You may be right but you may also be wrong. Just like me.I was simply sharing my reasoning for why I think masks may go away quicker than some think. I know for me ( I’ll be last to get a vaccine due to age and need, so everyone will have access by then) I will stop wearing a mask about a month after my final shot. At that point it’s no longer about protecting someone else.
I fear many people will have that attitude but it’s not really the safe attitude.
First off, vaccination is far short of fully effective. It would be like saying, “as long as I wear my seatbelt, I can drive recklessly.”
The vaccination only reduces the likelihood of serious infection. So let’s say, you’d typically have a 50% chance of getting infected by being in a room with a Covid positive individual. By being vaccinated, it reduces that down to 5%. But if you rip off the mask and start partying with hundreds of Covid positive cases, you probably will get the infection eventually.
Thus, as long as disease is widespread in the community, a mask is still advisable for your own safety.
Further more, and even more importantly: though vaccination reduces transmission, we still don’t know how much it reduces transmission. Thus, even if you’re vaccinated, you can still pick up an asymptomatic infection and pass it to others.
Thus, until nearly everyone is vaccinated, masks should continue to protect the unvaccinated.
I suspect masks can go away when we get down to under 100 cases per day, nationwide. Or regionally... say when Florida is recording under 20 cases per day.