Because the risk of infection is much lower outdoors, health officials also relaxed advice for those who haven’t gotten their shots, saying they could safely shed their masks for some outside activities.
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Biden Speaks Following C.D.C. Easing Mask Guidelines
President Biden spoke on Tuesday about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new guidance about when masks should be worn outdoors.
Cases and deaths are down, down dramatically from where they were when I took office on Jan. 20, and continuing to fall. This is particularly true for a group of Americans that we were most worried about when it came to the virus, senior citizens. When I took office in January, we were losing literally tens of thousands of our seniors each week, grandparents who were loved so dearly, moms and dads, pillars of every community. We have given 215 million shots. And that anyone 16 years of age or older is now eligible to get the vaccine now, today, immediately. And because of the extraordinary progress we made in fighting this virus and the progress our scientists have made in learning about how it gets transmitted, earlier today, the C.D.C. made an important announcement: Starting
“Some tell me that they had planned on getting vaccinated until J.&J. was halted,” Mr. Bergner said. “Now, they say they are going to hold off until they feel confident that all vaccines are safe.”
The county had distributed fliers and made phone calls to businesses, churches and other community groups to drum up interest for a vaccination clinic on Wednesday, but only 14 people showed up. It was actually about double what Mr. Bergner had expected, he said, though the health department could have handled about 100 shots.
Dr. Walensky said the federal government planned to emphasize the vaccine’s safety to Americans who might be hesitant to take it after the pause.
Could getting too little sleep increase your chances of developing dementia?
For years, researchers have pondered this and other questions about how sleep relates to cognitive decline. Answers have been elusive because it is hard to know if insufficient sleep is a symptom of the brain changes that underlie dementia or if it can actually help cause those changes.
Now, a large new study reports some of the most persuasive findings yet to suggest that people who don’t get enough sleep in their 50s and 60s may be more likely to develop dementia when they are older.
The research, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, has limitations but also several strengths. It followed nearly 8,000 people in Britain for about 25 years, beginning when they were 50 years old. It found that those who consistently reported sleeping six hours or less on an average weeknight were about 30 percent more likely than people who regularly got seven hours sleep (defined as “normal” sle