Maybe he had it confused with rabies?
Jewel-Osco (“…by the Jewels.”), one of the more prominent grocery stores in Chicagoland, has as well.
At this point mandates like this are nothing more than theatrics and I’d rather we target our efforts at societal cooperation towards more useful choices.
The mid-eighties parents did in fact get Paxlovid rebound infections.
There’s a paradox about masks: Masks work but mask mandates don’t work. It’s not just the people who ignore the mandates. Even if everyone complied, too many people don’t wear them properly. And of course, they remove them to eat and drink. This virus doesn’t need much of an opportunity to get by masks, so even people who mask everywhere sometimes get infected because they don’t always keep the mask in place.
Anyway, what they really need to do is to properly ventilate places where people congregate indoors, such as schools and restaurants. That was discovered fairly early in the epidemic, but no one did anything with the info.
People don’t wear masks at home either, and in households of more than one that’s obviously going to be a major transmission vector.
I just don’t think masks are meant to be as load bearing as some want them to be, not 8 hours a day for months and years on end. Even “well fitting N95s” are failing at this level of contagiousness, because there are just too many opportunities for failure or another chance to get infected, and for masks to be worth it, it needs to be important to not get Covid at all, instead of letting the vaccine do the work that it is now doing. If it’s important for the majority now not to get Covid at all, frankly we should be doing China style and not the quarter measure of masking up. I don’t think we should be doing China style at this point.
So reimplementing a mask mandate at this point in the USA is just a feel good, makes people feel like they are doing something, even as cases have largely decoupled from hospitalizations and deaths for the large majority of cohorts. I do have concerns about political capital and I would like to save this sort of thing for a time where it may be impactful. Mask mandates are not going to be impactful at this point.
Does the amount of initial viral load influence how bad the case is? (About three minutes googling got me about four different answers to that question.)
If so, then reducing the amount of virus inhaled matters, even if enough still gets through to cause an infection.
I don’t think that’s definitively known for covid. But it’s true for flu and several other viral illnesses. So… probably. Especially if you’ve been vaccinated/previously exposed and are likely to mount an immune response fairly promptly, before getting sick.
At this point I think of masks as a purely selfish behavior—wear one to not get sick. The bad part is that masks are not worn often or effectively enough to slow community spread. However, an individual can greatly reduce their own risk by appropriately wearing an effective mask in certain situations.
Maybe I’ll get COVID someday, and if somebody who lives in my house brings it home, then I’ll likely get sick. But, if I’m properly wearing a good mask, then I’m much less likely to catch it right now from that random person standing near me in a public place.
Performative mask wearing has always been pretty pointless. There are no more mandates (outside of a few specific locations, like most medical facilities), so if you’re going to wear a poorly fitting mask under your nose, why are you bothering at all?
Yes, that is necessary, and will have the side effect of also reducing the incidence of other airborne diseases. It also is effective regardless of how seriously the people in the space take COVID. Sometimes the change can be simple. At my office they just adjusted how often the air handling fan runs to increase ventilation.
I also wear a mask to protect others. Mask mandates may not be highly effective, but wearing a good mask properly is very effective at protecting others from you.
When my mother was dying, and i was exposed to covid every day, i was quarantining from my family, and the psychological strain of being alone was getting to me. The most helpful thing anyone did during that time was when the social worker suggested i go home, shower, put on all clean clothes and a mask, and then leave my bedroom and hug my husband.
I went to a square dance where masks were optional. Most dancers didn’t wear them. Most of the rest wore pretty good masks. But one guy wore a surgical mask over his mouth, with his nose hanging out. Everytime i saw him it made me squirm. WHY?!
People unclear on the concept for $500…
No, I’m pretty sure he thought it was something like Covid, because both words had the same last syllable.
I’m not sure what you mean here but, unless you’re working in a covid ward, a properly-worn N95 will not fail even at “this level of contagiousness”.
Masks don’t have to “work” to be useful. Even a statistically insignificant difference in virus transmission among individuals can be statistically significant at the population level. So while your own benefit / risk calculation is negligible, as is those of the people you encounter, it’s still helpful.
Partial compliance is helpful in the same way, though frustrating as all hell. The I-won’t-cover-my-nose guys aren’t helpful, but their wives generally wear the masks properly. (I have seen this dynamic over and over and I’d love an explanation: he either doesn’t know how to wear it, or can’t be bothered, or is being a jerk, but SHE knows, and she’s WITH him: why doesn’t she do something, or else say “to hell with it” along with him? It’s not a woman’s responsibility to manage her husband, of course, but I want to know what these couples are thinking.)
I’m thinking he’s a jerk and he’s thinking I’m a sheep. We just stay together for the cats.
There are worse reasons to stay together!
Out here, masks aren’t commonly worn so they are also a sort of signal to those of us who care. We can tell by looking around the room who is like us or who is probably un-vaccinated and a denier. MAGA hats are also a very good signal as to the sort of person under the hat, it’s so much easier to find my flock nowadays.
So this got me wondering: I still see masks in optional settings (by outsiders, not by employees) worn below the nose. What does that mean for the person’s beliefs wrt Covid?
Well, we’re thinking about bailing on the family reunion next week in Plymouth, MA. Couple dozen people we’d love to see, from all over the country, doing a decent amount of indoor dining. I’m scheduled to get my shoulder replaced 7/7 and obviously cannot have Covid at that time.
This sucks.
Re: poor mask wearing
Sometimes I think it is just a poorly fitting mask, and it won’t stay properly in place. Of course, if the person really cared, they’d do something about it.
Some masks come with these rubber sliders to tighten them, but it’s cheap to buy a pack to modify a mask that is a bit loose. The very first time I use a mask the elastic is tight enough, but I have to install these when I reuse the mask, because the elastic has stretched a bit.