Two ways to think about the mask debate

The case against wearing a mask indoors

Those arguing for a return to indoor masking typically say something like “What’s the big deal? It’s just a mask!” But masks have downsides. They’re hot, they fog up your glasses, and they muffle speech to the point that I have to scream “O!-L!-G!-A!” at every barista. Once everyone started masking, I stopped seeing friends in person, because driving an hour just to stare at someone’s eyeballs is not my idea of fun. Like many Americans, I was happy to wear a mask until the vaccines arrived, and I was happy to be rid of it once I got jabbed. Few people would likely prefer to wear a mask every day if they didn’t have to.

And if you’re vaccinated, you technically don’t have to. “I agree with what the CDC says: If you’re vaccinated, you don’t need to wear a mask,” says Joseph Allen, an environmental epidemiologist at Harvard. Indoor masking may be reasonable in areas with large outbreaks, but a top-down mask mandate for all of America no longer makes sense, he says.

Allen worries that encouraging vaccinated people to keep masking undermines confidence in the vaccines. You can’t claim you “believe in science” unless you also believe in the science of vaccine efficacy. Mask-free living can also be a carrot: Look, if you get vaccinated, you can lose these things once and for all!

While there is technically a chance that a vaccinated person might transmit the virus to someone who transmits the virus to someone who just had a bone-marrow transplant, that risk is small.