Following the CDC, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is rightly revising New York’s rules to allow fully vaccinated people to go maskless, both outdoors and in, with some major exceptions including nursing homes, schools and transit. The move shows that healthy respect for scientific expertise cuts both ways: toward caution when appropriate, and toward a relaxation of restrictions when that brings minimal public health risk and creates incentives for people to get their shots.
Minimal risk doesn’t mean zero risk. While more than a third of New Yorkers have gotten their shots and aren’t going to get sick going maskless indoors, there’s hardly any enforcement mechanism — and you don’t have to be a Ph.D. in psychology to know that some of those who don’t cover their faces also didn’t get vaccinated.
That creates a conundrum for those with weakened immune systems on whom vaccines don’t work, many cancer patients among them. The safest course for such people is to stay masked and keep their distance from the unmasked, particularly indoors. As for young kids, while they aren’t yet approved to get the vaccine, they have largely (but not entirely) been spared COVID’s ravages. Masking them outdoors is largely unnecessary, though for now it remains wise to stay covered indoors.
New York has a tool that can help people and businesses navigate the complicated new reality: Excelsior Pass, a “vaccine passport” the likes of which has been banned in other predominantly Republican states. If Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center can use it to let vaxxed fans sit close together and unmasked, so should other private places and spaces be able and empowered to make such smart, safe judgments.
Realistically, though, nobody’s going to show their vaccine passport when running to catch the train, which is why masks are still de rigueur, for now, on buses and subways. It would be nice to have a single, simple set of rules, but the complexity of human behavior and nastiness of this virus make that, for now, elusive.
