I remember seeing a video about this before. Thanks for reminding me.
It’s amazing how useless intuition is when it comes to this, and probably many other aspects of this pandemic.
There are quite a few things in the universe that are like this. When an expert in the field says something, and a layperson doesn’t understand how that can be true, the knee-jerk reaction should not be “therefore the expert must be wrong.”
Just quoting for truth.
Right on! It’s funny how different people’s experiences can change their perspective. As a Canadian I never had the same concerns. And as a retired naval officer and the son of a WW II RCAF pilot I tend to immediately think of WW II.
Also, during the formative days of our stupid freedumb convoy, as well as other protests, I saw footage of protesters with giant yellow star of David placards - fucking idiots.
Um.
I agree with what I think is your ultimate conclusion-- that masks and other precautions to save lives are both worthwhile and within the government’s purview. (And I agree with your subsequent point that the pro-draft anti-maskers are hypocrites. Maybe not as bad as the anti-abortion anti-maskers, but still.)
But…I don’t like this argument. The U.S. government has violated a lot of people’s rights throughout history. As I contemplate a future in which I could be denied the right to an abortion by my government, I know that this doesn’t compare to what my government did to women generations ago by denying them the right to vote, own property, and generally be treated like adults. Nor does it compare to slavery, Japanese internment camps, the Trail of Tears, and on and on. I still have the right to be upset about it, and push back on it. “Stop whining; my generation had it worse” is not a valid response to my grievance. And it’s not a valid response to the idiot anti-maskers’ idiotic grievance, either, although there are valid responses that still include the “stop whining” part.
So what are you saying? You are also oppressed by Nazi rules that say you can’t drive your car on sidewalks or the wrong way on one-way streets, or you can’t just shoot someone whose music is too loud and on and on and on.
The whole anti-mask, anti-vax and oppression arguments is a collosal, giant fucking crock and simply doesn’t stand up to any logical argument and is perpetuating the requirements for these restrictions.
If everybody did their part, and if vaxxing had been spread adequately and globally, we could probably have stopped this by now.
But the mindless, uncritical thinking combined with people looking for loopholes has caused this to drag on over and over.
Every time someone fights against the government’s oppression of their rights, causes those individuals to go against my rights.
If Americans had *%&%# worn masks until we had access to vaccines, and had gotten vaccinated promptly when they became available, we wouldn’t be hovering on 1M dead.
It’s less obvious to be what precautions we ought to be taking now. Personally, I am masking in public, and only unmasking with my immediate household and when I’m in a small group who have all tested. But I’m about to go to a convention, where I will have to eat with other people. I just got a booster, to protect me while I do that. But of course, we can’t get boosters every time we go out in public.
And for the rest of us this applies (I’m Canadian and we had the grand parade of ignorance and stupidity, I mean Freedom Convoy (holy fuck)).
In a recent conversation with one of my sisters (I’m 63 and she’s 75) she mentioned that this will probably be her normal for the rest of her life. And I certainly believe that. Until the whole planet is vaxxed (and it’s too late for that now), there will forever be the threat of a new, particularly vicious, wave.
Lots of animals can carry it. Even if every human is vaccinated, there will forever be the threat of a new, particularly vicious, wave. One of the leading theories for the origin of omicron is that it jumped to mice, and then back to humans. (Another is that it simmered in a single immune compromised person for more than a year – I hope that we will always have immune compromised people, too, as the alternative is worse.)
I hope your school doesn’t end up like this one:
FWIW my one remaining in-school teaching family member is still masked up with no dreadful loss of connection. Or test performance.
Last week, we had 46 reported cases in the district, which covers 140k students, 10k teachers, and I don’t even know how many other employees. I’m sure that number is lower than reality, but even if it’s off byan order of magnitude, that’s extraordinarily low.
Virtually every teacher I know sees masks as a major inconvenience but is 100% willing to wear them if it’s making an appreciable difference in safety. With rates currently this low, most of us don’t feel it currently is.
What makes sense to you? Should we all mask permanently, since COVID will never be entirely eliminated, or is there a level of endemic COVID that fully vaccinated people can just accept as minimal risk?
I think we’ll have broader or seasonal vaccines before long. The hard part with the first round of mRNA vaccines was packaging and delivery. The question will be whether packing a slightly modified sequence needs a full round of trials. Then we’ll actually have minimal risk.
So with <50/ cases/week out of 150k , you think dropping the mask mandate is imprudent?
Considering the facts that (A), Covid is here to stay; and (B) so far, at least, it is getting more contagious all the time, I think that there is a 99+% chance that you will get Covid at least once in your life, regardless of what precautions you take. So why bother with stuff that is annoying and inconvenient, such as wearing masks? (I’ve tried several different styles of masks, and NONE of them are very comfortable.) As far as I’m concerned, you might as well just get a yearly booster shot (which I personally plan on doing), and cross your fingers that that will be enough protection to make your well-nigh-inevitable Covid infection a mild one with no lasting consequences.
This attitude is why I have a family member with permanent heart damage after having to wait hours to be treated in a hospital that was overloaded due to Delta. “In your life” vs within a couple weeks of a new variant arriving makes a difference in health outcomes.
The town in question with the closed school is only 30.8/100k.
I never posted anything about mandates. Any organization with some staff whose efficacy is reduced by masks that cannot find more capable replacements will have to weigh that loss vs the potential losses incurred by rapid spread.
And like I wrote, I hope it’s a non-issue. Best case, I’m a nervous nelly and nobody’s school gets interrupted.
I’m talking about case rates within the school district, not the community, and the weekly rate, not the daily rate. We have over 200 schools, and only 50 cases of COVID total, all week. I guess I feel like you are implying that teachers and students who don’t wear masks–however low the current rate of community spread is–are being self-indulgent and careless with the health of others. If the community rate were higher, I’d agree with you. But it’s not, right now. If it goes up, the masks will go back on. But when you say “well, no, it’s still not safe. 7 cases/day is still too many. Wait until we have better vaccines. Then it will be safe enough”, it feels like a fool’s errand. I just don’t think it will ever be safer than this.
So, do you think the teachers and students in my district that have removed masks (and we were very diligent until the county and the CDC told us we didn’t need to be), do you think we are being foolish, careless, and reckless with the safety of others?
Wow, you must have way lower rates than we have. I feel like everyone i know has covid, or just had covid, or is a close contact and is testing. It felt a lot safer last summer. I hope it feels safer in a month or two, honestly.
It’s not just me. My employer just reimposed a mask mandate and reduced building occupancy and maximum meeting size because our rates are so high.
This time last year, the US was just coming out of a surge, and at the time it seemed like the increasing vax rate was maybe the critical factor behind it. I remember a sense of optimism that this was finally going to be the end of the pandemic, that between the vaccinations and the actual cases we had achieved something approximating herd immunity (even though, yes, the experts said we needed more people vaxed to get there). By late June 2021, the daily new case count was the lowest it had been since the start of the pandemic; it felt like the death star had finally been blown up, and we could all get back to normal.
And then the case count started going back up.
In late summer/fall, we had the delta surge, and then in the winter we had the monstrous omicron surge, and now we’re on the leading edge of yet another surge. The experts say all pandemics end, but right now the sense of optimism isn’t there; it just feels like these surges are going to keep happening and happening.
I kind of agree with both of these. Last summer definitely had the optimism that maybe things were actually over, This year it doesn’t look like it’s ever going to end. I have been going into public places without a mask finally (which I haven’t done in two years) when I don’t expect to be there long. But at the same time case rates are rising and I’m hearing about a bunch of people I know who have COVID in their households. I think I’m engaging in a bit of cognitive dissonance at this point.