The impact of today’s announcement—like that of so many others during the past 15 months—will vary greatly across the country. For the millions of people who have long refused to wear masks, it will make little difference. Plenty of others will ignore it; in New York and other cities, people regularly wear masks as they walk down the street even though the CDC relaxed guidelines for outdoor activities weeks ago. Businesses and local governments could continue to require them. For many, the announcement immediately raised anxiety and a host of new questions, particularly among parents of children who are too young to be vaccinated. Is it safe to bring kids into a grocery store where people aren’t wearing masks? What about the immunocompromised for whom the vaccines might be less effective? How do you know whether a maskless person is vaccinated? Enforcement is impossible. (“It’s not an enforcement thing,” Biden said. “We’re not going to go out and arrest people.”) The president and the CDC framed the change as one more incentive for people to become vaccinated by presenting the vaccine-hesitant with a choice—get your shot if you don’t like wearing a mask. But the guideline change was also at least a tacit acknowledgment that not everyone is going to become vaccinated and that at some point the country needs to move closer to normalcy anyway. With cases dropping across the country, the CDC was under increasing pressure to loosen its position toward masks.