On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged New Yorkers to wear two masks at least until June.
De Blasio urged citizens in the Big Apple to add a second mask to their personal protective equipment arsenal in a morning press conference. “Through June, keep doing exactly what you are doing,” he said. “Not just wear a mask, wear two.” De Blasio further obscured the timeline for the practice, admitting the local government may “continue that guidance for quite a while depending on what is going on.”
The unpopular mayor’s position echoes remarks made by President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in January. “This is a physical covering to prevent droplets and virus to get in,” Dr. Fauci said at the time. “So if you have a physical covering with one layer, and you put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective.”
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study suggesting multi-layered masking and proper fitting could drastically reduce exposure but stopped short of amending their official guidance.
“I want to be clear that these new scientific data released today do not change the specific recommendations about who should wear a mask or when they should wear one,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at the time, “but they do provide new information on why wearing a well-fitting mask is so important to protect you and others.”
“We continue to recommend that masks should have two or more layers, completely cover your nose and mouth and fit snugly against your nose and the size of your face,” she added. More recently, during remarks focused on reopening schools, Walensky asserted the CDC’s guidance is “free from political meddling.”