The sheer amount of people who stopped wearing masks as soon as they were optional demonstrates how many people never understood why they were wearing them in the first place, which is a tremendous and ongoing failure of institutional public health
@currentbias lots of people ranting in here about people not wearing masks, but I want to know, when do we stop wearing masks?
Covid is not going to go away without a fully 100% effective vaccine.
Do you expect people to wear them for the next 50, 100 years?
Without a sterilizing vaccine? Absolutely. Unless you think the health consequences of endless infection are worth it. And even then, it's not a decision you're making for yourself, it's a decision you're making for everyone you share air with. Air purification and ventilation are great for long-range aerosols, but as long as people are gathering close-quarters and launching aerosols directly at each other's faces, respirators are how we adapt to the world as it now actually is
@MobileOak@currentbias
Cholera, giardia, dysentery and other waterborne diseases never went away either, and we never became immune to them. The reason we don’t have to think about them all the time is that massive public investments were made to build waste, sewer and water treatment systems. If these systems didn’t exist already, the idea of building them now would seem equally unrealistic.
@mcmullin@currentbias I don't worry about Ebola because there isn't any in my country.
I don't worry about Zika because my climate doesn't have enough mosquitos to worry about it.
I don't worry about Lyme disease because I'm not out hiking around ticks.
At some point there has to be a threshold of "there aren't enough Covid cases to take extra precautions", but everyone here seems to say "that threshold doesn't exist"
@MobileOak@currentbias
That threshold exists but we’re nowhere near it. I haven’t checked the latest stats, but it’s still spreading very widely, and each new strain is more infectious than the last. Vaccines save lives and prevent the worst acute consequences, but everything we know about long term effects of repeated infections looks grim. The second biggest wave of the whole pandemic was just two or three months ago. Like you said, it’s not going away.
@mcmullin@currentbias my local government's Covid dashboard says that currently we are "below the transmission threshold" of 3% of weekly ER visits. Currently at one of the lowest points ever, 0.49% of visits.
Wastewater measurements are 4.2% (~280k) of the peak we reached in January (~6.28m).
I am not saying long covid doesn't exist/isn't bad, but right now things seem about as best they've been. How much lower do things need to get before people say "ok maybe you don't need a mask?"
@MobileOak@currentbias
If we’re in a bit of a lull right now, that’s great. I won’t relax until I’m convinced it’s permanently below a tolerable level—and I’m sure your idea of tolerable is higher than mine. Also, I know too many people who’ve caught it recently, and in other previous lulls between waves, to let my guard down. But though we disagree, I commend you for looking for actual data.
Plus, what people don't seem to understand is that if everyone wore a mask when cases were low(er), then cases would stay low. Only wearing a mask when cases are surging is exactly how they surge in the first place. Also, hospitalizations are a lagging indicator. If someone is using the amount of people in the hospital as an indicator of when to mask up, it's already too late/all over their community
@MobileOak@currentbias
Effective COVID mitigations are not impossible. And they are only expensive compared to not needing them in the first place. Compared to needing them and not having them, they’re cheap.
The fact that I know so many otherwise intelligent folks, who have behaved like this, has left me pretty cynical about our future as a species in general.
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