Rockford Doctor Weighs In On New Mask Guidelines

Dr. Norem joins the show every Monday morning at 7:05 to give us the latest on the coronavirus, COVID-19, and the vaccine rollout.

Dr. Norem has been joining us pretty much every week for over a year now. He was explaining things during last spring's lockdown, and he's been guiding us all the way through the pandemic. We learn something new from Dr. Norem every week and this week was no exception.

The big news from last week was the CDC announced that those that are fully vaccinated no longer have to wear masks in most public areas. They are still recommended in close indoor proximity and at all medical centers, but for the most part, those that are vaccinated are free to go maskless.

We asked Dr. Norem what he thought of the announcement and how it will affect the health of the country. Dr. Norem was very excited about the announcement and loves the fact that this means that people can start living life "normally" again. He knows that there is a definite chance that strong anti-vaxxers will probably not be totally honest about being vaccinated while going maskless, but the good, incentivizing people to get vaccinated, will outweigh the negative of people not abiding by the honor system.

We also asked Dr. Norem what the chances were that numbers might spike and we would have to go back to mask-wearing, or even worse, another lockdown. Dr. Norem is confident that this will not happen for 2 main reasons. One being that the public probably won't accept or follow a tightening up of restrictions. But more importantly, all evidence shows that the 3 vaccines on the American market are reasonably effective against any new mutations that we've seen develop over the past few months.

We love having Dr. Norem on every week. We've had some visits from him that were not exactly positive, not because of Dr. Norem, but because of the situation the country was in. This was one of the most positive visits we've had, and look forward to some even better ones in the future.

Pretty soon we might be lucky enough to cancel the whole segment.