'You're welcome to step away if you like': Ted Cruz rebukes a reporter who asks him to wear a mask and says he is following CDC guidelines
Senator Ted Cruz rebuffed a reporter's request that he wear a mask while giving a Senate presser on Wednesday.
As Cruz stepped up to the microphones, an unidentified journalist asked: 'Would you mind putting on a mask for us?'
'Yeah, when I'm talking to the TV camera, I'm not going to wear a mask,' Cruz responded, adding: 'All of us have been immunized, so...'
The reporter is then heard saying 'it'd make us feel better.'
'You're welcome to step away if you'd like,' Cruz replied.
'The whole point of the vaccine - CDC guidance is what we're following,' he said.
Senator Ted Cruz (right) rebuffed a reporter's request that he wear a mask while giving a Senate presser on Wednesday
The CDC advises that fully vaccinated people can gather indoors with other fully vaccinated people without wearing a mask.
It is not clear whether everyone at the briefing had been fully vaccinated and everyone else visible in the video appeared to be wearing a mask.
Despite this, conservatives praised Cruz and mocked the reporter on social media.
''It would make us feel better' = muh feelings matter more than science,' Amber Athey, the editor of Spectator USA tweeted.
'This is exactly how to respond to a performative virtue signaling reporter pretending to be scared of a vaccinated politician,' Cabot Phillips of The Daily Wire said.
'Left reporters have lost their minds,' Cruz later tweeted, alongside the hashtag '#commonsense'.
The CDC also advises that fully vaccinated people should 'still take steps to protect yourself and others in many situations.'
These include wearing a mask, staying at least six feet apart from others and avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated spaces.
'We're still learning about how vaccines will affect the spread of COVID-19,' the CDC website reads.
The World Health Organization has echoed these comments, with Dr. Katherine O'Brien adding on the group's Science in 5 podcast that the uneven supply of vaccines around the world means that social distancing and other measures aimed to curb the spread of coronavirus are likely to be required for some time.
'Vaccines are in short supply, so we don't have enough vaccine yet out in the community to protect everybody. Those are the reasons why we have to continue the precautions, especially the masking, the physical distancing, the hand washing and not gathering in big groups.
'For how long we need to continue those interventions? Time is going to tell. Once we get broad vaccination coverage in the community, when we know more about what the vaccine can actually do to prevent infection, and we can slowly start taking our foot off the pedal of these other interventions and make sure that the transmission, again, doesn't start to escalate again.'
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