Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Local Montanans Decide They’re Done Wearing Masks
I first noticed the pattern when picking up my cheese pizza at Little Caesar’s. Signs were everywhere: “Due to the Coronavirus, we are asking that you not wait in the lobby.” “Due to the governor’s order, masks are required for entry into this establishment.” With a little intake of breath, I realized I’d left my mask in the car. Then I saw that no one behind the counter was wearing a mask. Neither was the other customer, a man waiting casually in the lobby for his special order. The next time I got a hankering for pizza, I noticed the same thing. Montanans in our town are just finished with the mask mandate, and certain establishments and their clientele have tacitly agreed that going maskless is fine.
If I had a graph of mask compliance around here, it would show a steep, narrow curve. It’d start with about a third of locals in the stores wearing them, often older women and workers. Before the governor made the order, there were national guidelines, and probably some state and county recommendations, too, so we all had the feeling we were supposed to be wearing them. But the mask wearers stood out. And then the governor gave the order in July, some weeks after our re-opening, enforced through the businesses. Everyone was masked, and one of my friends told a story about being ordered out of a coffee shop after protesting she had a health condition, and told never to return. My graph shoots up to about 98%.
Then after some weeks, I noticed a trend of shoppers and workers wearing the masks right under their noses. They were wearing them just enough to avoid accusations of non-compliance. Not sure what that does to my graph. Enthusiasm was certainly falling. And now I go into places where almost no one is wearing a mask, or they’re doing it with the mouth-only compromise. They are only sort of wearing them. The line of my graph plummets down to 20% or so, except for in the number of stores that still strictly require them for entry.
The other night, upon entering a taco shop, I noticed that an older man and a younger one, presumably his son, had gone in right ahead of me. It was actually hard not to notice them, because before they strolled to the entrance, they were yelling back and forth, something about their car. It sounded like they were upset, but once in the restaurant, they appeared chummy and cheerful–Montanans do that sort of thing with their conversation decibels, and this public volume often has no correlation to feelings of anger. However, I also noted two other factors that had me tensed for some unpleasantness. First, there were signs pleading with customers to wear masks. One said: “Be kind. We are just trying to stay open.” I felt the pathos of the plea, and the resolution to uphold the requirement. Second, however, I saw that this vocal pair were not wearing masks, and neither were the required accessories anywhere near their persons.
But nothing unpleasant happened. The older man leaned up against the tall counter, behind which were both masked and sort-of-masked employees, and deliberated on his order. Near me stood another pair of customers who were not going to ruin their dinner out with face coverings, and a lady next to me who had her mask under her nose. “Do you want guacamole with that?” I could hear the server asking. The older man, after considering, said, “Yeah, go ahead and put all of the good stuff on it” in the same way a diner at a fine restaurant would order the hundred-dollar bottle of wine to go with the meal. He was already splurging on this pleasant fall evening, so he was going to go all out. Guacamole and everything. As they were ringing him up, the employees warmly wished him a great day. And they meant it.
Published in Politics
I am willing to mask up when shopping so that the Man does not get all over my favorite stores, which do risk serious repercussions like shutdowns from local and state officials if they allow too many unmasked patrons. The stores here are not free to make their own policy if they want to stay open, so OK.
But when I take my daily walks, unmasked, along broad trails in the great outdoors, and see people approaching me hastily put on their masks, as though our half-second’s passing each other eight or ten feet apart is as risky to them as if I were pulling a carrion cart full of bubonic plague victims, I just shake my head. Virtually that is. Poor sheeple.
Yes! See this post.
https://ricochet.com/791535/the-war-of-all-against-all/
If the reason for wearing a mask is to reduce the spread of the virus, it is manifestly not working. The virus spreads. There are new cases reported every day, in every state in the Union; those with mask mandates (like my state of Washington), and those without mask mandates. If mask-wearing does not halt the spread of the disease, why wear masks? The adverse societal effects of mask-wearing cancel out any benefits.
Yes, having people cross to the other side of the street because I don’t have a mask on and they do makes me think that we are not free people anymore. And what does six feet of distance mean compared to five feet or seven feet?
As I recall WHO decided one meter of separation was sufficient, so doubled it to two meters as their distancing recommendation – just to be sure. No science behind doubling it. It is the medical equivalent of throwing a pinch of salt over your shoulder.
Just like when I was at work. I would approach my boss’s desk, with my mask on, and she would hastily put on her own mask. As if to say to me: Infection!! Infection!! Must protect myself from this infected employee!! How many times can someone endure that kind of behavior before they start to think of themselves as infected and unclean?
Moreover, if masks work, why maintain 6 feet separation?
If 6 feet separation is effective, why wear masks?
The whole kabuki thing is so over the top, it is laughable (except for all the pain, loss, and destruction of both the economy and civil society, that is).
The pinch of salt has to be exactly 312 mg in order to work.
This morning, while eating rice krispies, I happened to sneeze.
Six feet seems like a good recommendation to me.
Digging a little deeper reveals this:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/montana/
Go to the bottom, look at the daily deaths in Montana. One to five a day since July, with three days higher. Overall the graph is getting denser.
“New cases” are irrelevant. Deaths matter, and they are increasing in Montana (but may have peaked Sept 2-25). Were I in Montana, I would wear a mask indoors in busy or crowded situations, but not elsewhere.
Here in Massachusetts, I follow the rules of my employer or of whatever store I am in, no matter how I may disagree. In the handful of incidents where I walked a quarter mile through a parking lot to get to a store and found at the door that I had no mask, I put on a big smile and was not hassled.
In Minnesota they have civil and criminal penalties for non-owning middle-management. Our commie governor said he was using a “light hand” but it’s a lie.
They have no idea how much it changes the R0 or even if it makes it worse.
They shoved this down our throats unilaterally, so they owe us a dog and pony show about why it supposedly improves things.
This is excellent about the efficacy of lockdowns and the politics of it. Start at 1:51:00
This is also must listen.
But at the Menards my wife and I were escorted out. So we went across town — Mitchell, S.D. — to the competition and no one had masks on. Go figure.
Be sure to listen to the John Ziegler interview about masks and lockdowns on the whiskey politics podcast. That guy is absolutely excellent on the topic.
If you’ve never heard whiskey politics it’s absolutely excellent. Dave is really good at what he does.
The State wants to be the “alpha” and us to be the “betas”. If we wear a mask just because they order us to, we are “beta”. :
If we submit completely to their order, but make some symbolic gesture that salves our egos, it’s a win-win
That is like saying, “Universal backward-walking may eradicate cancer, but…”
It is technically true, but it is silly, and because many Americans have graduated high school, but can no longer perceive that it is silly, they will be willing to continue to support mandatory orders to walk backward until someone gives a strong reason to change.
When Dr. Fauci declared for universal mask-wearing, he provided exactly the same number of supporting scientific papers as there are for backward-walking preventing cancer: zero. That is because there aren’t any, in spite of decades of research on the question.
Or lowering the speed limit to 5 mph would save 25,000 lives a year. Some prices are too high to pay.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said on the recent flagship podcast that they don’t know if masks reduce that R0. There is a famous participant in this forum who is a doctor that says there are 100 research papers that prove it reduces the Ro.
I pay pretty close attention to this topic and I think the data is highly conflicted and it gets worse by the month. We are overdue for a big study about it from Denmark.
I wish some libertarian sugar daddy would start a public relations campaign to force them to put on a dog and pony show about why they say they work.
The Dan Proft podcast is a very good clearinghouse for this subject and everything related to it.
Is that the same guy who was predicting the U.S. would have 2 million dead by now?
It would be more like saying that keeping the speed limit the same would save 25,000 lives. You are accepting the premise that there is a benefit to wearing masks, in terms of preventing the spread of the infection from the wearer, or to the wearer, to weigh against the costs.
In fact, no such connection has been established. Masks as worn by the public today were found to be a potential cause of infection for the wearer but not to have any benefit.
Denmark’s health authorities said that they could find no evidence that mask mandates work so they did not order one. The usual suspects called them bad names. Like in Sweden, everybody in Denmark has not yet died of COVID but any day now…
There are papers that show that masks block almost all big wet loogies when sneezed or coughed. Duh. Whether they work in sustained use in enclosed spaces or as policy is another matter especially since the CDC still has not settled on their theory of transmission to be used as the basis of a guidance doc.
With the conspicuous exception of Massachusetts, almost all the mask mandates went into effect long after the case incidence was already in marked decline.
You can find the dates of implementation of all state COVID mandates, closures etc on the John Hopkins COVID site which conveniently marked each action on the case incidence graph for that state. If anybody can find a graph with even a hint of change from a mask policy, please let me know.
That isn’t what he said, is it? I remember that statement and was at first going to comment on it, but then decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
Several weeks ago one of our medical people cited two studies. One of them was possibly the worst crap ever published in a reputable scientific journal (which journal had let its standards down just for covid-19) and the other was a decent study showing their efficacy under the conditions of the study, though it hardly claimed to go so far as to prove anything.
There’s an apropos moment and quote from The Lion in Winter, when King Henry has locked his rebellious sons in a dungeon, they hear him coming, probably to kill them, and son #1 Richard declares “He’ll not see me beg” [for his life].
His brother criticizes him as if “how you fall matters”, and Richard replies, “When the fall is all there is, it matters.”
One does what one can.
Mm-hmm. Or it’s a “I’m following your silly rules but still flipping you the bird.”
“Beta.” For shame.
I pay very close attention to this stuff and that comment is not even in the ballpark of what the research says in my opinion. There are a lot of doctors that say we have no idea if it works as a ***public health intervention***.
They have known the main way it spreads for a long time. It’s contact over 15 minutes, indoors, with a spreader. There are obvious situations where a mask is probably going to statistically mitigate spread. They are taking it much further than that, obviously.
Now it’s a political issue both ways.
The government really needs to stop talking like it’s totally efficacious.
This is just brutal.
Now that I understand the meaning of the picture I take back my criticism. My bad.
I hate wearing one, and I hate seeing other people in them.
Oh, a prediction: Watch for governors to maintain the mask requirements through flu season. After all, “too many” Americans die from flu every year too . . .
It’s not science – it’s engineering. It’s not uncommon too build in a safety factor of two for tried-and-true designs, or three for new designs.
However, I do believe the doubling was arbitrary in this case, so it’s neither science nor engineering . . .