I worry too. But I worry more about all these Covid precautions becoming permanent. I travel for a living, and I am on planes all the time. I’ve had something like 150 flights this year. I hate masks. I can’t stand them. I’m afraid that masks on planes will never go away, because people have no sense of operational risk management.
Operational risk management is a phrase we used in the military. It was a study of how you mitigate risk in proportion to your goals and the benefits gained.
I really worry because so many people downplay the loss of freedom that restrictions have on our lives. The same people that talk about micro aggressions and how they weigh on people, can’t see that wearing masks, or avoiding going out, or any of these other restrictions is a real loss.
20 years later, and we are still taking off our shoes, well actually I am not because I have TSA pre-check, but most people are. It’s silly. We have TSA patting down grandmothers and kids. Theater.
Whenever I get into social media debates with people about mask mandates, I ask them what is their criteria for eliminating them. None of them really have an answer. A surprising number say that they think there should be mask requirements forever.
I really think the Democratic politicians underestimate how Covid restrictions will affect voting in the next election.
I’ve read these articles saying that Biden is gambling his presidency on these vaccine mandates. Which I approve of, because everyone should be vaccinated. However if the vaccine mandates work to reduce cases and hospitalizations, and the restrictions still stay, it will do no good. People will vote for the guy saying there should be no restrictions.
That’s what I worry about.
On a sidenote, I’m on day three of my hotel quarantine, or jail, here in Salta, Argentina. Being locked in a hotel room with no human contact for seven days sort of sucks. It’s also frustrating since I’ve been vaccinated, and actually had a booster shot. I hope this is not a regular thing.
As always, this whole post was dictated on my phone. I only made a half assed attempt to correct grammatical errors. Don’t hold it against me
Sorry about your quarantine situation--that does suck. I think your "theatre" analogy to taking off shoes at airports (I also have Global Entry/Precheck, thank goodness) is apt.
I was working in DC in 2001 and getting into federal buildings or even big spaces where policy discussions were held was a huge pain that seemed to bear little or no relation to actual security. Much of the time, people were just asked to show a drivers' license, as if the people who flew the 9/11 planes didn't have them.
I was working for the UK government at this time, and one day I had to convey a message from a British Minister to a US cabinet secretary. I wanted to take it myself to make sure it got there in time; this was a Friday and I was dressed very casually. I'm also American. So I show up at this agency and the person who was supposed to meet me at the secretary's entrance isn't there. I, a poorly dressed, obviously non-British person said "Hey, I'm from the Embassy and I have something from Minister X for Secretary Y." They waved me right in!
Pre-vaccines, wearing a mask was annoying--I wear glasses, which were always fogged up. But in the absence of anything better, it was worth it to get out into the world and do things. But now it seems, in many situations, to be just another form of ideological signaling. As I have been since last summer, I'm (temporarily) in a small town on Lake Michigan. There is not a lot to do, and the variant is not raging despite a significant portion of non-vaxxed people (I got vaxxed as soon as I could). But there are A LOT of people walking around OUTSIDE with masks. I work at the library much of the time, which is seldom crowded, and I'm often the only one not wearing a mask. There's also still a bunch of useless hand sanitizer/temp check/agressive cleaning rhetoric and activity going on. I've seen exactly one business (an excellent cidery) talk about improvements to ventilation.
If I felt even the slightest bit ill, I would stay home and/or wear a mask to seek medical care. I kind of get wearing them on planes, although I hope I don't have to wear one on an Amtrak trip I have coming up in a couple of weeks (I probably do). But what we have now just seems to be yet another large-scale morality play.
Which ones don’t have expiration dates? All the rules and regulations that haven promulgated that I’m aware of are E&P rules, and are temporary by definition. The mayors orders in dc have expiration dates. These things get extended when the deadlines approach since the pandemic continues to rage, but that doesn’t mean they’re passed as permanent measures.
Honestly, a lot of your objections read as someone who is upset about the state of things and hasn’t taken the time to understand the way these things actually operate in giver mental bureaucracies. The legal frameworks and underpinnings of these regulatory responses are more complicated and nuanced than you’re implying.
I hope you’re a better lawyer than you are commenter.
Where in my comment that you are replying to did I talk about Covid mandates or Covid precautions specifically?
I was talking about LAWs. rules and precautions in general. You can see that by the way I mentioned governments and corporations.
Furthermore, I state that I wish “all“ laws and rules had expiration dates, implying that I believe some do.
And after 22 years in the military, and working for a large corporation, I think I have a great idea about bureaucracies.
In fact, I guarantee you that in your daily life there is some sort of form or process or procedure that you have to perform for some reason, and you think yourself God this is stupid and serves no purpose. But you’re still doing it. Every single organization in the world has these. Mainly because the people in charge don’t have balls enough, to just say this is stupid. Or the processing paperwork required to resend a rule is just not worth the inconvenience.
Besides, Washington DC famously kept their outdoor mask requirement until May. I mean that’s a long fucking time. Like literally, kids had to wear masks on the playground outside. This is in March or April. When the Covid numbers were super low.
I mean it took you guys till May. Mat for god sake.
Seriously, if that doesn’t show cowardice at the executive level of the Washington DC government, I don’t know what else does.
Hell, I bet they were relieved when they were able to re-implement the mask requirements.
You have a great day!
Sorry for any grammatical errors, I was dictating this in a very snarky voice.
Just to finish the thought since I tapped "post" prematurely: You say "In fact, I guarantee you that in your daily life there is some sort of form or process or procedure that you have to perform for some reason, and you think yourself God this is stupid and serves no purpose."
Absolutely! I don't agree with a large number of the policies put in place around Covid. On specific proposals I'm sure we'd have a lot of agreement as to whether some specific action is a good or bad idea. But there's a big difference between "this policy is silly and not worth it" and "this policy is being put in place to create a permanent state of authoritarian overreach that will be with us forever!" as your original comment was claiming. I think outdoor masking was silly. I think schools should've opened much sooner. I do NOT think that the fact that DC kept its outdoor mask mandate until May is somehow evidence that we will be wearing masks on planes in 10 years time or that the government is really using these as an excuse to impose permanent restrictions that will outlast the pandemic itself. Those sorts of wildly hyperbolic claims about what is really going on here are a little bit unhinged in my mind.
I am asking you which ones do not have expiration dates. I am not aware of any. You "believe" some don't have expiration dates. Which ones? I can only speak to the ones I am personally familiar with, all of which have expirations. But sure, I have not followed every federal or state or local mandate/law/regulation/order/etc., so there may be some that are permanent. I can't prove the negative though. It was a simple question on my part, and one you could address extremely easily by simply providing an example. Just one. I'm not saying you're wrong, which is why I asked for the evidence. Your rant and insults in response are a pretty bizarre reply to someone just asking for an example.
Which "laws" have been passed? Do you understand the difference between a law and a rule/regulation? Your comments imply that you're confused on the precise differences between these and are lumping them together in ways that are not actually correlated to their real life operations. You say that you never talked about "Covid mandates or covid precautions specifically"- but your comment that I responded to laws and rules and precautions. Do you understand that the government imposed the covid mandates and precautions via things like rules, regulations, and Orders? Again, your whole comment thread demonstrates a misunderstanding of the legal underpinnings of how these things actually operate in a governmental setting. Yes, large corporations and the military are bureaucracies- but they function in a fundamentally different way than the federal, state, and local governments all operate. You continue to respond in a way that you don't actually understand these processes or the nuances of how they operate.
So many rules and regulations are completely outdated, ill-suited to current challenges, or actually harmful. I love the idea of a sunset/review, but one problem is, who would have the credibility to carry it out???
A) Lots of areas already lifted mask mandates when cases dropped- the only reason they're still around is because Delta caused a resurgence in cases that public health officials correctly assessed needed to be addressed and mitigated. So you already have your answer- jurisdictions will lift mask mandates when the situation on the ground justifies it. DC (where I live) has specific targets for what needs to happen before mask mandates will not be imposed. So worrying that mask mandates (as opposed to people voluntarily wearing masks) will become permanent is an odd concern given what has actually happened already this year. B) These concerns about authoritarian overreach and permanent state interventions into peoples live long after the pandemic has passed have been raised during every public health emergency in our history- your concerns are mirrored by identical claims made in 1918. The authoritarian states never came to pass after those outbreaks, and there's no reason to think this situation is any different.
Why can't anyone read the next sentence? DC established specific criteria for lifting mask mandates. When those criteria were met they were lifted. When Delta drove caseloads higher they were re-imposed. We have plenty of well done research at this point that demonstrates how effective masks are at reducing spread, so claiming that we have no idea when they're justified or not is just ignoring the evidence, willfully pretending that the situation hasn't moved in the direction you're advocating for when the situation has improved. and sticking to an odd ideological stance based on some unfounded concerns about the looming authoritarian state.
Mask mandates don’t work when everyone is already masked is what the data said. If you want to hinge the whole argument on “you can’t make me!” I guess you’re welcome to do so.
Honestly, anyone still arguing that MASKS don’t work is being willfully obtuse. If you’re arguing that mandates don’t work because people don’t wear masks then you’ve got yourself in a bit of bind given your other arguments- why object to a rule you oppose that nobody complied with? If anything, the vast body of evidence supporting masks efficacy would mean that we should be arguing for more stringent enforcement of mask mandates that require the wearing of high quality masks. It’s a minor inconvenience (despite all the belly aching on here, which I find akin to complaining about having to wear pants in public) that has significant impacts on transmission. It should literally be a no brainer at this point.
In that study, they also educated people at the same time as handing out masks. This led to, for example, an increase in social distancing in the masks-wearing areas. This interestingly contrasts a common expectation that masks would cause people to be less cautious, although it does become a confounding factor. So how much you can attribute to the masks vs. altered behavior is unclear (I am *not* saying it's zero though!).
Regardless, I think the more relevant question now is more whether there is sufficient benefit from *vaccinated* individuals still masking up (remember, mask mandates for the unvaccinated were never really dropped). I think everyone got way too spooked by the Provincetown data, which wasn't so clear-cut despite claims otherwise. The chance of a breakthrough infection is still really low, plus more recent data indicates what we would expect, that when it occurs, it doesn't spread as easily. Have you seen any attempts to estimate how much masking vaccinated people can affect the spread to the unvaccinated? My suspicion is that it would be very low, but I'm open to arguments otherwise.
But anyway, that aside, your point about the quality of the masks is a good one. But the fact that this isn't being stressed more now makes me feel like a lot of this is (perhaps well-intentioned) theater.
Too bad they don’t have a link to the full paper because a lot of questions were left unanswered (indeed, unasked) in that article. Still:
“…tripled mask usage, from only 13% in control villages to 42% in villages where it was encouraged….the number of symptomatic cases was lower in treatment villages than in control villages. The decrease was a modest 9%…”
"This works by X degree" is not justification. It is a data point that can be used to formulate justification. This is a core problem, a problem at the center of the difference between recommendation and policy.
"Live in your house forever" is unquestionably very effective, but few would say it is justified.
Lol... DC did not establish specific criteria. Mayors order is below. And DC is your example???? They had the strictest requirements in the country for the longest time.
I work as a health care attorney in DC"s government. The MOs were not the place where they identified the specific criteria. The Mayor issued guidance, held press conferences, put out powerpoint presentations through the DOH, etc. I've read the MOs (literally had to for work). The MOs are not the sole source of information on this. Spend more time browsing around https://coronavirus.dc.gov/ as a good place to start to understand what was going on here.
And yes, we did have strict requirements. That's the whole point. When the situation changed DC reversed nearly all of them as cases dropped. That runs counter to your argument that these are power grabs intended to become permanent and usher in a new authoritarian state. Even one of THE MOST restrictive jurisdictions in the country relaxed and removed nearly all of the restrictions as soon as the situation improved and cases dropped. That will happen again when more people are vaccinated, delta burns its way through the population, and numbers drop again. It literally already happened once during this pandemic, so there is no reason to think it won't happen again.
You say "almost" that's not good enough. I want ALL restrictions dropped. I know things like outdoor masking might fade away. But indoor masking at the DMV. Or mask mandates at schools. Or masks on airplanes. I am not at all confident about these. But hey.. .at least I know a good healthcare attorney to contact if I want to sue the cities for the restrictions! Has been fun debating. 2 more hours of my 7-day quarantine passed by. Have a great day!
Yes. I do worry about it. Unlike the past we have national media and social media to stoke peoples fears, and our leaders are a lot more risk adverse than they were in the past, because every bad thing is amplified.
And mask mandates were never removed from airplanes. Bottom line, I don't trust people with out a sense of appropriate risk management, and I especially don't trust when people uses terms like "when the situation on the ground justifies it"
Note. I am 100% in favor of vaccine mandate policies. A vaccine is a one time (or three time thing). Mask mandates effect people every day.
I think these concerns are objectively silly and misplaced, but if you want to worry about them then knock yourself out. Let's plan on meeting back here this time next year and evaluating where things stand at that point.
And why would you pick out the "situation on the ground justifies it" as if I'm saying that we should just rely on nebulous claims of when to return to the previous situation? The very next sentence in my comment demonstrated how jurisdictions have defined when it will be justified.
Your jurisdiction might have specific goals, but it's a rarity. And given the federal and state and health district mandates, and the CDCs warbling.
But I will take your bet... To be fair... if the mortality rate is lower than it was in say 2000, and I am still REQUIRED to wear masks on planes or in any non medical setting, you owe me a beer.
My metro decided a month ago that we were living in an Emergency sufficient that it would re-institute a universal indoor mask mandate, but it was not enough of an Emergency to continue updating the coronavirus caseload, hospitalization, etc. numbers on weekends. That went down to work-week only in maybe May or June, and daily updates have not returned.
What an odd graph to base your argument on. "The US has seen a steady downward trend in age adjusted mortality rate for a century. 2020 was so bad it was the highest mortality rate in 20 years! So therefore Covid wasn't that bad and we shouldn't be doing much to mitigate it"....? Covid dramatically reversed a trend that has been ongoing for about a century, and incredibly consistent since the end of WWII. Your own graph shows how anomalous and concerning last year was.
Nope... Because all of us can remember 2000. Wasn't scary at all. I can only assume that you might be a Gen Z and therefore not remember it. But hell... I grew up in the 80s without acting like the sky was falling.
At some point, society needs to rip off the band-aid and remind ourselves that the CDC et al. are organizations that make science-based recommendations and not organizations that set policy.
If the CDC wants to recommend airplane masks forever (FYI, kinda dumb, the air exchange cycle is much more rapid in an airliner than in an office) or masks every flu season, that's fine. Those are probably scientifically-grounded recommendations, in that you will be safer doing that than not doing that. But it would also be safer for me to wear an ice hockey helmet every winter when I go out to shovel snow, in case I slip and fall. I don't do that, because as a policy recommendation it's kind of silly.
To wit: I spent more than a year optimizing my lifestyle according to placing a gigantic weighting factor on respiratory disease prevention. I haven't decreased that weighting factor to zero, but it's not gigantic anymore.
I for one appreciate how, late last year, the CDC consulted the renowned epidemiologists at the national teachers' unions before revising their social distancing recommendations from the WHO's three feet to a more conservative six feet. That's what I call following the science.
This sort of hints at a larger discussion that the CDC just did a really terrible job at pandemic response. Yeah, Donald Trump is a fractal catastrophe in every dimension, but lots of blue states and regions did whatever they wanted without giving a crap about what Donald Trump said. Yet the pandemic was rather awful in those places.
It seems like pandemic response should be a really big part of the CDC's mission. If they totally shat the bed on that, it seems like we should reconsider how the CDC works. We should definitely *not* say "oh, they didn't do well enough, we should throw more money at them!", and I'm confident that this will be the prevailing message.
I think pandemic response (or more broadly contagious diseases) should be the CDC's whole mission. Give the other stuff to someone else. Stay focused on task
Wearing a mask has revealed that we don’t need to get colds or the flu.
My thought is the 180 degree opposite of yours - why wasn’t I wearing a mask on planes, trains and subways this whole time? The Asian countries knew what was what.
I don’t care what you do to tell the truth. If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. I care what do you want to make other people do.
Also, mask wearing in Asia wasn’t as ubiquitous as people make it out to be pre-pandemic. Yes it was more common, but it was usually older people, or people who were sick who wore them. A big part of it was pollution that was prevalent in many Asian cities.
I could go into a long spiel about how people don’t take into account the negatives of mask wearing. How it reduces social connection, limits communication, especially since a lot of human communication is through expressions.
Then there is immunity debt, where there are immune system needs to be exposed to a certain amount of germs and viruses to basically keep in shape. Especially children.
I would never skydive, but I don’t want to ban skydiving. My risk tolerance shouldn’t he forced upon other people.
Plus, way more Asians wanna move to America than Americans want to move to Asia. And when they do move to America, they stop wearing masks.
I’m only interested in what you want other people to do. Do you want to make other people continue to wear masks or not? What is your threshold for that decision.
I work with a number of Asian people. While in February of 2020, they were the first putting on masks, now that they are vaccinated, almost none of them wear a mask unless specifically asked to.
One of the ironies about this thread is people arguing that it’s no big deal if they become permanent in response to my statement that I worry that they will become permanent. Simultaneously other people are arguing that there’s no way they will become permanent. Those two sets of people should start arguing with each other.
Hi started wearing a mask back in February 2020, and used to get into arguments with people that said don’t wear masks. But when I got my second vaccination shot, I said never again unless legally required.
In Boise I only wear my mask in medical facilities or at the airport.
The easy break point is transmission and hospital load. Masks went back on when transmission surged and hospitals saw spiking capacity. Prior to Delta masks had gone away outside of airports and hospitals. I suspect in hospitals they'll stick around which is probably a good idea around patients
The problem is that the benefits of a policy often only accrue to everyone, if everyone participates. And in particular, with masking, my mask protects you, and your mask protects me, because the point of the mask is to capture the exhaled droplets that carry pathogens.
Let's rephrase your statement: "I’m only interested in what you want other people to do. Do you want to make other people drive below 25 mph on narrow residential streets? What is your threshold for that decision?"
Yes, I want to make other people obey speed limits. With the understanding that the way speed limits operate in the US is that they're "more guidelines, than actual rules." Police enforce them with a certain amount of discretion -- and there are epicyclic problems bound up in that, relating to how the discretion gets used. But regardless, it doesn't keep me or my family safe if _we_ obey the speed limit, while a bunch of other people come tearing down our street at 60 mph.
At some point, you have to reach a decision, as a community, about what rules you're going to enforce one everyone, for the good of the community as a whole. And while "democracy + courts that try to adjudicate whether a majority is over-reaching" is an imperfect way to do that, it's better than anything else that we've tried.
Personally I would not vote for a really rigid ongoing mask mandate in all public places. I would be OK, though, with "you must cover at least your mouth on public transit and planes". This idea that going without a mask is a matter of "personal freedom" is just willfully ignorant. Every freedom has its limits. Your freedom to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose. We have to hash out as a nation where we want to set those limits, and if you don't like where those land, well, go try to win that argument through the democratic process. Either that, or go live off the grid in some cabin in Montana, where your exhalations don't affect other people.
truth be told, it wouldn’t be hard to convince me to wear a mask on a plane.
however, coercive masking makes my first priority pushing back against the coercion, the threat to my autonomy, and the threat to american culture. i don’t want close views of young womens’ faces to become rare. they are a ray of sunlight in an often dreary world.
i certainly think any time a sick person goes out in public they should wear a mask.
They are going to be so many secondary and tertiary marginal costs to this whole pandemic, that we have no idea. Probably things we haven’t even thought of.
Have you ever thought of the difference between what's good for individual actors and what's good for species generally? This is part of the theory of predation, but it applies to many evolutionary processes. So it's fine that you'll be skipping it and that may be what's right, but I wouldn't be so sure you're on the right side of history. 100% of the time, I limit my certainty to non-0% or 100%. ;)
People are generally really bad at estimating downside risks, and even worse at systems thinking. It's just too easy for the dinosaur flight or fight emotional brain to break you when something threatens to upset your day to day peace.
I don't envy the job of the CDC or the Biden administration. They have to put out messaging that is simple and easily understood. Nuanced discussions of risk are neither.
That said, it seems pretty clear that masks in crowded, unventilated areas are net good (i.e. on the airplane, no; in the airport, probably). Same reason I eat food on washed dishes, wash my hands after using the toilet, and otherwise expend a modicum of effort around not getting myself sick. We should probably embrace them, as most of Asia has since SARS the First.
There is a limit to how much change a society can endure in a fast span of time though - and I think a lot of what we are seeing in terms of resistance to these things is a consequence of that.
It is not clear at all that they are a net-good. I can prove it. When given the choice, way more people choose not to wear masks than to wear them.
And since you speak about systems, we need to talk about immunity debt. Being exposed to Germs is a net good. Its how our immune systems keep in shape.
I don't like wearing a mask either, but, the fact that most people may feel as I do doesn't prove they're not a net good. (If by "good" you're referring to something that, on net, saves lives). Not many people enjoy a low calorie lifestyle but following such a regimen would likely do a lot of good.
You got a point. I am actually going to argue that in the long run, more years lived are lost from the precautions then from actual Covid. Years behind on school... equals lower life span. Kids immune systems being hurt... lower life span. Less travel, means less international migration and trade, equals lower life span. But for me net good means Im not annoyed.
I would argue it depends on the germ. I don't see anyone lining up for Polio parties.
No doubt there is nuance there - we probably get some exercise from common cold viruses and that is net good. Kind of like how overuse of antibacterial soap leads to very antibiotic resistant bacteria.
That said, if masks reduce some of the worst of this, especially in large venues with sketchy ventilation, more people versus less people wearing them likely saves enough lives of vulnerable populations (thinking annual flu, post covid) to make it worth it. Even if compliance is uneven and only half of people actually do the thing.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy floated - I think yesterday - the first trial balloon about endemicity, mentioning that we need to soon worry less about cases but more about hospital capacity and death. I want to hear more about that. This tells me they're hearing a lot of people such as yourself (I'm of the same mind) saying that, in the not-so-distant future, the cure will be worse than the disease. I made the political-backlash argument on a FB group about this exact topic the other day.
My personal feeling is that about 2 months after kids can get vaccinated (at least the upcoming 6-12 - I'd extend this for younger ages _provided those are in the works - if they're not happening, don't wait for them_, then I'd stop doing mask mandates.
The U.S. (AFAIK) at least has enough vaccines to vaccinate every eligible person who wants one - once everyone who wants a vaccine (barring individual immune system issues) can get one, we may be "as good as we're going to get", and once we get there, we should stop with the mandates.
I will say that now that I have masks I'll wear them when _I_ feel sick which I didn't do before (if I was sure I was sick I stayed home, but sometimes it seems like allergies? now I can just wear a mask)
"I really worry because so many people downplay the loss of freedom that restrictions have on our lives. The same people that talk about micro aggressions and how they weigh on people, can’t see that wearing masks, or avoiding going out, or any of these other restrictions is a real loss. "
I'm a life-long Democratic voter who is so sick of the Dems performative bull and identity politics and "equity" nonsense that I don't know if I can vote Dem again. Unfortunately, we have only two political parties, and the other one is worse.
I disagree with part of your conclusion, but it's really shocking just how few Democratic campaign/office staffers seem to have ever worked a regular nine-to-five "go to the office, do your regular office bullshit, then go home" real job.
In the land of Not Twitter, I don't know any normal people who invest heavily in that crap.
TBH, in terms of work I came out ahead because Covid made it possible to finally go fully remote and move my family out of the city to an area where I wanted to live.
So I agree the range of experiences on this really has been extreme, and people spend a lot of time talking past each other or missing other folks' viewpoints.
I appreciate your prespective. We each have our own way of risk assessment. While I personally don't mind wearing a mask, it's always benefical to hear other's views. Hopefully we get to the point that wearing a mask, or not wearing a mask, is simply a personal preference.
Hopefully is what I say to my kids when they say they want to go to Disney World... I will never take them. If people said, I think we should have mask mandates until ICUs are only at 70% capacity... then fine. I can go with this. Right now its just arbitrary with moving goalposts.
You say "hopefully we get to that point" as if it's out of our control. So as Rory said, what then are the criteria for getting to them being optional that you're waiting for? I think if this were clearly stated, people might be more understanding.
People are beginning to talk about the exit stragety. It's a bit premature to get very specific about it, but, if we're not yet at the beginning of the end, we may be approaching the end of the beginning. Mask relaxation will be part of this discussion. Denmark has just announced the end of all covid-related restrictions, and I think Ireland is going there next month.
There's no clearly-articulated endpoint for *any* policy, and when lunkheaded boors say "that's how you know they want this power forever", I have no answer to them.
We already saw blue states like California relax restrictions when caseloads were down amid the first wave of vaccinations reaching most adults. I went to a nice outdoor concert back in late May, and I went to see the Black Widow movie.
Right now I think Delta and other emergent variants have people somewhat worried, but the two legit worries were (1) that breakthrough infections among the vaccinated (which definitely are more common than the original strain) might have higher impact with hospitalization and "long COVID" than breakthroughs of the original; and (2) we don't want kids to get infected, because even though it hits them less hard than older adults, it's still not great, and we're seeing _some_ kids get hopsitalized, and some of them even die.
And on (2), well, it's only a matter of time before everyone down to quite young kids can be vaccinated. At that point, it seems certain that we'll see significant loosening of restrictions. A mandate to either be vaccinated, or get tested regularly, if you want to participate in public life _at all_, will definitely help, in terms of reducing the number of exposures vaccinated people face, and reducing the rate at which the virus can mutate into new strains. We'll probably need boosters every year, maybe even every six months for a while, but in the end it'll be fine -- I get a flu shot annually at work, so I don't pick up the flu and give it to my aging parents or my young nieces, all of whom would be more vulnerable to flu than me. And that's fine too.
Yes but they only relaxed restrictions, they didn’t eliminate them. Until they actually eliminate them, I’m wary. Especially when it comes to things like flying.
I hope you’re right. But I can find a surprising number of people that think there should be indoor mask mandates forever.
But they were _right_ to only relax them! It turned out that we were facing an incipient wave from a new variant. Once vaccination extends down to kids, and we get vaccination rates around the country up to 85-90%, it's going to be a lot easier to drop things.
Regarding masking indoors -- honestly I'd be fine seeing masks become heavily normalized for crowded situations like public transit, the way they are in Hong Kong, though I'd agree that an absolutely rigid mandate here would probably be overkill. (I can't read without glasses, and my eyes have always reacted badly to contacts. I can ride a train without needing to read something, but for folks who can't see _at all_ without glasses, I'd want some flexibility for them to at least just cover their mouth and leave their nose free, so they don't fog up.)
fascinating. I respect your opinion, but I have the opposite personal preferences... I don't mind masks at all, and now I'm totally conscious of how much other people used to get their filthy breath on me (especially on the subway). So I'm pretty ok with the idea that masks in crowded places, or whenever you feel sick, will become pretty commonplace here - like it is in parts of Asia, actually.
And I like being able to sing along with the music in grocery stores without anyone seeing my lips move behind the mask!
But that's it... personal preference. And when it comes to personal preferences, the least restrictive preference should win out. (assuming its a wide spread preference).
And no, it won't become commonplace... some will do it.... but it will always be a small minority.
maybe the vaccine mandates (and natural infections amount unvaccinated) will lower incidence enough that an anti-restriction consensus emerges. That’s Biden’s hope. He knows Ds get crushed if covid is still a big deal after this winter
This is troubling because it means Republicans have the opposite incentive. Enabling COVID to keep spreading and killing people is in their self-interest, not just something they might do out of ignorance.
I strongly believe the politics of *vaccination* are in the Democrats' favor and that the more polarized that issue becomes, the better off the Democrats will be. But maybe the Republicans gain more by keeping COVID numbers high than they lose by being perceived as siding with the antivax freaks. That is, maybe the hit they'd take on being associated with antivaxxerism is, in the bigger picture, a worthwhile investment. To counter that, Democrats might really need to go all-in on vitriolically blaming COVID's resilience on antivaxxers, the way the Republicans in 2002 went all-in on allegations that liberals were pro-terrorist and anti-patriotic.
Well, it's entirely possible I'll be proven wrong (we may find out in 14 months) but I suspect it's not going to work out that way for the GOP because their sabotage is playing a meaningful role in acquiring the herd immunity that will benefit the country and its economy in 2022. (and 2024).
Also, if they could content themselves with being merely "neutral" in covid measures — ie, don't do much to help fight the pandemic but don't be absolute lunatics in their obstruction — then they'd be in a stronger position to attack Biden and the Democrats next year if things don't go well. But at this rate, I'd say there's a non-trivial possibility it is *Republicans* who will be blamed by voters if we're in the 7th covid wave in the autumn of 2022 (at minimum Democrats will have a highly plausible angle of attack).
The funny thing to me is that the 'rona is currently a capital letters Big Deal almost exclusively in places that Democrats can't realistically win anyway.
It seems like the biggest electoral threat is newspapers of record excitedly reporting on bad outcomes among the unvaccinated, and these outcomes are very sad but they don't seem to substantially threaten the vaccinated majority.
My guess is that, oh, three years from now COVID will be a distant memory and we'll be living our lives the way we want to. If some things have changed -- e.g., more remote work -- it will be because we like that more rather than for safety. I doubt that we'll even see a lot of changes for the good, such as wearing masks during flu season, because regression to the mean is such a powerful drug.
As Matt says, we are powerfully affected by what just happened in shaping our view of the future. Here in Los Angeles, the January 1994 Northridge earthquake was one such experience, and we were all convinced that another big earthquake was imminent. No reason geologically speaking; it's just the emotional force of presentism. As a community we've made positive changes since then, such as in improved building codes, but I guarantee you that people here are individually no more prepared for, or thinking about, a big earthquake than they were on Jan. 16, 1994, the day before the quake.
I would have agreed with you last spring. The problem is that I think there's a good chance that 3 years from now Covid will not be a distant memory but a constant, mid-level annoying problem from mutant strains until it becomes endemic like any other respiratory virus. You'll have surges and risk of over-filled hospitalizations and masking/social distancing will have to be re-implemented (or continued if never halted). So in this way I think Rory may be right -- that a lot of mandatory masking will remain in place b/c it simply becomes the norm. I can see both sides on this issue: that it makes sense to mitigate infectious disease in general, and that it's truly annoying to some. Personally I only mind it for my exercise class and would really love to go back to that w/o a mask.
1) There was masking and social distancing for the 1918 epidemic but it passed fairly violently and rapidly through the population creating enough herd immunity in several years. And the population had some immunity to influenza already. Currently, we are still far from herd immunity. There's enough partial immunity from vaccination and prior infection that the curve is flattened. My opinion is that eventually everyone may have to be exposed and develop natural immunity, but it will likely take 5-10 years (as MY's prior post described) rather than 2 violent years and it's over.
2) Coronaviruses mutate quicker and are more infectious than influenza so there will be this constant interplay where the virus can mutate to decrease effectiveness of the vaccine and we'll have recurrent surges. Recurrent surges will threaten to overwhelm hospitals and new masking requirements will be implemented all over again. (Or not, as happened recently in Florida, and the hospitals get overwhelmed with a significant number of people dying.)
3) Our population is significantly older than in 1918. Medical care has advanced significantly since then. So instead of people getting sick and either recovering or dying, you have people hospitalized. Which, once again, leads to the possibility of overwhelming hospitals, requiring masking.
So, eventually masking becomes an accepted part of the culture and no one thinks twice about having to mask on airplanes. Just the way no one thinks twice about needing to wear a seatbelt. Anyway, I could be wrong, but this is what I predict.
>>..My opinion is that eventually everyone may have to be exposed and develop natural immunity, but it will likely take 5-10 years...so there will be this constant interplay where the virus can mutate to decrease effectiveness of the vaccine and we'll have recurrent surges.<<
Can doesn't mean "will." Many researchers believe this virus is approaching the physiological limits of its capacity to become more infectious (and/or defeat vaccines):
Is that my take? I don't have a take, I'm not a scientist. And yes, we may indeed be dealing with deadly outbreaks or waves for another half decade. It's possible! I'm simply pointing out there are a number of different viewpoints held by researchers on this topic.
I expect an annual reminder in the form of a PSA or poster in the window of my local CVS. And I’ll stop in and get a shot of a mRNA cocktail that virtually guarantees I will not contract any sort of viral respiratory disease.
Have we not adapted? Global mRNA manufacturing capacity is up orders of magnitude from a year ago. It wouldn’t make sense to shift that capacity to other vaccines when billions are still unvaccinated. PPE is broadly available. Teleworking is more common.
Congress proved once and for all that stimulus works so well it can wake up an economy from deep freeze within a couple months. In March of 2020, I was afraid even four week lockdowns would cause a depression. That fear was common. It has been dispelled.
Finally, the social dissensus over COVID has owes to its having a curiously ambiguous lethality. If it were 5x more lethal, lockdowns would be uncontroversial. If it were 5x less lethal, only scolds would want coercive distancing. Covid isn’t that big a risk for healthy young people but is a moderate risk for older people so it creates a dynamic where some people are fanning hysteria for personally rational reasons and others feel put upon by scolds. The chances the next pandemic is both roughly as lethal and roughly as contagious as covid are actually pretty small.
America did prove adaptive. It experienced high fatalities because it has a shitty public health baseline. Americans under 65 were something like 2.5 times as likely to die if infected as similar Canadians.
The number of obese, addled and unhealthy people in America is staggering. A historian of the French revolution described the peasantry as a person up to his chin in water, even a slight deepening could prove disastrous. The American precariat treads in deeper water than those in other advanced countries.
We did not make a dent in obesity during the pandemic nor did we enact universal healthcare. Our structural deficiencies remain. However, America did a good job with vaccines, teleworking and debt financing.
I strongly suspect the pandemic will increase the appetite for health care reform. It will swing some moderates towards action, whether that proves decisive enough to result in legislation is uncertain.
Next year, Biden should make health care reform front and center.
His slogan should be “Too many americans died of covid because our public health policies are crap.”
I don't live in America, I live in a developing country that provides manufacturing for America. It is pretty clear that we haven't "adapted".
The ongoing global supply chain woes make clear that there's a lot more to the story than whether the richest country on Earth can make 500 million vaccines for itself in short order.
The Great Famine in Ireland wasn’t as bad as Chinese famines in the 19th century because Ireland was part of the UK, which was rich for 1847, and which (begrudgingly and stingily) provided relief. Without public works projects, subsidized emigration and grain purchases, the Irish famine would have been much worse.
Which is to say the richest countries are always able to weather distress better than poor ones. Look at how many people in the developing world die of cholera and in floods. Poor countries usually get poor outcomes
Bad example. Famines are caused by poor governance. If Britain actually cared about individual Irish people, they would have mitigated it. UK governance could have been even worse of course. This is a great topic if Matt Yglesias wants to indulge in more UK bashing. Repeated famines under the British empire, stopped once countries got even minimally competent self-government.
It sounds like you've done you're research so I'll defer to you, but, Ireland lost something like 12% of its population to hunger/disease in five years. Did China go through anything quite that bad?
(But sure, your point about rich countries weathering storms is obviously valid.)
I worry too. But I worry more about all these Covid precautions becoming permanent. I travel for a living, and I am on planes all the time. I’ve had something like 150 flights this year. I hate masks. I can’t stand them. I’m afraid that masks on planes will never go away, because people have no sense of operational risk management.
Operational risk management is a phrase we used in the military. It was a study of how you mitigate risk in proportion to your goals and the benefits gained.
I really worry because so many people downplay the loss of freedom that restrictions have on our lives. The same people that talk about micro aggressions and how they weigh on people, can’t see that wearing masks, or avoiding going out, or any of these other restrictions is a real loss.
20 years later, and we are still taking off our shoes, well actually I am not because I have TSA pre-check, but most people are. It’s silly. We have TSA patting down grandmothers and kids. Theater.
Whenever I get into social media debates with people about mask mandates, I ask them what is their criteria for eliminating them. None of them really have an answer. A surprising number say that they think there should be mask requirements forever.
I really think the Democratic politicians underestimate how Covid restrictions will affect voting in the next election.
I’ve read these articles saying that Biden is gambling his presidency on these vaccine mandates. Which I approve of, because everyone should be vaccinated. However if the vaccine mandates work to reduce cases and hospitalizations, and the restrictions still stay, it will do no good. People will vote for the guy saying there should be no restrictions.
That’s what I worry about.
On a sidenote, I’m on day three of my hotel quarantine, or jail, here in Salta, Argentina. Being locked in a hotel room with no human contact for seven days sort of sucks. It’s also frustrating since I’ve been vaccinated, and actually had a booster shot. I hope this is not a regular thing.
As always, this whole post was dictated on my phone. I only made a half assed attempt to correct grammatical errors. Don’t hold it against me
Sorry about your quarantine situation--that does suck. I think your "theatre" analogy to taking off shoes at airports (I also have Global Entry/Precheck, thank goodness) is apt.
I was working in DC in 2001 and getting into federal buildings or even big spaces where policy discussions were held was a huge pain that seemed to bear little or no relation to actual security. Much of the time, people were just asked to show a drivers' license, as if the people who flew the 9/11 planes didn't have them.
I was working for the UK government at this time, and one day I had to convey a message from a British Minister to a US cabinet secretary. I wanted to take it myself to make sure it got there in time; this was a Friday and I was dressed very casually. I'm also American. So I show up at this agency and the person who was supposed to meet me at the secretary's entrance isn't there. I, a poorly dressed, obviously non-British person said "Hey, I'm from the Embassy and I have something from Minister X for Secretary Y." They waved me right in!
Pre-vaccines, wearing a mask was annoying--I wear glasses, which were always fogged up. But in the absence of anything better, it was worth it to get out into the world and do things. But now it seems, in many situations, to be just another form of ideological signaling. As I have been since last summer, I'm (temporarily) in a small town on Lake Michigan. There is not a lot to do, and the variant is not raging despite a significant portion of non-vaxxed people (I got vaxxed as soon as I could). But there are A LOT of people walking around OUTSIDE with masks. I work at the library much of the time, which is seldom crowded, and I'm often the only one not wearing a mask. There's also still a bunch of useless hand sanitizer/temp check/agressive cleaning rhetoric and activity going on. I've seen exactly one business (an excellent cidery) talk about improvements to ventilation.
If I felt even the slightest bit ill, I would stay home and/or wear a mask to seek medical care. I kind of get wearing them on planes, although I hope I don't have to wear one on an Amtrak trip I have coming up in a couple of weeks (I probably do). But what we have now just seems to be yet another large-scale morality play.
The issue is... for all governments and corporations... its easy to issue rule and precautions. It's extremely difficult to eliminate them.
Personally, I think all laws and rules should have an expiration date.
Which ones don’t have expiration dates? All the rules and regulations that haven promulgated that I’m aware of are E&P rules, and are temporary by definition. The mayors orders in dc have expiration dates. These things get extended when the deadlines approach since the pandemic continues to rage, but that doesn’t mean they’re passed as permanent measures.
Honestly, a lot of your objections read as someone who is upset about the state of things and hasn’t taken the time to understand the way these things actually operate in giver mental bureaucracies. The legal frameworks and underpinnings of these regulatory responses are more complicated and nuanced than you’re implying.
I hope you’re a better lawyer than you are commenter.
Where in my comment that you are replying to did I talk about Covid mandates or Covid precautions specifically?
I was talking about LAWs. rules and precautions in general. You can see that by the way I mentioned governments and corporations.
Furthermore, I state that I wish “all“ laws and rules had expiration dates, implying that I believe some do.
And after 22 years in the military, and working for a large corporation, I think I have a great idea about bureaucracies.
In fact, I guarantee you that in your daily life there is some sort of form or process or procedure that you have to perform for some reason, and you think yourself God this is stupid and serves no purpose. But you’re still doing it. Every single organization in the world has these. Mainly because the people in charge don’t have balls enough, to just say this is stupid. Or the processing paperwork required to resend a rule is just not worth the inconvenience.
Besides, Washington DC famously kept their outdoor mask requirement until May. I mean that’s a long fucking time. Like literally, kids had to wear masks on the playground outside. This is in March or April. When the Covid numbers were super low.
I mean it took you guys till May. Mat for god sake.
Seriously, if that doesn’t show cowardice at the executive level of the Washington DC government, I don’t know what else does.
Hell, I bet they were relieved when they were able to re-implement the mask requirements.
You have a great day!
Sorry for any grammatical errors, I was dictating this in a very snarky voice.
Just to finish the thought since I tapped "post" prematurely: You say "In fact, I guarantee you that in your daily life there is some sort of form or process or procedure that you have to perform for some reason, and you think yourself God this is stupid and serves no purpose."
Absolutely! I don't agree with a large number of the policies put in place around Covid. On specific proposals I'm sure we'd have a lot of agreement as to whether some specific action is a good or bad idea. But there's a big difference between "this policy is silly and not worth it" and "this policy is being put in place to create a permanent state of authoritarian overreach that will be with us forever!" as your original comment was claiming. I think outdoor masking was silly. I think schools should've opened much sooner. I do NOT think that the fact that DC kept its outdoor mask mandate until May is somehow evidence that we will be wearing masks on planes in 10 years time or that the government is really using these as an excuse to impose permanent restrictions that will outlast the pandemic itself. Those sorts of wildly hyperbolic claims about what is really going on here are a little bit unhinged in my mind.
Sure.
I am asking you which ones do not have expiration dates. I am not aware of any. You "believe" some don't have expiration dates. Which ones? I can only speak to the ones I am personally familiar with, all of which have expirations. But sure, I have not followed every federal or state or local mandate/law/regulation/order/etc., so there may be some that are permanent. I can't prove the negative though. It was a simple question on my part, and one you could address extremely easily by simply providing an example. Just one. I'm not saying you're wrong, which is why I asked for the evidence. Your rant and insults in response are a pretty bizarre reply to someone just asking for an example.
Which "laws" have been passed? Do you understand the difference between a law and a rule/regulation? Your comments imply that you're confused on the precise differences between these and are lumping them together in ways that are not actually correlated to their real life operations. You say that you never talked about "Covid mandates or covid precautions specifically"- but your comment that I responded to laws and rules and precautions. Do you understand that the government imposed the covid mandates and precautions via things like rules, regulations, and Orders? Again, your whole comment thread demonstrates a misunderstanding of the legal underpinnings of how these things actually operate in a governmental setting. Yes, large corporations and the military are bureaucracies- but they function in a fundamentally different way than the federal, state, and local governments all operate. You continue to respond in a way that you don't actually understand these processes or the nuances of how they operate.
Governmental*
So many rules and regulations are completely outdated, ill-suited to current challenges, or actually harmful. I love the idea of a sunset/review, but one problem is, who would have the credibility to carry it out???
A) Lots of areas already lifted mask mandates when cases dropped- the only reason they're still around is because Delta caused a resurgence in cases that public health officials correctly assessed needed to be addressed and mitigated. So you already have your answer- jurisdictions will lift mask mandates when the situation on the ground justifies it. DC (where I live) has specific targets for what needs to happen before mask mandates will not be imposed. So worrying that mask mandates (as opposed to people voluntarily wearing masks) will become permanent is an odd concern given what has actually happened already this year. B) These concerns about authoritarian overreach and permanent state interventions into peoples live long after the pandemic has passed have been raised during every public health emergency in our history- your concerns are mirrored by identical claims made in 1918. The authoritarian states never came to pass after those outbreaks, and there's no reason to think this situation is any different.
“…jurisdictions will lift mask mandates when the situation on the ground justifies it”
No one has the slightest clue when mask mandates are justified.
Why can't anyone read the next sentence? DC established specific criteria for lifting mask mandates. When those criteria were met they were lifted. When Delta drove caseloads higher they were re-imposed. We have plenty of well done research at this point that demonstrates how effective masks are at reducing spread, so claiming that we have no idea when they're justified or not is just ignoring the evidence, willfully pretending that the situation hasn't moved in the direction you're advocating for when the situation has improved. and sticking to an odd ideological stance based on some unfounded concerns about the looming authoritarian state.
“DC established specific criteria for lifting mask mandates”
Yes. Entirely arbitrary criteria.
“We have plenty of well done research at this point that demonstrates how effective masks are at reducing spread…”
The evidence is very mixed, but suggests that mask mandates don’t do very much.
Mask mandates don’t work when everyone is already masked is what the data said. If you want to hinge the whole argument on “you can’t make me!” I guess you’re welcome to do so.
Let’s go further, then: The evidence is very mixed, but suggests that mask don’t do very much to slow community spread.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02457-y
Honestly, anyone still arguing that MASKS don’t work is being willfully obtuse. If you’re arguing that mandates don’t work because people don’t wear masks then you’ve got yourself in a bit of bind given your other arguments- why object to a rule you oppose that nobody complied with? If anything, the vast body of evidence supporting masks efficacy would mean that we should be arguing for more stringent enforcement of mask mandates that require the wearing of high quality masks. It’s a minor inconvenience (despite all the belly aching on here, which I find akin to complaining about having to wear pants in public) that has significant impacts on transmission. It should literally be a no brainer at this point.
In that study, they also educated people at the same time as handing out masks. This led to, for example, an increase in social distancing in the masks-wearing areas. This interestingly contrasts a common expectation that masks would cause people to be less cautious, although it does become a confounding factor. So how much you can attribute to the masks vs. altered behavior is unclear (I am *not* saying it's zero though!).
Regardless, I think the more relevant question now is more whether there is sufficient benefit from *vaccinated* individuals still masking up (remember, mask mandates for the unvaccinated were never really dropped). I think everyone got way too spooked by the Provincetown data, which wasn't so clear-cut despite claims otherwise. The chance of a breakthrough infection is still really low, plus more recent data indicates what we would expect, that when it occurs, it doesn't spread as easily. Have you seen any attempts to estimate how much masking vaccinated people can affect the spread to the unvaccinated? My suspicion is that it would be very low, but I'm open to arguments otherwise.
But anyway, that aside, your point about the quality of the masks is a good one. But the fact that this isn't being stressed more now makes me feel like a lot of this is (perhaps well-intentioned) theater.
Too bad they don’t have a link to the full paper because a lot of questions were left unanswered (indeed, unasked) in that article. Still:
“…tripled mask usage, from only 13% in control villages to 42% in villages where it was encouraged….the number of symptomatic cases was lower in treatment villages than in control villages. The decrease was a modest 9%…”
Other studies found smaller effects.
"This works by X degree" is not justification. It is a data point that can be used to formulate justification. This is a core problem, a problem at the center of the difference between recommendation and policy.
"Live in your house forever" is unquestionably very effective, but few would say it is justified.
Lol... DC did not establish specific criteria. Mayors order is below. And DC is your example???? They had the strictest requirements in the country for the longest time.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/coronavirus-dc-maryland-virginia/2021/05/17/11c446d0-b719-11eb-a6b1-81296da0339b_story.html
https://coronavirus.dc.gov/maskorder
I work as a health care attorney in DC"s government. The MOs were not the place where they identified the specific criteria. The Mayor issued guidance, held press conferences, put out powerpoint presentations through the DOH, etc. I've read the MOs (literally had to for work). The MOs are not the sole source of information on this. Spend more time browsing around https://coronavirus.dc.gov/ as a good place to start to understand what was going on here.
And yes, we did have strict requirements. That's the whole point. When the situation changed DC reversed nearly all of them as cases dropped. That runs counter to your argument that these are power grabs intended to become permanent and usher in a new authoritarian state. Even one of THE MOST restrictive jurisdictions in the country relaxed and removed nearly all of the restrictions as soon as the situation improved and cases dropped. That will happen again when more people are vaccinated, delta burns its way through the population, and numbers drop again. It literally already happened once during this pandemic, so there is no reason to think it won't happen again.
Also... good come back. Literally the best job you could have to give credibility (Not being facetious... I believe you). I tip my hat to you.
You say "almost" that's not good enough. I want ALL restrictions dropped. I know things like outdoor masking might fade away. But indoor masking at the DMV. Or mask mandates at schools. Or masks on airplanes. I am not at all confident about these. But hey.. .at least I know a good healthcare attorney to contact if I want to sue the cities for the restrictions! Has been fun debating. 2 more hours of my 7-day quarantine passed by. Have a great day!
Yes. I do worry about it. Unlike the past we have national media and social media to stoke peoples fears, and our leaders are a lot more risk adverse than they were in the past, because every bad thing is amplified.
And mask mandates were never removed from airplanes. Bottom line, I don't trust people with out a sense of appropriate risk management, and I especially don't trust when people uses terms like "when the situation on the ground justifies it"
Note. I am 100% in favor of vaccine mandate policies. A vaccine is a one time (or three time thing). Mask mandates effect people every day.
I think these concerns are objectively silly and misplaced, but if you want to worry about them then knock yourself out. Let's plan on meeting back here this time next year and evaluating where things stand at that point.
And why would you pick out the "situation on the ground justifies it" as if I'm saying that we should just rely on nebulous claims of when to return to the previous situation? The very next sentence in my comment demonstrated how jurisdictions have defined when it will be justified.
Your jurisdiction might have specific goals, but it's a rarity. And given the federal and state and health district mandates, and the CDCs warbling.
But I will take your bet... To be fair... if the mortality rate is lower than it was in say 2000, and I am still REQUIRED to wear masks on planes or in any non medical setting, you owe me a beer.
More than fair. I don't drink, so you'll owe me a diet coke instead ;) Cheers.
Well we agree on one thing. Addicted to Diet Coke. And I really don't drink much either.
My metro decided a month ago that we were living in an Emergency sufficient that it would re-institute a universal indoor mask mandate, but it was not enough of an Emergency to continue updating the coronavirus caseload, hospitalization, etc. numbers on weekends. That went down to work-week only in maybe May or June, and daily updates have not returned.
Excuse me, what?
One of the two required effort on the part of the local government.
The age adjusted mortality rate for 2020 was roughly equal to that of 2002. And lower than every year before that. I don't remember feeling panicky in 1999, and I was worried about Y2K! https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/us-mortality-1900-2020-age-adjusted.jpg
What an odd graph to base your argument on. "The US has seen a steady downward trend in age adjusted mortality rate for a century. 2020 was so bad it was the highest mortality rate in 20 years! So therefore Covid wasn't that bad and we shouldn't be doing much to mitigate it"....? Covid dramatically reversed a trend that has been ongoing for about a century, and incredibly consistent since the end of WWII. Your own graph shows how anomalous and concerning last year was.
Nope... Because all of us can remember 2000. Wasn't scary at all. I can only assume that you might be a Gen Z and therefore not remember it. But hell... I grew up in the 80s without acting like the sky was falling.
At some point, society needs to rip off the band-aid and remind ourselves that the CDC et al. are organizations that make science-based recommendations and not organizations that set policy.
If the CDC wants to recommend airplane masks forever (FYI, kinda dumb, the air exchange cycle is much more rapid in an airliner than in an office) or masks every flu season, that's fine. Those are probably scientifically-grounded recommendations, in that you will be safer doing that than not doing that. But it would also be safer for me to wear an ice hockey helmet every winter when I go out to shovel snow, in case I slip and fall. I don't do that, because as a policy recommendation it's kind of silly.
To wit: I spent more than a year optimizing my lifestyle according to placing a gigantic weighting factor on respiratory disease prevention. I haven't decreased that weighting factor to zero, but it's not gigantic anymore.
I for one appreciate how, late last year, the CDC consulted the renowned epidemiologists at the national teachers' unions before revising their social distancing recommendations from the WHO's three feet to a more conservative six feet. That's what I call following the science.
This sort of hints at a larger discussion that the CDC just did a really terrible job at pandemic response. Yeah, Donald Trump is a fractal catastrophe in every dimension, but lots of blue states and regions did whatever they wanted without giving a crap about what Donald Trump said. Yet the pandemic was rather awful in those places.
It seems like pandemic response should be a really big part of the CDC's mission. If they totally shat the bed on that, it seems like we should reconsider how the CDC works. We should definitely *not* say "oh, they didn't do well enough, we should throw more money at them!", and I'm confident that this will be the prevailing message.
Liked for "fractal catastrophe".
I think pandemic response (or more broadly contagious diseases) should be the CDC's whole mission. Give the other stuff to someone else. Stay focused on task
Wearing a mask has revealed that we don’t need to get colds or the flu.
My thought is the 180 degree opposite of yours - why wasn’t I wearing a mask on planes, trains and subways this whole time? The Asian countries knew what was what.
I don’t care what you do to tell the truth. If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. I care what do you want to make other people do.
Also, mask wearing in Asia wasn’t as ubiquitous as people make it out to be pre-pandemic. Yes it was more common, but it was usually older people, or people who were sick who wore them. A big part of it was pollution that was prevalent in many Asian cities.
I could go into a long spiel about how people don’t take into account the negatives of mask wearing. How it reduces social connection, limits communication, especially since a lot of human communication is through expressions.
Then there is immunity debt, where there are immune system needs to be exposed to a certain amount of germs and viruses to basically keep in shape. Especially children.
I would never skydive, but I don’t want to ban skydiving. My risk tolerance shouldn’t he forced upon other people.
Plus, way more Asians wanna move to America than Americans want to move to Asia. And when they do move to America, they stop wearing masks.
I’m only interested in what you want other people to do. Do you want to make other people continue to wear masks or not? What is your threshold for that decision.
I work with a number of Asian people. While in February of 2020, they were the first putting on masks, now that they are vaccinated, almost none of them wear a mask unless specifically asked to.
One of the ironies about this thread is people arguing that it’s no big deal if they become permanent in response to my statement that I worry that they will become permanent. Simultaneously other people are arguing that there’s no way they will become permanent. Those two sets of people should start arguing with each other.
Hi started wearing a mask back in February 2020, and used to get into arguments with people that said don’t wear masks. But when I got my second vaccination shot, I said never again unless legally required.
In Boise I only wear my mask in medical facilities or at the airport.
The easy break point is transmission and hospital load. Masks went back on when transmission surged and hospitals saw spiking capacity. Prior to Delta masks had gone away outside of airports and hospitals. I suspect in hospitals they'll stick around which is probably a good idea around patients
The problem is that the benefits of a policy often only accrue to everyone, if everyone participates. And in particular, with masking, my mask protects you, and your mask protects me, because the point of the mask is to capture the exhaled droplets that carry pathogens.
Let's rephrase your statement: "I’m only interested in what you want other people to do. Do you want to make other people drive below 25 mph on narrow residential streets? What is your threshold for that decision?"
Yes, I want to make other people obey speed limits. With the understanding that the way speed limits operate in the US is that they're "more guidelines, than actual rules." Police enforce them with a certain amount of discretion -- and there are epicyclic problems bound up in that, relating to how the discretion gets used. But regardless, it doesn't keep me or my family safe if _we_ obey the speed limit, while a bunch of other people come tearing down our street at 60 mph.
At some point, you have to reach a decision, as a community, about what rules you're going to enforce one everyone, for the good of the community as a whole. And while "democracy + courts that try to adjudicate whether a majority is over-reaching" is an imperfect way to do that, it's better than anything else that we've tried.
Personally I would not vote for a really rigid ongoing mask mandate in all public places. I would be OK, though, with "you must cover at least your mouth on public transit and planes". This idea that going without a mask is a matter of "personal freedom" is just willfully ignorant. Every freedom has its limits. Your freedom to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose. We have to hash out as a nation where we want to set those limits, and if you don't like where those land, well, go try to win that argument through the democratic process. Either that, or go live off the grid in some cabin in Montana, where your exhalations don't affect other people.
I believe by making my arguments here, I am doing exactly what you state in go try an “win that argument”.
And I am happy to leave it to the democratic process. Especially if opponents downplay “personal freedom” and talk about limits.
Have a great day.
well put!
a perfectly valid thought!
truth be told, it wouldn’t be hard to convince me to wear a mask on a plane.
however, coercive masking makes my first priority pushing back against the coercion, the threat to my autonomy, and the threat to american culture. i don’t want close views of young womens’ faces to become rare. they are a ray of sunlight in an often dreary world.
i certainly think any time a sick person goes out in public they should wear a mask.
Might be bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7XQ5ZNKDJo
They are going to be so many secondary and tertiary marginal costs to this whole pandemic, that we have no idea. Probably things we haven’t even thought of.
I plan on skipping flu season this year as well. Thanks to my mask.
Have you ever thought of the difference between what's good for individual actors and what's good for species generally? This is part of the theory of predation, but it applies to many evolutionary processes. So it's fine that you'll be skipping it and that may be what's right, but I wouldn't be so sure you're on the right side of history. 100% of the time, I limit my certainty to non-0% or 100%. ;)
People are generally really bad at estimating downside risks, and even worse at systems thinking. It's just too easy for the dinosaur flight or fight emotional brain to break you when something threatens to upset your day to day peace.
I don't envy the job of the CDC or the Biden administration. They have to put out messaging that is simple and easily understood. Nuanced discussions of risk are neither.
That said, it seems pretty clear that masks in crowded, unventilated areas are net good (i.e. on the airplane, no; in the airport, probably). Same reason I eat food on washed dishes, wash my hands after using the toilet, and otherwise expend a modicum of effort around not getting myself sick. We should probably embrace them, as most of Asia has since SARS the First.
There is a limit to how much change a society can endure in a fast span of time though - and I think a lot of what we are seeing in terms of resistance to these things is a consequence of that.
It is not clear at all that they are a net-good. I can prove it. When given the choice, way more people choose not to wear masks than to wear them.
And since you speak about systems, we need to talk about immunity debt. Being exposed to Germs is a net good. Its how our immune systems keep in shape.
I don't like wearing a mask either, but, the fact that most people may feel as I do doesn't prove they're not a net good. (If by "good" you're referring to something that, on net, saves lives). Not many people enjoy a low calorie lifestyle but following such a regimen would likely do a lot of good.
You got a point. I am actually going to argue that in the long run, more years lived are lost from the precautions then from actual Covid. Years behind on school... equals lower life span. Kids immune systems being hurt... lower life span. Less travel, means less international migration and trade, equals lower life span. But for me net good means Im not annoyed.
“ Years behind on school... ”
No it doesn’t:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/kids-can-recover-from-missing-even
> Not many people enjoy a low calorie lifestyle but following such a regimen would likely do a lot of good.
But not necessarily a net good.
I would argue it depends on the germ. I don't see anyone lining up for Polio parties.
No doubt there is nuance there - we probably get some exercise from common cold viruses and that is net good. Kind of like how overuse of antibacterial soap leads to very antibiotic resistant bacteria.
That said, if masks reduce some of the worst of this, especially in large venues with sketchy ventilation, more people versus less people wearing them likely saves enough lives of vulnerable populations (thinking annual flu, post covid) to make it worth it. Even if compliance is uneven and only half of people actually do the thing.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy floated - I think yesterday - the first trial balloon about endemicity, mentioning that we need to soon worry less about cases but more about hospital capacity and death. I want to hear more about that. This tells me they're hearing a lot of people such as yourself (I'm of the same mind) saying that, in the not-so-distant future, the cure will be worse than the disease. I made the political-backlash argument on a FB group about this exact topic the other day.
My personal feeling is that about 2 months after kids can get vaccinated (at least the upcoming 6-12 - I'd extend this for younger ages _provided those are in the works - if they're not happening, don't wait for them_, then I'd stop doing mask mandates.
The U.S. (AFAIK) at least has enough vaccines to vaccinate every eligible person who wants one - once everyone who wants a vaccine (barring individual immune system issues) can get one, we may be "as good as we're going to get", and once we get there, we should stop with the mandates.
I will say that now that I have masks I'll wear them when _I_ feel sick which I didn't do before (if I was sure I was sick I stayed home, but sometimes it seems like allergies? now I can just wear a mask)
"I really worry because so many people downplay the loss of freedom that restrictions have on our lives. The same people that talk about micro aggressions and how they weigh on people, can’t see that wearing masks, or avoiding going out, or any of these other restrictions is a real loss. "
I'm a life-long Democratic voter who is so sick of the Dems performative bull and identity politics and "equity" nonsense that I don't know if I can vote Dem again. Unfortunately, we have only two political parties, and the other one is worse.
I disagree with part of your conclusion, but it's really shocking just how few Democratic campaign/office staffers seem to have ever worked a regular nine-to-five "go to the office, do your regular office bullshit, then go home" real job.
In the land of Not Twitter, I don't know any normal people who invest heavily in that crap.
TBH, in terms of work I came out ahead because Covid made it possible to finally go fully remote and move my family out of the city to an area where I wanted to live.
So I agree the range of experiences on this really has been extreme, and people spend a lot of time talking past each other or missing other folks' viewpoints.
I appreciate your prespective. We each have our own way of risk assessment. While I personally don't mind wearing a mask, it's always benefical to hear other's views. Hopefully we get to the point that wearing a mask, or not wearing a mask, is simply a personal preference.
Hopefully is what I say to my kids when they say they want to go to Disney World... I will never take them. If people said, I think we should have mask mandates until ICUs are only at 70% capacity... then fine. I can go with this. Right now its just arbitrary with moving goalposts.
You say "hopefully we get to that point" as if it's out of our control. So as Rory said, what then are the criteria for getting to them being optional that you're waiting for? I think if this were clearly stated, people might be more understanding.
People are beginning to talk about the exit stragety. It's a bit premature to get very specific about it, but, if we're not yet at the beginning of the end, we may be approaching the end of the beginning. Mask relaxation will be part of this discussion. Denmark has just announced the end of all covid-related restrictions, and I think Ireland is going there next month.
There's no clearly-articulated endpoint for *any* policy, and when lunkheaded boors say "that's how you know they want this power forever", I have no answer to them.
We already saw blue states like California relax restrictions when caseloads were down amid the first wave of vaccinations reaching most adults. I went to a nice outdoor concert back in late May, and I went to see the Black Widow movie.
Right now I think Delta and other emergent variants have people somewhat worried, but the two legit worries were (1) that breakthrough infections among the vaccinated (which definitely are more common than the original strain) might have higher impact with hospitalization and "long COVID" than breakthroughs of the original; and (2) we don't want kids to get infected, because even though it hits them less hard than older adults, it's still not great, and we're seeing _some_ kids get hopsitalized, and some of them even die.
On (1), we seem to be getting consistently good news: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/health/breakthrough-infections-long-covid.html
And on (2), well, it's only a matter of time before everyone down to quite young kids can be vaccinated. At that point, it seems certain that we'll see significant loosening of restrictions. A mandate to either be vaccinated, or get tested regularly, if you want to participate in public life _at all_, will definitely help, in terms of reducing the number of exposures vaccinated people face, and reducing the rate at which the virus can mutate into new strains. We'll probably need boosters every year, maybe even every six months for a while, but in the end it'll be fine -- I get a flu shot annually at work, so I don't pick up the flu and give it to my aging parents or my young nieces, all of whom would be more vulnerable to flu than me. And that's fine too.
Yes but they only relaxed restrictions, they didn’t eliminate them. Until they actually eliminate them, I’m wary. Especially when it comes to things like flying.
I hope you’re right. But I can find a surprising number of people that think there should be indoor mask mandates forever.
But they were _right_ to only relax them! It turned out that we were facing an incipient wave from a new variant. Once vaccination extends down to kids, and we get vaccination rates around the country up to 85-90%, it's going to be a lot easier to drop things.
Regarding masking indoors -- honestly I'd be fine seeing masks become heavily normalized for crowded situations like public transit, the way they are in Hong Kong, though I'd agree that an absolutely rigid mandate here would probably be overkill. (I can't read without glasses, and my eyes have always reacted badly to contacts. I can ride a train without needing to read something, but for folks who can't see _at all_ without glasses, I'd want some flexibility for them to at least just cover their mouth and leave their nose free, so they don't fog up.)
fascinating. I respect your opinion, but I have the opposite personal preferences... I don't mind masks at all, and now I'm totally conscious of how much other people used to get their filthy breath on me (especially on the subway). So I'm pretty ok with the idea that masks in crowded places, or whenever you feel sick, will become pretty commonplace here - like it is in parts of Asia, actually.
And I like being able to sing along with the music in grocery stores without anyone seeing my lips move behind the mask!
But grocery music is awesome these days. All 80s stuff I grew up with!
But that's it... personal preference. And when it comes to personal preferences, the least restrictive preference should win out. (assuming its a wide spread preference).
And no, it won't become commonplace... some will do it.... but it will always be a small minority.
maybe the vaccine mandates (and natural infections amount unvaccinated) will lower incidence enough that an anti-restriction consensus emerges. That’s Biden’s hope. He knows Ds get crushed if covid is still a big deal after this winter
This is troubling because it means Republicans have the opposite incentive. Enabling COVID to keep spreading and killing people is in their self-interest, not just something they might do out of ignorance.
Of course it means that. It also helps Republicans when the economy sucks.
I strongly believe the politics of *vaccination* are in the Democrats' favor and that the more polarized that issue becomes, the better off the Democrats will be. But maybe the Republicans gain more by keeping COVID numbers high than they lose by being perceived as siding with the antivax freaks. That is, maybe the hit they'd take on being associated with antivaxxerism is, in the bigger picture, a worthwhile investment. To counter that, Democrats might really need to go all-in on vitriolically blaming COVID's resilience on antivaxxers, the way the Republicans in 2002 went all-in on allegations that liberals were pro-terrorist and anti-patriotic.
Well, it's entirely possible I'll be proven wrong (we may find out in 14 months) but I suspect it's not going to work out that way for the GOP because their sabotage is playing a meaningful role in acquiring the herd immunity that will benefit the country and its economy in 2022. (and 2024).
Also, if they could content themselves with being merely "neutral" in covid measures — ie, don't do much to help fight the pandemic but don't be absolute lunatics in their obstruction — then they'd be in a stronger position to attack Biden and the Democrats next year if things don't go well. But at this rate, I'd say there's a non-trivial possibility it is *Republicans* who will be blamed by voters if we're in the 7th covid wave in the autumn of 2022 (at minimum Democrats will have a highly plausible angle of attack).
The funny thing to me is that the 'rona is currently a capital letters Big Deal almost exclusively in places that Democrats can't realistically win anyway.
It seems like the biggest electoral threat is newspapers of record excitedly reporting on bad outcomes among the unvaccinated, and these outcomes are very sad but they don't seem to substantially threaten the vaccinated majority.
My guess is that, oh, three years from now COVID will be a distant memory and we'll be living our lives the way we want to. If some things have changed -- e.g., more remote work -- it will be because we like that more rather than for safety. I doubt that we'll even see a lot of changes for the good, such as wearing masks during flu season, because regression to the mean is such a powerful drug.
As Matt says, we are powerfully affected by what just happened in shaping our view of the future. Here in Los Angeles, the January 1994 Northridge earthquake was one such experience, and we were all convinced that another big earthquake was imminent. No reason geologically speaking; it's just the emotional force of presentism. As a community we've made positive changes since then, such as in improved building codes, but I guarantee you that people here are individually no more prepared for, or thinking about, a big earthquake than they were on Jan. 16, 1994, the day before the quake.
I would have agreed with you last spring. The problem is that I think there's a good chance that 3 years from now Covid will not be a distant memory but a constant, mid-level annoying problem from mutant strains until it becomes endemic like any other respiratory virus. You'll have surges and risk of over-filled hospitalizations and masking/social distancing will have to be re-implemented (or continued if never halted). So in this way I think Rory may be right -- that a lot of mandatory masking will remain in place b/c it simply becomes the norm. I can see both sides on this issue: that it makes sense to mitigate infectious disease in general, and that it's truly annoying to some. Personally I only mind it for my exercise class and would really love to go back to that w/o a mask.
I think it'll be like flu. Annoying yes, and deadly (but on a much smaller scale). But we don't engage in societal-wide masking for influenza.
Covid is here for the long haul (sorry!), but we'll get back to normalcy.
Yes, like the flu, but also this is different.
1) There was masking and social distancing for the 1918 epidemic but it passed fairly violently and rapidly through the population creating enough herd immunity in several years. And the population had some immunity to influenza already. Currently, we are still far from herd immunity. There's enough partial immunity from vaccination and prior infection that the curve is flattened. My opinion is that eventually everyone may have to be exposed and develop natural immunity, but it will likely take 5-10 years (as MY's prior post described) rather than 2 violent years and it's over.
2) Coronaviruses mutate quicker and are more infectious than influenza so there will be this constant interplay where the virus can mutate to decrease effectiveness of the vaccine and we'll have recurrent surges. Recurrent surges will threaten to overwhelm hospitals and new masking requirements will be implemented all over again. (Or not, as happened recently in Florida, and the hospitals get overwhelmed with a significant number of people dying.)
3) Our population is significantly older than in 1918. Medical care has advanced significantly since then. So instead of people getting sick and either recovering or dying, you have people hospitalized. Which, once again, leads to the possibility of overwhelming hospitals, requiring masking.
So, eventually masking becomes an accepted part of the culture and no one thinks twice about having to mask on airplanes. Just the way no one thinks twice about needing to wear a seatbelt. Anyway, I could be wrong, but this is what I predict.
>>..My opinion is that eventually everyone may have to be exposed and develop natural immunity, but it will likely take 5-10 years...so there will be this constant interplay where the virus can mutate to decrease effectiveness of the vaccine and we'll have recurrent surges.<<
Can doesn't mean "will." Many researchers believe this virus is approaching the physiological limits of its capacity to become more infectious (and/or defeat vaccines):
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-delta-variant-has-been-caged-whisper-it-but-this-may-all-be-over-soon-jgh3lsmn6
Is that my take? I don't have a take, I'm not a scientist. And yes, we may indeed be dealing with deadly outbreaks or waves for another half decade. It's possible! I'm simply pointing out there are a number of different viewpoints held by researchers on this topic.
Just one minor correction: influenza has a higher mutation rate than coronaviruses, due to the proofreading function of the latter's RNA polymerase.
Ok. Did not know that. Thanks for the clarification. I'll have to read up on it.
I expect an annual reminder in the form of a PSA or poster in the window of my local CVS. And I’ll stop in and get a shot of a mRNA cocktail that virtually guarantees I will not contract any sort of viral respiratory disease.
I hope you are right Marc.
Have we not adapted? Global mRNA manufacturing capacity is up orders of magnitude from a year ago. It wouldn’t make sense to shift that capacity to other vaccines when billions are still unvaccinated. PPE is broadly available. Teleworking is more common.
Congress proved once and for all that stimulus works so well it can wake up an economy from deep freeze within a couple months. In March of 2020, I was afraid even four week lockdowns would cause a depression. That fear was common. It has been dispelled.
Finally, the social dissensus over COVID has owes to its having a curiously ambiguous lethality. If it were 5x more lethal, lockdowns would be uncontroversial. If it were 5x less lethal, only scolds would want coercive distancing. Covid isn’t that big a risk for healthy young people but is a moderate risk for older people so it creates a dynamic where some people are fanning hysteria for personally rational reasons and others feel put upon by scolds. The chances the next pandemic is both roughly as lethal and roughly as contagious as covid are actually pretty small.
Very optimistic!
America did prove adaptive. It experienced high fatalities because it has a shitty public health baseline. Americans under 65 were something like 2.5 times as likely to die if infected as similar Canadians.
The number of obese, addled and unhealthy people in America is staggering. A historian of the French revolution described the peasantry as a person up to his chin in water, even a slight deepening could prove disastrous. The American precariat treads in deeper water than those in other advanced countries.
We did not make a dent in obesity during the pandemic nor did we enact universal healthcare. Our structural deficiencies remain. However, America did a good job with vaccines, teleworking and debt financing.
I strongly suspect the pandemic will increase the appetite for health care reform. It will swing some moderates towards action, whether that proves decisive enough to result in legislation is uncertain.
Next year, Biden should make health care reform front and center.
His slogan should be “Too many americans died of covid because our public health policies are crap.”
I don't live in America, I live in a developing country that provides manufacturing for America. It is pretty clear that we haven't "adapted".
The ongoing global supply chain woes make clear that there's a lot more to the story than whether the richest country on Earth can make 500 million vaccines for itself in short order.
The Great Famine in Ireland wasn’t as bad as Chinese famines in the 19th century because Ireland was part of the UK, which was rich for 1847, and which (begrudgingly and stingily) provided relief. Without public works projects, subsidized emigration and grain purchases, the Irish famine would have been much worse.
Which is to say the richest countries are always able to weather distress better than poor ones. Look at how many people in the developing world die of cholera and in floods. Poor countries usually get poor outcomes
Bad example. Famines are caused by poor governance. If Britain actually cared about individual Irish people, they would have mitigated it. UK governance could have been even worse of course. This is a great topic if Matt Yglesias wants to indulge in more UK bashing. Repeated famines under the British empire, stopped once countries got even minimally competent self-government.
It sounds like you've done you're research so I'll defer to you, but, Ireland lost something like 12% of its population to hunger/disease in five years. Did China go through anything quite that bad?
(But sure, your point about rich countries weathering storms is obviously valid.)