Despite what Rand Paul says, you can't "throw away your mask" once you've received the COVID vaccine, for *at least* four reasons (thread):

1) It takes a couple of weeks to develop antibodies from the first jab. In that time, you're still vulnerable.

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2) Efficacy is ~95%, which means that ~5% of vaccine recipients will still get infected. That might be you.

3) We don't know yet if the vaccines prevent transmission and not just symptoms. (They probably do IMHO, but we can't conclude that just yet. So be cautious).

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4) We don't know how long immunity lasts. Therefore, again, we have to be cautious while that is figured out. It would suck to be prancing about society, assuming you're immune, when in fact your immunity waned some time ago.

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So we have to maintain our mitigation tools --masks, distancing, etc-- until enough people are inoculated such that the risk of anyone getting it is small. It's not a permanent situation, just until we get more vaccine distribution and more data.

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