmission can take place. So that’s why, especially when you have a lot of virus circulating in a community, it’s important to take that extra step, go that extra mile, wear that mask in indoor settings, outside the house, so you don’t contribute to transmission.”
Responding to a Republican National Committee tweet accusing the Surgeon General of wanting parents to “wear masks at home with their kids and outside,” Murthy spokesperson Alexandria Phillips clarified to CNN that “what the Surgeon General said is that parents of unvaccinated kids can wear masks in public places to avoid bringing infection home to their kids, so they don’t have to wear masks at home with their kids.”
Still, the administration’s embrace of a return to masking stands in stark contrast to a wealth of evidence that has steadily grown over the past year indicating that masks played little role in curbing the pandemic, as well as evidence that COVID-19 is least dangerous to children.
That evidence includes the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s (CDC’s) acknowledgement last September that masks cannot be counted on to keep out the coronavirus when spending 15 minutes or longer within six feet of someone, a May 2020 study published by CDC’s peer-reviewed journal Emerging Infectious Diseases that “did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission”; and a May 2021 study by biology professor Damian D. Guerra and biochemistry professor Daniel J. Guerra finding that “mask mandates and use (were) not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among U.S. states” from March 2020 to March 2021.
Despite this evidence, as well as admissions by pro-mask entities such as the Associated Press that masking and related restrictions did not lead states to better health outcomes than more open states, Biden’s CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced last week that the fully vaccinated should “wear a mask indoors in public if you are in an area of substantial or high transmission” to “maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading it to others.”
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