Can the new mask guidance work on an honor system?

Her conundrum is common. In an intensely polarized nation, many people have little faith that their maskless fellow Americans have actually been vaccinated. That lack of trust, fueled by the ongoing politicization of the pandemic, tears at the fabric of a public-health strategy built on the assumption that other people will do the right thing... As a result, the public’s lack of confidence in each other foments “a sort of existential crisis,” said Richard Carpiano, a medical sociologist and public-health scientist at the University of California at Riverside. He said trust functions as a social glue to hold together society. “If that’s undermined substantially in relation to a potential threat to the health of ourselves or loved ones or other people in our community,” he said, “it’s not a good situation.” Widespread lack of faith in others isn’t new. About 70 percent of people told Pew Research in 2019 that they thought interpersonal confidence had declined in the past two decades. Last year, political polarization stood at its highest level in decades.