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Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

nytimes.com

351–360 of 925 posts

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I want the virus eliminated.

This is completely unreasonable. We've never been able to eradicate any disease that affects humans other than smallpox, and not for lack of trying.

The case numbers coming out of Israel show their (still ongoing) vaccination effort is on the precipice of eliminating it locally. So it seems incredibly reasonable it will be eliminated, at least from the developed world. From that point any reintroduction of the virus is unlikely to gain a foothold.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I want the virus eliminated.

This is completely unreasonable. We've never been able to eradicate any disease that affects humans other than smallpox, and not for lack of trying.

This is false. We've eradicated SARS-CoV-1, for example. The last case was in 2004. And New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan outright eliminated COVID community spread domestically (Australia did it twice!), proving it is possible.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#353
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For what it's (not) worth, it prompted me to sign up today. :) More for my understanding than anything else, and with every guarantee that I won't present any follow-up questions or statements, but why was this the tipping point and not the actual disease risk mitigation resulting from the vaccine?

My guess: GP is young and healthy, so the chance of significant harm from COVID is nearly zero, and the vaccines for COVID have significantly worse side effects than pretty much any other vaccines given today. Thus, until today, it was a high-risk low-reward proposition.

Newer variants are hitting young people harder. COVID is getting more dangerous to that group. Plus, as other posters have said, the vaccine is extremely safe.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are vaccinated, why do you care if others are or not? I mean sure, there is a small chance someone could infect you, and a much much smaller chance that than infection actually causes you a hospitalisation, but it’s not a big risk once you are vaccinated yourself. If you think the vaccine works, which I assume you do, then why do you need to know others vaccine status?

_I_ don't need to know it, but my friend who can't take the vaccine as she is pregnant might wish to use the information to make risk assessments. Further: it is literally illegal not to wear a mask here in certain public areas - I'm specifically interested in how one would enforce that if you split between those who have to wear masks and those who now don't have to.

FYI it’s probably low risk for pregnant women to take the mRNA vaccines. If your friend wants to be vaccinated but is uncomfortable maybe they can specifically ask their GP about it?

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommend...

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#355

I think it's worth noting that among the demographics that frequent this site there is ostensibly a deep distrust and skepticism of the American government on matters of surveillance, and law enforcement. Yet simultaneously there is ostensibly a high degree of trust in the motives and competency of the American government when it comes to COVID. There's been multiple threads lately, including one that is on the front…

As a European I'm quite surprised how deep the conspiracy theories and suspicions against the state go in the US. You don't need tp take everything at face value, but to be so suspicious of essential institutions like the CDC seems crazy to me. Except for a vocal but tiny minority there's a lot of trust in the institutions of the EU and (Western) Europe, where citizrns at most worry about incompetence, not malicious…

Didn’t the Panama Papers affect your trust at all?

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#356

I think it's worth noting that among the demographics that frequent this site there is ostensibly a deep distrust and skepticism of the American government on matters of surveillance, and law enforcement. Yet simultaneously there is ostensibly a high degree of trust in the motives and competency of the American government when it comes to COVID. There's been multiple threads lately, including one that is on the front…

As the Atlantic noted recently [0] there are many who see masks and safety measures due to COVID as part of their political identity. Likes guns to some, the masks, more critically the forcing of others to wear masks and abide by certain precautions, has become a weapon in politics. My distrust of the masks, and friction at being forced to wear one, really comes from that distrust of those who are forcing me; they ar…

What about the rest of the people around the world wearing masks, are they treading on the rights of people to not infect their loved ones?

Why is it political here, when it is a matter of global public safety?

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely unreasonable. We've never been able to eradicate any disease that affects humans other than smallpox, and not for lack of trying.

This is false. We've eradicated SARS-CoV-1, for example. The last case was in 2004. And New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan outright eliminated COVID community spread domestically (Australia did it twice!), proving it is possible.

I thought with SARS-CoV-1, no people have it, but animals still do, and it could jump back to people from them, so it isn't considered eradicated yet.

And stopping community spread in a few countries is totally different than global eradication.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#358
post #242
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA and CDC are fundamentally different institutions. It does not make sense to treat them the same any more than it makes sense to treat NASA and the IRS the same...

They are not the same, but they are institutions with a lot of similarities (NSA, CDC, NASA, IRS). They largely receive funding the same way, and are answerable to the same people (congress, White House). There is some similarities to how the heads of these organizations are determined and how the heads of these organizations are fired. In startup speak the organizations have the same VC and share many board members.

Literally every organization is similar by criteria such as this.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#359

I think it's worth noting that among the demographics that frequent this site there is ostensibly a deep distrust and skepticism of the American government on matters of surveillance, and law enforcement. Yet simultaneously there is ostensibly a high degree of trust in the motives and competency of the American government when it comes to COVID. There's been multiple threads lately, including one that is on the front…

The CDC is not law enforcement. The talent it attracts, its mission statement, its mode of operation are all different. The statements of fact they release pertain to public health with no human adversarial motives. The research they use to substantiate their claims can be peer reviewed, duplicated and critiqued.

"The statements of fact they release pertain to public health with no human adversarial motives."

The CDC has knowingly lied about the efficacy of masks intending to trick the public to deprive them of useful medical gear. They were slow to identify the spread of covid as aerosol based, even after it was widely known. CDC guidance focused on "6 feet apart" instead of the importance of ventilation. The CDC temporarily halted the J&J vaccine unnecessarily, wasting time and eroding trust in vaccines generally. Early in the pandemic the CDC blocked hundreds of labs from doing their own covid tests in favor of flawed CDC tests that took substantially longer - again, this was at an absolutely time critical moment in the pandemic.

I have never really paid attention to the CDC until this pandemic. Now, I feel like they constantly make huge blunders and don't really deserve much trust. Even when they aren't lying to you, as they did regarding masks, they don't seem like they really know what they're doing.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European I'm quite surprised how deep the conspiracy theories and suspicions against the state go in the US. You don't need tp take everything at face value, but to be so suspicious of essential institutions like the CDC seems crazy to me. Except for a vocal but tiny minority there's a lot of trust in the institutions of the EU and (Western) Europe, where citizrns at most worry about incompetence, not malicious…

One need only go back about 80 years to find horrific abuses by public health officials in both Europe and America (e.g. involuntary sterilization, to say nothing of Nazi experimentation). What I find strange is that Europeans have such a short memory regarding these things…

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