W.H. COVID Response Coordinator: CDC ‘Working on’ Framework for Deciding Travel Mask Rule – ‘Reasonable People’ Will Behave Differently

During an interview with CNN aired on Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said that the CDC is still working on a “scientific framework” to make a decision on the transit mask mandate and that “if you’re vaccinated, if you’re boosted” then you “are highly, highly protected. And, at that point, I think it’s reasonable for people to make different risk calculations.” And “reasonable people are going to come to different decisions” about their personal behavior.

Jha said, “[W]hat we need is a good scientific framework for how to do this, right? And we know that the CDC scientists are working on that. I expect that we’re going to see the framework. I haven’t seen it yet. We’re going to see it in the next few days. And we’re going to want to make a decision, and it’s going to be a national decision based on that framework. So, I want to see what the CDC scientists come up with and then use that. We’ll get a direction, we’ll get a decision from Dr. Walensky and I think we’ll implement that decision based on what the data and what the evidence shows.”

Jha also stated that “if you’re vaccinated, if you’re boosted — or in the case of President Biden, double-boosted, because I think people over 60 should get double boosted — you are highly, highly protected. And, at that point, I think it’s reasonable for people to make different risk calculations. But — we not only have great protection from vaccines, we also have great therapeutics that are becoming widely available. I think reasonable people are going to come to different decisions about what that means for their own personal behavior. Collectively, from a public health point of view, it’s critical that we protect people by making these things widely available.”

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