Basically, I’ve seen some people say they’re more likely to oppose serious restrictions on daily life if it’s not accompanied by a specific end date or clear standards for ending it, out of fear that no standards, or vague ones like “as long as it takes,” will end up lasting for months or years longer than expected or (that they consider) reasonable. Others don’t seem to mind it as much, or at least don’t mention it as a factor in their thinking.
Where do you fall?
Don’t need an end date.
On the fence on this. I think any standards are somewhat arbitrary anyway, just a guess as to what to do. As most of us face when dealing with this anyway.
I would support them for others if it helps morale. I also note that the long term impact of quarantine is a real thing, creates depression, and I’ve noticed it happen to me. So I don’t support excessive restrictions; they need to be balanced with other considerations.
Well, there’s definitely nothing more permanent than a “temporary emergency measure.” Just look at the survival of security theater performed by the TSA. Combine that with the fact that many places in the US have already or are about to end their public health orders, and I don’t think there’s any political or public will to go back to masking and especially lockdowns unless it gets really, really bad again. There’s already real discontent at my workplace for continuing the current measures when the state has removed the mandate and the message we were getting for over the last year was “We’re going to follow the state orders.”
There was an article in the Atlantic a couple months ago, The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown. I think there’s some real dangers to continuing that line of thinking. The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown - The Atlantic
Unlike the nebulous threat of ‘terrorism’, which seems to apply to any offense committed by someone of vaguely Middle Eastern or Central Asian descent but not to disgruntled white men occupying federal land or blowing up buildings, the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has very quantifiable harms. The point of “masking and …lockdowns” is to prevent things from getting “really, really bad again,” so if we wait until ICUs are overflowing we’ve already failed to act in ways that will have repercussions for months down the line.
That being said, public health measures should be based upon an actual analysis of what data is available and informed speculation about trends, not just CYA sensibility or political leanings. More to the point, government health officials need to work with business and civic leaders to illustrate the need for such measures while finding ways to allow businesses and facilities to function as best possible under the circumstances. Shutting down municipal and state parks for months, refusing to allow restaurants to offer outside service even when data indicates minimal spread outdoors, and mandating masks in all outdoor public areas undercuts the legitimacy of such measures because it is an imposition without basis.
I’m concerned that this rush to end public health orders in toto is premature when we have less than half of the adult population fully vaccinated, still awaiting vaccine approvals for children 12 and under, and highly infectious variants spreading rapidly throughout the world. I understand the desire to not just seesaw up and down with direction but we seem to have collectively decided that this pandemic is over even as no actual end or expectation of comprehensive vaccination is on the horizon.
Stranger
Of course, we do not know what constitutes herd immunity.
I did greatly appreciate in Washington State that there were some pretty clear guidelines for different stages. Open ICU beds, case numbers, infection rates, etc. Again, the main point being keeping the health care system working. Once the hospitals shut down because there are too many infections that have turned serious, then there are massive multipliers of people dying without access to non-covid health care.
Plus, standards takes the political pressure out of the equation. It’s not pure calculus, but not having Trump or other politicians pontificating on when it’s safe to open again is a good thing.
I use the “metric” when everyone who wants to have a vaccine has gotten their two doses, plus two weeks. How do I know when that number has been reached? When the number of people with two doses is essentially equal to the number of people who have had only one dose. I suspect very few people only “want” on dose (not counting J&J); those people are typically waiting for their second dose.
If I lived in an area where only 50% of the population got both doses (and only 50% only got one dose) then I would wait two weeks, then stop wearing my mask except when specifically told to. (I will probably have to wear my mask on public transit long past the date in question.)
I am not going to use herd immunity, since we will probably never reach it.
Actually there seem to be a significant portion of people who, having gotten one dose of the mRNA vaccines, have become hesitant to get the second dose out of some kind of buyer’s remorse or fear that the effects of the second shot will be debilitating. This is unfortunate because the immunogenicity imparted by just one shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is a fraction of what the full regime provides, and it is likely that the protection will wane more quickly. In any case, if you have a vaccine uptake of less than half of the population in your area, it probably isn’t going to have a great effect in stopping the circulation of the virus even before the more infectious variants start circulating. Despite being fully vaccinated, I would (and do) selectively wear a mask in circumstances that are most risky, e.g. indoors in poorly ventilated spaces and in large crowds.
Yeah, there seems to have been a lot of misapprehension regarding herd immunity, with some people thinking that it would just magically occur in a few weeks if we just open everything up and let all the ‘frails’ die off, or that it is a natural conclusion once X percent of the population is vaccinated, and so forth. In fact, many viral pathogens are sufficiently infectious that achieving any global herd immunity threshold is not plausible even if there aren’t animal reservoirs that the virus can spillback into the human population. We’ve never ‘defeated’ chickenpox despite the existence of a highly effective vaccine (no thanks to the people who won’t vaccinate their children but even with comprehensive vaccination it will continue to circulate into novel populations) and the likelihood of completely eradicating SARS-CoV-2 is in the foreseeable future remote.
At this point, the theoretical herd immunity threshold is north of 90%, which is in excess of the efficacy of the best vaccines against the B.1.167.2 ‘Delta’ variant, so we’re going to have to live with the potential for contagion, just as we do with influenza, measles, dengue fever, and many other dangerous pathogens through periodic vaccination, test & track surveillance, therapeutic manage of significant cases, and yes, imposing physical distancing, mask-wearing, and other public health measures when an outbreak rises to epidemic proportions.
Stranger
I’m going to continue to follow the rules as directed by the provincial government regardless, but I do think they need to share the metrics to get wide buy in.
Ontario is currently in Step 2 of our 3 step reopening process. Step 3 includes reopening of gyms, theatres, and indoor dining “with some capacity restrictions”. They have not told us what those restrictions are, which is going to make it difficult for those business operators to staff appropriately. Step 3 is currently scheduled to take effect 2 weeks today, so it is coming up quickly. There is also no plan for post step 3. We don’t know if it is a full lifting of restrictions, an undisclosed step 4, or something else.
I kind of think that there should have been more clear guidance on this since early on that would have been adjusted as more was learned.
My preference would be for “tripwires” based on conditions to have been published by the CDC- an average 7 day case rate of X per 100k in an area means mask mandates, Y means additional measures, and Z is full lockdown. Under X means effectively no restrictions.
The problem as it exists, is that there’s no “end” defined to this. I mean, most states are lifting restrictions, and people are acting much like they were in 2019, albeit maybe a bit more standoffish/aware of social distancing than before.
I think that it would have taken a lot more public leadership from the previous administration to have actually pulled this off though, and there aren’t any guarantees that state governments would have followed it anyway. But at least conscientious people would be aware and could do their own thing accordingly.
Also better communication about the risks to young children would be awesome. Both of my kids are under 12, and it’s very unclear what we should and shouldn’t be doing with them/letting them attend, and how they should be doing it. It’s a whole lot of “Are we being too paranoid?” or “Are we being paranoid enough?” when it comes to what stuff our kids go do this summer, and whether or not masks are required, etc… Having some sort of case rate guidelines would be extraordinarily useful for peace of mind or knowing if we should just keep them home.
Benchmarks are handy from a mental health standpoint, I think. Here in Ontario, knowing that it’s x more weeks until y public activities can come back has personally helped me out mentally. The frequent “sorry, things are worse than we’d thought (usually untrue anyway, the scientific modelling was always there) so we’re pushing things back three more weeks.” of the past six months has been rough but understandable.
I fortunately don’t socialize with any anti-vaxxers–I have one friend who won’t get the jab for medical reasons that I don’t quite buy, but she does believe they work–so my Facebook feed is currently filled with happy announcements: “Got my second shot!” “Appointment booked for #2 on July 19!” “My two weeks are up tomorrow!” so I’m happy that my social circle is being smart about it, and going out and doing stuff is going to be relatively safe.
That said, following on what @FinsToTheLeft said above, I don’t know what the plan is for after three weeks of Ontario’s step 3, and the Provincial government isn’t terribly forthcoming. They have announced that Ontario will keep the mask mandate until some date in September; I expect we’ll still be seeing a lot of masked folks in public for a while yet after that and I’ll be one of them. After sixteen months of this, I’m kind of resigned to the occasional surge in the future, with periodic reeling-in of certain activities (whether those closures are performative, but useless, or not is another question). My current main concerns are international: I want to travel ten months from now and I want our Feds to get off their asses about a vaccine passport that’s recognized overseas.
Thare’s a big difference between the TSA and all the masking and social distancing though. The TSA only really affects air travel, which the vast majority of people only ever interact with maybe two days out the year (going on vacation, and coming home from vacation). So, as annoying as it is, there’s not much of a popular groundswell to get rid of it.
But the pandemic response affects everyone, almost every day of the year. Whenever you go out in public, it’s “Wear a mask, stand in line, keep your distance, sorry we’re at the allowed capacity, take your temperature, have you been tested recently?” If enough people get to the point where they think all this is being artificially dragged out for some stupid political agenda, there will be mass civil disobedience the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
Hell, I’ve been a big supporter of the pandemic response so far, and even I would tell the government to get stuffed if they tried to keep all that going well after most of the population has been fully vaccinated.
That was sort of my point. People are willing to deal with a lot if they see the necessity and especially if the measure has a time limit. But to me a lot of politicians and agencies have burned through most, if not all, of their goodwill. A lot of it has been confused messaging, pointless actions, difficult requirements, and to some degree questionable results from all these actions. Now that the problem is that people are actively against vaccination and there is no political will or ability to force them, it’s a point of “Why should I have to deal with this if I’ve done everything ‘right’ this whole time?”
It’s like at my work. Not everyone is vaccinated and the company is either unwilling or unable to force the issue. And they’ve said they might change the policy, but not until after Labor Day, so I’m supposed to be wearing a mask a lot. But the state is completely open, I’ve been going places without a mask since the health order was amended after the initial CDC announcement, and we’ve even gone out for beers since. But at work it’s part of a larger morale issue, which has been exacerbated by other decisions they’ve made, and the executives are losing what respect they had. The response has been “What’s the point of saying ‘We’re following the state’s health orders’ when you clearly aren’t now?”
Yeah, and at some point, I’m sure those of us who are vaccinated will finally declare, “Fuck the unvaccinated!”
Right now we’re being told to keep wearing masks, because a vaccinated person can still carry the virus, and pass it along to an unvaccinated person. And I’m willing to do that, because there are still people in line to get their vaccinations.
But, as you say, at some point we’re going to top out on that, and the vast majority of unvaccinated people will be those who refuse to take the vaccine. And at that point, I’m going to tell them to get fucked. If, after a year and a half of this shit, they still have their heads up their asses about vaccines, well, then let them suffer the consequences of their choices. Those of us who acted to protect ourselves will just stop caring about them, and will start living our lives again.