touching the front of their mask to readjust
So if it gets out of position they just don't touch it? None of this is going to work. Wearing a mask is a nice mitigation strategy but people expecting things to be somehow perfectly sanitary need to stay home.
I don’t work food service but the mask I wear to go shopping doesn’t have ear straps. If it does become scrunched up while out I do try and readjust it by picking the corners closer to my cheek bones.
You pull the straps by your ears to readjust, not the part you breathe through.
Potentially, but people have different masks, some are homemade for example. It's human nature to just fix the problem, not necessarily in the most sanitary way.
The point is that people's expectations here are way too high. If your expectation is perfect sanitation you should stay home. Frankly, you're really just lying to yourself that you're avoiding the virus. The whole mask thing is like the TSA. It's probably better to wear masks than not, but it's not going to really stop the virus.
I mean, yes it will stop the virus. Or at least it has a decent chance of doing so. If R is 1.01 without masks and 0.98 with masks, then masks make the difference between the virus spreading exponentially (albeit still somewhat slowly in this extreme example) and slowly dying out.
Mitigating a virus and stopping a virus are the same thing when we're talking on the scale of an entire population.
I'm not arguing that masks will or will not stop the virus (spoiler alert, they won't completely - we need a vaccine), what I'm saying is that expectations need to be lowered. A mask can potentially help to stop the spread of course, but it doesn't eliminate the risk. If you see someone adjusting a mask inappropriately and that triggers you, you should probably stay home because that's just one potential attack vector. You can't be completely sterile and shouldn't expect to be, mask or no.
Note that I am not advocating that people don't wear masks or that they won't slow the transmission of the virus. I am saying that they won't eliminate the spread of the virus even if 100% of people wore them 100% of the time (naturally it would be more effective).
I'm also curious why people don't really think about this in the context of the flu. We get the flu every year. Why aren't people freaking out about wearing masks? Not that this is exactly equivalent, but the logic looks to be pretty much the same to me here.
Dude, the death rate is roughly 20 times higher than the flu and we usually also have a vaccine for the flu by the time flu season hits. Those're two pretty huge differenced, and they easily explain why people are taking this so seriously.
I agree that expecting people to be perfect with their masks is unrealistic, but criticising people for wearing them on their chins and such is not only justified, it's actually helpful if it causes anyone hearing the criticism to do better.
Dude, the death rate is roughly 20 times higher than the flu and we usually also have a vaccine for the flu by the time flu season hits. Those're two pretty huge differenced, and they easily explain why people are taking this so seriously.
Your point about the vaccine isn't a great one. Each year multiple vaccines are developed based on the likelihood of potential flu strains being prevalent. When you get a flu shot every year (as I do, and you should), you're being inoculated against a few different strains, but not all. Even with a flu shot you can still get the flu.
The death rate may be higher, but I don't think the statistics on it are that great. As many have pointed out, hospitals have an incentive to report any death could potentially be construed as being related to COVID-19 to get federal and state funding. Not to mention are we talking about Ohio death rate? Italy? the US? World? These things matter when saying the death rate is 20x higher.
I agree that expecting people to be perfect with their masks is unrealistic, but criticising people for wearing them on their chins and such is not only justified, it's actually helpful if it causes anyone hearing the criticism to do better.
I don't think it's justified. If you're concerned with someone wearing a mask or not, you shouldn't even go out. The mask is only one part of the concern. The same person could sneeze in their mask, COVID-19 can get on their hands, etc. There's a lot of potential attack vectors and if you're worried about someone even talking with a mask off, then you just shouldn't go out. I certainly advise my high-risk relatives to not go out. For myself I don't really care much. I don't care if someone wears a mask or not.
Your point about the vaccine isn't a great one. Each year multiple vaccines are developed based on the likelihood of potential flu strains being prevalent. When you get a flu shot every year (as I do, and you should), you're being inoculated against a few different strains, but not all. Even with a flu shot you can still get the flu.
Dude, of course you can still get the flu. But your chances of getting it go down, as do the severity of your symptoms if you do get the flu, on average. Decreasing the probability of someone getting the virus, and thus decreasing the probability that they will spread it, is obviously not the same as a guarantee of not getting the flu. But it's also far better than nothing. And we don't have anything like it here. I'm really not sure what you're even arguing.
The death rate may be higher, but I don't think the statistics on it are that great. As many have pointed out, hospitals have an incentive to report any death could potentially be construed as being related to COVID-19 to get federal and state funding. Not to mention are we talking about Ohio death rate? Italy? the US? World? These things matter when saying the death rate is 20x higher.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-covid-19-death-count-is-almost-certainly-too-low/
I don't think it's justified. If you're concerned with someone wearing a mask or not, you shouldn't even go out.
I'm not worried that someone not wearing a mask is going to infect me. I'm a young, otherwise healthy smoker. I'm in pretty much the lowest risk group there is. I'm worried that they're going to prolong our suffering as a society needlessly because they're unwilling to wear a mask properly.
The mask is only one part of the concern. The same person could sneeze in their mask, COVID-19 can get on their hands, etc. There's a lot of potential attack vectors and if you're worried about someone even talking with a mask off, then you just shouldn't go out. I certainly advise my high-risk relatives to not go out. For myself I don't really care much. I don't care if someone wears a mask or not.
But we're not just talking about "for myself." We're talking about "for our society as a whole." I don't particularly care if I catch Covid-19. I care if, as a result of us collectively getting lax about proper mask protocol, tens or hundreds of thousands of people catch the disease who didn't need to, because hundreds or thousands of those people will likely die.
If encouraging mask shaming results in more people wearing their masks properly, that is unequivocally a good thing. Are you seriously arguing otherwise?
Im arguing three things:
Masks are a stopgap measure until we have a vaccine, and they will not stop the spread of the virus if there is an outbreak. Slow and limit it some, yea, but they won’t stop it. So if your expectation is mask==safe you are mistaken. Wear them, but don’t confuse wearing one with safety.
Mask shaming is beyond stupid. I don’t expect you to go around and fat shame people so why would I expect you to “shame” someone who readjusts their mask improperly when it’s not going to make a difference?
Virtue signaling and even having the idea of mask shaming is really fucking lame, and it just causes people to get pissed off and actively fight back against your goals. Don’t mask shame. Keep to yourself. Wear a mask if you want and/are required.
So if your expectation is mask==safe you are mistaken.
I have explained three times that this is not my expectation, nor is it any expert's expectation. The expectation is that masks = slowing of spread and, hopefully, reduction of R below 1.0 such that infections start to taper off.
Mask shaming is beyond stupid. I don’t expect you to go around and fat shame people so why would I expect you to “shame” someone who readjusts their mask improperly when it’s not going to make a difference?
I'm not fighting you on the "readjusting their mask improperly" thing really. I'm talking about the people who don't cover their nose or just put the mask on their chin. Those people are not actually wearing a mask, and they know they're doing it wrong. It's unrealistic to expect people to totally fix their automatic habits vis-a-vis touching their faces/masks, but it's not at all unreasonable to ask people not to make the conscious decision to wear their masks in a way that they do little or no good at all.
Also, if you don't realize why mask shaming would be different from fat shaming, try thinking about it for a second. Seriously. You can argue that the distinction isn't total, but it's certainly there. Mask-wearing is entirely a choice, and it can be fixed instantaneously. Being fat is much less of a choice, and it's also something that cannot be fixed instantaneously. Mask shaming is thus more moral and likely to be more effective.
Virtue signaling and even having the idea of mask shaming is really fucking lame, and it just causes people to get pissed off and actively fight back against your goals. Don’t mask shame. Keep to yourself. Wear a mask if you want and/are required.
Letting people die because you don't want to be mildly inconvenienced is really fucking lame. I'd go so far as to say it's lamer than virtue signalling, at least in this one instance. Wear a mask if you go into an enclosed space with new people, as we're all recommended to be doing. And if someone isn't doing it, point out to them that they're putting others at unnecessary risk, because they are.
More posts from the Columbus community
https://www.reddit.com/r/Columbus/comments/go1ed2/not_1_employee_was_wearing_a_mask_hypocrisy_at/frfyxqe/
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