How's the feeling now in the States? Does it mirror the article?
Nothing convinces them. When a loved one dies of asphyxiation, they shrug it off and say that person died of obesity, old age, or a lack of vitamins. We have nurses telling stories of patients struggling to breath, but who still refuse to believe this virus is real and only cease gasping about the "fake news" when they are intubated.
Complicating this is our HIPAA regulations. The media can't show you what's happening inside our hospitals right now. They can only show the refrigeration trucks for bodies and roads closed for oxygen trucks outside the hospitals. So the conspiracy theorists claim these are for show and that the hospitals are actually empty.
With the complete abdication of leadership at the federal level--where some of our officials are openly urging citizens to fight against policies slowing the spread of the virus, we can do nothing but stay inside and hope to ride this out.
For me, I'm just not going anywhere or doing anything. It turns out that I can have everything delivered, and my risk is essentially 0. I'm going to wait it out until there's a vaccine. If the numbers dip very low in my area, I might try to squeeze in a doctor and dentist visit. I'm not immunocompromised, but it's not that hard to live as if I was. I'm considering this whole thing a bit of an experiment to see how self-sufficient I can be.
Conversely, I have coworkers that are traveling all over the country (wearing masks), and staying at cheap airbnb's. Some are relocating because of the changing housing market. If you don't mind taking on a minimal amount of risk, you can get a lot of good deals on flights/hotels/airbnbs/apartments/etc right now. Personally, even a little risk isn't worth it when I know there's 95% effective vaccine being manufactured.
At this point, it's obvious that we'll never get rid of COVID-19 entirely as a disease. Hopefully it'll become a disease only for the people that believe in "fake news" and "anti-vax".
Collateral damage is a shame, but there's a limit to how much you force other people to do what you want. So be it.
It might seem so, but I'd say it's accurate, for exmaple:
“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real,’” Doering said, adding that some patients prefer to believe that they have pneumonia or other diseases rather than covid-19, despite seeing their positive test results.[1]
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/16/south-dakot...
Keep in mind the general urge to call them morons has the opposite effect. Not saying anyone in the thread specifically has done that, but melodrama/hand-wringing is in the neighborhood.
Especially in the case of COVID, where NY, NJ, MA and CT have per capita death rates two to three times worse than the National average. In early May, over half of all US deaths were in the Boston to DC corridors.
The sort of folks who don’t care much about COVID aren’t posting on HN. Typically. So you will get a sampling bias towards the (over?) aware, or those who have an agenda for or against a particular position on COVID response.
There’s still a huge number of people in complete denial that this is real.
Similarly one can know it's real but have a different perception of risk.
For instance, a recently published controlled trial doesn't show a statistically significant difference between mask wearers and non.
I don't think you're taking away the complete story of the paper you mention. There are two fundamentally different ways in which masks could help: protecting the wearer from others, or protecting others from the wearer.
They state:
"These findings do offer evidence about the degree of protection mask wearers can anticipate in a setting where others are not wearing masks and where other public health measures, including social distancing, are in effect. The findings, however, should not be used to conclude that a recommendation for everyone to wear masks in the community would not be effective in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections, because the trial did not test the role of masks in source control of SARS-CoV-2 infection. During the study period, authorities did not recommend face mask use outside hospital settings and mask use was rare in community settings (22). This means that study participants' exposure was overwhelmingly to persons not wearing masks."
By suggesting that this paper concludes that masks don't help much, it totally ignores the community benefit of widespread mask-wearing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/dont-wear...
I think it is harmful to say that masks protect the wearer (unless they are N95 or better). This is a big and easily attacked surface that only serves to obscure and discredit the real point of wearing masks.
Instead the messaging should focus solely on the fact that they protect others from the infection carried (likely without knowledge) by the wearer, and that people without symptoms can be contagious.
This point needs to be drilled into people's heads until everyone gets it. People also need to be taught to wear masks properly. Wearing one with nose sticking out is darn near useless.
Given the prevailing attitude towards personal freedom and personal responsibility in the US, I wonder what sort of an effect would such explicit messaging would have on the level of mask wearing.
Umm...doesn't show a statistically significant difference between recommending mask wearing or not.
Ironically, when that study was posted here (yesterday?) people were saying in the comments the 'anti-maskers' would jump on it to 'prove' mask wearing wasn't effective.
Beginning of August the deaths per capita in the 7 county Twin Cities area were four times the rate of the rest of the State. It has reduced to only 2.5 times now.
Basically for the first seven months, the COVID fatality rate in the rest of the State was comparable to the 17-18 flu season, perhaps a little better. Folks would reasonably ask why worry...
Given the Twin Cities have had over twice the COVID fatalities per capita is spite of an arguably superior health care system, the city folks themselves aren’t in much of a position to preach what works...
As to the rest of your point, yes, in a large urban area the virus will spread faster and sooner than out-state. However, I've been watching the weekly change per-capita per-county map in the Star Tribune and Hennepin county has been lagging everywhere else for quite some time now, so I think we are in fact in a position to preach about what works.