The Recovery Continues

California had a modified limited reopening on June 15, with certain exceptions for transit, large events, and medical facilities. But even at Kaiser, though we still have to wear masks, the attitude is more relaxed, and the Polizei at the entry yelling "pull your mask all the way up!" are gone. A retail store I visit apologized that the building owner still wants masks there, but I can live with it. About a third of the people at mass wear them, but so far, it's at individual discretion.

The Delta variant is an intereating case. Pretty clearly in the US, a fairly small minority has wanted renewal or continuation of masks and social distance due to the Delta variant. Los Angeles County has "strongly recommended" continuing masks and social distance, but detailed updates to the public health order as of June 28 are very limited. It's especially significant that CDC head Dr Walensky has reiterated that fully vaccinated people don't need to wear masks:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that fully vaccinated people are "safe" from the current variants and do not need to wear masks, doubling down on CDC guidance as some others call for a return to mask wearing.

The question of mask wearing has come back to the forefront given recommendations from Los Angeles County health officials, and from the World Health Organization, that even fully vaccinated people should continue to wear masks indoors in public as a precaution due to the rise of the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus.

But Walensky said that the CDC's guidance has not changed and that fully vaccinated people do not need to wear masks, echoing other health experts who note that the vaccines are highly effective even against the delta variant.

"If you are vaccinated, you are safe from the variants that are circulating here in the United States," Walensky said on NBC's "Today," adding it was "exactly right" that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks.

Let's get real. Dr Fauci has controlled the narrative for 18 months, and Dr Walensky, Fauci's boss but new to the job this year, has been letting him do it. But that she would make such a definitive public statement of CDC policy, with Fauci remaining silent on the issue, is new. In fact, Fauci's latest utterance has been nothing but a tautology:

Fauci declared that “When you have such a low level of vaccination super-imposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions, states, cities or counties you’re going to see these individual types of blips. It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas.”

Two Americas, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Two Americas, the male and the female. Two Americas, those sleeping and those awake. It sounds as though Fauci has been given the word, and policy statements are now to be made by Dr Walensky. Fauci, if he chooses, may make general statements about how the world is, if anyone is interested.

I read this as an indication of Fauci's impending retirement.