Poll: 38% Say They 'Always' Wear a Mask Outside Their Home

Over one-third of Americans say they “always” wear a mask outside their home, a The Economist/YouGov survey released this week found.

This week, a handful of blue-state leaders announced plans to relax certain mask restrictions in their respective states. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is ending mask mandates for school children in March, and Gov. John Carney (D) of President Biden’s Delaware is dropping the state’s indoor mask mandate and lifting the statewide school mask mandate in March as well.

Additionally, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is dropping the statewide mask mandate, but only for vaccinated individuals, and New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) dropped the mask or vaccine ultimatum on businesses, which went into effect Thursday. 

Even so, some Americans continue to wear masks in public. According to the survey, which asked respondents how often they wear a mask outside of their home, 38 percent said they “always” do, followed by 22 percent who said, “most of the time” and 21 percent who said “some of the time.” Nearly one-fifth, 19 percent, said they “never” wear a mask outside of their home. 

The survey, taken February 5-8, 2022, among 1,500 U.S. adults, has a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percent. 

Despite blue-state leaders dropping mask requirements, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has yet to update its mask guidance, which urges vaccinated individuals to “wear a mask indoors in public if you are in an area of substantial or high transmission.” The federal health agency, however, updated its guidance last month to include the use of N95s and KN95s, essentially admitting that the traditional cloth and surgical masks originally recommended are not as effective — a point of argument for leftists throughout the pandemic, despite the fact that Dr. Anthony Fauci himself admitted in a February 2020 email that drug store masks are “not really effective in keeping out the virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.”

Nonetheless, the White House coronavirus team refuses to concede, as officials continued to recommend masks for “most of the country” during Wednesday’s briefing.

“At this time we continue to recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission,” CDC director Rochelle Walensky stated. “That’s most of the country right now.”