CNN Medical Analyst Wen: ‘Big Mistake’ for CDC to Trust Honor System on Masks, ‘People Are Not Behaving Honorably’

CNN medical contributor Dr. Leana Wen on Friday’s “Cuomo Prime Time” said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “really made a big mistake” by saying that fully vaccinated people can take off their masks but trusting the honor system because “people are not behaving honorably.”

Cuomo said, “Once you get rid of the restrictions, and the masks come off, we see how many people get science infections and good old stomach viruses again, right? We haven’t seen those for a year or so. We expected that. The hedge was the vaccine would take up the slack and help people not get sick. It’s not happening. Now you’re seeing the cases come up, which is the concern for fall.”

Wen, the former Planned Parenthood president, said, “Well, I was hoping we could get through the summer. My prediction is that we would have a good summer and we’d see cases potentially surge again in the fall. It’s already gotten bad, and we’re only in the middle of July. I have to go back to what you and I talked about a while ago, Chris, which is that the CDC really made a big mistake here. By saying that fully vaccinated people can take off their masks but not having any way to verify this and just saying we need to trust the honor system. People are not behaving honorably.”

She added, “The unvaccinated are basically saying well, it’s open season for me, I can do whatever I want as well. And as a result, we did not incentivize people to get vaccinated. It was exactly the opposite. These restrictions got removed, people are doing whatever they want to. And unfortunately, we are seeing surges as a result. Now it’s going to be really hard to put the genie back in the bottle, and that’s what I’m afraid of. These states they need indoor mask mandates now, and that’s not going to happen, so we’re going to get more preventable deaths.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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