Agreed, but this guidance goes both ways, right? Now that all adults have had a meaningful chance to be vaccinated, we should treat the unvaccinated who choose to go maskless with kindness and respect as well.

I mean, it’s not my problem anymore if they want to go around infecting each other, or kids, or the immunocompromised. I respect their decision to risk spreading deadly germs to vulnerable people, now that I’m no longer vulnerable myself.

Gotta say, though, I’m not sure everyone will be taking the president’s advice.

Wearing a mask when it is not medically necessary is grotesque and unhuman, an attack on society itself. It feeds paranoia and fear. You are treating air like it is toxic and other humans like they are nothing but vessels of disease. It is disgraceful, arrogant, and offensive.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 16, 2021

This didn’t seem very respectful either:

Former child star Rick Schroder harasses a Costco employee over face masks pic.twitter.com/HRlWeJJlt1

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) May 16, 2021

The employee is right. Costco’s new policy in the wake of the CDC relaxing mask guidance is for their stores to simply follow local rules. If a state has dropped its mask mandate, customers can ditch their mask inside a Costco located in that state too. If a state’s mandate is still in effect, it’s still in effect in Costco. The bad news for Californians is that Gavin Newsom is keeping their mandate in place until June 15, when he expects to fully reopen the economy. Which seems a wee bit onerous given that no state is doing better with COVID than Cali.

As for what the unvaccinated are supposed to do now that the masks are coming off everywhere, the president had a message for them this afternoon: That’s your problem.

The president highlighted that “deaths are down from COVID by 81%,” which he said was “their lowest level since April of 2020.”

But he cautioned that “I can’t promise that will continue this way. We know there will be advances and setbacks and we know that may flareups could occur. But if the unvaccinated get vaccinated, they’ll protect themselves and other unvaccinated people around them.”

And the president warned that “if they do not, states with low vaccination rates may see those rates, may see this progress, reversed. Ultimately, those who are not vaccinated will end up paying the price. The vaccinated will continue to be protected against serve illnesses, but others may not be if you’re not vaccinated.”

Get the shot or take precautions or accept the risk of socializing. Those are the three options for vaccine holdouts at this point. Society will no longer require precautions as a baseline rule now that exposure to infection is basically a matter of choice.

We do still need to keep up the information campaign to reach people who’ve been misled about the vaccines, though. Especially since it’s partly the government’s fault that they’ve been misled:

The first two there are at least bona fide side effects of the vaccines (only the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the case of blood clots) but the J&J “pause” has clearly fooled many, many people into believing that clots are more common than they are. We’re up to 28 cases of unusual clotting in the brain from J&J out of 9.6 million doses administered, odds of 344,183 to one. By comparison, a recent Oxford study found 20 cases of clotting in the brain among a sample of around 514,000 people diagnosed with COVID, odds of 25,700 to one. If you’re worried about clots, the obvious move is to get vaccinated and lower your risk.

Here’s Biden pleading for kindness towards the forever-maskers as everyone else gets back to normal.

President Biden: "Some people may want to continue to wear masks even if they are fully vaccinated. That's a decision they can make. Some businesses may want to continue to require wearing masks. Let's all be kind and respectful for one another as we come out of this pandemic." pic.twitter.com/WYk2zxXlk4

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 17, 2021