I don’t really believe people in Northern NJ are better people. We were just hit harder earlier than the rest of the country. But we’ve been at like 95% mask wearing (in my experience) since March – none of this up and down stuff.
Hopefully, with the president saying (in his racist way, of course) that mask wearing is patriotic, we’ll see some better compliance.
How about mandating they have to hire somebody to walk six feet in front of them, banging on a cowbell, and crying, “Unclean!” That way they’re shamed and hit in the pocketbook at the same time.
Yep. But nothing works. Data does not work. Facts do not work. Nothing will work to turn someone around that voted for Trump. That would be admitting that they voted for a crooked moron.
No one wants to admit that they got conned. Much less that they got conned by a moron. It’s full speed ahead for these folks.
It will play out eventually. My father used to say, “nobody voted for Nixon.” His point was that, after Watergate, no one would admit having voted for him. I’m confident the same will happen with Trump. The question is whether it happens within the next few months, as things go down in flames, or after another term, or some other point. I don’t mean to get into politics, here – the point is that people have ways of reconciling/rationalizing their own acts retroactively to avoid that bad feeling. So, yes, you might be able to persuade a previous non-wearer to be a wearer, and instead of having to feel weird about having been so wrong, they will claim to have been pro-mask all along.
I wonder if anyone would undertake a study of the political affiliations of those who have died from Covid-19. I wondered early on if Trump’s influence might cause those numbers to skew a particular way. Now I wonder if it could be used to motivate people. As in, “we’re dying at higher rates. Don’t let the liberals take over and take away all our freedoms because we got too hung up on the freedom to not wear a mask!”
My guess is going to be that deaths to date have been mostly Democratic voters, for three reasons. First, we had a lot of deaths in NY and NJ. Second, it seems to be hitting blacks and Hispanics especially hard. Third (and this might be somewhat redundant with 2), working class people are the ones that have had to keep working and have more hand-on jobs, so have been in more danger.
Sadly, you are probably right.
This is a study comparing cloth masks to medical masks in protecting healthcare workers. As already mentioned, the paper conceded that cloth masks may be better than no masks at all AND the point of people wearing masks out in public (like going to the store for an hour) is to protect others with some protection for oneself depending on the mask.
I addressed this in the other thread. In fact, I mistakenly addressed another one of your incorrect claims in this thread, but this is the wrong thread.
Well then, don’t reuse them. You’re supposed to wash them between wearings. It’s like saying that underwear causes infections when in actuality, it’s just people who never wash their underwear who get infections.
Why anyone is still claiming face masks are bad or don’t work in the face of overwhelming evidence that they do help prevent spread of COVID-19 is beyond me.
Thanks ever so much for telling me I am idiotic. The helmet thing was an example of a nanny-state law I do not like.
But you didn’t answer his question:
NOTE if this has been posted before ignore it, I tried but it looked like it didn’t work. NOTE2 this site is worse than the old Dope, and harder to read and find my posts.
Not one of this is my primary reason. #2 I agree with a little bit.
You people have got to quit thinking that anti-mask = proTrump. The renegade nonmaskers I hang around with are some of the most anti-Trump people you will ever see, and the only Trumpist I know IRL is masking like a motherfucker. It is not a party alignment thing.
We really need a new national anthem. The land of the free? The home of the brave? I don’t think so.
When I went on the BLM marches I had a mask that said “I can’t breathe.” I was happy with that on any level you care to read it.
She/he didnt say you were idiotic, they said your example was idiotic-I agree, both that you are not idiotic but your helmet example was.
If a rider gets a quadriplegia-inducing head injury from an helmetless accident, my tax dollars (or insurance premium dollars) might be used to pay for millions of dollars worth of medical care. Granted, any cost to me would be exceedingly minor in that case, so I am willing to cede that mandate.
Not so regarding someone not wearing a mask. In that case, the consequences are not a few dollars over the course of a lifetime, but could be my life altogether.
So, your freedom to be maskless or my actual survival. Not a tough call.
Well, I guess you do keep in mind the people that needs organ transplants. 
Got it. I should have remembered /s/.
Organ donor is 
on my automobile driving license, BTW /not s/. I know I am singing to the choir.
Thing is that the libertarian argument (or that it is about freedom 
)against masks is not even seen as being a good argument by all Libertarians:
Whether I wear a mask or not has absolutely zero zilch nada to do with anything about you. Your actual survival? Nope. Anyone else’s actual survival? Nope. I am virus-free and in fact for the last four months have been enjoying stunningly good health, not so much as a headache. I’m living in a 99percent virus-free area of the country so the odds that I will pick it up are slim. Should I pick it up the odds that I will pass it along to some rando in another part of the country are even slimmer than the odds that I will pass it along to someone I actually live with. Which, note, I would make every effort not to, and I think I would be successful. So my wearing or not wearing a mask is no concern of yours.
Furthermore I have stated more than once that where they are required, if I have to be there, I wear one. But I resent the hell out of it, I think it’s stupid overkill and more theater than anything else, and I think those who believe otherwise are not thinking it through.
By all means, demand that your virus-free friends mask up if they want to be around you. If I wanted to be around you and your presence was more important to me than my firm conviction that virus -free people wearing masks is needless, I’d do it. Right now there is exactly one person in my life that I’d do this for though and it’s not you.
One suggestion for how the pro-mask (and the pro- do-something-about-this-pandemic in general) side could step up its influencing game:
My neighbor rants that it’s all the “mainstream media”'s fault because all the news (and he does watch news pretty much all day) doesn’t sufficiently play up all the sickness and gruesomeness and dead bodies nearly enough.
He thinks that the news should incessantly show clips of all those refrigerator trucks parked in hospital parking lots, including video of the dead bodies inside all neatly stacked in body bags. Show interviews with the survivors who are left disabled. Show the people in ICUs enwrapped in tubes and wires. Worse still, show the ones who are conscious and gasping to breathe. Grind the gruesome scenes into everybody’s consciousness relentlessly.
You can say you are virus free until you aren’t. The virus won’t necessarily give you warning. Plenty of asymptomatic and presymptomatic spread (your feeling fine and not having so much as a headache is not proof of being not contagious).
As long as you are willing to wear a mask where and when required, we have a deal. For my part, I don’t go anywhere they aren’t required.
And you are absolutely right, I am not interested in being around you. So, I’ve said you are right about two things.