For varying definitions of “common”. They are becoming rarer and rarer every time I go anywhere (which is not that often). And I’m in a fairly “blue” area. When we were in Florida a few months back, virtually nobody had masks on.
Many offices HAVE opened up, at least part time, but a lot of others are still allowing full-time telework.
I found this article to be very apropos for this thread. For all of the well earned opprobrium that the previous administration got, there’s still plenty to be had for the current administration’s pandemic response, as well.
On the more humorous side.
Hopefully I’m not beating a dead horse here, but here’s another take on how this ain’t over and we could/should be doing more.
The ‘should be doing more’ is getting vaccinated, right? From the graphs it looks like deaths are mostly unvaccinated with a small bump for vaccinated 80+.
And this quote:
Yeah, it seems like it hits the poor unduly, but around here at least, the local governments did nearly everything they could short of mandating vaccinations. Both free vaccination sites were in the poorest parts of town, vaccines were free, they had all sorts of weird hours to accommodate shift workers, gave away fairly high dollar gift cards for getting vaccinated ($50 to Wal Mart IIRC from what my kids each got), and made it drive-through, etc… They could have moved a little faster, but in all they made it VERY easy for the poor and people of color in my area to get vaccinated and tested.
Yet, when you read the county’s statistics, it’s white people from the more wealthy areas that had the highest vaccination rates- especially the older age groups.
Anecdotally speaking it seemed like masking was highest in upper/middle class whites, then black people, with more rednecky whites and hispanics basically ignoring it entirely.
At some point, we just have to accept that there’s a big chunk of the population who because of their own choices, will get COVID and suffer whatever consequences that comes with.
I guess the good thing at this point is that enough people have been vaccinated, boosted, and/or contracted COVID that the seroprevalence in the population is high enough that it’s not really spreading much anymore. We actually went from red to green in the last month and it’s only about a month after school started, so that either accelerated that process, or didn’t affect it much.
VERY different here. In the city of Chicago and environs, I would say the upper/middle class whites were most mask resistant (especially in ethnically white suburbs), Hispanics were most compliant by far (I live in an 85% Hispanic neighborhood that just got nailed in the first wave), Blacks were largely compliant. When I see masks these days, it tends to be worn by minority groups more often than whites. Or at least by my observation.
Largely the same here, in my bit of suburban Chicago, though I’d also say that masks are still common among older women, regardless of group. (Older men, not nearly so much.)
Well, now it’s rare to see anyone at all wearing a mask here, and if it is, it’s almost some middle-aged or older woman (all ethnic groups in fact).
Even we quit wearing them; we’ve been vaccinated, boosted, AND had COVID within the last 3 months. It’s not much of a risk of catching it again right now for us.
It’s still fairly common here. When I go to my local Target or grocery store, about 10-20% of folks still wear masks. My older kid goes to a private affluent grammar school, and almost nobody wears masks there, but my other daughter is at the local, mostly Hispanic, public grammar school, and around 15% of kids still choose to mask up.
I stopped masking when it became optional, about May of last year (before it flip-flopped a time or two), and I was often one of a few people not wearing a mask in my neighborhood, while when I went to the the (predominantly white) southwest suburbs, nobody wore masks (and many didn’t even bother during the restrictions, and several businesses were fined.)
I guess it varies greatly by region, because here, my observation on Hispanic mask compliance is that they were the group most masked up, and still are.
The trend toward telework has receded somewhat from its peak, but in many cases it will become entrenched as the new normal for reasons unrelated to the pandemic (the most obvious one being the widespread perception that commuting in an expensive and useless pain in the ass).
It’s seemed to me that since about June or so, mask wearing has been pretty much non-existent in the places I’ve been- Alaska, Pacific NW (Seattle, Portland & surrounding areas), Dallas, and Houston. I felt like quite the outlier for masking up in fact.
If I had to guess, it would be close to 1 in 20 people wearing masks nowadays around here.
It’s 1 in 100 where I live, probably less. (I don’t think I’ve seen anyone with a mask on in over a week). I’m always a little surprised when I venture over to Seattle and it’s 1 in 20.
With Covid being everywhere, I think the old school thinking of superspreader events and that sort of mitigation isn’t all that useful. I believe studies have shown that masking has had decreasing impact over time and with Omicron emerging. There isn’t virgin territory for Covid at this point. Efforts need to be focused on who’s most vulnerable rather than relying on “comfort food” of reintroducing masking or restrictions.
I not only have “Covid precautions and policy fatigue,” I have “worrying about other Americans and their Covid precautions” fatigue. Most of us Americans have easy access to vaccinations and high quality masks. We know how it is spread. My family members are all vaccinated and we have masks ready to go at any time. If you choose not to get vaccinated, if you choose not to wear a mask in potentially risky environments, I would encourage you to be safe, but there is only so much I can allow myself to care about you. I realize that you are the best judge of how much risk you want to take.
Certainly that’s the most important thing, but deaths are not the only negative metric we should be addressing in the interest of public health. Widespread transmission will mean multiple infections per year, even among the vaccinated, more sickness, more cumulative damage, and more long covid.
Fortunately, the Lancet Commission came out today with a report on the many public health failures of this pandemic and recommendations on what more should be done.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01585-9/fulltext
I just went to a K-pop concert in San Francisco on Tuesday. Almost everyone wore a mask. The crowd was largely Asians, as you might expect, and I’ve noticed that Asians are far more likely to wear a mask than any other group.
My observation is that, prior to COVID, if I ever saw someone wearing a mask in public (here in the midwestern U.S.), it was, without fail, someone of Asian descent. My suspicion is that it’s been, for years, a cultural norm to do so in those communities, if you’re either sick, or concerned about getting sick.
Actually, good point. Many Asian groups tend to show high usage here, as well. (Much less among South Asians, but East Asians for sure.)
What’s the most effective is herd immunity. If enough people out in the community have immunity from vaccinations, boosters and/or actually having COVID, then the spread of the disease is pretty low, especially if the people adjacent to the vulnerable are all immune. Which is the case right now in large swathes of the country, including where my relative lives.
But what happens if there’s a new variant brewing somewhere in the world that is similar to BA5 in that it circumvents a lot of the acquired immunity and vaccination? We’re back at the starting line until they adjust the vaccines and distribute them widely and/or enough people contract the disease that it’s no longer spreading wildly or a big deal.
That’s basically what Dr. Taylor is talking about in those tweets. I’m guessing she got Delta and then some Omicron variant in that eight week period.
I have to figure there’s some piece of the puzzle we’re missing. Other viruses like influenza or other coronaviruses don’t operate like what she’s describing. People don’t typically get the flu more than once a year, nor do they get the same other coronavirus over and over in the same year either. Why should COVID be any different? Is there some immunological or epidemiological information that is missing in Dr. Taylor’s thinking? Or is she absolutely right and we’re all just going to keep on catching COVID repeatedly for the rest of our lives?
Not typically, but it can totally happen.
One of the key difference is SARS-CoV-2 is vastly more infectious than known influenza strains. Remember the flu season basically disappeared that first COVID year because the precautions that were only partially protective against COVID virtually wiped out flu circulation. Although SARS-CoV-2 isn’t notably more mutation prone than many other common viruses, the increased number of hosts multiply the chances of a novel mutation.
The most infectious virus known is the human specific measles virus (MeV) (COVID is trying to unseat it), but by contrast measles probably can’t meaningfully mutate to more infectious forms.
So COVID is a double-whammy. Mutates readily (if not super-speedily) AND is also super-contagious so always generating new hosts to mutate in. It’s not quite the worst of all possible worlds (that would be super-contagious plus also super-lethal and a super-fast mutator), but it’s bad enough.