If the President came out strongly in favor of wearing at least cloth masks, led the way by wearing one when touring manufacturing plants, showed people the best way to put them on and take them off, it would make a huge difference.
It would help himself by reducing the spread of disease, help reopen the economy, have fewer Americans die.
My business is 100% “do not enter without a mask”. On a given day I’ll interact with 15 people, 14 of whom will be masked. But every day there has been one person who bitches about their freedom/whatever. Even one out of fifteen is a pain in the ass.
I just explain that I’m following the state’s requirements and I threaten to call the police if they do not leave. I’ve actually picked up the phone a few times but I’ve never had to dial beyond “9” (we have no number for police other than 911).
When I throw someone out I do not pull any punches. “Get the fuck out” gets someone’s attention. There was a woman who refused to mask during the first week of masking here. I told her to get the fuck out. She took such umbrage to the work “fuck” that I’m still hearing about it. She filed a complaint with the Better Business Bozos (I’m not a member), sent me a snail mail (hanging up at work, lots of laughs), and will eventually undoubtedly gun me down in the street.
I shop at a grocery store on the edge of town in Western North Carolina, and I’d say at least a third of customers are maskless. It’s really frustrating. Our county just put in a mandatory mask law, but:
Really frustrating.
I would love for somebody braver than I to engage in some civil disobedience at one of these maskless protest. They could take off their pants. Get arrested for offending people’s sense of decorum by not wearing pants, while idiots next to them endanger everyone’s lives by not wearing a mask. Put paid to the stupid “FREEDOM” argument.
My only quibble with the OP is the use of an apostrophe in a plural noun. Yes, the Cult Of Donald can tolerate no action that contradicts the Dear Leader. Facebook is rife with conspiracy theories and virus denial. All because Donald can never under any circumstance be wrong about anything. This time it’s not something laughable like altering a hurricane forecast map with a Sharpie and then denying knowledge of it. This is real shit. People are dying, many of whom did not need to. The government is still dragging its feet, kicking and screaming to resist more widespread testing. Why? Because more testing makes the number of known cases go up. They’re perfectly content to have millions of unknown cases running around infecting others, they just don’t want the numbers to look bad for Donald.
For what it’s worth, in my area (Lansing MI) masks are required to enter most stores. The vast majority are following the rules. Yet there are the minority who think this is Governor Whitmer’s plan to steal the election from the Dear Leader. There were the armed morons who stormed the state capitol building and pointed guns at legislators. These people are terrorists, pure and simple.
If.
Of course, that won’t happen, because the president is one of these stupid morons.
Alas, he has a cadre of professional bodyguards, so punching him in the nose isn’t really an option. Even though he absolutely deserves it.
I know, but it’s causing so many pointless deaths. I was going to start a thread on this in IMHO or the Pit, but do we really need another Trump-bashing thread? No.
It would just be so easy for him to make such a huge, impactful difference for the course of this virus.
To our few remaining Trump supporters: Do you think he should come out strongly in favor of wearing a mask when around other people? Do you think he should lead by example, even if he’s not really at risk due to everyone else around him taking precautions?
I don’t know about this. Or at least there’s a lot of regional variation.
The maskless around here are certainly angry and hostile. Almost without exception, the response to the most polite suggestion that the person put on a mask is a torrent of profanity, and often enough a threat of violence.
But have they drunk the far-right Kool-Aid? I don’t think so. This is brownstone Brooklyn, after all. It’s as blue as you can get. Right up there with Berkeley and, say, Ann Arbor.
We are, unfortunately, home to a significant number of finance bros, who (a) are probably happy enough to go along with Trump, just so they get the financial deregulation and tax breaks they want, and (b) really don’t give a shit about the people most at risk for this thing, i.e., the elderly and the poor, especially the non-white poor.
But they’re not likely to march on the state capitol with an AR-15. They can, after all, do their jobs just fine from home. And you won’t see them waving a Confederate flag, because there is a social cost to that kind of asshole-ness in NYC.
And I know the internet tough guys here will advocate punching them in the nose or some such nonsense, but as a 60+ year old man with multiple joint replacements and other implants, and a history of heart disease, I’m not up to beating up, say, a couple of twenty- or thirty-something year old runners. Believe me, I’d like to, but it’s not really a practical suggestion.
I don’t see a solution. The NYPD seems perfectly content to enforce mask and social distancing requirements in the poor and non-white neighborhoods of the city, but it’s rare to see a police officer at all around here, let alone cops in the park enforcing anything.
We don’t have political party apartheid. It is perfectly possible to be rabid-right in a blue state, or lunatic-left in a red state. It’s not the geography, it’s the person.
Of course.
What I meant, though, was that the maskless jerks around here *aren’t *rabid right. They’re hostile and angry, sure, but not rabid right. Probably not Republicans at all, and certainly not Trump republicans (although they’re happy enough to take any deregulation that comes along – they’re basically neoliberals).
Hostile and angry transcends political leanings. Being inconsiderate of one’s neighbors knows no party affiliation, nor does being a self-centered jerk
That’s fucking beautiful!
There’s only one way to get Trump to wear a mask, and that’s to convince him it will help him get re-elected. That’s all he cares about, surprisingly.
Just realized today… the smug look on the faces of people who refuse to wear a mask at Walmart is the exact same “whauttayagonnadoaboutit” look worn by assholes who fell the need to wear a gun on their belt to go shopping in suburbia.
Death. Cult.
I think it would help him get reelected. His 40% base will vote for him no matter what, and he might make inroads in the more swing voters if he showed some leadership on this and saved some lives. Plus, when the number of cases goes down quicker than otherwise, states will reopen earlier.
His poll numbers are getting worse, not better. Maybe encouraging mask-wearing would reverse that trend.
You’re talking about a guy who can never admit to being wrong about anything. He can not possibly change course now.
Here in Ontario, I haven’t noticed any left/right divisions on masks. Far from universal adoption – the slightly more strongly worded suggestion to wear them is fairly recent. Really, it’s only suggested for situations where social distancing is difficult, such as small stores or a medical appointment. Most stores, lucky if even close to half the people are wearing them. I haven’t noticed the non-wearers to be obviously worse at social distancing.
I was so disappointed that the Ford plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan let Trump tour the plant without a mask a few days ago. (He actually wore one at some point, off-camera, but "didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”) How juicy would it have been to deny him entry when he refused to put one on, or immediately have him removed from the premises when he took it off? I know he’s surrounded by Secret Service, but that still doesn’t give him the right to remain on private property if he deliberately breaks posted rules.
But with Trump, those aren’t the same thing. He’s incapable of admitting to being wrong, but he’s perfectly capable of saying or doing things that are contradictory to things he’s said or done in the past.
Wearing masks in public places is the right thing to do because you can’t always insure that you will be 6 feet or greater from everyone you will encounter, especially in stores, picking up food, etc.
If you are running outside, and are able to stay at least 6 feet away from others, then I don’t think you need to wear a mask.
I agree with this. I always wear a mask when I go into a store, and I’ve worn it in crowded state parks, because the trails are too narrow to get away from people.
But, just walking around? No, I don’t. I end up having to walk around people onto lawns, into the street, etc., but I’d rather do that when I’m just walking around outside.