New mask rules trust Americans will be honest about vaccine status. Experts say they'll lie.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's announcement Thursday that fully vaccinated people largely no longer need to wear a mask has left many Americans wondering: If there are no enforcement measures, won't people just lie about their vaccination status?

Public health officials admitted that the honor system will play a large role in the new rules.

"I mean, you're going to be depending on people being honest enough to say whether they were vaccinated or not and responsible enough to be wearing ... a mask," Anthony Fauci, the nation's top epidemiologist, told CNN Thursday.

There's long been talk of a "vaccine passport" model of enforcement in the USA, where vaccination status grants or limits a person's ability to travel or enter certain spaces. 

Such a program is mostly a theory, and multiple businesses announced that they won't ask customers to prove their vaccine status if they shop unmasked.

Michael McCullough, a psychology professor at the University of California, San Diego, said the new guidance will enable unvaccinated people to flout rules with "impunity."

"Many will lie. Many are lying, have been lying," he said. "In some ways, this is a really perfect recipe for lots of people to be dishonest about whether they got vaccinated. They can say, well, everyone who really is worried about it has gone out and done it, and my personal risk is low."

Read More:    USAtoday.com

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