Once more on vaccine hesitancy
Let me follow up briefly on my post from yesterday on vaccine hesitancy.
Demeaning people is the first step towards ignoring their interests or even persecuting them. Jason Brennan urges us to ignore the welfare of the unvaxxed by painting a picture of them as moral terrorists or extortionists. He holds them responsible for their confusion and fears. He pretends that everyone is well-informed and knows how to evaluate scientific evidence, and that everyone has loads of time to keep up on the latest covid news. Then he blames people who fail to get vaccinated for their poor choices.
These are the key facts, as I see the matter:
- Many people are not vaccinated, vaccination rates are slowing, rates of hesitancy are high.
- Most unvaccinated people are not hard-core anti-vaxxers. Many are busy or have difficulty figuring out how or where to get vaccinated. Some are scared of needles. Some just worry about the safety of the vaccines. Young people are likely to prove difficult to vaccinate, because they are at very low risk of dying from covid.
- Unvaccinated people are a threat to themselves, to people who for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated (a small group, apparently), and to people who are vaccinated but have compromised immune systems. They are also (presumably) a very, very small risk to people who are relatively healthy and vaccinated.
I got covid in December during a visit to the hospital. While I was in the hospital – with an active diagnosis of covid, being cared for by doctors and nurses whose job it was to care for people with active covid – I had several nurses who said they would not get vaccinated, at least not right away. My sense is they were worried about possible side-effects. They were not malevolent, they were (relatively) well-informed about the risks of covid and of the vaccines, and they were not as far as I could tell making a political statement. Their worries were understandable, but their planned choices were (arguably) terribly misguided given their high exposure at work.
We owe it to the unvaxxed to at least try to persuade them to get vaccinated. This means spending money: on education, outreach, transportation. It means doing research to figure out what works. Maybe we should go further and pressure people to get vaxxed or use positive incentives (money, beer, pot) to get everyone to vax up. The case for using pressure and/or incentives is strengthened by third party benefits.
The Biden administration needs to orchestrate a vaccination campaign taking into account our polarized political situation. That’s hard. Polarization means that the government cannot simply require people to get vaxxed; even pressuring them will be controversial. It means that people need to hear pro-vax messages from people they trust – their doctors, religious leaders, family members, etc., not from politicians. This makes communication much more difficult. President Biden can get lots of free press to spread the word on vaccines, but if vaccination becomes closely associated with him some Republicans may decline to get their shots.
Brennan’s characterization of the situation is uncharitable, inaccurate, and politically destructive.
I can see both sides, but neither in a very good light. It is easy for one to make good decisions when one has all the relevant information, but it is not a realistic expectation for most of life’s important decisions. Everyone is afraid of something and most people are ruled by their worst fears. Good judgement seems to be a lost art.
Three homes on my 1/2 mile long road in NE OH have anti vax yard signs right next to their Trump 2024 signs.
To be more specific, Eric Kramer does present the best possible solution for our situation, but Jason Brennan is correct that adult people are inevitably responsible for their own confusion and fears. Blame rarely produces a change in results. Maybe it works for nuns, but not the rest of us.
“For hate is strong and mocks the song…”
I think Eric is saying the same thing I thought I was saying…but I have been getting beat up on AB lately by people who think I am disagreeing with them…
People are “responsible” for what they believe… of course, if you mean they will bear the consequences… but people are easily fooled, and probably no one deserves the consequences we would visit upon them in our fear and anger and misunderstanding.
Coberly,
Sometimes we do not bear the consequences for our bad choices, but we were still responsible for making them. People often live within narrow comfort zones, which is to say that people are easily fooled by themselves. OTOH, who does not take comfort in hiding amongst a crowd that obfuscates and shares that blame if consequences do follow. One of my sister-in-laws is an alcoholic and I dated a really hot blonde alcoholic just over forty years ago. Alcoholism is just an obvious example of conditions leading to motivated reasoning, but there are examples of it almost as limitless as humanity itself. Confusing rationalizations with rationalism is a common mistake.
Otherwise though, I agree with both Eric and yourself. Understanding what to do in the situation that we are in does not necessarily require we understand how that situation came to exist.
I think the country would like to achieve a little bit higher uptake and the hesitant are the only game in town really. If Brennan is okay with where we are now, well he could just say that instead of making inane arguments coming his own paranoia. He must be living in another realm entirely if he thinks that the unvaccinated are scheming to keep the vaccinated from having a beer at the Mets game without their mask on or keeping their 6 year-old kid tied to a screen even longer than they otherwise might be. Good lord, what is the man thinking?
We need to give people time to see where their best interests really lie. We need to give Biden time to reach out to them. But not forever.
Changing our behaviors from wearing a mask to protect other to assuming others no longer need that protection will put most of the risk on those who are not vaccinated. They will be the ones getting sick. That disparity will become more noticeable when masks go away.
Choosing to not wear masks when we know that others are still at risk is something of an FU, but it is what they want. (the continued risk of new variants is a different post). A bigger, but perhaps realistic FU, is to allow insurance industries to put the unvaccinated in a more expensive risk pool. The cognitive dissonance would be loud.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but people who refuse the vaccine provide a viral reservoir where the SARS-CoV-2 virus undergoes selection for variants that are more contagious and more vaccine resistant. As such, this is not a personal freedom issue, this is a public health issue. I don’t believe anyone has the right to endanger others, and that’s what vaccine resistance amounts to.
Joel:
It was a little over a week ago, a mover and I had a conversation about a move. He was in his car with his older son calling on customers. Today, I called him and asked if he had my quote ready. He said no he had come down with Covid. Then he proceeds to tell, he never had the flu. I was not terribly kind to him even though he said he was sick for 3-4 days now. He said he has difficulty thinking and his head felt like it was in a fog.
How do you not be a bit angry? I told him this stuff can kill you or hang around and cause other health problems. I did say it and implied it that his actions were stupid. He endangered his son too. asses . .
Ron
“otherwise”… here i thought you were agreeing with me the whole time.
there may be some confusion between being responsible and bearing the consequences. i guess i was using the words interchageably and you were making a distinction. i am not sure i quite follow the distinction. does “being responsible” mean (only) that we take (deserve) the punishment? does “taking the consequences” mean only the “bad” consequences, or also the consequence that you “got away with it”?
i dont’ think it matters very much if we disagree over this… it’s only words, and the world will keep doing what it does. but i do worry about those who so easily say “it’s a public health issue” therefore “we can force them to.”
this begins to look like fascism to me, or the short road to it. no doubt if we believe in witches it is mandatory that we kill them…it’s a public health issue. but if we don’t believe in witches, then killing them is insanity.. insanity that people are prone to, however well educated they think they are.
as for the insurance companies, it they believe you have put yourself at greater risk (because you smoke, drive while drunk, don’t wear a mask, or do or don’t get inoculated) then of course they are justified in charging you a higher premium.
it’s one thing to put some witches brew in my veins because a man on television tells me “I am a Scientist and I’m smarter than you,” and it’s another to demand the insurance company give me a free ride. If I pay a higher premium, or a higher tax… it’s only money, but what i do with my body is my business and not yours… even if you can use government force because you are in the majority (for now).
much of the above not directed at Ron, but to others.. who will not agree with me. There was a time when I thought they might recognize some of their own arguments when the shoe is on the other foot. But I am learning that was kind of pollyanna of me.
Run, Run, Run
are you proud of not being very nice?
you asked me that very question [in different words] when you thought i had not been very nice to Joel. is there some kind of not nice virus going around? did we all catch it from Trump?
Coberly,
Consequences do not always apply to decisions and deserving often does not apply to outcomes whether consequences or happenstance. OTOH, bad decisions generally lead to bad outcomes, but often enough not by the one making the bad decision. That is why people can exist and persist with motivated reasoning and it is not just a few people that do that. I would venture most people do that. Still there are plenty examples of bad decisions resulting in self-destructive lives like alcoholics. Not every smoker dies of lung cancer and not every alcoholic dies of liver failure. Second hand smokers and car accident victims do not deserve what they inherit from others around them.
In the long run cleverness will produce the best results, just not perfect results. That said though, I would still rather be lucky than good.
I was surprised by the CDC recommendations. Businesses are not generally going to like this. My PT already texted his customers that even if they are vaccinated to keep masking because he does not intend to ask people about their status. I doubt it hurts his business since he is really top-notch, but I think lots of businesses will have some customer pushback no matter what they do. I wonder what signs we’ll start seeing on the grocery store doors later today? I would be tempted to immediately reproduce the CDC language and hope for the best. I wouldn’t take steps to question people on their status….if mask policing had some pushback, vaccine-status policing is going to prove very conflictive.
I take it as a de facto admission by the CDC that the vaccinated do not have “skin in the game” on social distancing and masking. They must realize that a lot of the unvaccinate are just going to blend into the new situation and nothiing like vaccine-status check-points are going to get set up at most publicly accessible places. Unless they are really not smart, the CDC has just told the vaccinated not to sweat this pandemic at all any more.
As an example, consider the local COSTCO. Nearly everyone wears masks. They watch for it, but I have noticed that lately the rare person in the store without them is not getting hassled or yelled at. Anyway, if you wear a mask at the store entrance you just walk in. So under the new guidelines. the fully vaccinated have no reason to do that. So they just walk in. But the unvaccinated just wear a mask and walk in. And 15 seconds later they take the mask off. What business in America is going to sign up to police this? The airlines are lucky in a sense that they mask rule for them is indifferent to vaccine-status. My sister joked that in a week the surest way to figure out who is vaccinate at the liquor store is that they’ll be the ones wearing masks.
She was joking a little but also said that she’ll keep masking until the recommendation is for everyone. Her view is that the CDC is saying that between the mouth/nose of an unvaccinated person and the mouth/nose of everyone else – including the vaccinated – there should be a mask. She plans on it being her mask, because why should you rely on anyone else in this matter?
@Run,Yes, I am angry at people who refuse to take this pandemic seriously. There’s no difference between that and someone who walks around randomly firing a gun. Or someone who speeds through every intersection without stopping. They’ll tell you they never intended to hurt anyone. “I am a Scientist and I’m smarter than you” said no scientist, ever. This tells me a lot about the person who posted it. Sad. Many of us who are scientists, when talking about the sort of science we’ve spent decades training in and researching, will say “I’m a scientist, and if you want to debate me, you need to come up with facts and evidence.” I don’t know any scientist who bases their arguments on “I’m smarter than you,” and I know hundreds of scientists. Can we please stop with the cheap shots already?
Joel:
You are fine.
And no you did not allude to yourself as being a Scientist. It is good to have you around though. I now have some who can tell me when I screwed up on my assumptions such as my post of mRNA and some of its wording. You are a lot like Barkley, Peter, Eric, Ken, and Tom; a wealth of information which I do not have an in-depth reservoir of on various topics. I have to do quite a bit of reading to become acquainted with some of the topics I put out here which some here have an extensive background in.
Eric
I think you are right, I can’t make any sense of the new CDC policy,
Except politics. Maybe the CDC is betting that with no one required to wear masks, everyone will rush to take the vaccine…to protect themselves from the maskless.
It seems the mask requirement war has been lost. I have noticed a lot of people “wearing” the mask but without covering their noses… including senators and congressmen whose masks are always falling down.
Joel
the only person I have heard say “I am a scientist and I’m smarter than you” is you. You are doing it right here.
Whatever your degree is in, and whatever you do in your day job, your attitude is about as scientific as Donald Trump’s.
@Dale,
Please post a quote from me saying “I am a scientist and I’m smarter than you.” Take all the time you need.
Of course, you can’t because you are lying. And you wonder why people get angry with you. It is cheap and lazy. Shame on you!
Whatever your degree is in, and whatever you do in your day job, your attitude is about as irresponsible as Donald Trump’s.
Please stop trolling me now.
Coberly,
While your logic is sensible, my gut feel is that vaccination or no vaccination for eligible people at this time is significantly driven by what fear level they have of COVID so a surge probably won’t be too significant as this is not going to make people more afraid. Premature to say if the CDC messed this up I guess, but this is the genie that is not going back into the bottle, so whatever it is they believed was worth accomplishing with this step better happen.
note to EM
VACCINE REPORT CARD — “The Racial Gap in U.S. Vaccinations Is Shrinking, but Work Remains,” NYT: “Black and Hispanic people across the United States have received a disproportionately smaller share of vaccinations to date, according to a New York Times analysis of state-reported race and ethnicity information. And vaccine disparities have grown in some of the most socially vulnerable parts of the nation, leaving many low-income communities of color with vaccination rates well below the national average.
run
run at 4:21
“joel, you did not allude to yourself as being a Scientist.”
Joel at 9:54 “Many of us who are scientists…”
so what does “allude” mean?
the first time i heard from Joel, and in every post he has written since, he has “alluded.” but I was not particularly “alluding” to him when I wrote “I am a Scientist, I’m smarter than you”, but to the very common attitude among some “scientists” and their true believers that “science” works by authority or claims to authority. Far more serious that he, they , believe they have a right to force people to do what they want in the name of public health. that’s what the Salem witch trials were all about, and the Nazi “ethnic cleansing.”
i have seen that Joel has extreme difficulty with paraphrases, much less figures of speech, and is ready to call me a liar if I cast his remarks in a way that shows what they amount to. It’s like his “facts.” it’s not the “facts” that are the problem, but the inferences we make from them.
Joel is hardly the only one who has trouble making fine distinctions… such as the distinction between shooting a gun and not taking the pandemic seriously… and yet believes he can ‘tell a lot about a person” “because he disagrees with me.”
But Joel peppers his comments with insults..he might even call them cheap shots, ….
etc. no point in going on…. i just wanted to “allude” to the “fact” that I have my own set of facts from which I make inferences, and generally if you hear cheap shots coming from my direction, you better check your own gun to see if it is smoking.
Dale:
He did not say he was a scientist in this comment at 4:21. Of the many of us, who are scientists. It still does not identify Joel as a scientist. You are destroying a good post with this insistence. Please stop
@Dale,
Please post a quote from me saying “I am a scientist and I’m smarter than you.” Take all the time you need.
Of course, you can’t because you are lying. And you wonder why people get angry with you. It is cheap and lazy. Shame on you!
Whatever your degree is in, and whatever you do in your day job, your attitude is about as irresponsible and dishonest as Donald Trump’s.
Please stop trolling me now.
@Dale,This will be the last post I’ll address to you on this or any other thread.Your behavior–invented quotes, inappropriate anger and personal attacks–are sometimes early signs of dementia. Get help, my friend. Don’t live the rest of your days as a hater.
Joel,
funny, I was going to say something similar about you, but I decided not to because I realized , finally, that you might be a “delicate” person.
Perhaps it would help if you could tell yourself that I am not really talking about you, but the millions of others who worship “science,” and those who think just saying “I am a Scientist” confers so much credibility to their opinions that they don’t have to offer evidence or cogent argument. Or even understand what the question is.
Coberly,
“…Maybe the CDC is betting that with no one required to wear masks, everyone will rush to take the vaccine…to protect themselves from the maskless.
It seems the mask requirement war has been lost…”
[Exactly. The guvmint’s quiver is running out of arrows for the anti-guvmint, anti-mask, anti-vaxxer, progun Trumpist crowd. Strategic surrender is all that was left. Bars are opening, but hospitals can still require masks. If we are lucky the next strain to emerge will thin the anti-vax herd.]
Ron
I am confident the virus will adapt to humans even more. In a degree of magnitude, what worked before will have a lesser impact on the virus and we will be back to the test tubes (drawing board) looking for alternatives to meet the new variants.
In Michigan, last words, “I do not believe I am dying from this.”
…vaccine passports had strong opposition from the Left (equality means no access restrictions to the pure woke) and the Right. Next best is drop the masks since there was little opposition to that.
…also states still get to tailor their own response to CDC guidance.
I don’t know much about virus evolution, but i think i heard once that viruses adapt to humans by becoming less lethal, thus preserving their supply of hosts. if the less lethal variants confer immunity to the more lethal, then the more lethal should find itself facing herd immunity whatever the herd thinks about it.
and have to find a new way to kill itself off (it seems that among humans, the more lethal variant outcompetes the less lethal without conferring any immunity at all),
Joel,
I like to think i acquired a degree of expertise in the subject you bring up. But I had no patience or talent for sympathetic listening. Not sure there is “help” for dementia…except the protection of a very good family; very good nursing care being hard to find.
Meanwhile if the symptoms you describe are not caused by dementia, you might try to give careful thought to the phenomon of “projection.” I don’t hate much, but I do try to correct dangerous error when I think I see it. Never does any good, so I suppose I might fit the popular (wrong) definition ascribed to Einstein (wrongly) of keeping doing the same thing expecting different results.
Sympathetic listening does appear to help, in the hands of a sincere, unconditional positive regard person of good insight and timing….but not when it is faked. I have also heard of good results with the help of good advice given with good timing and great tact… but that’s pretty hard to fake too. Of course at some level the “subject” has to want to change.
[This comment has been carefully edited to avoid giving offense. It won’t work anyway.]
run
two comments of mine which tried to identify the origin an significance of my “I am a Scientist; I am smarter than you.” Have disappeared from this site.
I applied that quote to Joel because it seemed to me to describe his attitude over the years.
He didn’t identify himself in comment at 4:21 because that wa YOUR comment. He did identify himself as scientist in comment at 9:54. In that same comment he failed to understand that the issue was not scientists talking about science, but people claiming the authority of “science” while talking about something entirely different: public policy. And when he talks about public poliy he takes a fascist attitude about forcing people to do things in the name of “public health.”
I tried to point this out to him and got invective (insults) in return, and a rather pathetic insistence I show him an exact quote by him saying what was intended by me to show him what his argument amounted to.
Undoubtedly, his was a “perfect” post. No explicit quid pro quo.
As for destroying a good post, I agreed with the author.
But I have had to learn over the years that no matter what you say, if you disagree with some people they will react as if you were shooting at them.
As for Dr Science..googling Dan Coffee dr science, may work better than my earlier suggestions. interesting to me that among the sites that googling “Dr Science” dragged up were many who didn’t quite get the point, or added their own gloss to it. Seems to be a universal fact of human nature.
“…heard once that viruses adapt to humans by becoming less lethal, thus preserving their supply of hosts…”
[Well, that is sort of in the ballpark, but no cigar. If a virus were to kill its host too quickly then it could not spread fast enough to become a global pandemic. E.g., the Ebola virus has a fatality rate of up to 90% in around ten days after displaying first symptom. It can spread quickly though given the proper conditions. So, Ebola is more a risk for concentrated disasters than a global pandemic. That are no mild carriers of Ebola, just the lucky and the dead.
The natural selection of virus genetic variation only requires effective transmission to new hosts, not the any host survive. Matter of fact Ebola outbreaks sometimes end when everyone within the locus of the outbreak has died.]
Ron,
Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke. I think I got my story from an evolutionary geneticist (not a real doctor). But she may have been being kind to me and sparing me the details, ifs, ans, and buts. What you say makes sense. Certainly a new variant could be more lethal and more infectious. But in the long run of things, we seem to end up with viruses that have become less lethal over time. not that less lethal matters to those that actually die.
Since we cn’t get all of the people all of the time to wear masks, and I am not willing to live in a society that is willing to force people to get injected, I’d rather not panic them into thinking that if they don’t force me to drink their coolaid I will be responsible for the deaths of their children.
I offered a thought in a prior comment that no one took seriously: if only a few people don’t get vaccinated, it will not affect ultimate “herd immunity.”
if a lot of people won’t get vaccinated, you are going to create an interesting political situation if you try to force them to. I kind of liked masks and social distancing…which ought to be possible without shutting down the economy. I don’t think I’d like Fascism, witch trials, forced sterilization, or all of the other ways people, yea even liberals, can think of to save themselves from uncertain death.
I’m for kinder and gentler spell-checkers.
spell check turned Facism into Racism. not always the same thing.
Related Thought:
the arguments for forced vaccination ignore the problem of the reservoir of virus in the rest of the world. are we going to force the Indians to get vaccinated…when we wouldn’t even share our stock of vaccine with them?
Further, less related thought:
are we going to impose vaccination on everyone, but not impose price controls on the providers of the vaccine?
i think (don’t know) that currently the government is paying for the vaccines (ultimately the taxpayer)
but the friendliness of our government toward disaster price gouging (and all medical care is a disaster for the sick) not only hurts the victims (and arguably leads to their deaths,,which we don’t care about because they are not even potentially OUR deaths (until we run out of money ourselves) but leads to the huge profits that enable the “providers” (in any industry) to buy the government and get the laws that enable then to amass the money to buy the government and..
and you get the idea. talk about a virus.
Coberly,
In all general aspects then I must agree with you including with the bottom line of what our public response should be. However, that is not a benign conviction, but rather a stark and harsh realism that motivates my agreement. There is still a piper to be paid even if we charge it to plastic.
After a full weekend of the new guidelines I’m confident that the public health aspects of these are fine. I do not think there were political considerations apart from the common-sense one that if you can safely do something today that probably will be well accepted by the country then no point in doing it a month from now. I also think it is a mini-lifeline to the “vaccine passport” business, even if that was not the driving factor. At least now this business has a plausible justification that the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated can be pretty significant. I do not think it is going to shift this very far however. Still having people wrestle with this concept in May instead of June or later is a small victory. My guess is that not a lot of investment is tied up in these passports, but that those developing them expected to make a good deal of money from them. So at least they have a plausible case for their products, even if I expect it to fail in most of the country. In my mind COSTCO is kind of the most influential entity on this matter in Green Bay, They went with the CDC and said it is up to the customers to respect it (or not).
ah, Eric,
sadly I don’t agree. what surprised me is that (according to a leftish newsletter i get) neither do the doctors. i’ll try to find a link. seems that the “system” depends on the honor of those who have showed they have no honor. you are going to get a lot of no mask no vaccine people mixing in crowded spaces. and the vaccines are not yet truly “available.”
Let me add some clarity then. The recommendations are fine for vaccinated people. The recommendations are not changed for the unvaccinated, so the guidance is fine for them as well. But human nature being what it is, likely some unvaccinated will “blend in”. I think this blending in is not risky for the vaccinated. I do not think the vaccinated have much skin left in the restrictions game. The blending in will somewhat increase the risks to the “blenders”. But the reality is that mask requirements are coming down and capacity restrictions are easing anyway. An unmasked unvaccinated person in my town is not truly “blending in” because their choice is no longer contrary to any authority. The state mandate was declared unconstitutional and the local one lapsed earlier this month without renewal. So I honestly feel like it is pretty much right now or never for the idea of a vaccine-status segregation regime. I think “never” is going to easily prevail, but for those interested in establishing this, this guidance is the best possible rationale: significant diverging recommendation based on vaccine-status.
The American Bar Association explained:
HENNING JACOBSON, Plff. in Err., v. COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.
I guess I do not view that it is the CDC’s responsibility to issue recommendations that are influenced by the possibility that they will be ignored. I think they need to consider whether they might be unclear or simply too complicated to be implemented as they intend, but not that a clear and pretty simple recommendation will be ignored. Other people in the process of setting protocols might act on that belief however.
Eric
excerpt copid and pasted [what someone else thinks]
Dr. Tara Smith, an infectious disease epidemiologist, tweeted in a thread on Sunday that she’s “frustrated” about the guidance and the messaging used to defend it. “‘Anyone who wanted a vaccine had plenty of time to get it.’ This is patently false,” she said. “One, the vaccine just became available for the 12-15 year age group. Why not wait another month until many in this group were able to get both shots and develop protection?”
She added: “Two, even those in the 16+ age group who got the vaccines as soon as they were eligible are wrapping up their 2nd dose in some states, because eligibility for them just opened at some point in April. Even if they jumped in on first day eligible, some are not yet fully immune.”
Smith concluded: “I 100% agree that the science shows that vaccinated individuals are very safe. But many still *want* to be vaccinated & can’t be or haven’t been yet for many reasons. They’re now at risk. It’s an own goal to not have worked in this area first before changing the guidelines.”
National Nurses United, the country’s largest nurses union, released a statement on Friday condemning the new guidance. “This newest CDC guidance is not based on science, does not protect public health, and threatens the lives of patients, nurses, and other frontline workers across the country,” National Nurses United Executive Director Bonnie Castillo said. “Now is not the time to relax protective measures, and we are outraged that the CDC has done just that while we are still in the midst of the deadliest pandemic in a century.”COVID-19 related deaths are still being reported, with 780 people having died from the virus the day the new guidelines were released, the union said. “If the CDC had fully recognized the science on how this deadly virus is transmitted, this new guidance would never have been issued,” Jean Ross, president of the union said.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICL
Eric
i don’t know enough to argue with you. indeed i am not arguing. just briging up points that occur to me on the way to having an opinion.
before CDC said vaccinated don’t need masks, stores had a “legal” reason to require masks, which made it more likely people would wear masks, even if they couldn’t quite cover their noses with them. now anyone can walk into any store and “demand their right” not to wear mask. i suppose we could institute vacicine certificate checks at the door, but i don’t see that happening.
so, before, i could go into a store wearing a mask and trying to keep a reasonable distance from the other masked customers and not stress out when one of them got too close, now i have to worry about the unmasked customer that insists upon breathing in my (masked but not 100% protected) face.
i more or less understand your argument, and don’t have a logic tight response of my own, but I feel we (they) have damaged a “solidarity” ethic/excuse for mask wearing and given the victory to the “masks be damned” segment … who will certainly be “vaccinations be damned” folks among us.
as i suggested in my first comment on this subject, that may drive the rest of us to get vaccinated, but i suspect that is going to leave a lot of people uprotected for various reasons neither of us has thought of yet, but the nurses union (in my comment above) seems to have concerns about.
“90%” effective might get us herd immunity if 100% we vaccinated, but I don’t think it will protect — any of us really– if only, say, 60% are.
and while i trust science to some degree (if they disagree with my last sentence) I don’t trust politicians at all. any of them.
again, this is only unformed (not uninformed) opinion, so don’t think i am attacking you.
in the above (my comment at 4:10) “if 100% we vaccinated” should have been “if 100% were vaccinated”
Do not worry at all – not only are you not attacking me, it is not even an attack in any conceivable way to establish your opinion sincerely. It is unfortunate that these directives have caused anyone to feel more threatened.
Run
I think you know that “Constitutional” is subject to interpretation, and seems to change from time to time.
Both Lincoln and Jackson overrode the Supreme Court and got away with it. FDR was a little more subtle: he scared the Court into changing its mind about the New Deal.
I suggest we wait and see what happens. A spike in cases among the unvacccinated, new cases among the vaccinated, or among those waiting to get vaccinated, or those vaccinated but not yet immune (i assume it takes time for the body to build up immunity in response to a vaccination) might convince us that “no masks required” is premature. And any serious increase in cases from one or a few states would almost certainly get people thinking about a Federal response.
Meanwhile, when you all are vaccinatied against Covid, what are you going to do when the next pandemic shows up…just give in to the anti maskers while forceably inoculating everyone? watch the unmasked hordes fleeing Florida to hide out, as they suppose, in up-state New York?.
I like the mask. it’s an outward and visible sign of social responsibility. currently “less than half the population is fully vaccinated.” i have no reason to suspect the anti masker anti vaccer is suddenly going to change its stripes and socially distance itself…out of kindness i suppose.
i am not sure of the numbers, but if the vax is 90% effective…or 99%…that would reach herd immunity if everyone, or even 70% were vaccinated, but not if only 50% are. consider, if you have one chance in 10 of getting infected from each unvaccinated person you breathe together with, what are your chances of getting Covid if half the people you meet are unvaccinated? (i think the statistics is more accurately stated in terms of population, rather than individual, risk.)
then, what is easier, get 100% of people vaccinated, or keep wearing your mask until the herd infection rate is much lower than it is today?
it seems to me we as a people are always expecting to get something for nothing…or making someone else do what they “should” so we don’t have to.
so far, best i can make of this is that it’s a political (not medical) decision. we have lost the war against the anti maskers. by surrendering we shut them up while scaring the vaccine hesitant to get vaccinated ASAP to save themselves from millions of typhoid mary’s.
re 10th amendment
what would the SC say if each state barred entry to citizens, or even travelers, from other states due to pandemic fears?
Since this seems to be still a live thread, how about a slightly different COVID item. Let’s say that the proof becomes very high that this virus was a lab escape of a virus undergoing gain of function manipulation in China and not something coming from nature. Does the US government decide to never acknowledge that? My view is that probably the country can handle the truth but maybe China cannot handle knowing that the world knows or rather, the world both knows and acknowledges that it knows this. Could you square misleading the American population on the origins of a pandemic that for over a year now has created great suffering because China’s reactions to this could be bad for us and, anyway, what is done can’t be undone?
Eric
i applaud complex thinking. At further risk to my brand, I’ll offer some of my own twists and turns (not sparing others from twisting and turning my offerings).
Misleading the American (and Chinese) population is what government does.. both Republican and Democrat. And most of know it, both Democrat and Republican. So I suppose it doesn’t matter much.
Deniability (barely “plausible”) seems to be the lingua franca of diplomacy. So if “we” deny China’s “gain of function manipulation,” maybe they will deny our involvement in it. And the world will sleep peaceably. Behind the scenes and screams, US and China can look each other in the eyeballs and hopefuly say, maybe we don’t want to do this anymore.
On the other hand, if it was an “escape” from nature, maybe we don’t want to do that anymore either (“mess” with mother nature).
meanwhile
seems to be plenty of chatter on the innertubes about the wisdom of “masks no longer needed.”
some of it apparently from people who claim to be scientists. i can’t manage links, so I’ll leave you-all to stumble upon it on your own.
[some of it…at least the part i like…seems to agree with me: keep wearing the masks, dear children, until the case count gets really, really low. and buy a box of masks to save for the next one.
remember, the life you save might be mine.
i love the ads that won’t get out of the way. makes me feel all warm nd friendly toward the advertisers.
oh, on the possibility of the government telling us the truth ( or “the proof becoming very high”)
how would we ever know?
i think it was the “new criticism” [after my time] that established there was no such thing as truth. took the politicians some time to realize how fully they could take advantage of that fact (sic).
but I learned the other day that Spinoza (before my time) established the same thing 350 years ago. Nobody believed him.
a quick check of wiki on the new criticism does not support my theory of the death of truth, maybe i got it from an unreliable narrator.
on the other hand a pop up of reader response theory shows (for no given reason) a lovely picture (from Renoir?) of two girls, whose loveliness may not depend so much on Renoir [who “only” recorded it] as it does on the loveliness of the girls themselves and the work of art they made themselves by artful choices in clothes.