It’s inappropriate to include the words “Control and Prevention” in the name of an agency (the CDC) that recommends that people reduce their use of safety measures in the middle of a pandemic, causes a surge in infections, and refuses to withdraw their recommendations even after seeing the surge begin.
As we have seen, when the CDC said that vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks, but unvaccinated people need to continue to wear masks, it was functionally equivalent to saying “masks are optional for everyone now”.
The CDC knows that most people and businesses have no practical means to verify vaccination status (because the CDC refuses to provide the data), and they know that the anti-vaxxers are mostly anti-maskers, too.
They know that without enforcement, many people won’t wear masks.
They know that discouraging vaccinated, asymptomatic people from testing allows the disease to spread under the radar.
They know that as long as the disease continues at the current level, people with compromised immune systems will remain in their own lockdowns, new mutations will continue to arise, and the general population will need periodic vaccine booster shots.
The CDC saw the Delta variant coming, and instead of taking preventative action (“batten down the hatches”) before it took off here, they essentially threw the doors open and invited it in. Dereliction of duty is about the nicest thing you could call it.