It’s not psychopathic to believe masks don’t work. We have a major national problem with not having good information, nor, really, very good venues for that kind of thing to be vetted and discussed.
And it doesn’t help that apparently most people are completely unable to cope with probabilities. Vaccines don’t prevent you from catching covid, they significantly reduce the odds. Vaccines don’t prevent you from spreading covid, either. Again, they reduce the odds. Masks… Once again, it’s about changing the odds.
No, sorry, it’s psychopathic. There is no debate about the efficacy of masks:
Masks and social distancing worked. The drop in flu incidences during the 2020-2021 winter prove the case. And to literally deny reality merely to uphold ones personal identification with a particular ideology, especially when dealing with an airborne disease which caused this:
Imagine, if you will, that it’s October of 2019. Nobody’s even heard of this pandemic yet. And further imagine that I own a bar. And now imagine that I decide, as a promotion, that I’m going to have a costume night: Drinks are half-off tonight, but you have to be wearing a costume to enter. And now imagine that I turn a customer away because he’s not wearing a mask. Would there be any conservative outrage, at all, against me doing this? I think not: Some might say that it’s a foolish business decision on my part, but those folks would then say that it’s my right to make foolish business decisions, and the appropriate punishment is the profits I’ll lose as a result.
But if that’s not a source of outrage, then why is there conservative outrage when a bar today chooses to turn away customers who aren’t wearing masks? Is there any difference in rights that are being infringed?
Not that I’m debating the basic point that masks should be required, but what in the world is that graph saying? It looks like it’s saying that, on average, someone born in 2020 will have a life expectancy 2 years shorter than someone born in 2019, but that would only be the case if Covid-19 kills off 3% of children under 1 year old, which it most emphatically doesn’t.
I don’t want to go into the details of the argument against that, because honestly, I am a big believer in the efficacy of masks re covid and to a lesser extent, flu. I have acquired a nice wardrobe of masks and respirators. I wear a high-quality mask every time I visit my elderly mother because I’m terrified I’ll infect her, and I believe I substantially improve my odds of not infecting her by wearing one.
But there are a lot of other factors that were different, and there are rational arguments that other factors led to the drop in flu. Like… everyone staying home.
I really don’t think it’s meaningful to define “psychopath” so broadly that it applies to a third of the population.
What the graph shows is that if mortality-by-age were the same as it were in 2020 for every year of a hypothetical life, that person would have a life expectancy 2 years shorter than a person who was subjected to the mortality-by-age that we measured in 2019 for every year of their hypothetical life.
That’s how “life expectancy at birth” is ordinarily calculated.
In years when nothing remarkable happens, it’s an okay number. It basically says “if there are no changes in mortality-by-age from today, this would be the life expectancy of someone born this year.”
But it’s not a great way to look at covid mortality.
fwiw, the conservative person I am channeling has never complained about something like that being anything worse than a bad business decision. He saves his outrage for legal mask mandates and state-required vaccine passports.
But the thing is, there are Republican politicians who really are punishing private business owners for mask mandates. And someone in their base must be supporting that. Why?
IOW, he’s like Ron DeSantis – he is outraged by anything that might help to stop the spread of COVID on a large scale, acting like a paid propagandist for the COVID virus. Can you channel him (or ask him directly) why the COVID numbers for Canada – both case counts and death counts per capita – are much less than half of those in the US, per my previous post? In fact, they’re just a little more than one-third of the per-million counts in the US. And whether he believes this could have anything to do with COVID-promoting lunatics like DeSantis and Abbott.
Because they’re catering to their low-information lunatic base. Some of them might actually know how dangerously wrong this is, which makes them the worst kind of hypocrites.
ETA: Looking at your question more carefully, you’re also asking why the base is so outraged by mask mandates and vaccine mandates/passports. I think it’s because this is a demographic that has been conditioned to have an extreme distrust of government, and considers any sort of government mandate a huge intrusion on their personal freedom to be dangerous jerks. I think that’s about all that can be said, since you can’t reason with crazy.
But it’s not a government mandate I’m talking about. It’s a private business policy. Some private businesses want to require masks, but the government is telling them that they can’t require masks.
I thought I addressed that. The “government” that is telling them they’re not allowed to require masks is invariably a Republican lunatic like DeSantis or Abbott catering to their government-averse and ill-informed base. Which is also the demographic that is going to be responsible for the continuing spread of COVID and potentially more dangerous and more contagious new mutations.
Exactly. That ill-informed base is pandered to in allowing it to go on under the impression that the private business’ decision to require masks or vaccines in an imposition on behalf of those “unaccountable” scientists at the CDC/WHO/etc who want to control you, not a sincere business decision(*). From the POV of the ill-informed base, it is that private business becoming an agent of the Deep State (and of course, from the POV of the ill-informed base, the guy they voted for is not really “government”. They are THAT ill-informed.)
(*because, of course: “What sensible business would not want ME to patronize them? It’s impossible for a real business decision to mean that!”)
So, you don’t like lockdowns. You don’t believe in masks. You are ambivalent on vaccination.
I observe that the COVID numbers for Canada – both case counts and death counts per capita – are much less than half of those in the US. In fact, they’re just a little more than one-third of the per-million counts in the US. What do you think explains this? It ain’t the weather, most of the population of Canada lives very close to the US, in the same climate as our northern states.
Maybe I’ll ask about DeSantis and Abbott in a follow-up. Or not. Personally, I think Trump really created the politicization, and the rest just ran with it.
<I hate to bring the same discussion as everywhere else into this thread, but I think it’s unavoidable in the current context>
US right-wing ideology right now is just “down with the libs”. On shows like Hannity and Tucker Carlson, there’s almost no discussion of objective external problems at all. It’s just about what THEY are trying to do to YOU. While people in the past have been happy to handwave people like Hannity as nut-jobs, I think it’s key to understanding things like Jan 6th and QAnon by taking them seriously as representing the core of the party right now.
Getting back to the OP, in some ways it’s just side effect of the phenomenon I just described.
The libs wanted masks and vaccine passports, therefore evil. Businesses want to require those things…didn’t I just tell you they’re evil?
Any attempt to find a justification beyond this would be post hoc. It’s absolutely not a position that was reasoned into.
Is this actually happening anywhere? I know this is a fast-moving topic so I may have missed a law or two, but when I checked last week even the most insane anti-mask laws (Texas?) only targeted public entities or private businesses take public money (not sure what this covers – maybe stadiums or something?)
