Now imagine that you’re exchanging sexual fluids with everyone who comes within six feet of you whether you want to or not, because that’s the situation we’re in vis-a-vis masks and covid.
You’re talking about two different things.
Under the present COVID situation, the vaxed are being advised to wear masks in areas of high prevalence. This protects the vaxed wearer, but it also protects the unvaxed around them. This includes dopey unvaxed adults, but it also includes their unfortunate teenaged children, and also includes unfortunate people for whom the vax is contraindicated, and any unfortunate children too young to be vaxed just yet. It’s reasonable, probably even prudent, for for the vaxed to mask up under these conditions.
But that’s not the situation you were talking about originally. Here’s what you said upthread:
So you want everyone to wear masks in public, forevermore, in order to mitigate the flu, irrespective of whether we’ve successfully curbstomped COVID. In spite of the availability of a flu vaccine.
I’ll point out again that masks were only one component in an arsenal of anti-COVID measures. If we all masked up forever, it wouldn’t dent the annual flu case count like it did last year unless we also stayed out of movie theatres/restaurants, got our groceries delivered, worked from home, didn’t travel, and kept our kids out of school.
What people, and when? Are you talking about vaxed people with no obvious signs of any infection, COVID or otherwise, at a time when COVID was not highly prevalent?
I also feel zero social obligation to the anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers. But I do still feel social obligation towards children under 12, the immuno-compromised, as well as just plain, normal, vaccinated people who may suffer a breakthrough infection. I don’t want to be a part of a transmission chain. I wore my mask getting my haircut today and going about my errands. When I was sick (with a random cold, turns out) a couple weeks back, I got myself tested.
I want this to be over, too. I want to take my mask off for the final time. But we’re not there yet.
Never stopped wearing a mask in public. Yes I’m vaccinated.
Delta variant.
We haven’t “successfully curbstomped covid”. We’ve scored a run in the second inning of game 1 and you’re acting like we won the World Series.
Covid isn’t going away. Not in our lifetimes. This is the world now. If you’re not wearing a mask in public, you’re actively making things worse even if you’re fully vaccinated and not contagious, because there are liars out there who will pretend to be vaccinated so they can avoid masking and who will use you as their excuse.
I never said we did. I paraphrased your post, in which you said we should all wear masks in public, “indefinitely,” to mitigate the flu - and that your advocacy of such was not based on COVID prevalence. Here are your own words again:
Masks should be worn indefinitely to ward off the flu and to ward off covid. Turns out they can do more than one thing.
I think you’ll be disappointed at the results if you only insist on masks. What about all the other measures that contributed to a mild flu season:
- reduced travel
- no visitors in long-term elderly care facilities (and if a resident leaves for any reason, they’re subject to a two-week quarantine upon return)
- kids stay home from school
- social distancing
- reduced/eliminated indoor dining at restaurants
- no public attendance at sports/concerts/festivals
I’m fine with most of those as well. I see no reason that social distancing and lower capacity at restaurants shouldn’t be continued indefinitely, and I don’t see why we can’t travel or have live attendance at entertainment events without being packed in like sardines. Kids staying home from school? Why not. Physical schools are an anachronism - the only things you can do in school that you can’t do in a virtual classroom are be bullied and body-shamed, have to ask for permission to drink water or use the bathroom, and get scouted by predatory colleges that offer you a useless degree in exchange for a lifetime of crippling student loan debt.
There’s also:
- no kids from different households playing with each other
- no daycare
- no dinner parties or evening beers with your neighbors
- no holiday gatherings with friends or extended family
- no funerals, excepting maybe members of the deceased’s household
- no weddings, excepting the marriers and their officiant (definitely no reception)
- no crowding of public beaches and parks
- no public pools
- probably some other measures I’ve forgotten about
If the middle seats are always empty, be prepared to pay 50% more for your flight. Similarly, the restaurants that have managed to survived the past year have been limping by while hemorrhaging money; if they’re expected to adopt to current operating conditions long-term, expect the cost of a restaurant visit to go up.
We were in a restaurant last night. Mid range family place, small town. The prices were 30 to 50% higher than 18 months ago. The place was about half full.
Some people make friends in school.
I doubt you’d find anyone working in education that would agree with you here, especially for younger ages. It’s important for child development to interact with peers.
That’s ignoring the babysitting elephant in the room. How is the economy going to handle all the kids being sent home permanently? Guess which part of the workforce will get screwed.
This post in another thread is relevant:
And we just crossed the threshold in my county, so back to indoor mask wearing for me!
Not to mention getting properly socialized with both adults and other children. 
TBH, the CDC’s hedging is just making their guidance worse. As soon as the Delta variant was found to be more contagious - back in April or May - CDC should have continued its indoor mask guidance.
This is why I keep banging that drum: don’t count on CDC in this case; we need to keep up with research and findings that are coming in from various sources. CDC does a lot of things right, but I’m afraid they’re behind the curve when it comes to accurate data reporting, and this is being demonstrated time and time again.
I personally am comfortable with their guidance and will continue following it on their schedule.
I’m fully vaccinated, and I’ll be wearing masks indoors to protect myself as well as those around me. The increased incidents of breakthrough cases makes this a threat to the vaccinated, albeit less than that for the unvaccinated. If the cases in my area goes up I’ll be wearing masks more often.
We just bought a new package of KN95s because we expect to be wearing them more often.
I’ll put it this way: the data you see in the news is basically averages. There are people on the low (unfortunate) end of those averages, people on the fortunate end, and most of us somewhere in between.
If we’re talking about a vaccinated person who’s between 14 and 40, not obese, doesn’t smoke, and doesn’t do tobacco, then that person’s probably going to have nothing more than a bad cold, even if they get infected.
But a lot of people don’t fit into that category. A lot of people reading this are well into their 40s, and many are seniors. The data that’s gradually starting to emerge is that the people who were vulnerable and lining up to get their vaccines back in January and February…are probably just as vulnerable now. They just might not know it yet. Moreover, they could be doing all the right things and vaccinated or unvaccinated people could carelessly infect them.
But my real beef is this: why should we wait until we’re in an emergency before we start taking precautions that can stop the spread of the disease? We know delta is out there. We know it’s highly contagious. We know that it will be in every county and that it will be the dominant variant wherever it goes. Why do people in these ‘safe’ counties, who know that they are at increased risk, have to wait for the CDC to clear up all the confusion?
Yep, I just went to the office a week and a half ago for the first time since I started my job last September. Right now masks are optional for vaccinated people, and we were all required to upload our vaccine cards for HR (and it’s a law firm with a large employment law practice, so I have a reasonable level of faith that unmasked folks have actually been vaccinated). Same rules for clients, not that many are coming to the office these days anyway. I am fully vaccinated, but have been wearing a mask in the office anyway unless I am alone in the office with my door shut (which is the vast majority of the time). With my crappy lungs, I don’t even want a mild case of COVID. Also, with Delta, I have a 78-year-old mother who is on immunosuppressant drugs. And we are going on a family visit in 2 weeks - all the adults are vaccinated, but two of the kids are too young to be eligible. I really wish my employer would just stick with the old rules - masks in the office unless you are alone in a room with the door shut. Or that people would see my mask and take it as a hint that I would prefer if they masked around me. (My boss did, because he’s a perceptive and considerate guy.)
Starting yesterday, I saw the national head of the employment law practice wear a mask in the office, which he hasn’t been doing. This coincides with our county’s descent into the CDC Orange Zone and change in masking recommendations for public indoor places. There hasn’t been a change in workplace policy yet, but I sure hope it’s coming soon - I emailed HR yesterday to ask. Honestly, nobody else on my team was in the office this week, so there was absolutely zero business-related reason for me to be there - clients literally can’t tell the difference where I am unless they ask, and I have absolutely no job duty that can’t be done remotely at this point now that we have made all our processes paperless (except for government filings, which I can’t do anyway because a lawyer needs to review and sign everything). Why force people to come to the office for no real reason, where they can infect each other? Not to mention public transportation, where compliance has been pretty good, but definitely not 100%?
I suspect that if Delta follows the current trajectory, we will be back to default remote work, which is just fine with me. And I bet they return to the mask requirement this coming week.