The CDC hung frontline workers out to dry | Opinion

On May 13 of this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hung American frontline workers out to dry. And we’re paying for it now.

The agency issued public health guidance that was unenforceable on the face of it: People who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 could forgo face coverings in all settings. The unvaccinated were still being asked to mask up in crowded indoor spaces.

Never mind that a U.S. vaccine certificate is just a piece of cardboard — one most establishments don’t ask to see — and that convincing counterfeits have been sold online. Even if there were a reliable method of certifying vaccination, maybe modeled on Europe’s digital passports, there would be no feasible way to distinguish between the haves and the have-nots in settings like a store: Once you’re in the door, any way of monitoring a subset of customers for mask-wearing while letting others roam free would be either seriously creepy or completely impractical.

The CDC guidance did not compel state and local authorities to drop their mask mandates, but many did, including Pennsylvania — fully aware of the unease and political polarization surrounding this simple public health measure. Once the dominoes started falling, private businesses followed suit, not wanting to be seen as the buzzkill holdout when everyone just wanted to leave the Great Plague behind. Even some of the most ardent mask enforcers at my workplace, an organic grocery store, were relieved at not having to play bad cop anymore.

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Unsurprisingly, the changes may have been premature: On July 17 the CDC partly walked back the guidance, recommending indoor masking for the vaccinated in areas with “substantial” and “high” COVID-19 transmission — currently nearly two-thirds of U.S. counties. It will be difficult to reverse course now that people have had their much-anticipated reprieve. Meanwhile, every single worker out there in the trenches has had to make up their own guidance since May. The last couple of months have felt like a mirror image of early 2020, with the rules — and even the physical setup — of our workplaces changing almost every day.

I was one of the last to take off my mask at work. I still wear it when I run a cash register. I’ve had coworkers ask about my reasoning, noting that they have seen me with and without a mask throughout the same day.

I’ve explained that, post-vaccination, I’m trying to make customers as comfortable as possible at the one point of their shopping trip where they can’t avoid me and I can’t avoid them. But overall, I’m sick and tired of masking up myself. It is one thing to slap on a face covering for your 15-minute trip to the store — I don’t get the whining about that. It’s another thing to cover up your mouth and nose for 45-plus hours a week, while walking 10 miles a day on concrete, interspersed with heavy lifting. If you’re that person, every little bit helps. Just ask the workers who have actively lobbied for dress codes that permit elastic pants. I always add that my reasoning might well be stupid, but right now we all have to make it up as we go along.

With looming variants and breakthrough infections, more of us are going back to masking up full time. But no one, absolutely no one I have spoken to, is looking forward to another round of enforcing mask mandates on customers. We have only just caught our breath from the last time; we were looking forward to a return to normal just as much as everyone else. And even though it might feel like it after 18 months of this, we are still not trained as public health workers or law enforcement.

» READ MORE: CDC guidance spurs statewide masking in N.J. and calls for vaccination, worry about restrictions in Pa.

I’ve been asked what is the best way to support frontline workers in this mess. Obviously the problems are different for grocery workers and teachers, for nurses and elder-care workers. But one main thing people can do for all of us is quite simple: Get your vaccine. And if you’ve had yours, persuade your fence-sitting friends and family members to get theirs.

There is this metaphor in public health and workplace safety about Swiss cheese. It holds that any one protection measure is going to be imperfect — the way cheese slices vary in size, with varying numbers and sizes of holes. The more slices you layer on top of one another, the larger the protected area becomes, and the smaller the overlap between the holes.

While we contend with a new round of confusion on masking, think of vaccines as a very large slice of cheese, with few and small holes. The more we can layer up that particular kind of protection, the less weight we have to put on the other ones. And that will benefit all of us. You won’t get yelled at at the grocery store, and we won’t have to risk our lives for a paycheck — again.

Michiko Kobayashi works at a small organic grocery chain in the Mid-Atlantic.