As much as we'd all love to throw our face masks in the garbage, it appears we'll be wearing them at the poker table and most other places for quite some time. Dr. Anthony Fauci dropped a bombshell on the country, saying he expects Americans to still need to wear face coverings into 2022.
That's about two years longer than anyone could have anticipated back when COVID-19 began spreading in the U.S. And it likely means the live poker scene won't return to normalcy for quite some time.
The fact of the matter is face masks and plexiglass dividers at the tables have changed the game. Most card rooms in the U.S. have required face coverings since COVID-19 started, and the players don't like it. Even those who feel they are necessary despise having to wear a face mask while playing poker.
With that said, many have accepted it and are just happy to be able to play live poker even with annoying temporary restrictions. But it now appears wearing face masks at the poker table isn't going to be so temporary.
Dr. Fauci is considered the nation's top disease expert. He served under the Trump administration in 2020 as an adviser to the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services. You probably saw him alongside President Trump during national coronavirus press conferences for months last year.
He's now the chief medical adviser to new President Joe Biden. The physician has served the American public for more than 50 years.
What Fauci said about face masks
Fauci recently spoke on CNN's show, "State of the Union," to discuss the current state of COVID-19. He told host Dana Bash that he can't predict when life will return to it's pre-coronavirus ways, but did give some hope to Americans.
"We're going to have a significant degree of normality beyond the terrible burden that all of us have been through over the last year," Fauci said on CNN.
But he then gave an opinion that may not sit well with poker players who are fed up with wearing face masks at the poker tables. He said it was very possible society will still have a need for face coverings at this time next year.
Fauci did, however, say that he thinks there's a good chance face masks won't be necessary once most Americans have been vaccinated. But the question he can't answer is, when will the bulk of this country get vaccinated?
Fauci, along with President Biden, has said recently that he expects vaccines to become available to everyone in the country by the end of summer. That doesn't mean everyone, or even the majority of Americans, will get the shot by then, however.
In fact, millions of Americans are adamant about refusing to get vaccinated for various reasons. Those reasons range from health concerns to baseless conspiracy theories about how Bill Gates is secretly microchipping humans via the vaccine (yes, there are actually people out there who believe that).
The anti-vax crowd is quite large in the United States. Those individuals could prevent the U.S. from reaching herd immunity, thus forcing Americans to wear face masks for much longer. And that would irritate many poker players.
Featured image source: Twitter
