Survey: 80% of Americans Plan to Continue Wearing Masks

The vast majority of Americans plan to continue to wear masks as vaccine rollout continues across the United States, an Axios/Ipsos survey released Tuesday revealed.

It has been over a year since the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) declared the Chinese coronavirus a pandemic, and Americans are still showing no signs of reverting to a maskless lifestyle.

According to the survey, 80 percent of Americans “plan to continue wearing masks, and nearly two-thirds plan to continue social distancing, even after they receive the COVID-19 vaccine (63%).”

Mask use, Ipsos found, remains “steady,” with seven out of ten Americans indicating they wear a mask when they leave their home.

“However, fewer are saying they’re maintaining a distance of six feet at all times when leaving the home (44% now, down from 54% one month ago) – a guideline that the CDC has recently changed for both schoolchildren and fully vaccinated adults,” the survey found.

Public health officials have continued to urge Americans to wear masks. This month, President Biden asked Americans to “keep wearing” masks upon the news of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lifting the statewide mask mandate.

“Now is not the time to let our guard down,” he said.

However, recent data suggest that the absence of statewide mask mandates has not resulted in a spike of cases in states such as Texas or Florida. In fact, both states have reported fewer cases per capita in the last seven days than blue New York, which continues to have a mask mandate in place.

As Breitbart News reported:

March 21 CDC data shows Texas reporting 94.6 new cases per 100,000, or 27,424 cases, in the last seven days. Florida has reported 142.4 cases per 100,000, or 30,584 cases, in the last seven days. CDC data separates New York City’s data from the rest of the state, but even separately, the state and city have reported more cases per capita than both the Lone Star State and Sunshine State.

New York, excluding the city, has reported 213.8 cases per 100,000, or 23,637 cases in the last seven days. New York City has reported 260.6 cases per 100,000, or 21,884 cases, in the same time frame. Combined, New York reported more than 45,500 new cases in the last week — nearly 15,000 more than Florida and over 18,000 more than Texas despite having a stringent mask mandate in place.

The Ipsos/Axios survey’s margin of error is +/- 3 percent.