I trust them on the science. When they say being vaccinated means you’re pretty safe and don’t need a mask in most circumstances, I believe them. When they say we can loosen social distancing requirements outdoors, I’ll believe them, and the studies do support that. But you have to know by now that this pandemic has a psychological, sociological, and political dimension that you also have to recognize, and they have to know that their advice has ramifications. Our idiot conservative democrat governor has to know that too, but do they care? No. Our state mask mandate has been dismissed, thanks to the short-sighted recommendations of the CDC. This is only going to encourage the worst elements in the state.
Case in point: our local grocery store, Willie’s Super-Valu of Morris, Minnesota.
When the seriousness of the pandemic began to hit us all, they dragged their heels on implementing even the most basic preventive policies. For months, they were carefree, few of the workers wore masks, and almost none of the customers did. It was so disgracefully bad that we gave up and started shopping 40 minutes away. They finally did put up signs requiring masks in the store, but it was too late — we have lost all trust in the store. I go there only reluctantly, and when absolutely necessary, like today. I’ve been car-less for almost a month while my wife was off spending all her time with our granddaughter, and the pantry was bare. She’s going back this week so I’ve just this weekend to stock up again, and I made the mistake of going to Willie’s.
The instant the governor ended the mandate, the signs all went away. None of the workers are masked anymore, and very few of the customers. The kaffeeklatsches have resumed, with people stopping in the middle of aisles to gossip with other residents. We are back to “normal”, I guess, but the pandemic isn’t over, and the CDC recommendations are about people who have been vaccinated…that is, about half the population. This is a politically conservative area, so I have no confidence that any of the people in that store have been following prior recommendations, or have been vaccinated, or at all responsible in protecting the health of the community. I sure as hell don’t trust the owners of the store.
So here we are again, with the local Trump-loving citizens of this town showing their asses and being irresponsible.
I’m going to have to continue occasionally visiting Willie’s — it’s basically the only major grocery store in walking distance — when my wife takes the car again, but as soon as she gets back home again for good, they have lost my business. It’s a shame, too, that a place that has the silly slogan “Home of the People-Lovers” should so reliably betray their community.
At one of the super markets near my house they haven’t been following the mandatory mask rules at all. Masks worn wrong or not at all. It makes me very uncomfortable. I only go there once in a while now for the stuff i really really like and no other supermarket has. When i do i go very early in the morning. It’s quite depressing so i really feel ya here.
I just posted this on the last thread.
I’m afraid I have to agree with PZ here. So do a lot of public health experts.
A lot of public health experts are dismayed by what the CDC just did about masks. The CDC threw away a huge advantage while we are still in the end game for this pandemic.
In the USA, cases are still high at ca. 40,000 a day and 800/day or so people are still dying.
They could have waited a few weeks and done a more gradual shift and achieved a lot more.
These people say it well in a not too long and easy to read article.
The CDC aren’t idiots. They just underestimated the vast swaths of the population who are idiots.
Even in cray cray Florida our local Publix eventually became a seemingly safe place to shop with all employees masked and most shoppers. Don’t know how quickly that will change. I’ll still wear mine for now.
I had been tempted to go back to restaurant dining but that’s a much larger psychological hurdle for me. Lately I’ve noticed many of my fave restaurants packed to the gills at peak hours. If I go it will be at off times, but I don’t even know the proper manner to dine in anymore, over a year removed from doing that. It would be a slighter hurdle to order take-out which I never did either (OCD), but might go that route instead of dining in if I can gather up the courage.
Maybe eating maskless in a packed restaurant is safe for me now. I’m vaccinated against HepB also. Wonder how my odds of dying from COVID stack up versus foodborne illness, being shot in a robbery or by disgruntled former waitstaff, or runover by a car while seated, as cars running into buildings is a thing. It’s Florida so lightning.
Can’t wait for all the COVID-19 variants that we’re about to see as the USA becomes the breeding ground for them.
Strangely enough, the mask mandate was supported by most of the American people and compliance was high.
The anti-maskers are a small lunatic fringe minority, more noted for being noisy.
They are just Plague rats.
In Realityland, the vast majority of Americans support wearing masks and do so.
The number of people who want to risk getting Covid-19 virus and risk death isn’t all that high.
The anti-maskers are a small minority that is more noise than substance.
With high overlap with fundie xians, climate denialists, flat earthers, antivaxxers and so on.
The lunatic fringes.
@4- Hemi
I meant HepA, which ironically was a growing concern in Florida not long before the COVID pandemic hit.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article233419627.html
“The number of Hepatitis A cases in Florida has exploded in 2019, with this year’s 2,034 cases nearly four times the 548 cases reported in all of 2018, according to the Health Department. And there are five more months to be accounted for in 2019.
In 2014, just five years ago, there were only 106 cases in the state, the health department’s figures show.”
I got vaccinated against A and B almost 15 years ago.
people don’t understand the full statement of:
Which has the condition of: fully vaccinated, and that it refers to individuals not regions.
Like COSTCO lifting its mask requirement to enter the store on the honor system of [if you’re fully vaccinated], with no proof required to enter maskless.
Also the CDC recommendation that “you can…”, doesn’t mean “you should”
Seems to me the CDC should have included the qualification, to their statement, about it being better in general to stay with the mandate until we achieve [herd immunity].
I simply cannot understand the objection to wearing masks.
I agree they are annoying, So what?
The annoyance is pretty effin minor,
@6- raven
On the upside mask wearing is now normalized in our culture as it was in China after SARS so maybe regardless of CDC guidelines people will feel more comfortable wearing masks in public. Previous to the pandemic it seemed immune compromised, cancer patients, and hypochondriacs did so and got odd stares. Now if an influenza season gets really nasty people might break out the masks without feeling stigmatized. Apparently masks and distancing all but shutdown the previous flu season though maybe more people got the vaccination.
I had gotten an MMR booster within the past several years because idiots. I had afterward heard some suggestive speculation that mumps antibody titers may be correlated with less severe COVID outcomes, but I don’t know if that panned out. I was hopeful. Now we have vaccines against CoV2.
The annoyance is mostly for us wearing glasses; for most masks I have to pinch them close by holding my hand across my nose all the time, or the humid air I exhale will fog up my vision. I am told some smart kid in the US invented a thing that you can clap on, but it is not available here.
Despite the annoyance, people in Sweden have to wear masks on buses, which is a good thing. But experience indicates the effective thing is to keep distance!
And if someone does not know how much six feet is, John Cleese has helpfully demonstrated it.
Spell check altered “clip” to “clap”.
Cuomo is still evaluating the CDC recommendation. I hope he keeps evaluating it for awhile and if he stops evaluating and decides to lift the mask mandate I hope the local government will continue to do so. Most people in my area are pretty good about wearing masks both indoors and out.
California is keeping its mask mandate for now. There appears to be an intent to remove the mandate on 15 June. We’ll see how that goes. Where I live, Solano County, we’re still in “Red” status (the only Bay Area county that is).
My wife got a mask from Etsy that says, “Vaccinated and still masked.”
Re: hemidactylus @ #9…
Buses, airplanes, airports, medical facilities…all still require masks under the new CDC guideline.
Try looking for a smaller store run by someone competent. For the past year, we’ve been doing most of our shopping at a locally owned corner store that has been limiting themselves to 4 customers in the store at a time—even though all the local grocery stores have been enforcing masking and capacity limits. (Well, Trader Joe’s has been a bit lax, having been “invaded” by anti-mask protestors from out of the county more than once.)
Being in California, our county did get hit fairly hard by the Jan/Feb outbreak, but public mask compliance has been pretty good. It seems to work—79% of our transmission has been person-to-person in the same household, and half the deaths have been in nursing homes. Community transmission has been quite small.
Our university has had only 288 cases in the past year (staff, faculty, and students combined) for a student population of about 19,000—most of the cases have been off-campus students. The case rate in the community has dropped enough that on-campus students are only required to have weekly testing, rather than twice weekly.
@10- birgerjohansson
I have worn protective eyewear throughout the pandemic. I started with a paper mask and faceshield, which fogged bad, and I was very miserable. If I had to have gone through that all year I would have stepped in front of a train. But I got clear eyewear which protects from spit (say it don’t spray it) or droplets in air. I think eyes are a possible infection route along with nostrils and mouth.
Yeah fogging is annoying. I eventually stumbled upon some triple ply cloth masks at CVS with a pretty sturdy metal nose thingy I can bend around my nose for a decent though imperfect seal. These masks also have adjustable ear loops. Given facial asymmetry one of my ears got really chafed so I resorted to cutting bandaids in half and taping them over my upper ears in the morning to shield from ear loop irritation. Fun times.
Oh and the three ply is kinda breathing restrictive so I get out of breath easier. I wondered if this strengthened my lungs and made them more resilient to COVID effects in case of infection.
Counter to the anti-maskers my masks never made me sick, though I am sick of wearing masks. Been very much over it for a LONG time. Can’t even imagine being a health professional…wait now I can. Yeah not fun.
@birgerjohansson
There is a 3D nose clip I designed at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4327291 (based on a European design). I stopped using it and sewed a pocket for wire onto all my cloth masks. Using 22-gauge copper hookup wire folded twice (to make 4 strands) makes a better, more adjustable nosepiece than any clip I could design. Cheaper and more washable also.
You can see the wire pocket and how I now wear my masks at https://wordpress.com/post/gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/13376
I’ve also sewed the wire pockets onto commercial cloth masks that were sent to me by charitable organizations as thanks for donations. I’ve found that those masks also fit me better by using a paperclip to join the elastic straps behind my neck, rather than trying to use them as earloops.
When Willies says: “Home of the People-Lovers”, do they mean: in a CREAM sauce?
Imagine living 25 miles from the nearest grocery, being physically disabled, and not ever having a car.
Consider having groceries delivered, if that option is available. That’s not available to me either.
At least your county isn’t doing to bad on vaccinations
https://data.democratandchronicle.com/covid-19-vaccine-tracker/minnesota/27/
but the infection rate 28/100000/day isn’t great.
There is no medical certification to most masks – and it will often say that on the label. Being a fat out-of-shape old man with a tendency to run short of breath, it is a hard sell to interfere with my airways on the basis of improving my health. I have yet to find any statistical analysis supporting use of face coverings as reducing disease transmission. Given the size of viruses, it looks as likely a plan as filtering water with a chain link fence.
You left out Plague Rat troll.
Cthulhu, this is stupid.
Why do you think medical professionals wear face masks all the time?
Most people would be appalled if their surgeon was cutting them open and…not wearing a mask.
The data supporting masks as an important public health measure is overwhelming.
To state the obvious, this year we managed to obliterate the flu season for the first time ever.
re @10:
yes, eyeglass fogging is the annoyance I tolerate. I’ve tried improvising clips to masks without them using new twist ties and a band-aid to hold it in place. Someone recommended a kleenex tissue folded along the upper edge of the mask helps prevent fogging. I’ve tried it, and it helps most of the time. Sticking to masks with clips built in, works well..A band-aid added inside the mask inside of the nose clip, for padding, is the best.
re @20:
the size of the virus is not the only factor behind wearing a mask. Viruses are often riding on aerosol particles of fluid. Viruses. I bet, are rarely airborne themselves, with no particle.
“…with the local Trump-loving citizens of this town showing their asses…”
PZ, I think you misunderstand where masks are to be worn.
birgerjohansson, try Googling “mask extender”, plenty of easy DIY versions out there if you can sew on a moderate sized button. Shifting the mask a touch lower gives a better nose seal.
@johnfarnham, either your reading and listening comprehension is badly lacking or you’re a troll. One isn’t inhaling pure viral particles from a culture plate, the vector is aerosol based, which is rather largish liquid droplets. My cloth mask more than protects against casual aerosols and the only way I’d need an N95 mask is if I was intubating patients or open a surgical airway, which isn’t likely given I’ve retired from military medicine.
@all, I have two barometers for this area, the Rutters convenience store/fuel station and the shopping center two miles away (road/walking distance). The shopping center is 90+% masked only, due to the state store and supermarkets mandating masks. Rutters averages around 40% masked before the CDC change of recommendations and I get occasional dirty looks from the unmasked – briefly, as my baleful return glare suppresses any Fox recommended confrontations.
Thankfully, we’re now fully vaccinated, so at worst, the virus would only kill us a little bit…
I imagine that some will want to have a big veterans welcome parade, like they had in 1918.
Hemidactylus, Kevin Karplus, slithey tove and wzrd1 , thank you for your suggestions!
@The troll(#20):
My father has COPD and 30% of his lung capacity left. He can wear and use a mask just fine. The place he goes for treatment has people worse of then him, worse as in just one step away from dragging their own oxygen supply with them, they can wear masks just fine. Better yet since they are regularly monitored they serve as a good example that wearing a mask does not harm your health else they would have been told to stop wearing masks.
So take your whiny fat ass (by your own admission) and stick that excuse that you get out of breath easily so you can’t wear a mask there.
Oh and next time you lie about to have yet to find any statistical analysis I suggest you actually look for those and instead of being a narcissistic self entitled asshole who only cares about himself not just restrict the result to what it does for you. I’m not going to do what didn’t do, and that is actually look for your analysis (just search the CDC website, also has a study listed backing up what my father and the people at the center he goes for treatment have noticed).
And in case you are wondering cheap masks generally protect others more if the wearer is contagious then the wearer being protected from others who are contagious but even then it reduces infection rates both ways.
-The face masks should be seen as one factor in a whole battery of protective measures needed to bring the “r” number below 1.
And widespread compliance is crucial.
If a significant number of the population regard the pandemic as a hoax or just say, “fuck everyone else, I cannot be bothered to comply”, the r number is going to stay high until nearly everyone has had the vaccine.
☹
Sociologists and psychologists will be studying the period 2020-2021 for a century, trying to find what works to overcome “fact resistance”.
Maybe one day they will conclude ‘freedom of expression’ should not include snake oil salesmen in the middle of a pandemic.
But this is not helpful for the here and now. Right now, I try to influence vaccine sceptics I know to reconsider.
And when people bring up the dangerous side effects of some vaccines, my mantra is “it is as likely as being hit by lightning” over and over again. And to remind them of wearing masks in crowded places.
Addendum. Yes, face masks help. And being comitted to helping the community by accepting the minor inconvenience helps.
#19: That map is interesting. The highest percentage of vaccination in the legend, though, is 38%, which isn’t good enough yet.
Also, what’s fascinating is that little clump of counties with the lowest vaccination rate, right around St Cloud. When I drive into Minneapolis, that’s a region I call the Bachmann Zone, where all of a sudden you start seeing the most batshit looney billboards lining the freeway. Back in the day, that’s where they splattered everything with Michele Bachmann signs, now it’s all Trumpistan.
Well, that and Kris “Guaranteed Offer” Lindahl’s smug mug on real estate billboards. I just have to close my eyes for about 30+ miles while driving.
raven @21 and Who Cares @27: Here’s a thought; if a single comment shows ignorance in some area, why not see it as an opportunity to educate, rather than reflexively leaping to “troll”. If the commenter persists, perhaps that would be called for.
If one of you posts something which I know to be mistaken, would I be justified in calling you a troll?
Edit for #31:
Rob Grigjanis @ 30, 31
Seconded.
.
Infection rates per 100,000 inhabitants; Sweden is currently worst in Europe.
We don’t have MAGA-heads so it is weird.
I wonder if it has something to do with long, bright evenings tempting people to hang out late. Other Scandy countries would also be affected but they start from a lower level.
Add to this a young population feeling they are immortal.
BTW I don’t buy the low infection rates reported by Russia, it has “Putin meddling” written all over it.
@33- birgerjohansson
We could be distantly related though Johnsons in Sweden are Kims in Korea or Nguyens in Vietnam.
johnfarnham @20:
Plenty to be found, if one looks.
Here, from mid-2020: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253999/
Point being, the virus is not free-floating; it’s found in respiratory droplets (aerosols) and those are indeed trapped by the mask.
@34
I descended from Johannessons. Way too many consonants plus a dropped “a” and “e”. Seriously the name got more efficient on the way over. Pic of my grandfather looks like someone Sweden exiled for being way too ornery.
Since this is Minnesota, perhaps they are fans of 20th century Swedish social democracy and the “people’s home” principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkhemmet
@Rob Grigjanis(#31, #32) & birgerjohansson (#33):
If it were ignorance yes, This guy was straight up lying so no. Especially since they lied for the simple reason that the they not even want to suffer the minimal discomfort that comes with wearing a mask and rather take the risk that they are culpable in the death of others.
birgerjohansson @33 >>>Infection rates per 100,000 inhabitants; Sweden is currently worst in Europe.<<<
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
indicates Czech Republic still struggling significantly, and, with both Slovenia and Luxembourg (OK, data will be noisy with small country here) are worse than Sweden. Latitude not apparently key.
raven@6
While I fully agree with the sentiment, I think you’re being unfair to the rats that carried fleas with bubonic plague. At least those rats weren’t volunteers!
Our modern-day plague rats are more akin to Mary Mallon, who was forcibly quarantained for 26 years for persisting to work as a cook while being an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever. While that sounds pretty harsh, but I’m not sure if better alternatives were available at that time.
So enforced quarantine in case of illness and an injunction for some kinds of work where there would be a high risk of transmission sounds like a reasonable option for people who refuse vaccination.
Requiring Covid-19 vaccinations for some jobs, schools, and the military is going to happen and soon.
Just recently an unvaccinated worker at a Kentucky nursing home set off an infection cluster. 46 people got Covid-19 virus and 3 of them died.
The stakes are high here, literally life and death.
Most universities are going to require vaccination for onsite attendance this fall.
This is going to be the next culture war battle for the fundie xians/GOP. And it is going to get real ugly real fast. 20% of the population are hard core antivaxxers who will refuse the vaccine any way they can.
It’s also going to be hard to enforce.
The cardboard CDC vaccine cards are already being counterfeited and fake ones are widely available.
hemidactylus @ 34, 36
Surnames in Europe used to be simply “son of…(father’s name)” describing the actual father’s name..
Then there was a phase shift of sorts with surnames, presumably because administrators in the age of steam wanted a system that made it easier to see which ones were related.
The surnames became “frozen” and followed the male lineage.
And since the names John/Johan/Johannes were popular at the time, we get a ton of those names.
.
“Johannesson” -the name Olof Johannesson was the pen name of the Nobel physics award winning Hannes Alfven when he wrote the novel “The Tale of the Great Computer” in the 1960s, pondering the fate of humans in a fututre dominated by sapient ‘strong’ AIs.
.
Once, surnames could also be derived from place names. So a person from the Ram-bo homestead could have the surname Rambo. And a fictional descendant (naturally named John) would be a “Rambo”.
Emotionally charged messages are way more effective than dry facts.
If people who suffered long-term covid effects sometimes displayed horrible visual consequences like “krokodil” addicts, the media should display those ugly wounds nonstop.
Never mind if the risk of such particular COVID long-term effects are one in a million, we have seen how badly the public is at processing statistics. In this hypothetical case, it would be a benefit for vaccine & mask propaganda.
OT, but this is what things feel like now…
The NewsBiscuit: “Excitement builds as new ‘Portugal’ variant set for release in August!” http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2021/05/16/excitement-builds-as-new-portugal-variant-set-for-release-in-august/
Boris Johnson has already allayed fears within government that this may make them look a bit incompetent by re-confirming their policy on responsibility: ‘From the beginning of this pandemic, I have made it crystal clear that I expect the general public to take full responsibility for anything that goes wrong. So if this all goes tits up, it’s not our fault. Ever.’
re birgerjohansson:
your statistics of Sweden brings to mind stories of Sweden’s leader advocating taking a fast track to herd-immunity by staying without masks at all times. Excuse me for not googling it myself, I think asking a resident would be more reliable. A, I mistaken it was Sweden or was is another Scandinavian nation?
re 45:
that last line I wrote was meant to be:
Am I mistaken…
I can’t breathe well in my mask so I only wear it on crowded streets, on public transportation, and inside public buildings. I’m also vaccinated. New York City makes it mandatory and I don’t have a problem with that. I still can’t fathom that idiot Jim Something politician who was yelling at Dr Fauci about freedom a few days ago . Freedom to do what , get very sick?
raven@41:
Assuming that this person could have been vaccinated but didn’t, and came to work voluntarily while ill, that is two abject moral failures right there.
Wouldn’t the families of the deceased be able to make a pretty good criminal or civil case out of this, if they were so inclined?
In some places, we are already at the point where most of the people being hospitalized for Covid-19 virus are…not vaccinated.
It won’t be long until it is almost all of them.
Maybe.
But what good would that do?
Most of the staff at nursing homes are housekeeping. These are minimum wage workers like cooks, servers, janitorial, laundry, etc..
Chances are this worker lives pay check to pay check and doesn’t have any money.
The article stated that 90% of the patients were vaccinated and only 50% of the staff were.
They might and probably will sue the nursing home itself but again, what good will that do?
We are in a pandemic and people are getting sick and dying everywhere.
The nursing home will argue they made a best effort and stuff happens and may even have immunity from lawsuits on that basis.
Just about every nursing home everywhere had a Covid-19 virus pandemic.
There are a few around where I live. Every single one of them had an infection cluster, some of them had more than one.
In some states the vaccination drives are starting to stall out.
Idaho is one.
They are at only 35% partially or wholly vaccinated.
We can see where the summer home and refuge of the Covid-19 virus will be already. Every single state at the bottom of the vaccine uptake list are Red GOP states.
I am fully vaccinated. So is my wife and all of our family members and friends and coworkers. I realize that many people disagree with the CDC’s new guidance. Some are saying that it’s too soon to go maskless while shopping or eating out. I am not one of those people. I look at it this way — I know that 30% of the population won’t get vaccinated no matter what happens. They have their reasons, none of them very good. Another 20-30% are partially vaccinated and dithering about getting that second dose. Why? Maybe they think 80% protection is good enough. Does that mean that I should wait to go to Trader Joe’s without a mask until they come around? I’ve done what the experts say I should do — get my two jabs. I know this will sound callous but I really don’t care what happens to all of those unvaccinated fools. If I stop wearing a mask and they fall ill is that my fault? If I have to wait until 75-80% of the populace is vaccinated that could take another year. Or more. No, I’m done with these people. Perhaps the only thing that will bring them around is when they or their family members get seriously ill. When I’m done here I’m going to TJ’s and doing some unmasked shopping.
It turns out that 80% of epidemiologists agree with PZ. The CDC is run by idiots.
A huge number of medical professionals dealing with this pandemic are looking at the CDC and wondering why they mishandled this whole issue.
The tl;dr version.
“In the informal survey, 80 percent said they thought Americans would need to wear masks in public indoor places for at least another year. Just 5 percent said people would no longer need to wear masks indoors by this summer.”