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It's actually the state governments that's at fault here. Not the specifically the people. Let me tell you I was in back-country Oregon recently, some of the MOST republican places within Oregon, not going to name drop the county. Anyway, the Oregon state government is very much democratic (cause you know Portland). But because of that, even the republican counties are under a mask order. And the extremely red counties, people are actually wearing masks all over the place. Grocery stores even are employing someone to just stand there and either hand a cheapy surg. mask or tell them to put one on.

So what I'm saying is that regardless of what people WANT to do, the state has the power and push to get people to do it. And this is why we need Biden in office yesterday.

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Grocery stores even are employing someone to just stand there and either hand a cheapy surg. mask or tell them to put one on.

In the more advanced countries, such as Thailand, this is automated.[1] The store entrance gate won't open until the automated face scan has seen a mask. Hikvision has a mask and temperature detection system integrated with their face recognition systems.[2] If you already have a face recognition system, adding mask detection is a software update. And yes, face recognition now works on people with masks.

[1] https://twitter.com/i/status/1312668730791403520

[2] https://www.hikvision.com/uk/solutions/solutions-by-applicat...

> In the more advanced countries, such as Thailand, this is automated.

Having facial recognition everywhere isn't necessarily considered "advanced" in all circles. Technically, perhaps. Ethically? Not so much.

Facial recognition could be put everywhere in the US. Its primarily the political, legal, and social culture that prevents it, not the access to sufficient technology.

Facial recognition everywhere is a horrifying thought.

Some might see a million dead people as a worse thought.

I don't really like the idea of facial recognition, but the political class lives in a public facing world where every move they make is scrutinized. So they see the world maybe differently than when they're private citizens.

I guess it depends where each person falls on the “freedom vs safety” spectrum. I’m strongly on the “freedom” side. But I feel it’s a perspective based in some objectivity, as it’s generally a lot easier for one to protect themselves than to free themselves.

perhaps it will incentivizes mask wearing to get around the facial recognize and tracking and help with covid as a side effect

calling this facial recognition is a bit of stretch when its more akin to "is a mask present?", not trying to match to people in a database. No different then self driving cars detecting a pedestrian. very far from unethical (although i would hope they would make an effort to accommodate all skin colors to not unintentionally discriminate against anyone.)

> not trying to match to people in a database

Are you sure it’s not building one?

What is it going to record? "Dude with a mask" ?

Facial recognition with masks is already working [1]. So storing facial images of all customers entering store with or without mask is essentially the same.

[1] https://apex.aero/articles/facial-recognition-tech-works-mas...

“Dude who ignored a mask mandate from the government”

Software, or a person, could do this without knowing whose face is presented and without keeping records.

That's not enough. Someone standing in front of such a system cannot tell whether records are kept, or shared.

1. One risk is that the government will slowly erode any limitations. In Germany, one of the most privacy oriented countries, restaurants were required to collect contact information. This was announced as being strictly for covid contract tracing purposes. Less than a month later, the police in multiple states were found to have demanded and received access to those lists for reasons entirely unrelated to covid. So any default level of trust has already been betrayed.

2. Another risk is that the vendors themselves might prefer "alternative definitions" of record keeping and data sharing for various reasons (e.g. processing in the cloud and/or by third-party companies with even less restrictions, data collection for ML training purposes, selling the same dataset for profit, "flagged as hidden" vs "never actually stored", "stored to persistent media then deleted" vs "never persistently stored", preventing access by contractual/legal vs technical means...). The people making such promises are never ever the engineers that actually understand their system. And similar to the previous paragraph, companies have every incentive to slowly erode any guarantees they might've actually met at some point.

3. The people buying the products (shop owners) as a general rule have neither the expertise, time, motivation nor source code level access to call the vendors out.

`In the more advanced countries, such as Thailand, this is automated.` That seems very dystopian.

It's both. You can still wear masks in areas where they aren't explicitly necessary. In liberal cities in many "red" states, most people wear masks. It's 100% a "culture war" thing at this point. When I was moving from CA back East a few months ago, I saw practically nobody wearing masks even in rural CA.

That's not even mentioning that it's the people who are electing governments which don't require these basic public health requirements.

> Let me tell you I was in back-country Oregon recently, some of the MOST republican places within Oregon, not going to name drop the county.

Not sure the name drop matters given the other information you shared ;) I won't name drop it either but for future curious readers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Oregon

Are we talking about Malheur county?

You know who else has the power to lead people and states? The federal government. Almost like they were empowered specifically for this kind of scenario.

I started thinking about this when thinking of the United Nations. If the UN had become what it could have, we would have some sort of federal world system that could tackle things like climate change, etc. This same thing occurs at different levels. The US federal government is in the best position to enforce regulations that require collective state action, like pandemic response. If they’re not solving the problems they’re uniquely in a position to solve, then what’s the point of federal taxes?

no, the federal government exists to defend the interests of the states, and resolve disputes between them. it's not meant to be a higher level of authority.

> no, the federal government exists to defend the interests of the states, and resolve disputes between them.

Clearly, yes.

> it's not meant to be a higher level of authority.

The Supremacy Clause fairly explicitly disagrees.

yes, but the supremacy clause applies only to laws written within its (federal) jurisdiction, as enumerated in the constitution (and amendments). the battle there, of course, is how much jurisdiction can be finagled under the interstate commerce clause and the like.

In your opinion, has COVID-19 had any effect on interstate commerce? Or is interstate commerce the same as it was this time last year?

all commerce, including the interstate kind, has slowed down due to the pandemic response, but that certainly doesn't mean that the interstate commerce clause should be invoked for covid (or in many other cases that it has been employed by the federal gov't). that power should be reserved for things like collusive, coercive, and anti-competitive behavior, its intended purpose.

for epidemiological concerns, the public health services act is the relevant federal legal framework, as @dragonwriter mentioned elsewhere.

however, a national mask mandate is a political ploy unlikely to lower infection rates materially vs. less visible and harder-to-enforce mitigations. it's polarized pangeantry, being pushed to put some points on the political board and coalesce power. anyone who cares about getting past the pandemic should punish such ineffective partisan behavior in favor of real meaningful, targeted, and effective measures--start with focusing on private social gatherings, the primary vector of spread (and completely unrelated to interstate commerce), not meaningless public displays of compliance.

> all commerce, including the interstate kind, has slowed down due to the pandemic response, but that certainly doesn't mean that the interstate commerce clause should be invoked for covid (or in many other cases that it has been employed by the federal gov't). that power should be reserved for things like collusive, coercive, and anti-competitive behavior, its intended purpose.

> for epidemiological concerns, the public health services act is the relevant federal legal framework, as @dragonwriter mentioned elsewhere.

The Public Health Services Act is almost entirely an exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause. (Some bits of it may be grounded elsewhere, but that is the main source of authority for the Act.)

You can't really say it's the right statutory authority and say that the Commerce Clause should not be invoked in this context.

> "The Public Health Services Act is almost entirely an exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause."

some quick research reveals that the federal quarantine powers of the PHSA are largely restricted to state and national borders. so that's indeed based (partly) in the commerce clause, protecting trade across borders from destabilizing forces. but the 5th & 14th amendments (due process and equal protection) also contribute, as does the necessary and proper clause (allowing the fed to use unenumerated powers to carry out its charter, and only its charter, when necessary and proper).

but a true national quarantine, where people are confined to homes or communities, and other proposed national measures (like a mask mandate) would require broader powers that go beyond the commerce clause, and that was the (unstated) common understanding from which i was arguing from before.

i still find this use of the commerce clause troubling, as it's just another stepping stone in the consolidation of power away from states to a future autocrat. the commerce clause is meant to curtail human-induced distortions on interborder trade, not pandemics.

The states aren't run by stupid people. They're not gonna send in some state cops start shooting people over masks or to escalate in that direction. They don't have the manpower to enforce mask mandates without the consent of the governed. Their options for projecting power into areas where people have relatively homogeneously chosen to not comply are limited.

There are plenty of examples of unpopular rules successfully enforced, from school integration to the War On Drugs. The lack of mask/distancing enforcement is purely government cowardice and indifference. They could do it if they wanted to.

Publicly fire a few county bumpkin Sheriffs who refuse to enforce the mandates and you'd see an attitude change.

So when people protest, are you going to break up the protests?

That's the thing, in rural Oregon they protested the election, but they're definitely walking into grocery stores wearing the masks.

AFAIK most (all?) sheriffs can't be fired. They're elected county officials, so maybe they could be impeached but I really don't think they can be just outright fired like that.

Also, I would imagine many of the sheriffs that refuse to enforce mandates probably have considerable support from their constituents. Surely that would make their impeachment a significantly more difficult ordeal for whatever agency is responsible for the impeachment proceedings.

Do you think mask mandates are working in the other states due to enforcement? They aren't. People are just wearing them because they accept the seriousness and have a sense of the risk and their responsibility.

Some do it out of shame, others necessity (e.g. shop not letting you in without a mask) but nobody is afraid of being arrested for failing to wear a mask.

With mask noncompliance so widespread, what exactly is Biden going to do? Throw all the anti-maskers in jail? Post law enforcement outside their houses to force them to quarantine? In fact, while the state technically has legal authority to get people to comply with mask mandates, they don't literally have the ability to do so. So, I would argue that the state doesn't have the "power" to do anything here at all, or, at least that it hasn't been demonstrated to date.

Yeah, but uhhh shouldn't you change your view while dying?? I mean... That's just plain insane.

I'm reminded of monthy python: those lost arms?!? Just a scratch!

Oregon’s cases are skyrocketing:

https://covid-19.direct/state/OR

Much of this is in Portland:

https://covid-19.direct/county/OR/Multnomah

I think we can pretty safely conclude that any data saying blue cities have it worse than bumfuck nowhere towns must be misleading or manipulated. It just doesn't line up with what we know about education levels and compliance levels.

There are more total cases in Portland because of the population numbers. From what I recall, the per capita numbers bounce around, with rural counties going through outbreaks occasionally taking the lead. There was a church in La Grande that had a big one in late spring. Sure put the lie to the notion that it was "density" and a "city problem".

The graphs I linked use the Covid Tracking Project API. The data is not manipulated in any way.

Blue cities are denser than outlying red areas. Density means more opportunities for transmission. All else being equal, they would see higher transmission and per-capita infection rates.

The fact that we see the opposite is unfortunate and unnecessary.

San Francisco is the second densest city in America. San Francisco has the lowest COVID transmission rates of any city, with recently a positive test rate under 1%. Masks matter.

I wonder if cities having a high proportion of knowledge workers that are all able to work from home has a big impact too. The less people gather in groups, the better.

San Francisco has imposed unrelenting, draconian business closures for most of 2020, and only barely allowed re-opening of a few classes of business in late summer before closing them again in the fall. The city has seen a mass exodus amongst the worst in the nation.

And yet, despite all of this, and despite some of the strictest mask rules in the world, and the highest rates of compliance...cases have almost quadrupled since mid-October:

https://covid-19.direct/county/CA/San%20Francisco

But sure, none of that matters: if cases go down, it’s because masks. If they go up, it’s because someone didn’t wear their mask right. There can be no other explanation.

Much of it is due to private gatherings without masks, gyms, and maybe bars and restaurants.

From what I can tell (I'm just staying home), people maybe did backyard gatherings when it was nice enough out, but moved indoors and that's gotten a lot of people sick.

> Much of it is due to private gatherings without masks, gyms, and maybe bars and restaurants.

Prove it.

When cases go down, it’s because of masks. When they go up in the same place, it’s because people suddenly stopped wearing them, but no proof is provided for either assertion.

I think we can all agree (and I don't have to prove) that if nobody would ever meet anyone outside their home there would be 0 infections. So that would be the ideal. We could have states just mandate very strict shelter in place. Would you like that?

Probably not, in which case we have to allow people to get outside their homes. When we do that we come up with rules to try to minimize infection rates, distance and mask wearing is supposed to help with that. Is your argument that mask wearing has 0 impact on COVID19 spreading rate?

This article seems to go over a number of studies showing correlation between mask wearing and lower death rates: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8

But if mask wearing isn't helping at all with infectious diseases like COVID19, why are health experts always wearing them? It's a lot more comfortable to not be wearing any mask so they could do that instead. They'd have the data and the skills to determine if it helps or not, much better than we would.

It is a lot more comfortable to not be wearing any mask, that's why health experts like Dr. Fauci wear them only in front of the cameras but take them off when they think the cameras are off.

> I think we can all agree (and I don't have to prove) that if nobody would ever meet anyone outside their home there would be 0 infections. So that would be the ideal. We could have states just mandate very strict shelter in place. Would you like that?

Absolutely. If we were really serious about beating the virus, that's exactly what we would do: Real and strictly enforced stay-at home, and mask wearing for exceptional cases when you had to go out. Coordinated nationally so we didn't have this healthy state - sick state problem. Then stick with it until it succeeded. It would be temporarily economically painful, and people would complain about their freedom to get their nails done and eat at Olive Garden, but we'd get the public health benefit and come out the other side not-dead.

Instead, we managed to do an even worse thing: Announce half-assed "business closures" and stay-at-home orders (more like suggestions), uncoordinated with other states, and unenforced, which gave us the negative economic effects and did not provide the health benefit. To top it off, we opened up way too early, causing this yo-yo effect where cases predictably spike after re-opening, causing re-closing, then a rush to re-open because economy, then another spike, then an inevitable re-close, and on and on.

Unless the vaccines pan out, we're going to be in this exact situation a year from now. Constantly re-opening, faking surprise at the cases spiking, and then re-closing.

This is what https://www.oregon.gov/oha/Pages/index.aspx and our county health program here in Deschutes county are saying. They seem pretty reliable and objective.

Oregon still seems to be doing relatively better.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k...

Cases are skyrocketing everywhere. While your statement is true, it's extremely misleading.

Oregon is 47th place in terms of population adjusted total cases. In terms of number of absolute new cases, Oregon is 40th. Every state with fewer absolute new cases than Oregon is smaller with the exception of Lousiana. Oregon has done a fantastic job of handling Covid.

(1) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ .

It isn’t misleading in any way: the parent was talking about mask rules in Oregon, asserting that they make all the difference. Yet cases are going up, all over Oregon, and especially in the places with the most compliance.

The fact that cases are going up all over the northern hemisphere - in places both with mask rules and without - should tell you something very important about the effectiveness of those rules.

I'm not sure why you're being purposely ignorant. Rules in Oregon have been relatively more strict so Oregon has had relatively fewer cases. Oregon lifted restrictions, opening up dining & gyms for example leading to an increase in cases. As a response, Oregon has reentered a lockdown.

What's so complicated?

How civil.

Oregon’s restrictions were no more or less strict than, say, New York City. In New York, gyms are open, dining is open.

New York is currently at 20 per 100k cases per day. Portland is at 100 per 100k. I suppose this means that New York is masking harder?

What’s so complicated?

You understand that state governments are made up of people from the state right?

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