A few days ago I wrote about the fact that the Centers For Disease Control released new guidance that those who are fully vaccinated and have are 3 or so weeks post final vaccine are able to go outdoors and indoors without masks. It was still recommended that one use masks in public transportation, but essentially it was their feeling that for many activities, those who are vaccinated can now go around without masks in many public activities.

While I felt the news incredibly positive, it also felt like they were being quite specific about who can go around without masks and where.

But some critics feel like the CDC wasn’t clear enough and have created problems.

Over on CNN.com, Christina Maxouris writes:

Coronavirus Experts are warning against unintended consequences of the CDC mask guidance

Quoting CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen:

“We’ve seen governors and mayors and business owners drop mask mandates, and as a result of that we’ve now made life much less safe for people who are unvaccinated, for immuno-compromised individuals and for young children who cannot yet be vaccinated.”

While I disagree that the CDC was vague or it was troublesome what they said -again, if you read their guidelines they’re pretty clear that they are ok with vaccinated people going maskless, not everyone– I do agree that some have taken the new guidelines and run with them much further than they should.

I genuinely hate to get political but I feel like once again we have people -often the ones on the right- who are using these new guidelines to go way above and beyond the recommendations offered.

Where I live, in Florida, we have a Governor who is very much a Trump acolyte, a deeply -IMHO- mistaken individual who has near constantly put down anything/everything regarding the dangers of COVID-19. If local politicians mandated mask wearing and tried to enforce it with fines, he was quick to nix any such rules, effectively overruling most and perhaps all (again IMHO) wise mask mandates from way at the beginning of this pandemic.

Ah well.

Regardless, now that children from 16 up are permitted to be vaccinated, I’m hopeful we’ll see the percentages of those vaccinated climb.

Locally, I was in a supermarket yesterday and found that there were only a few people waiting to get their COVID vaccine, which is both encouraging -hopefully it means that people in/around my area are mostly vaccinated- and somewhat worrying –are most of the people in/around my area mostly vaccinated?

I’ve stated this before: I’m fully vaccinated. Have been for a couple of months now and jumped on the very first opportunity to get vaccinated.

I had no major side-effects to either vaccine, other than perhaps some tiredness the day after the first shot and some pain in my shoulder where the injection was delivered.

Even the worst side-effects to the vaccine I’ve read about are nothing compared to what could happen should one get the worst of COVID-19.

So, again: Get vaccinated, people.

You want to get back to normal? You want to be able to really and truly walk around maskless?

Get vaccinated.

We have a very clear path back to normalcy.

Please: Take it!