The wearing of non-medical face masks in public to lessen the transmission of COVID-19 in the United States was first recommended by the CDC on April 3, 2020, as supplemental to hygiene and appropriate social distancing. Throughout the pandemic, various states, counties, and municipalities have issued health orders requiring the wearing of non-medical face coverings — such as cloth masks — in spaces and businesses accessible to the public, especially when physical distancing is not possible.
Federal officials initially discouraged the general public from wearing masks for protecting themselves from COVID-19. In early April, federal officials reversed their guidance, saying that the general public should wear masks to lessen transmission by themselves, particularly from asymptomatic carriers. Public health experts such as Larry Gostin stated that federal officials should have recommended mask-wearing sooner; others noted that US government guidance lagged significantly behind mask recommendations in East Asian countries and likely exacerbated the scale of the pandemic in the United States.
President Donald Trump largely resisted wearing masks in public media appearances, and did not mandate their use at his campaign events during the 2020 presidential election. After briefly encouraging their use in mid-July, Trump continued to hold campaign events (such as the 2020 Republican National Convention) where masks were not widely used, and publicly mocked Joe Biden for wearing face masks in public appearances. After Biden was sworn in as president in January 2021, his first executive orders included mandating the wearing of masks on public transport systems and more vigorous enforcement of COVID-19-related health and safety protocols, including masks on federal properties.
In April and May 2021, as the country's vaccination program increased in pace, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued successive guidelines stating that fully vaccinated individuals did not need to wear masks or physically distance when in public. The announcement faced a mixed reception, with critics arguing that this guidance primarily relied on an honor system, and may have been premature given the country's progress on vaccination at the time. In July, due to rising cases mainly caused by the more transmissible Delta variant, the CDC issued a recommendation that face masks be worn by anyone in an indoor public space if "substantial and high transmission" exists locally. The CDC mask mandate for public transport was further extended into 2022, due to the similar threat of the Omicron variant. By late-February 2022, the CDC had adjusted its metrics for "substantial and high transmission" to account for mitigating factors, stating that masks were not necessarily needed in roughly 70% of the country. By April 2022, nearly all state-level mask mandates had been lifted, and the CDC's mask mandate for airplanes and public transport was struck down as unlawful.
Mask mandates have been divisive with attitudes generally varying along the political spectrum. Republican-led states were, initially, less likely to impose health orders requiring the wearing of masks than Democratic-led states. Several states, including Arizona, Georgia, and Texas, took actions to block localized health orders requiring masks, but later softened their stances to help control local spikes.
Timeline
2020
Early recommendations Initially, the U.S. government did not recommend the use of face masks by the general public outside of medical settings to protect themselves from COVID-19, as to prevent shortages of medical-grade personal protective equipment (PPE) for doctors treating COVID-19 patients. In February 2020, Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams stated that proper hygiene and getting a flu vaccine were appropriate preventive actions to be taken by the public, and stated on Twitter that masks should be saved for healthcare professionals, and that they were "NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching Coronavirus". CDC director Robert R. Redfield also stated that healthy people did not need to wear masks.
In a March 8 interview with 60 Minutes, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Anthony Fauci similarly argued that "when you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is." Fauci again cited the need to conserve supplies of PPE for medical workers and those who were sick.
In late March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a recommendation that masks be used by those who are sick, or are caring for someone who is sick and not able to wear a mask themselves, and discouraged their use by healthy members of the general public. This guidance was consistent with that of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the time.
Recommendations on using masks to reduce transmission
In late March 2020, some government officials began to focus on the wearing of masks to help prevent transmission of COVID-19 as opposed to protecting the wearer; former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stated in a report that face masks would be "most effective" at slowing its spread if widely used (citing Hong Kong and South Korea as examples), as "they may help prevent people who are asymptomatically infected from transmitting the disease unknowingly".
On March 30, 2020, the Director of the CDC Robert R. Redfield stated that the organization was evaluating data regarding use of masks by the general public. The next day, President Donald Trump suggested in a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing that scarves or "something else" could be worn as face coverings. COVID-19 response coordinator Deborah Birx stated that the task force was discussing the addition of face masks to its guidance.
On April 3, 2020, the CDC issued guidance recommending that non-medical face coverings be worn in public when social distancing is difficult to maintain, such as at grocery stores and pharmacies, and especially in areas with significant amounts of community transmission. The CDC published tutorials on making non-medical face masks, including a design only requiring a t-shirt and rubber bands, and no sewing.
When asked by National Public Radio about the April 3 reversal, the CDC cited studies from February and March showing presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission, and reports from Asian countries regarding the effectiveness of face coverings in this manner. Professor of public health Larry Gostin said that the CDC could have revised its recommendation sooner; by maintaining its initial recommendation throughout March, it had given the public the impression that widespread mask usage was ineffective even though scientific evidence to the contrary was already available. The earlier recommendation damaged the agency's credibility.
In a May 27 interview with CNN, Fauci urged Americans to wear face masks in public as a sign of "respect" for others, and stated that he had been doing so himself "[because] I want to protect myself and protect others, and also because I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that's the kind of thing you should be doing." On June 5, amid the nationwide protests over the police murder of George Floyd, Fauci warned that people not wearing face masks in crowds may "propagate the further spread of infection".
Downplaying by the Trump administration Following the change in recommendations by the CDC, President Donald Trump began to publicly downplay the use of face masks; during a media briefing on April 3, he emphasized that the new guidance was voluntary, and that he himself would not follow them. When asked about his stance by a reporter, he explained that "somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute desk, the great Resolute desk, I think, and wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, [..] I just don't see it for myself." Trump and Vice President Mike Pence avoided being seen wearing face masks during media events, such as an April 28 visit to the Mayo Clinic by Pence, and a visit by Trump to a Honeywell factory producing respirators. After he was criticized for violating Mayo Clinic policies requiring masks to be worn by staff and visitors, Pence explained that he was regularly tested negative for COVID-19, and that, "I thought it'd be a good opportunity for me to be here, to be able to speak to these researchers, these incredible health care personnel, and look them in the eye and say 'thank you'."
On September 17, 2020, the Washington Post published a report on documents from the United States Postal Service obtained by American Oversight under the Freedom of Information Act, which included a draft press release dated April 2020 announcing that it planned to distribute 650 million reusable masks in five-packs to each residential address in the United States (beginning with areas identified as being hot spots at the time, including New York City and parts of Louisiana and Washington). An anonymous senior official told the Post that the proposed program had been scrapped due to "concern from some in the White House Domestic Policy Council and the office of the vice president that households receiving masks might create concern or panic."
When visiting a ventilator factory on April 30, Pence was seen wearing a mask. During a visit to a Ford Motor Company plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan on May 21, Trump wore a cloth mask inscribed with the presidential seal, but took it off before appearing for the media. Trump explained that he did not want to give the press the "pleasure" of seeing him wearing a mask.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued a warning to Ford for violations of state health orders. In a CNN interview, Nessel called Trump a "petulant child who refuses to follow the rules", and suggesting that he did not respect the safety and welfare of his potential voters enough "just to engage in the very simple task, the painless task, the easy task of wearing a mask when he was provided one." On Twitter, Trump accused Nessel of "taking her anger and stupidity out on Ford Motor", insinuating that "they might get upset with you and leave the state, like so many other companies have — until I came along and brought business back to Michigan."
Trump criticism of Joe Biden After former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wore a black mask and sunglasses during a Memorial Day ceremony (his first major out-of-home appearance in two months), Trump shared a Twitter post by Fox News commentator Brit Hume that ridiculed the outfit, captioned "This might help explain why Trump doesn't like to wear a mask in public." In an interview the next day, Biden criticized Trump for sharing the post, and for being a bad role model for the American public. He argued that "presidents are supposed to lead, not engage in folly and be falsely masculine." During a subsequent media appearance, Trump described Biden's decision as being "very unusual", as "he was standing outside with his wife, perfect conditions, perfect weather." He added, "I thought that was fine. I wasn't criticizing him at all. Why would I do a thing like that?" After a reporter refused a request by Trump to take off his mask because it had muffled his voice, Trump accused him of "want[ng] to be politically correct."