Conavirus......

I am going to remain cautious. I was vaccinated in January. However, my small community on a typical year has > 1 million tourists from all over the planet wandering around among our population of 5000 people, most of them during these summer months. They are coming in record numbers, as they did last year when we were shut down to non-essential travel.

I wore an N95 mask last year, and will continue to do so this year in any non-socially-distanced settings, until I see how the situation settles out. I'm wearing the mask to protect myself, and those I live with, as I don't want to bring something home to them.

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Originally Posted by Gardnr

Well, the antivaxxers aren't coming in.

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Same here, and this is the bluest county in a blue state. The percentage of the population not coming in is roughly the same percentage that voted for Trump in the County, which could just be a coincidence, but I also did not observe hardly any known-to-me GOP members during my 3 days at our large-scale vaccination events.

The head of our local GOP has refused to wear masks since this began, refuses to social distance, and has violated consistently the "stay out of the passenger cabin" rules for our ferry system, boldly marching up with her gaggle of unmasked friends and giving the deck crew hell.

So, good luck to them all.

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Originally Posted by bae

Same here, and this is the bluest county in a blue state. The percentage of the population not coming in is roughly the same percentage that voted for Trump in the County, which could just be a coincidence, but I also did not observe hardly any known-to-me GOP members during my 3 days at our large-scale vaccination events.

The head of our local GOP has refused to wear masks since this began, refuses to social distance, and has violated consistently the "stay out of the passenger cabin" rules for our ferry system, boldly marching up with her gaggle of unmasked friends and giving the deck crew hell.

So, good luck to them all.

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Perhaps it IS coincidence that the unvaccinated in your county equals the number of trump voters. But I had the same thought other day about my county. 14% voted for trump in 2020. 15% still have not received any shot. If the stats about republican voter hesitancy are true at 40% then I expect my county to ultimately reach 93-94% vaccinated.

Supposedly only 27% of the population here voted Trump and that is of voters (Remember many don't vote, so it seems flawed to take percentage of voters as percentage of population).

And YET ... over 40% over 16 unvaccinated with even one shot. Maps are interesting, of course most vaccinated are middle to well off areas, tending to be more white and Asian. least vaccinated other than a few genuinely Trump areas, are poor black areas. Tell me again how that is about Trump? If that's vaccine hesitancy or refusal (rather than difficulty fitting vaccines into difficult lives which also seems plausible) the causes go a lot further back than Trump. Poor areas got the virus though, so there is always the fact that there may be a great deal of natural immunity. Vaccine uptake correlates with income of course, but less than virus spread inversely correlated with it. Are we sure we have done all the vaccine outreach we can to what get called under served communities before all rules are lifted. All due diligence and so on. An interesting data point is the over 80 were less vaccinated than those in their 70s. Wonder what is going on there, if anyone is still finding it hard to get a ride or something.

I think there’s another element to the mask thing. I think Walter Kirn was right when he said “As the masks go away, a lot of Americans are going to miss the ability to classify, shame and despise one another at first site.”

That being said, I do think there’s a significant correlation between being foolish enough to believe Trump and being foolish enough to refuse the vaccine.

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

I think there’s another element to the mask thing. I think Walter Kirn was right when he said “As the masks go away, a lot of Americans are going to miss the ability to classify, shame and despise one another at first site.”

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You may be on to something. It seems similar to a friend who, when NY outlawed smoking in bars, commented that now it would be more difficult to figure out which of the other patrons were smokers and thus not someone he would be at all interested in potentially dating.

Honestly other than outdoors which is an non-issue anyway, did anyone actually run into anyone without a mask. It seemed a total non-issue, people work masks. I suppose those working in customer facing jobs got some trouble. Of course I did get angry at jerks wearing gators rather than proper masks and then there were those not covering the nose, but gators were perfectly ok with public health as all they ever said was wear "face coverings", so fish rots from the head, as no useful information about type of "face covering" was ever given to those who weren't trying hard to figure it out for themselves.

I know of 3 people up here among my circle of liberal friends in a liberal state who are not getting their shots "yet." They are all in their 30s. I'm not sure what's that about--I think they distrust the vaccine because of its fast-track through the FDA, so they're waiting to see what happens to those of us who got them. If their parents' noses don't fall off, maybe they'll get them.

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Originally Posted by catherine

I know of 3 people up here among my circle of liberal friends in a liberal state who are not getting their shots "yet." They are all in their 30s. I'm not sure what's that about--I think they distrust the vaccine because of its fast-track through the FDA, so they're waiting to see what happens to those of us who got them. If their parents' noses don't fall off, maybe they'll get them.

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yes, DH has been observing me carefully to see if I am growing horns, a tail, another head, etc.He is in the “control group.”

I think it was a little too soon to declare masks off, since a lot of people are still in the process of getting vaccinated, and I think ANM makes a good point about whether we could do a little more with outreach efforts in poorer communities. For what it's worth, I am seeing no real difference in behavior in my neck of the woods. The only change in my own behavior is that I no longer put on my mask if I encounter someone while I'm out walking, but I do still try to keep my distance.