Nearly 4 in 10 keep mask routine despite CDC guidance: poll

A new survey finds that nearly 4 in 10 American respondents, including a large portion of vaccinated adults, are still wearing masks about as often as they were before federal health officials announced updated guidance on the issue.

The Monmouth University Poll survey released Wednesday found that 38 percent of respondents said they are wearing masks “about as often” as they did before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its mask guidance in May.

The CDC guidance stated that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks in most situations, including outdoors or in some indoor settings, though they were still recommended for unvaccinated people and for crowded spaces.

The Monmouth poll found that more than a third of adults, 34 percent, said they wore masks “less often” following the updated guidance, while 12 percent said they were “not at all” wearing masks and 15 percent said they “rarely wore one.”

The survey found that 41 percent of those who said they have been vaccinated planned to continue wearing a mask about as often as they did before.

When it came to how much they trusted the CDC’s new guidance, 61 percent of adults said they trusted it at least “some” or “a great deal,” while 10 percent said “not much” and 27 percent said “not at all.”

“Most of the public may trust the scientific aspects of the CDC guidance on mask wearing. It is not clear, though, how much they – especially those who are already vaccinated – trust their fellow Americans to abide by that guidance,” Monmouth University Polling Institute Director Patrick Murray said.

“The difficulty with instituting an honor system is it’s already toothless when a significant chunk of the public was disregarding the rules to begin with,” Murray added.

The Monmouth survey of 810 adults was conducted June 9-14 via telephone. The results have a margin or error of 3.5 percentage points.