281–290 of 448 posts
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Forgotten that quote, which was from the Blair government for those who don’t recall it. As other poster pointed out, monarchy and CoE would disagree though.
So would Blair. He is a committed Catholic.
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Here in the liberal northwest, where we at least have a token amount of public transport, I see the bus signs alternating between their usual route number + description and "masks required". Haven't been on one to verify use by ridership, or to see what the driver's reaction to noncompliant riders is. The higher staff-to-rider ratio might help? Outdoor mask use is limited (50%?) but at least quite sparse and distant…
I don’t know where either of the London-based commenters go shopping but all staff are legally required to wear masks at shops in the U.K.
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I'm not sure that's completely fair. Countries vary so much that putting it down to "the government" ignores all the other factors. You're examples are all on the southern hemisphere, with mostly nice weather where people spend more time outside. General population health also has a massive effect. Here in the UK we are a nation of overweight old people, but fat-shaming is a thing so that's only going to get worse.
But those antipodean countries are all coming out of their winter. So they got through the worst of it during the coldest part of the year, with more people indoors, and only now are getting into summer.
As I said - there are other factors here (many more than I mentioned) - that you can't compare countries so easily.
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Every store I've gone in has required them, I've heard mass transit is a lot less crowded and also requires them, and I think county rules mandate them in those cases. I've seen people without them going on outdoor walks, but that's an incredibly low-risk activity.
Try smaller stores. Gas stations, corner stores, non-chain places. I see little to no compliance with customers or shop keepers in places like that. I also saw lots of maskless partying and social drinking in November.
This is the bigger problem.
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Australia is an island with a population almost half California. China welds people in their houses and forcibly enters homes and drags family to some location. I have no desire to emulate them.
I’m tired of hearing excuses. 20% of New Zealand export income[1] came from tourism, yet we closed the doors on February 1st, cancelling tourists while the season was still high. If you want to get rid of the virus, you can, but you have to suck up the costs: shut down your borders and do whatever it takes. Close down internal travel: domestic flights were virtually shutdown in NZ; Ozzie’s had other overland travel r…
In the US, some of the relevant choices have to be made at the Federal level.
For example, Oregon does not have authority to close state borders to travellers from other states or countries.
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Lots of things are "effortless tactics". If they don't work, it's just superstition. People will figure it out, and they'll stop believing you. If you have indoor mask mandates, and outside mask mandates, and shut down restaurants, and curfews, etc., and your cases are still shooting up, you're going to have a hard time getting faith in your actions. So much of what governments are doing in response to this are just…
Masks can make a significant difference when new cases per infection is near 1. Dropping it from 3 to 2 doesn’t matter has that’s still heavy exponential growth, dropping it from 0.5 to 0.25 again doesn’t matter because it’s dropping fast. However dropping from 1.05 to even 0.95 is huge.
Treating R, the number of infections from each case, as though it was the same everywhere is just a way of simplifying the model, but the map is not the territory and we need to be a lot more careful about whether our simplifying assumptions change the overall behaviour of the system being modelled than we have been.
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Wow. Here in deepest Republican middle America mask wearing by _staff_ in supermarkets is universal. Customers around 90% if you count "nose-slingers" as non compliant. Pretty much nobody just swanning around with no mask these days. Costco has heavy mask enforcement -- they will hunt down and eject anyone with their nose out. Where masks are not worn here is in smaller family owned businesses. Some have notices requ…
> Since this is the US, we have no public transport What do you mean you have no public transport? Is it cancelled because of covid?
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That’s a nice phrase. In my group we called it “dick-nosing” - iirc it came about due to: 1) you wouldn’t (shouldn’t?) go around with your dick hanging out of your trousers, so why would you do the same with your nose and your mask 2) you’re a dick if you do this
A decent amount of it is unintentional I suspect. Subconcious fiddling, poor feeling / awareness of slipping masks... a gentle reminder that "your mask has slipped a bit" can do wonders.
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That’s a nice phrase. In my group we called it “dick-nosing” - iirc it came about due to: 1) you wouldn’t (shouldn’t?) go around with your dick hanging out of your trousers, so why would you do the same with your nose and your mask 2) you’re a dick if you do this
A decent amount of it is unintentional I suspect. Subconcious fiddling, poor feeling / awareness of slipping masks... a gentle reminder that "your mask has slipped a bit" can do wonders.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of things are "effortless tactics". If they don't work, it's just superstition. People will figure it out, and they'll stop believing you. If you have indoor mask mandates, and outside mask mandates, and shut down restaurants, and curfews, etc., and your cases are still shooting up, you're going to have a hard time getting faith in your actions. So much of what governments are doing in response to this are just…
Masks can make a significant difference when new cases per infection is near 1. Dropping it from 3 to 2 doesn’t matter has that’s still heavy exponential growth, dropping it from 0.5 to 0.25 again doesn’t matter because it’s dropping fast. However dropping from 1.05 to even 0.95 is huge.
You're grinding an axe here, but it has little to do with what I wrote.