General Politics Discussion (IX) [ARCHIVED] • Page 1122

I'm wearing my mask for the foreseeable future

 

The only thing that's not "normal" right now, outside of seeing masks in some parts of the country, is that a highly infectious disease that didn't exist two years is now the leading cause of death in America (and has been the third leading cause of death for the last two years), and somehow the twitter crowd can't why maybe, just maybe that's not a good thing and that it is perfectly rational for people to feel distressed about it

 

Hitler the military genius lmao

 

poor guy has no idea what that dance with edgelordism just earned him lol

 

Thanks JB, but I’m good. I’ll keep my mask.

 

I don't ... really get this ...

Shouldn't the goal be "keep as many people alive as possible" to avoid spikes at the hospitals, mass death from COVID or not getting treatment because of the overrun hospitals, and then you like ... work backwards to how to do that? I feel like I'm living in some crazy universe sometimes.

 

uhhh yeah reading the article didn't really help me understand why the community turned on this plan. Why is local news always like this? It's unclear why DC feels so strongly either way, and even the quotes from people who were previously supportive of it don't offer much specifics.

Edit - A couple of important extra details in this Complex article. Seems like this was basic NIMBY with a twist, because DC has real investments in the area that would do much better with a full development of single-family homes which will drive down the local median age. It's almost like poor people don't have children who need schools too?

 

but the economy though

 

I dunno, it really reads more like "exhaustion" and just deciding to be done and live with it. I see a lot of Facebook posts these days about being masked and vaxxed and living their life. Which is why I don't really get what the point is of changing policies ... everyone seems pretty capable of doing anything they want?

 

It 100% feels like straight-up fatigue.
It seems reasonable to expect a big wave of people who've been "over it" for a long time but were kept in line by whatever social/political/legal/logistical/etc pressures applied to them. The ones who've been thirstily waiting for this slow trickle of permission.

 

You can do anything you want in this country right now, I don’t understand being “over it”.

 

People don’t want to think about it anymore, they want to walk around maskless and stand in crowds and not have anyone say anything.

it’s a baby brain mindset, we can’t fake return to normal and just ignore 2K deaths a day because you’re tired of hearing about it. You return to normal when people stop dying.

 

Even Wen makes it clear without acknowledging the point in the article Jason posted. It's just indoor public places and schools, and she says:
- Mask mandates can transition to personal choice now because research says the N95/KN95/etc masks protect the wearer regardless of whether they're around masked folks.
- The usual argument about kids needing to see faces to learn speech and social cues

This wouldn't be such a slimy take if she at least acknowledged that making masking a personal choice guarantees that we'll have large waves of every future major variant. You can't have a cost-benefit analysis that involves accepting the loss of life and quality of life that will accompany those waves and then not talk about it.

 

Speaking of us now having high-quality masks that protect the wearer, has anyone had any update for the free N95/KN95 masks being sent to pharmacies and that kind of thing? I look every time I go into my local CVS but haven't seen anything. And whenever I ask, the people working there usually don't know what I'm talking about. Not sure if I'm just in the wrong place and asking the wrong people, but I am running very low on KN95s at the moment.

And also still have not received any notifications about the free tests I ordered, even though it's now been, what, three weeks I think. Which is a bit frustrating.

 

I just received mine yesterday