SIO293: Did The CDC Screw Up?
Serious Inquiries Only
Thomas Smith
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2021
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The CDC recently made a surprise announcement that vaccinated people don't need to wear masks, with only a few exceptions. This was greeted with some excitement, but also with vigorous pushback by people on the left. So what's the science behind this decision, and what are the practical concerns? We break it down!
Then, we talk about a very premature victory lap taken by Bret Weinstein over the lab-leak hypothesis being confir... I mean not quite technically disproven.
***FACTUAL CORRECTION*** I said that 27 states never had mask mandates. I misread that. 27 didn't have them in place at the time of the CDC's announcement. 11 states never had mandates.
Links: CDC Updates To Recommendations, CDC Science Brief, KFF Report on Vaccine Hesitancy/Enthusiasm, Science Letter, "Investigate the origins of COVID-19", NYT Article on Science Letter
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to? Serious inquiries only. |
| 0:10.0 | Hello and welcome to Serious inquiries only. This is episode 293. I'm Thomas and with |
| 0:34.8 | me as always is Dr. Lindsey Osterman. How are you doing Lindsey? Wonderful. Couldn't be better because I'm |
| 0:41.6 | vaccinating. Excellent. Yeah. Me too. I went maskless so much today. Yeah. No. No. Well, not in, you know, |
| 0:52.0 | public indoor spaces. That's just me though. Well, we'll have to talk all about that because there's also |
| 0:56.4 | a lot of stuff being written about like women don't want to give up their mask because of cat calling. |
| 1:01.2 | I'm like, fair enough, but that's not what we're talking about today. We've got to talk about the |
| 1:06.1 | CDC's new guidelines because I really wanted to get Lindsey's take on the science behind this |
| 1:11.8 | and what's going on because I've seen people on the left arguing about this. This is something that |
| 1:16.2 | feels like a very hot button issue and it's not just, okay, you got trumpers and then you got |
| 1:22.4 | people on the, you know, it doesn't seem to be that, you know, it doesn't seem to be science deniers |
| 1:27.1 | versus people who like science. It seems to be that there's good faith. Well, there's plenty of |
| 1:32.9 | bad faith, but there's, there always is, but there's good faith arguments kind of on either side of |
| 1:37.4 | this CDC announcement. And I really am interested to try to evaluate this in a fair minded way and see |
| 1:44.4 | see if we can come to any conclusions or at least talk through the arguments. So why don't you take |
| 1:49.6 | us through it? What happened and why? Okay, so I read their, their science brief document, |
| 1:57.5 | which was contained all the evidence and arguments and justification for this change in guidelines. |
| 2:03.2 | And this is from the beginning of that document. So I think it's worth reading this quote. |
| 2:08.3 | All right. So they say, while some prevention measures will continue to be necessary regardless |
| 2:12.8 | of vaccination status, fully vaccinated people without immunocompromising conditions that may |
| 2:17.8 | reduce their response to vaccination may be able to engage in some activities with low or reduced |
| 2:23.0 | risk of acquiring or transmitting COVID-19. The benefits of avoiding disruption such as unnecessary |
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