that make it clear what responsibility looks like. These guidelines do neither. They also encourage places that have orders in place to remove them. On Thursday, the county I live in (with 45% having started vaccination and around 150 cases/100,000) removed the orders based - in large part - on the CDC guidance. Had they had better guidance, they would might well have set conditional mask orders - based on the community reaching low cases, high vaccination or some combination of the two.
People didn't start wearing masks until there was an order, despite the state trusting people to do what is right (and insisting that people wouldn't follow orders if they were imposed. Once they were imposed, mask compliance in most indoor spaces was 90% or better - after being 50% prior to that time.
And, in an area with low vaccination rates and high infection rates, vaccinated people aren't safe. Vaccination is not perfect protection. Of 1000 exposures that would cause COVID, a person with an mRNA vaccination would still develop COVID 5% of the time (or 50 cases). With Johnson & Johnson, it is worse - 25% of the time, or 250 cases. Acquiring 1000 exposures happens a lot faster in a community with high infection and low vaccination than in one with low infection and high vaccination rates. In ddition, some of those infections (likely most) will be asymptomatic, so vaccinated people not wearing masks will more likely to become infected, and more likely to infect those under 12, or those who can't be immunized (or can't develop immunity).
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