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

nytimes.com

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

#801

Post by interviewer0000 »

josephcsible wrote: post #150
bryant wrote: 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.

More or less spot on, but add a whole boat load of laziness to the equation.

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

#802

Post by hnra »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #161
bryant wrote: 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?

Not me, but a coworker of mine is the only guy in my office who hasn't been vaccinated (rest of us got second dose at end of January) because of adverse reactions to past (milder) vaccinations. He correctly assesses that he's in a very low risk environment, but at some point he'll probably risk the vaccine to not have pariah status. But for the last 3 months, there was nothing to make the tradeoff worthwhile to him.

Glad that he didn’t value not being a disease vector which could spread the virus to someone who may be at risk. Vaccines work when most of society get vaccinated, it only requires a small minority of egos to make a forgotten disease rear its ugly head again.

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

#803

Post by ceejayoz »

sigotirandolas wrote: post #792
ceejayoz wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One must evaluate the consequences of not following a particular piece of advice. If masks work, and you don’t wear one, you are potentially killing people and worsening the pandemic. If they aren’t needed, and you do wear one anyways, no harm has been done.

Since this is oriented to the general public, one would assume that this information has already been factored in the announcement. i.e. that the CDC has published this guidance because now the evidence for the vaccinated population not needing masks in most places is overwhelming.

I'm saying that some people may still choose to go beyond what the CDC recommends, by continuing to wear a mask in some situations. This harms no one.

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

#804

Post by renewiltord »

samatman wrote: post #173
jasonlaramburu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should be 100% the wearer's choice whether they want to show the world their face or not. Saying 'thank you' to someone opening the door is just as good as a smile. Nobody 'owes' anyone else anything.

You were allowed to wear a veil before the pandemic as well, and no one is going to stop you now. I adopted the Asian custom of wearing a surgical mask when feeling under the weather four years ago, for the record. Got a lot of weird looks on the BART, but also some supportive ones from, you guessed it, Asians.

Same here, with the N95 mask because I had those for fire season. Same thing. It was fine.

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

#805

Post by eganist »

interviewer0000 wrote: post #800
bryant wrote: 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?

Bleh, i'm 25, healthy, and more than all, lazy. But if it means I can take my mask off and be honest. I'm down.

Thanks, and thanks for getting it. :)

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

#806

Post by datagram »

stolenmerch wrote: post #723
ceejayoz wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One must evaluate the consequences of not following a particular piece of advice. If masks work, and you don’t wear one, you are potentially killing people and worsening the pandemic. If they aren’t needed, and you do wear one anyways, no harm has been done.

> no harm has been done This isn't the evaluation we're having though. If it was purely a personal choice to wear one or not then maybe. As it stands, most people were compelled by law to wear a mask under every circumstance whether it made sense or not. The argument quickly went from "wear a mask to protect yourself" to "everyone MUST wear a mask under every situation". It then split into two silly sides signally to…

> The argument quickly went from "wear a mask to protect yourself"

That was never the argument. Wearing masks isn't about protecting yourself (only properly-fitted high-grade masks do that well, and regular people wearing those would have taken supply away from medical staff). Wearing masks is about protecting other people from you spreading the virus (which they do a decent job of when combined with distancing).

The reason it can't just be a personal choice is because not wearing a mask isn't endangering you, it's endangering other people. It's the same reason we don't let people smoke indoors. And having a blanket rule to always wear a mask in public was mainly about keeping the messaging simple. Constant debating over which situations were safe or not for going maskless would have harmed our overall responnse to the virus. The reason the CDC changed their guidance is that there's now enough evidence to confidently say that vaccinated people can't spread the virus to others, but honestly it may potentially cause those same issues.

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

#807

Post by teachingassist »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #749
syops wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overwhelmingly we follow laws against public drinking, noise ordinances, littering, etc. How is following a mask mandate adopting a mindset of conformity that is different than following laws on littering? Consider the possibility that you have been manipulated to find outrage/concern/defiance over wearing a mask.

In my country, laws compelling mask wearing outdoors in non-crowded spaces have been criticized by scientists (often the same ones advising the government on COVID) for various reasons, e.g.: 1) regardless of how you might think masks are unobtrusive, enough of the population will consider it annoying to wear a mask when jogging or cycling that they won't exercise. Even during this pandemic, public-health officials t…

> 1) ...annoying to wear a mask when jogging or cycling...

This has never stopped mandatory cycle helmet laws.

> 2) ... risk ... is negligible.

This has never stopped mandatory cycle helmet laws.

Although many people vocally disagree with cycle helmet laws, nobody has ever called it an 'atrocity' or said that complying with these laws was a 'mindset of conformity'. This is a ridiculous exaggeration.

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

#808

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

teachingassist wrote: post #807
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country, laws compelling mask wearing outdoors in non-crowded spaces have been criticized by scientists (often the same ones advising the government on COVID) for various reasons, e.g.: 1) regardless of how you might think masks are unobtrusive, enough of the population will consider it annoying to wear a mask when jogging or cycling that they won't exercise. Even during this pandemic, public-health officials t…

> 1) ...annoying to wear a mask when jogging or cycling... This has never stopped mandatory cycle helmet laws. > 2) ... risk ... is negligible. This has never stopped mandatory cycle helmet laws. Although many people vocally disagree with cycle helmet laws, nobody has ever called it an 'atrocity' or said that complying with these laws was a 'mindset of conformity'. This is a ridiculous exaggeration.

> This has never stopped mandatory cycle helmet laws.

Actually it has, at least, it is one way the introduction of new laws in jurisdictions is opposed. There is research to suggest that mandatory cycle-helmet laws discourage healthful recreational cycling and commuting, and this has been used to suggest that the laws would ultimately be counterproductive from a public-health perspective.

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

#809

Post by Dylan16807 »

anthonygd wrote: post #771
Dylan16807 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, that's true at this point in time, but I don't think that's what anthonygd was arguing. They were complaining about the act of personally wearing a mask without a scientific basis.

It's probably late for you to see this but here's an attempt to clarify... my complaint is with wearing a mask as a statement _while_ complaining about the other side being overly aggressive in making their statement. Essentially 6 months ago you somewhat had the moral high ground because science was on your side, but now it's just personal preference. If you feel safer with a mask, that's fine (it might do some mini…

You can call it "divisive", but the two actions are not equivalent.

In terms of merely making a statement, then the anti-mask option would be something like wearing a shirt or mask with a message about how this whole mask thing is stupid.

The objection to people going maskless 6 months ago is not that they were making a statement, it's that they were endangering people in aggregate.

When you say "Was it lip-service and posturing 6 months ago or is it now? Do you value science or not?", that would only be justified if the science was specifically saying not to wear a mask right now. But that isn't true and has never been true. Wearing an unnecessary mask has always been fine.

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

#810

Post by kodah »

bb123 wrote: post #448
nexuist wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a worryingly large constituency, mostly on Twitter, who believe that any unjust death at all is damning evidence that all of our institutions and economic systems must be destroyed and rebuilt. Of course unjust death is tragic, but it's not an excuse to throw out all of society and start over again. I think many of these people saw mask mandates as that "rebuilding society" step, and to get rid of it so quic…

I’d be pretty careful drawing any conclusions about the mood of the nation from Twitter. The Twitter crowd are very loud and quite extremist but I believe they are small in number. To be honest I’d just avoid Twitter all together. Nothing good comes out of it.

Debating how small or big they are is fruitless when their power and impact via their network effect is palpable. "Avoiding Twitter" and it's collection of extremists (and their followers that signal boost) is not possible. These people have their tweets and reactions in the news, they are constantly quoted on blogs and websites.

I'd argue the opposite that you are. Twitter extremists influence the rest of the nation and it's easy to see how the network effect has some decay on their ideas, but the thorny points remain.

At some point you have to stop treating Twitter and Twitter users like an isolation zone.

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