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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 will take this opportunity to make a point that everybody forgets. The big problem with COVID-19 is not that it’s deadly, it’s that spreaders don’t take themselves out of commission like they do with the flu. Basically the whole left, never Trump, and most of the paranoid political executives screw this up. All it does is make everybody dumber about everything.
I do believe there is an element of the masks being a reminder of how government controls our lives. Time to burn them . . .
I read some articles about how every level of the left and some never trump just love collectivism regardless of its efficacy. They want everybody to be centrally planned rowing the boat based on the plan. They love it.
I get that a pandemic requires central planning, but these people aren’t trustworthy or smart.
What comment?
Sorry. The original comment by the doctor. I was doing some interpolation on how you wrote that but maybe I shouldn’t have. There is one forum member that is a doctor that keeps saying it’s basically 100% certainty because there are 100 research papers that say it reduces the R0.
Science!!!
@seawriter
@buckpasser
@stad
My wife was tasked with the job of implementing CDC “guidelines” as further digested by school system administrators to design a school day and all schedules for the parochial school where she is indispensable. It has largely consisted of various stupid applications of the six-foot rule.
Only half the students are in the building each day, the other half attend via remote. That way they have enough room to stay in the same classroom with the same other kids all day–six feet apart. They are expected to socially distance when going to lockers, lunchroom, or recess. (The fact of sharing the same circulated air in the same spaces and passing through the expended air of others in a hallway is not part of the CDC magic metrics nor is the reality of actual child behavior.)
At recess, their classroom group must remain 30 feet from other groups. Think about that for a sec. If six feet is magically effective why would you ever need to be 30 feet from any group or individual when outdoors? Oddly enough, there is no requirement to record wind direction and velocity to adjust spacing accordingly. The kids cannot share or exchange objects such as a ball. Bathroom use is–complicated. And everybody wears masks all day.
Children are highly resistant to COIVID-19 and at far less risk for flu fatality that in most flu years. No child of grade-school age has died from COVID in the school’s entire region (DC, MD, and VA). (Two teens have died in MD.) And kids as a group are now known with some certainty to be very poor transmitters whether symptomatic or not.
School closings and all of these containment procedures are utterly insane.
If anybody tests positive in the school (and somebody is sure to be at some time) there will probably be a panic and a closing. Like most of the developed world that school is largely held hostage to the fears of the most fearful, most innumerate members of the community and by the bureaucrats who feed on that fear.
When our leaders admit it’s over, I want no garbage about how we got through it together. I want scalps and I want “expert” careers put up against the wall and executed. I want no quarter for those like Andrew Cuomo who want to impose their revisionist version of the COVID fiasco. This can never be repeated.
Public health is worthless. Decades to get ready.
I just checked the Ontario death rate and compared it to the case count. The case count has gone up incredibly fast. The death rate is the same as it has been since the end of July.
The Pandemic is over. Its now about managing the crisis.
These are the same people who screwed up the Iraq war and why the USA is stuck in Afghanistan 20 years later. They screwed up all that, why should I listen to them on this.
Yakima is not quite as bad. Central and Eastern Washington are a lot better than Western WA. I haven’t worn a mask this whole time (I tie a bandanna around my neck) and I’ve never put one on my boys (6 and 8). Nobody says anything, anymore. I could see all of the dominoes falling relatively soon.
Not in Seattle, though. Was over there several weeks ago, and there is 100% masking. People walking around by themselves, jogging, riding bikes, etc… all masked. If masks work, there shouldn’t be a single positive case in Seattle. Of course, they don’t… but nobody cares much about the facts, anymore.
Try looking at graphs for hospitalizations and deaths, and maybe you’ll change your mind.
Also, look at the numbers for your lower graph. 0 – 200 – 400 – 600. On the top graph, it’s 1k – 2k – 3k.
If you’re still swallowing the propaganda, that’s on you. Enjoy wearing your mask. But, as I said, the dominoes will fall as more and more people realize they’re being lied to by power-hungry politicians.
Pandemic has been over for a very long time. At this point, everything we’re doing is all cost with no benefit. (that was likely also true for everything we did in the beginning, too). Interestingly, masks/distancing don’t seem to have eliminated the flu… so unless people want to now start arguing that the flu is some horrible novel pandemic that would be killing millions of people but for our extreme measures … which, of course, they’re not.
The narrative is falling apart by the say. As a Montanan (who currently lives in WA), I am very happy to see that Montanans are emerging from this madness faster than many. We still visit family there regularly, and I was discouraged by all the masked faces I saw last time (nobody complained that I wasn’t wearing one). So I’m hopeful that it was short-lived.
As far as graphs are concerned, I am truly amazed by the power of propaganda. Having read Animal Farm and studied Russian history, I shouldn’t be surprised by that, but I’ve fallen victim to having lived in a free country for too long.
I have long pointed out that that the most “novel” thing about CV19 is the fact that we have literally cancelled every other risk in our lives in order to focus solely on this one. Imagine if we looked at daily graphs for the flu; not just cases, but even hospitalizations and deaths, and imagine what it would look like if we reacted as we have for CV19.
If we flip that around, and instead rely on what we’re actually experiencing and seeing… well, again, it would be a totally different reaction. That so many people are unable to take that step back and gain some perspective is truly astonishing, and frightening. China just learned the most important and possibly history-defining fact that has emerged in the last several hundred years. It has witnessed the self-destruction of the West, and how easily that was accomplished, and how willing we were to roll over and take it.
I try to imagine Anthony Fauci as commander of the Pacific in WWII right after Pearl Harbor: “We should retreat to the West Coast, absorb the cost of yielding Hawaii to the Japanese, and just wait until they make
a vaccinea dozen more carriers. You assume we can defend Midway? I believe you are alone in that, sir.”A constant state of fear while awaiting rescue by government experts is a truly lousy way to live.
A-yup.
Not so astonishing when you think of the nightly newscasts on TV intoning the latest death count. I think they have convinced a good portion of the population that a Covid diagnosis is a death sentence.
And the constantly changing stories. How long ago was it that we heard “I wear a mask for you, you wear a mask for me” (to side-step around the actual science that says masks don’t work)? Well … that was convenient until enough people stopped questioning it, and now we’ve moved on to “Trump got infected because he didn’t wear a mask!” This is all so amazingly ridiculous, and we’ve become so lazy and foolish that we’ll believe the very latest flashy thing we’re told, though it contradict everything that came before. And dissenting voices are silenced, because we’ve created a world where “solidarity” is more important than truth.
When they do that, they obviously don’t understand what they are forcing on us. i.e. the nominal Republican governor of Ohio.
They need to be shamed into to putting on a dog and pony show about masks. There is no excuse not to.
You’ve expressed the idea that I’ve been unable to, that I feel almost everyone is missing. All the discussion (which I admit IS interesting, scientifically) seems to be a like a big dance, where everyone goes round and round in a circle, trying not to look toward the center where one of our friends is being beaten to death. We are all trying to distract ourselves from the crime by dancing and silliness.
Part of the problem is that we only see deaths by COVID (and not an accurate assessment). We don’t see flu deaths reported daily or any other contagious diseases. We now have nothing to compare it to. In the beginning we knew it was bad for old people (I’m 64) and not for others. Rather than take care of those people (who for the most part weren’t working), we quarantined everyone else and basically ruined our economy. Because of all this we have remote schools (which punish any children in the 1st thru 5th grade at least who can’t sit still all day) and people who can’t work either because the government says they can’t or they are single and can’t work from home and watch there children remote “learning”.
I don’t see how the “experts” can say we’re done with masks or social distancing. They say even one death is too many. Even with a vaccine people will die-do they die from flu after vaccination? WE are being set up to live like this forever.
I certainly don’t see the endgame.
At what point will Our Leaders™ declare the crisis over and we can all go back to normal?
At what point will the citizen class decide it can go back to normal?
(Those aren’t going to be the same date.)
I just don’t see a big announcement that says “As you were!” Our Leaders™ had the political will to lock us all down and mask us all up. But I don’t think any of them have the political will to say “over now.”
Back in February or earlier, I was really afraid that this was a more or less invariably deadly disease, very possibly a leaked bioweapon. But after the last EIGHT months I haven’t seen anything like what I feared. And I have seen scant comparisons to what the death schedules differ from what was expected (and we have screwy reporting, and haphazard or even biased collating of the data that is collected). It’s old and pointless to argue suicide, drug and alcohol deaths, and deaths and disability from missed necessary medical treatments, if we don’t have reliable numbers to look at.
This is one of the reasons why I scoff at mask wearing. This is so complicated in actuality that no one can say with assurance that it does work, and how well, and under what circumstances. The closest I can get to the fact is that it theoretically should work at times.
Add to this the changing and contradictory “scientific” rationales for masks — from masks are not necessary, to masks are necessary, to masks protect the other person (granny), to masks protect the wearer (such as the president).
If the facts and rationales change by whim or policy, what actual truth can we make important life and socio-ecnomic decisions on?
Could you provide a reference to these papers?
They were pummeling mask policy on Breitbart News Daily this morning. Every single week there is more data against it.
I really wish some patriotic libertarian with ambush these guys with a public relations campaign to shame them in to putting on a dog and pony show about masks. They don’t have the slightest idea if it improves the R0. Then their babbling clearly indicates they don’t remember how it started, or that they have thought about it very much. This should not be happening in this country,
If you give them the benefit of the doubt, it changes the radius of spread from a spreader and this is going to lower the R0. That is literally the only logical thing they have.
Just to be clear, I don’t think it’s a big deal to put on a good mask in certain obvious risky situations, but we are talking about a top down social policy here.
I am just so disgusted with Never Trump Republicans and anyone that doesn’t think about how this stupid mask policy actually has to work for it to be worth it.
Collectivist sheep babbling about The Collective. #vomit
I live in a building with 60 percent of people who are in the at risk group. So i wear a mask.
Ha ha ha, our betters are always so GD angry at us, aren’t they? How dare we think for ourselves.