It would be foolish to ignore what happened in Chicago

The Rise of Covid-19: The Triple Threat or “Trifecta”? Recent U.S. Progress Reporting the State of the State

In China, the government has finally begun to ease draconian zero-Covid policies. In the US, most Americans are resigned to the thought that Covid-19 won’t be gone in their lifetime and many feel a return to masking is unpleasant.

The current rise in Covid-19 cases is one leg of a triple threat – a “tridemic,” a “tripledemic” or a “trifecta,” as some news organizations are calling it – along with a bad flu season and an RSV outbreak hitting mainly children.

The federal government has moved in the opposite direction with vaccines. The House passed a defense bill on Thursday that eliminates the requirement for a Covid vaccine.

The official US government guidance for individuals has not changed since September. The US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone on public transportation be masked. But masking is only recommended in other public settings for all people in communities where there is a high level of transmission. People at higher risk of getting sick should wear masks when there is medium spread, such as in Los Angeles County.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters Monday that about 5% of the population currently lives in a county with high spread. More than two-thirds of Americans live in an area with low transmissions, according to data from the CDC.

Why should people wear a mask at the White House? The case of the Covid-19 pandemic, as Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed in an interview with NBC News

Walensky said the most important protection for people against the triple threat is to stay up to date on Covid-19 vaccines and boosters and to get an annual flu shot. Also, stay home when you’re sick, please.

During his final White House briefing in November, Dr. Anthony Fauci discussed the need for a mask and said that he was stepping down as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

He suggested in an exit interview with NBC News that people masks where they should, but he was careful to say it was only a recommendation.

“I am not talking about mandating anything,” Fauci said. “I’m talking about just common sense of saying, ‘You know, I really don’t want to take the risk of myself getting infected, and even more so, spreading it to someone who is a vulnerable member of my family.’”

Fauci said that it shouldn’t be. “I know sometimes when you walk in and you have a mask and nobody has a mask, you kind of feel guilty. You shouldn’t feel guilty.”

More than two-thirds of Americans said they were wearing a mask not often or never outside the home. Only a small percentage said their employer required them to wear a mask.

How to get people to wear masks without trying to make them do it is a dilemma public health officials will have to grapple with if Covid-19 cases continue.

When Ipsos asked about local government requirements in July, 45% were in favor, down from more than two-third of the support in January.

Gail: “Less useful” yeah. But my understanding has always been that the masks aren’t as important for protecting the healthy as they are critical for keeping people who are already infected from spreading germs to others.

Nationwide, Covid-19 case rates and hospitalizations have spiked by 56 percent and 24 percent, respectively, over the past two weeks. There have been 13 million illnesses and 7,300 deaths from flu so far this season, and it’s expected to rise in the coming months, according to the CDC. (Over the past decade, annual flu deaths have ranged from 12,000 to 52,000 people, with the peak in January and February.) While the decline in R.S.V. might be on the wane, infections are still high in many parts of the country.

How the mandates didn’t work, and what we had to do to prevent it – a reminder to let the leper be coming

Bret: The mandates didn’t work, and it’s not just on account of the recent analysis that I cited. David Leonhardt, a colleague of ours, came to the same conclusion last year. What can work at the individual level can, and often does, totally fail at the collective level.

It’s also common sense. If you have to wear a mask on an airplane, but can take it off to eat or drink, the requirement becomes useless. If you’re supposed to wear a mask while walking to a table at a restaurant but not when sitting down, it’s useless. If the mask is a cloth mask, then it is useless, because nobody cares if it is an N95 or a cloth mask.

Those folks are going to go out sometimes whether we like it or not, and if they’re the only ones who have to wear masks, it’s like a walking declaration of disease — ringing a bell to warn that the leper is coming.

There was never going to be a chance of us getting the kind of compliance we need to make a difference. I don’t think any of us would want that in our own country.