CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for being “overly cautious in a way that defies common sense” regarding their newly-released guidelines for fully vaccinated people.
The CDC’s new guidelines, released Monday, state that fully vaccinated individuals can eschew masks and social distancing when meeting other fully vaccinated individuals indoors, but need to maintain existing COVID-19 guidelines when in public as well as its standing advice against travel.
Calling the three existing vaccines “safe” and “extremely effective,” Wen told “CNN Newsroom” anchor Brooke Baldwin that “growing evidence” also suggests the vaccines significantly reduce the chance of transmission.
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“We don’t exactly how much this reduces that risk, but it’s probably substantially lower and that means maybe, in theory, you could be asymptomatic yourself but could infect others, but that chance is still much lower, and so that’s actually why I wish the CDC guidelines went a lot further than they actually did,” said Wen.
Asked about the advice to avoid travel, Wen call it “one of these examples where I think the CDC is being far overly cautious in a way that defies common sense.”
“Because look at what they’re saying about quarantine,” she continued. “They are saying that if somebody knowingly is exposed to an individual with COVID-19 and they are fully vaccinated, they don’t need to test or get quarantined. If you’re sitting on a plane, you’re not necessarily sitting next to people with COVID-19. You’re wearing a mask. Ideally, you’re keeping distanced so it just doesn’t make sense that you can’t travel, especially if you now can get together with loved ones.” (RELATED: Poll: Most Americans Expect Life To Return To Normal By End Of 2021 Or Later)
Wen called the ability to travel “one of those incentives that we can give as a way for restoring freedoms.”