Wired: “When the CDC announced in mid-May that fully vaccinated people no longer neededto wear masks in most indoor settings, it felt like a milestone to many Americans, indicating that we might be one step closer to the end of the pandemic. It’s understandable, then, that the agency’s decision several weeks ago to bring back indoor mask recommendations even for vaccinated people led to anger, frustration, or confusion for many. “It is a little bit confusing that the public is told at one point that the vaccine is effective enough that they can pretty much ditch their mask anywhere, and now, this is clearly a different recommendation because of the very high transmissibility of the Delta variant,” Dan Diekema, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, says. “I think the CDC did the right thing, but it definitely puts members of the public in kind of a difficult situation in terms of making day-to-day decisions.” But now that the circumstances have shifted, so should our behavior to deal with them. “The vaccines are highly effective, but we know they’re not perfect, so it’s important to use complementary measures like masking for those areas with higher levels of Covid in the community,” Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona, says. But that doesn’t mean everyone has to mask up everywhere outside their house, vaccinated or not. Let’s break down when to wear a mask and why, and when you can set it aside…”