Order the Damn Masks Already: An Open Letter to Joe Biden, Jay Inslee, and the CDC

Esteemed officials:

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Anna. I’m a vaccinated 31 year old woman-ish person working in public service in the Pacific Northwest. Those of you who were elected, I voted for you. Mr. Biden, I cried when you were elected and sworn in, thinking, finally, someone who might do some good for disabled folks, like me. Someone who won’t treat this pandemic like a political scenario.

I needn’t have wasted those tears.

I’m likely what you call a long-hauler. I caught a mystery bug in March 2020, took my desperately unwell self to the emergency room to try to get tested so I could inform the vulnerable people at my job if I needed to, got laughed out because I hadn’t been to Wuhan in the last two weeks, and then come to find out several months down the line when I still couldn’t breathe and had problems staying awake, whoops, this thing’s probably been around a lot longer than we thought. There’s been a lot of come to find outs for me during this whole nightmare, from “oh, that’s why my toes felt weird” to “yeah, I told you I was having classical ME/CFS symptoms and you told me to stop Googling.”

I’m an information professional. Sourcing information is what I do. Trying to do others a bit of good while I’m here is the other part. So, if you’ll permit me to try to prevent someone else’s come to find out:

With all of the data available, why on God’s green earth are you all dragging your highly polished, taxpayer-funded shoes on reinstating a mask mandate?

We know some things now. Delta variant is insatiably making its way through unvaccinated people, but it can and has latched onto vaccinated people as well. We know that it spreads asymptomatically, too.

We also know that immunocompromised folks, like me, have found varying-to-nonexistent levels of protection with the current vaccine regimen. Now, gentlepersons of the CDC, you can be forgiven for being trained in a healthcare and science industry literally founded on eugenics, but what in the flying fig were you thinking, tossing a line in your guidance about “taking all precautions”?

Do you know how many of us there are? Not really; you don’t seem to care to keep very good data on disabled folks and the impact of COVID. The Brits do, though. Older studies suggest in the millions. How many of us do you think work jobs that give us the option to isolate? Given the poverty levels for disabled folks, there’s a good chance a chunk of that number is low wage essential workers (although I saw your phase documents, Mr. Inslee. Who isn’t essential, except for when it comes to your snail-slow vaccine rollout? Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten you). You are making the highly ableist assumption that every disabled person is already shut up at home and has nowhere they really need to be. We have jobs, CDC. Lives.

But back to you, Mr. Inslee. Your super flippy floppy wibbly wobbly guidance on masking has left individual organizations in charge of determining whether or not to require masks. Many have taken your lax buck-passing as permission to institute a toothless “optional for the vaccinated, mandatory for the unvaccinated- but we won’t check and there’s no accountability for anyone found in violation” policy. The anti-vaxxers have figured this out, by the way. They’re openly flouting their naked faces in front of children and people who may or may not have medical conditions.

But let’s not lose sight in the face of those rude and emboldened unvaccinated folks of the lower but very real danger still posed by the vaccinated. Don’t get me wrong- the vaccines are effective at what they are designed to do, which is reduce death and hospitalization..among healthy recipients. Unfortunately, misinformation and the glacial pace of rollout efforts in vaccine-hesitant communities (where was the outreach BEFORE now?) has enabled mutations and will continue to do so. Pfizer and Moderna are holding strong, but J&J…33% protection with a single dose.

So assuming a third of the vaccinated adults who walk into my workplace unmasked hollering “I’m vaccinated!” were only hit with that single shot, that whole network of protection has a pretty big hole in it for delta, which now accounts for more than 80% of cases across the US.

Lest we turn to the callous smuggery I’ve heard out of some of my liberal friends (“only the unvaccinated will die, so that’s their choice, really,”) let’s spend some time with that. First, recall that children under 12 cannot be vaccinated yet. And it’s such a comforting lie that kids don’t get this disease. They do. Another really gross eugenicist refrain is “only kids with underlying conditions die”. 1. Not true, and 2. What the hell is wrong with you? A dead kid is a dead kid. Stop patting yourself on the back for only losing the disabled ones. They have value. Speaking of, remember those immunocompromised people? That’s your nana with RA, your auntie on chemo, me. Third, recall that some people are genuinely allergic to vaccine components or otherwise can’t be vaccinated. Let’s not write them off along with people who have been subject to, in some cases, a lifetime of cult-like disinformation.

And CDC folks, I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that the longer COVID runs around unvaccinated pockets and immunocompromised people, the more it mutates. You really wanna be picking COVID strains for shots every year like you have to do the flu?

All this to say, Mr. Biden, you unfurled your Mission Accomplished banner over the CDC’s aircraft carrier much too early. CDC, you are scientists. Privately, you’re all double masking. You’re unofficially recommending people do the same. Get working on your amygdalae already and put out an official statement. WHO managed it. LA managed it. Too used to being a political lapdog?

And you, Inslee. I’m the most disappointed in you of all. Washington was a leader in this crisis. You were doing the right thing when no one else was. Then suddenly some businesses started crying and you morphed into the enabling parent nobody likes at the playground. “Well, okay, you can have a few more deaths, as long as it’s just the sick ones. No, no, stop crying- schools? What if I make teachers feel really awful despite basically forcing them to reinvent themselves on a dime? Oh, oh…okay. Masks. Everyone can take their masks off if we hit 70% vaccination by June 30. Oh, okay, 68 is close enough. You lil stinker.”

I’m sure you all have very important election concerns, but I will tell you this- as a voter, I absolutely remember who is in favor of keeping our most vulnerable citizens alive and well versus keeping the money hoarders and COVID deniers happy.

I don’t want a single person to go through what I did. I don’t want a child living with long COVID for…god knows how long. We literally don’t know what this does. Knowing that so much more of this is preventable if one of you stops waiting for…what? Another ICU shortage? A million deaths?

Can you tell the American people what it is you’re waiting for?

Yours in perpetual exhaustion,

Anna Holmes

PS. Mr. Biden, please tell Major he is a good boy. Reactive dogs deserve love too.