I’ve made the decision myself that a 99% normal life will resume.
I won’t mask unless formally required, I’ll get all vaccinations that are recommended, I’ll remove myself from society if ill but that’s really it.
I’m on holiday as we speak. Austria, two-weeks of skiing and we’ve done everything as we’ve always done, eat out, travel on buses and ski-lifts, visited spas, pools and shops and it has been wonderful.
The only precaution is that you are sometimes asked to wear a mask in some enclosed areas but apart from that there seems to be very little by way of precautions by the general public.
Same for the UK, no real restrictions and I think that is the way it should stay unless the health service comes under severe pressures from the disease again.
That isn’t the case at the moment. The ICU patient numbers have barely moved and something approaching 70% of those in ICU with a positive Covid case are in there for another reason.
The biggest pressure on our health service at the moment is staff shortages due to having to isolate rather than from the direct effects of the virus on patients.
It is a personal calculation for us all to make at the moment. For the immunocompromised it is always going to be a problem whether that is colds, flus or covid. Both my parents (now both gone) were in that situation when ill and they had to take extra precautions because of it.
From the beginning of the deadly pandemic until the vaccine was developed and widely distributed, I was very militant about those that risked the lives of others because of their behavior. Now that pretty much anyone who wanted to be “vaccinated and boostered” is, in fact, exactly that, I have had a change of attitude simply because the lives being risked by those people are pretty much their own.
Personally, I keep a clean mask hanging from my turn signal and stored in my purse just in case I come in contact with people who are high risk and who request that I wear one. Those are the situations that anti-maskers or anti-vaxxers need to avoid. If they don’t that would upset me quite a lot.
Here in Arkansas, a lot of people never really took precautions. Back in October 2020, I walked into a very crowded restaurant in a small town for take out and I was the only person wearing a mask. They had a sign on the door that read “If you see anyone in here without a mask assume they aren’t wearing one because they have a condition that prevents them from wearing one. If you’re not wearing a mask we’ll assume the same.” And this was at a time when the governor had a mask mandate in place. But in the Little Rock area, when I went to the grocery store I could generally count on most people to be masked.
Once vaccines became freely available, most of our mask mandates came to an end. Well, okay, they ended before most people actually had vaccinations, but still. I have my vaccination and booster, and I’m pretty much living as if COVID never existed. I no longer worry about going out in public and I don’t even keep a mask on my person or in my vehicle.
I see very few people out in public with a mask these days but they’re still out there.
Here in central Maryland, when we had mask mandates, most people wore them most of the time, mostly correctly. It wasn’t ideal, but it was definitely better than nothing.
Mandates ended a few months ago. Mask usage in stores, gyms, schools has gradually dropped off, Now, it’s about 50-50. I still usually wear mine, partly out of habit, partly to protect others.
We already have that when it comes to things like sale of alcohol. This would be larger in scope, but not really different in type. If a business is providing a potentially dangerous product (space in which to congregate and spread a deadly disease/mind-altering drug) it’s reasonable to require they take steps to ensure they aren’t putting their customers at unnecessary risk (vax card check/ID check).
By the same token you need to enforce this in all private homes, because they are all providing the same product. Vax card doesn’t prevent Covid from being spread since Omicron either, so that’s either just for show or virtue signaling.
So, what do you think people are doing now that they shouldn’t be, due to the CDC changes? And, can you link to all of your posts complaining that people weren’t following CDC guidelines when they were stricter?
People requesting/requiring that other people continue to follow now out-dated guidelines.
For example, universal masking is no longer suggested. However, we have still people saying that others should continue to wear masks, likely to make them feel more comfortable.
Does this happen to you a lot? Because I’m in the liberal, COVID-averse northeast (NJ, and right now in Maine), and no one ever gives me a hard time. A few private businesses still require masks, but they’re private businesses and can do what they please. I always carry a mask for that eventuality.
Obviously, we agree that people being overly cautious now are much less of a problem than people, businesses and even whole states that were under cautious when the pandemic was running wild, especially before there were even any vaccines. Right?
Its on this board that i feel like people are still very judgmental about people not wearing masks. But then i worry thats the norm and people are silently judging me. Then I worry that maybe I am being inconsiderate, even though intellectually I don’t think the risk of me spreading covid is even negligible.
As a middle-aged white guy, after the mask mandates started dropping but lots of people still wore them, I definitely used to get worried when I didn’t have a mask on that people were thinking, eh, another right-wing, anti-mask asshole. That’s on me, though, not them. No one ever gave me a hard time or dirty looks (that I noticed). My sister helped me get past it – follow the science when it says to wear a mask, follow the science when you don’t have to wear a mask.
To be clear, no one in real life has ever given me a hard time about not wearing a mask when I didn’t need to. When I needed to, or the store requested or required it, I wore it, of course.
To me, personally, no, and I’m also in a deep blue state. Just anecdotes from the local tv/radio/newspaper.
One example, saw an interview with a suburban mom after the school mask mandates were dropped. She was beside herself, to the point of tears, saying it wasn’t “fair” to her little ones if the other couple hundred kids weren’t also masked. Just no.
Sunny Hostin of The View is adamantly against the eventual ending of masks on airplanes because SHE doesn’t want to breathe other people’s “Covid breath”. When the mandate ends, she can either not fly, or fly privately. Her paranoia shouldn’t affect everyone else.
In my case, I’m not interested in judging. I just want to live without worrying about anti-vaxxers in my presence.
My wife and I have done our parts and we recognize that the pandemic is not over, notwithstanding what policy makers state. Meanwhile, there’s a population which has chosen to ignore science and propagate crap for their short term convenience, and they have unnecessarily prolonged this thing.
In my case, I’m not interested in judging. I just want to live without worrying about anti-vaxxers in my presence.
My wife and I have done our parts and we recognize that the pandemic is not over, notwithstanding what policy makers state. Meanwhile, there’s a population which has chosen to ignore science and propagate crap for their short term convenience, and they have unnecessarily prolonged this thing.
There have been enough comparisons to WW II Nazi concentration camps, but I would love to see focus groups with Jewish holocaust survivors. Ask them, “would you choose one of the camps over a mask”? I would be hard pressed to imagine a survivor saying “I would rather be in a concentration camp than wear a mask or produce a Vax passport.”
Unfortunately, the folks who have been against the run-of-the-mill restrictions have shown themselves to be morally and intellectually bankrupt and possibly/probably stupid.
Upthread one poster has remarked that :
I live in Canada which, though generally has favoured appropriate restrictions, has not demanded [quote=“D_Anconia, post:30, topic:962705”]universal masking [/quote], only appropriate regulations based on the expertise of the medical experts, not the political expedience of policymakers.
The pandemic is in no way over and I certainly don’t think that we should unnecessarily go to extremes in either direction. But I do believe that we implement policy based on medical expertise combined with a good risk-benefit analysis. And if that means ensuring that people in crowded indoor environments have been vaxxed, I really would like to know how that is a bad thing.
I’m not talking about everyone must wear masks outside their homes at all times, regardless of the circumstances. But there are reasonable things that we can do with minimal effort for the greater public health.
Part of the problem is requiring that businesses become enforcers of government mandates, no matter how well-intentioned (or scientific) said mandates actually are. Why should the operators of concert halls or stadiums, and their low-level employees at the doors, be put in that position?
Yeah, you can find people mad at anything if you look for it.
I agree with this. Right now, the medical expertise seems to be saying that, if you’re vaxxed (and hopefully boosted), you don’t need to wear a mask.
I’m a big fan of vaccine mandates. It was appalling when NY dropped it for athletes so that Kyrie Irving could play.
What did you think about Florida trying to override the gate keeping that the cruise ship companies wanted to do?
As far as the businesses becoming enforcers, in NYC (where you had to produce proof of vaccination to eat at a restaurant, for example), they didn’t seem to mind. Even in the food court at my building, they put blocked off the eating area except for one entrance, and then they you just had to show your vax right there. We already ask restaurants and bars to enforce age limits for drinking, grocery stores for drinking and smoking, movie theaters for viewing R-rated movies. It’s not that hard. And, even for big events, every bad is already checked, so adding the vax thing was a piece of cake.
As far as I’m concerned, Covid has moved from pandemic to endemic status. And that’s a large part of the problem – a significant segment of the population is still insisting that we should still be continuing with extraordinary measures that are appropriate only to a pandemic.
Covid is not like the flu or the common cold. It is somewhere between rare and non-existent for somebody to get a cold or the flu during the summertime. Not so with Covid. Now there probably will be a fair degree of seasonality to Covid–wintertime will probably always see higher case counts. But, in the final analysis, it is something that we will simply have to learn to live with, just like we’ve learned to live with tens of thousands of people dying every year from the flu and from traffic accidents. The prudent among us will get an annual Covid shot, and that will be that.
Fair enough, but I want to know that I can go into a place that’s unpopulated by the imprudent.
And notwithstanding that covid may be moving from pandemic to endemic status (and I’m not disagreeing with you on this btw), from the Montreal Gazette two days ago:
"However, there was fresh evidence that the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in the province’s hospitals.
And at the same time our various policy makers are putting out meaningless, bland platitudes about expect our citizens to exercise good common sense (or some such crap), to which I mentally respond with FFS, the citizenry won’t exercise common sense. That’s the fucking problem with failing to lead.