Media Spin In The Covid-19 Endgame

Justifiably, heads are spinning as a result of Friday’s announcement by the CDC to relax mask guidelines. Some of that confusion is based on CDC’s own about-face — a policy change that some understand to flip the message from “most Americans should wear masks” to “most don’t need to”. 

This change of policy is confusing enough as it is. It’s been made worse by the way the issue has been treated in the media.

I already touched on the coverage in the New York Times in my last article. Here, I ask if National Public Radio’s coverage is any better.

Even the headline of that article — It’s safe to unmask in many places, says the CDC. These experts aren’t quite ready — is a study in ambiguity and spin.

To begin with, I can find nowhere that the CDC claims it is “safe to unmask”. Certainly the word “safe” doesn’t appear in the new guidelines.

During Friday’s CDC telebriefing, John Woolfolk of the San Jose Mercury News sought clarification. He asked:

“So, the new metrics that you all are talking about sound like they’re based mostly on the strain on the health bureaucracy and not, I mean, our readers are mostly interested in your guidance for what it means for them to avoid getting COVID and spreading it. And based on the metrics and the rules that were in place as of this morning, before this announcement, that would mean like pretty much all of California where we are, ‘you should wear a mask if you don’t want COVID’ recommendation. And it sounds like I haven’t seen what your new metric says for our area, but it sounds like it’s now saying, well, that’s not operative anymore. Go ahead and take the mask off. Is that [it?] Are people safe going in and around in public indoors without masks in places where your metrics now say it’s a high transmission situation?”

Notice the sections I highlighted in bold.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC, chose not to answer this unambiguous question. Instead, she first reiterated that, of course, people are welcome to wear masks if they feel safer doing so. (Verbatim: “So first and foremost, I’d like to go back to what Dr. Massetti said, which is anybody is certainly welcome to wear a mask at any time, if they feel safer wearing a mask.”) 

This is the kind of guidance that is exasperating to the ordinary person. Americans know they can wear a mask. What they are asking is whether they should.

Second, in a deft maneuver of redirection Walensky hints that personal safety isn’t the issue at all, but rather it’s about managing severe disease, i.e. preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed.

Again, from Dr. Walensky:

“The intent of these [sic] community guidance is to look at really severe disease – people who are coming into the hospital. We know that there’s going to be transmission of Covid-19 out there. And what we want to do is make sure that our hospitals are okay and that people are not coming in with severe disease…”

Okay, what about the second part of the headline? “These experts aren’t quite ready”. In juxtaposition to the first part of the headline, it sounds like these experts are disagreeing with the CDC guidance. That would set up an interesting conflict for the news. Clickbait. But, remember the CDC doesn’t actually say it’s safe to unmask.

In fact, as quoted, most of the experts themselves are pretty close to going around in public unmasked. One even acknowledged that he does it sometimes. But, he keeps a mask in his pocket, just in case.

Really, the emphasis (and the headline) needs to be on the fact that the experts aren’t quite ready yet. Likely, they’ll be there in a few weeks, but they’d just like to see transmission drop a little bit more, first.

Some of them have statistics they’re watching, like the daily number of cases per 100,000 people in the population. In fact, there’s remarkable agreement among the experts interviewed, who would all pretty much like to see that number in the range of 1-10.

As of this evening, the number of cases per 100,000 population averaged over the entire country is 20. For information about your own state or territory, you can consult the New York Times coronavirus tracker. Presently, just three states are reporting less than 10 per 100,000: Maryland (9 per 100,000), Nebraska (7 per 100,000), and Puerto Rico (7 per 100,000).

In fact, the experts are not strongly disagreeing with the CDC’s guidance. They emphasize various reasons to be cautious. Getting sick with Covid-19 means missing work. Many households include unvaccinated people, who remain at high risk for severe Covid-19. For themselves, they choose to exercise just a bit more caution than is implied by the misleading headlines. Probably, the CDC would like folks to exercise that caution, too.