# The problem with coronavirus is that it's not scary enough **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [June 22, 2020, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648 "2020-06-22T14:56:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2020, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/21 "2020-06-24T15:32:07Z")
[quote=“Manda\_JO, post:12, topic:911648, full:true”] I keep saying this. We needed a big public relations blast. Like AIDS, or MADD, or WW2, or Just Say No. We are good at this. We have a playbook for it. … But clearly the decision was made that that sort of thing would freak people out too much. [/quote] No, even that’s ascribing unrealistic levels of thought to our current national leadership, which wants to pretend we can reopen everything and the coronavirus will go away by itself. The remedies are 100% political and thus beyond the scope of this forum. ETA: I have no idea how to fix the quote box. $#@! ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2020, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/22 "2020-06-24T16:31:13Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > But even if you’re not, you could be just a good neighbor. There’s value in human life, no matter the age. You can just be an asshole, and you have the right to want to stay alive. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2020, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/23 "2020-06-24T17:17:39Z")
I s’pose that’s true as well, though I prefer living next to good neighbors. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2020, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/24 "2020-06-24T21:31:31Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > ETA: I have no idea how to fix the quote box. $#@! Somehow, the [/quote] tag at the end of your quote is on the end of the last line of text of the quote. I’m seeing lots of people doing quotes that are somehow happening like that. The [quote] and [/quote] tags need to be on lines by themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Win\_Place\_Show](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/win_place_show/32/13469_2.png) [@Win\_Place\_Show](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Win_Place_Show)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2020, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/25 "2020-06-24T21:52:12Z")
Anecdotally (so no cite available 🙂) most of the people in my Facebook feed who absolutely refuse to wear a mask (some almost bragging about it, some claiming that a mask even “increases the risk” _wtf?_) tend to be Trump supporters more often than not. I think the “you can’t make this shit up” irony of the whole thing is that when you tell them that “if you’d just wear the mask for the next few months, it’ll save a shit ton of lives” they’re practically defiant. But if you told them “if you’d just wear the mask for the next few months, the virus would slow, the economy will start to recover, and Trump would likely get re-elected”… well, they’d strap 2 or 3 of those fucking things around every orifice on their body. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2020, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/26 "2020-06-24T22:06:32Z")
[quote=“Win\_Place\_Show, post:25, topic:911648, full:true”] some claiming that a mask even “increases the risk” _wtf?_) [/quote] I read that someone claimed was that the mask is recirculating bacteria in a way that can cause pneumonia or something like that - don’t know if that can happen. > [@Win\_Place\_Show](#): > > if you told them “if you’d just wear the mask for the next few months, the virus would slow, the economy will start to recover, and Trump would likely get re-elected”… well, they’d strap 2 or 3 of those fucking things around every orifice on their body. I’ve told some Trump supporters exactly this - wear a mask, stop the pandemic, and Trump is likelier to win. They still wouldn’t have any of it. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2020, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/27 "2020-06-24T22:35:00Z")
Clearly leadership from Trump has been an important factor in mucking up many people’s response to Covid. Had he gone the other direction and urged everyone to distance, wear masks, etc., we wouldn’t be where we are (or where we are headed). I also can’t help but believe that if a sufficient number of high profile individuals had succumbed early on, that would have had the effect of overriding Trump’s message. Not that I wish any harm on him, but I believe if Tom Hanks would have died from it when he got it, I think a lot more people would have gotten on board. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/28 "2020-06-25T11:09:02Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I’ve told some Trump supporters exactly this - wear a mask, stop the pandemic, and Trump is likelier to win. They still wouldn’t have any of it. Many of us Americans are weird about masks. For most of us, our experience with masks outside of a hospital setting is that they are worn only by people who are immunocompromised, e.g. chemo patients. IOW, before the pandemic, if you saw someone in America wearing a mask, it’s almost certainly because they were extremely ill. As a result, some Americans feel that wearing a mask projects a signal to others that they are extremely ill - that is, wearing a mask projects weakness and vulnerability, something many Americans (especially the one in the Oval Office) are uncomfortable with. Americans also don’t like being told what to do. We’re like a little kid who refuses to obey a parent’s order to go to bed, even though we are struggling miserably to keep our eyes open. Other examples can be found in usage rates for seatbelts and motorcycle helmets. Part of it is a rebellious individualistic attitude (more on that below), part of it is an anti-intellectual attitude that’s becoming more and more widespread and causes people to dismiss even the most rock-solid and well-reasoned advice from public health officials. It’s like we all have low-level **[oppositional defiant disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder#Signs_and_symptoms)**. Many Americans also don’t give a flying fuck about their fellow Americans, so requests that they wear a mask as a way to protect others fall on deaf ears. We Americans also don’t like giving up or delaying the immediate pleasures of our lives for anything. We’ll even sacrifice _our own retirements_ by spending wealth right now for fast cars, big houses, and plush vacations. Taken together, this is how people end up issuing death threats when you ask them to wear a mask while shopping in your store, and it’s how you get people cramming themselves into bars, house parties and water parks in the middle of a pandemic. And it’s being made even worse by having a President who supports these sorts of behaviors through his own deeds and words. It’s insanity from top to bottom. The contrast with other countries is astonishing. Watch news clips from Japan, and you’ll be hard pressed to spot anyone who isn’t wearing a mask. Japanese folks are far less averse to following official instructions, and are much more community-minded. People in Japan who are suffering from the common cold typically wear masks in public to protect others around them, so mask-wearing doesn’t carry the sort of stigma there that it does here. Taken together, these things may have something to do with why America’s per-capita COVID case/death count is about _ **50 times** _ what theirs is. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/29 "2020-06-25T15:06:51Z")
Pretty much. This is exactly why things like mask-wearing, no hoarding of items, has to be mandated by law. You cannot count on Americans to voluntarily do the right thing. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/30 "2020-06-25T15:52:49Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > For most of us, our experience with masks outside of a hospital setting is that they are worn only by people who are immunocompromised, e.g. chemo patients. IOW, before the pandemic, if you saw someone in America wearing a mask, it’s almost certainly because they were extremely ill. At least here in the Chicago area (and probably in other bigger cities), I’d add another example: one would sometimes see Asian-Americans wearing masks, which probably came across to others, at that time, as somewhere between “weird” and “paranoid.” ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/31 "2020-06-25T16:17:35Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Pretty much. This is exactly why things like mask-wearing, no hoarding of items, has to be mandated by law. You cannot count on Americans to voluntarily do the right thing. Sometimes even the law isn’t enough. At the end of April, Stillwater Oklahoma implemented an order requiring masks for people entering business establishments. Business employees, in the course of attempting to comply with this order on their own premises, **[were met with death threats and verbal abuse by irate customers](https://time.com/5831351/threats-oklahoma-face-masks-stillwater-coronavirus/)**. Rather than standing up for public safety, the city backed down: instead of requiring masks, they simply began encouraging masks. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/32 "2020-06-25T17:36:55Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > This is exactly why things like mask-wearing, no hoarding of items, has to be mandated by law. You cannot count on Americans to voluntarily do the right thing. But we didn’t even ask people to, not really. Not in a way that was confident and apolitical. We’ve done it before: 90% of us wear our seat belts. We wear condoms a lot more than we used to. Drunk driving and smoking now carry heavy social stigmas. Those things didn’t happen all at once, but they showed us, as a a society, how to do this. But we didn’t. It’s not binary. If asking could have increased mask-wearing and social distancing by even 30%, we’d be a lot better off now. And with sustained social pressure, it’d get even better over time. ---
**Author:** ![Win\_Place\_Show](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/win_place_show/32/13469_2.png) [@Win\_Place\_Show](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Win_Place_Show)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/33 "2020-06-25T17:57:25Z")
It feels like there’s an analogy buried in here somewhere about (was it a bakery?) not wanting to bake a cake for a couple because they were gay? And weren’t conservatives at that time all about “hey it’s their business, it’s their right, so piss off if you don’t like it”? And now aren’t conservatives the ones crowing about businesses that require masks as being some sort of “hey what the hell, you’re violating our rights”? I don’t think I’m connecting the dots exactly right, but it feels like there’s a correlation in there somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/34 "2020-06-25T18:16:50Z")
I live in the grass seed capitol. There are always people wearing masks for allergies here. Also, during wildfire season, we’ll see more people wearing masks because the smoke travels hundreds of miles. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648/35 "2020-06-25T18:32:00Z")
I’ve been home from work since this started, but anecdotally my (large, government) employer is not enforcing its “wear a mask” rule very strictly, at least at some sites. I imagine that making people who really don’t want to wear a mask wear one is difficult and unpleasant if you’re middle management — and of course some middle management may themselves not “believe in” masks. (I can’t believe that’s a thing.) Especially unfortunately, one of these sites is a _juvenile detention center_. Yes, a place that is basically a freakin’ prison is not making its staff wear masks. Two staff — anecdotally— have been infected; no kids so far that I’ve heard. But it’s only a matter of time, I’d assume. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-problem-with-coronavirus-is-that-its-not-scary-enough/911648.md?page=1)