Conavirus......

[ApatheticNoMore]

I hated my governor for his greed over people stance when the pandemic was bad here too (that was before vaccines but from data I can find, we're only marginally more vaccinated than FL now which may be 70% or so adult vaccination but since kids can't get it, that's only 50% overall vaccination. We just have herd immunity + vaccines - because winter was so bad, so the real infection rate is probably at least 50%. Someone has the real estimates no doubt, local public health, they just only rarely kind of mention them, it was estimated to be 1/3 in the winter surge itself and there has been infection since).

It may be with near 100% vaccine coverage now there would be little pandemic anywhere in the U.S. (yes breakthroughs exist but), just one hits a hard wall of the quarter of adults who won't get it plus kids. It's been true here for months, vaccination inches over 70% of eligible population very very slowly.

Back then our govenor wouldn't close down xmas shopping, hospitals got overwhelmed. My anger burned red hot as the bodies piled up, the hospitals were full, they set up outdoor treatments, the crematoriums were full, and why isn't stuff being shut down? All because these are big shopping times of the year? That's it? For business and shopping? While they lift air quality restrictions in order to cremate more people? Those are our values? I could have killed. People were dying.

In the cold sober light of the morning after the pandemic: keep that guy or get Larry Elder ....

[jp1]

I guess I will never subscribe to the idea that society has no duty to worry about the weakest amongst us during an extremely infectious pandemic beyond telling them to stay home for the rest of their lives, never have guests since even vaccinated people can be unknowing carriers, and if you don’t do that and get sick, too bad, so sad, you were probably gonna die sooner rather than later anyway.

[Yppej]

I guess I will never subscribe to the idea that society has no duty to worry about the weakest amongst us during an extremely infectious pandemic beyond telling them to stay home for the rest of their lives, never have guests since even vaccinated people can be unknowing carriers, and if you don’t do that and get sick, too bad, so sad, you were probably gonna die sooner rather than later anyway.

You make this sound like a short term event "during an extremely infectious pandemic". Public health authorities want us to wear masks forever. I live in an area that is a success story in terms of vaccination, with ample room in hospitals, and the cry is "cases are going up". Yes, asymptomatic cases that aren't causing hospitalizations or deaths are going up a little, nowhere near where they were before. We have more restrictions here than in states that are facing real covid surges. It is paranoia and politics along party lines. Republican governors (who are not anti-mask because they put mandates in earlier) aren't now because there is no public health emergency so Democratic mayors are putting them in anyways at the local level. It is 100% partisan.

So do you think we should wear masks forever since covid will never go away but at best go dormant? It's been over a year - what would you like? A decade?

ETA: It's like the war in Afghanistan, where there was always an excuse to stay a little longer, due to fear mongering politicians.

[jp1]

Go visit a hospital in Florida and then try and tell me with a straight face that the asshole Republican governors who are currently anti-mask are anti-mask because there’s no emergency.

[Yppej]

Go visit a hospital in Florida and then try and tell me with a straight face that the asshole Republican governors who are currently anti-mask are anti-mask because there’s no emergency.

Come to my state (Massachusetts) which is what I wrote about. Come to Vermont. Come to New Hampshire. All have Republican governors who imposed mask mandates at the height of the pandemic but realize there is no need for them in New England now.

[Yppej]

JP do you think people in the Third World should wear masks for the rest of their lives because you and others like you will be taking up the vaccine doses with boosters every 8 months?

Hmmm - I wonder if this will lead to the sort of anti-American hostility that propelled the Taliban to power. Everything is connected to masks when you look deeply enough.

[bae]

Everything is connected to masks when you look deeply enough.

[Yppej]

While this is an apt analogy as far as it goes it ignores one CRITICAL difference between HIV and Covid. In order to get infected with HIV one had to have sex with the other infected person. All of us gay men who were having sex back then knew the risk and as a result it was normal behavior to ask "You negative? You play safe?" and then decide what to do from there. Yes there were cases like Kimberly Bergalis that caught it from her chitty dentist and blood transfusion patients before reliable HIV blood tests came into existence, but by and large the people dying of kaposi's sarcoma and all the other horrible infections that killed HIV patients caught HIV by having sex with infected people. They made a conscious decision to risk contracting a fatal illness. Contrast that with the person who gets covid when they go to the grocery store and spend a few minutes in line behind a contagious covid carrier or working the register when a covid carrier comes through their line, or when their relative/friend/neighbor brings them groceries and covid, and the comparison breaks down.

The analogy doesn't break down as much as you think.

The corollary to asking "You negative? You play safe?" today is getting vaccinated. When you're vaccinated you 99.99% of the time are not going to be seriously ill even if you do catch covid.

People can protect themselves from covid. They just don't want to.

[Alan]

Go visit a hospital in Florida and then try and tell me with a straight face that the asshole Republican governors who are currently anti-mask are anti-mask because there’s no emergency.

I'm not sure why you think that Republican governors are anti-mask when you could just as easily realize that it's simply that Republican governors are less likely than Democratic governors to use the power of the state to force people to bend to their will. I think it probably boils down to differences of opinion about the sovereignty of the individual vs the power of the state, which is probably the major difference between the two dominant political parties.

[Teacher Terry]

Yppej, my friend died in November before vaccines were available. I don’t have any unvaccinated friends or family. Even people that got Covid got vaccinated.