CARLSON: As you have likely heard, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have just issued new guidance on who must wear masks and when. It turns out, government scientists finally took a second to check the science and realized oh wait, everything we’ve been telling you for months is completely wrong.

Actually, people who have been vaccinated don’t need to wear masks most of the time because they’re vaccinated. That means they’re safe. Right.

So for the 151 million Americans who’ve already received the COVID vaccine, this would be good news. They can breathe freely for the first time in a year. They don’t need to be ashamed any longer to show their faces in public. They can be human. They can be Americans, and people like that are celebrating.

But for others, people whose main interest is not public health, but whose main interest is power, this new guidance is, as we often say in the news business, a troubling development.

For people like that, letting the vaccinated live without wearing masks raises all kinds of distressing questions beginning with: if people are permitted to dress any way they want to dress, how are we going to control them? And more to the point, if nobody has to wear a mask, how are we going to know who the Republicans are? How can we be certain who to scoff at? Who to feel morally superior to?

These are not small questions. News organizations are struggling with them as we speak.

For months, TV networks have attacked people who dared to go outside without their masks. You’ve seen the tape of the super spreaders. Some lady trying to buy oranges in the grocery store in Florida without her mask. You don’t know her name, but you know one thing about her, you know who she voted for, the orange man. She is one of the crazies. She has to be — no mask.

Except now, in the wake of this new guidance, you really can’t know and that’s the problem.

When everybody was told to wear masks, you could instantly identify party faithful on site. They were the ones obeying the rules. But now that the rules have changed. What do we do? Well, we could just act like it never happened. We could pretend the CDC guidance hasn’t changed at all. That’s many people’s plan. That’s David Hogg’s plan.

David Hogg is only 21 years old, but he’s got the crappiness and neuroses of a much older woman. David Hogg has been fully vaccinated, of course, but he announced this morning, he is going to continue to wear his mask when he is outside. Masking up is inconvenient, Hogg conceded, but it is quote, ” … more than worth it to have people not think I’m a conservative.” Good point, David Hogg.

When you wear a surgical mask, even after the doctors have told you not to, everybody is going to know your politics, not to mention your position in our society. You’re in the ruling class. That’s why you can afford to ignore the science and instead adopt a public health precaution as a fashion accessory.

It’s like ancient Chinese foot binding that way. It’s a mark of social distinction.

When you’re that powerful, you don’t need to walk or in this case breathe.

If you hate the idea of an egalitarian society, and people like David Hogg definitely do hate that idea, these new rules from the CDC are a disaster because they allow everyone to go maskless together and that’s bad.

Now, you can’t complain about that out loud, of course, this is a pandemic, so you’ve got to keep your game face on and talk about public health. Instead, you’re hearing people fret that allowing the vaccinated to go bare faced could be very dangerous. That’s Leana Wen’s position. Wen is the in- house doctor over on CNN.

Before this job, she was the President of Planned Parenthood, an organization that causes more deaths in America every year than all forms of cancer combined. So say what you want about Leana Wen, she knows a lot of what kills people, and she is highly distressed by this new guidance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: And I do really worry now we’re going to be potentially going into grocery stores or other settings where they could be exposed.

So if you’re taking your kids to the grocery store or somewhere else, try to go at a time when there aren’t a lot of people around. And if there are a lot of maskless people walking around, you suspect that some of them could actually be unvaccinated, maybe leave and come back later.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, OK. Well, then there’s the problem right there. People lie. It’s human nature.

Not everyone who is not wearing a mask has actually been vaccinated. You just can’t tell.

Unvaccinated people are like Russian spies. They circulate stealthily among the rest of us pretending to be something they’re not, committing medical treason, undermining this nation from within. It’s terrifying when you think about it.

But wait a second, you ask, why would someone who has been vaccinated worry at all about encountering an unvaccinated person masked or not? Isn’t the vaccinated person entirely safe from COVID infection? Isn’t that the whole point of getting the vaccine in the first place? And honestly, that is a fair question. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to answer that question. We’re not physicians, we’re not practicing MSNBC anchors, we just don’t have the data.

But for reference, take a look at this perfectly well-adjusted couple on a cable news morning show. They’ve been fully vaccinated, but they plan to keep wearing their masks anyway. Why? Because it’s just common sense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: If you’re on airplanes, if you’re on buses, if you’re on public transportation, wear the mask. You still are expected to wear the mask and actually for your own health, you should still wear the mask. I’ve got to say, in the future, I mean, I haven’t gotten the flu in a year. Why am I going to start wearing a mask — stop wearing a mask on planes? That just makes good common sense.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MSNBC HOST: That’s right. It’s a good idea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It’s just common sense. It’s just common sense because masks protect you not simply from COVID-19, but from everything, including from the flu. They’re like magic that way. We ought to wear them forever.

So you’re headed over to Amazon to throw 10,000 surgical masks in the old shopping cart. But before you do, ask yourself, do we know that’s true? I mean, we should check, trust but verify. Someone has got to have those numbers, right, on masks? Someone must have checked.

Well, in fact, someone has checked.

Last year, the peer reviewed journal of the British Medical Association took a look at the effectiveness of cloth masks. Those are the kind that MSNBC anchors wear on airplanes. They’re the ones you see at Whole Foods.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of data on their effectiveness. The authors could find only a single randomized clinical study of the subject, in other words, a scientifically valid study. But the results of that study are worth knowing about. It turns out that people who wear cloth masks are at quote, “higher risk” of viral infection than people who don’t wear cloth masks. The masks turned out to be completely ineffective.