If masks work, and you don’t wear one, you are potentially killing people and worsening the pandemic.
If they aren’t needed, and you do wear one anyways, no harm has been done.
There, corrected your typo for you.
This isn't the evaluation we're having though. If it was purely a personal choice to wear one or not then maybe. As it stands, most people were compelled by law to wear a mask under every circumstance whether it made sense or not. The argument quickly went from "wear a mask to protect yourself" to "everyone MUST wear a mask under every situation". It then split into two silly sides signally to their camps and a horrible political divide got much worse. Yeah, harm has been done.
The CDC's recommendations changed yesterday. It'll take a couple days for states to adjust accordingly.
A debate on mask mandates in general over the last year is probably off topic, but I'm inclined to see them as quite justifiable.
Given current and recent events in the U.S., it's also probably best not to give the police even more reason to be able to stop and question folks for what is a very minor infraction. With something like mask mandates, it's a highly visible signal that must be obeyed by every single person, so it's prone to enforcement abuse. In general, it's just not worth it to get flu numbers down, particularly when we weren't really scared as a society about the flu before now. As always, if you're sick stay home or even wear a mask out. Laws to enforce this? Not so much.
What I'm getting at is if it were just a permanent law like "wear a shirt (if female)" or "wear pants" what's the harm?
Why not a mandate to require wearing a jacket out in the winter? Not only could you injure yourself, but you put others at risk if they have drive through the harsh conditions to save you if frostbite gets you - and most wear their jacket out anyways when it’s so cold, so what’s the harm?
While we’re at it: perhaps we make owning too much alcohol illegal. Getting too drunk is widely considered best to avoid (it sucks to throw up!), so no harm done, and you wouldn’t be able to harm yourself or others with dangerous intoxication levels. No harm done right?
How about we just mandate washing hands after the bathroom - it’s pretty gross and think of all the sickness it causes, and there’s really no inconvenience with the sick right there and all. Where’s the harm?
These all lie on a spectrum. Why not ban cars? Why not require toothbrushing? Why not requiring people to take the vaccine (if it’s safe for their situation)? Why not require saying hello to people you pass on the right side of the sidewalk? Why not mandate snapping your fingers and doing jazz hands to get others attention when someone is about to step in gum? Why not mandate wearing your shirt inside out each Wednesday in order to slightly prolong the life of your clothing and thereby save planetary resources for future generations?
Just because something isn’t that inconvenient (by your standards nonetheless) doesn’t justify the state mandating it and implicitly enforcing it with the threat of imprisonment.
Should you go to jail for not wearing a mask for flu season? That’s why it shouldn’t be a mandate: because the state has not right to coerce people with the threat of violence for innane actions no matter how harmless the act may be.
If you don’t wear a mask for flu season (or any other regular disease we vaccinate against and is part of regular life), does the govt fine you? And if you don’t pay that fine presumably they take you to jail?
Should people go to jail for not wearing a mask for the flu? If not, then there shouldn’t be a mask mandate for it - even if you think there’s no harm.
That was never the argument. Wearing masks isn't about protecting yourself (only properly-fitted high-grade masks do that well, and regular people wearing those would have taken supply away from medical staff). Wearing masks is about protecting other people from you spreading the virus (which they do a decent job of when combined with distancing).
The reason it can't just be a personal choice is because not wearing a mask isn't endangering you, it's endangering other people. It's the same reason we don't let people smoke indoors. And having a blanket rule to always wear a mask in public was mainly about keeping the messaging simple. Constant debating over which situations were safe or not for going maskless would have harmed our overall responnse to the virus. The reason the CDC changed their guidance is that there's now enough evidence to confidently say that vaccinated people can't spread the virus to others, but honestly it may potentially cause those same issues.
Yes it was. It's easy to forget what the actual messaging was in the early days. Originally we were all talking about not using up medical masks or N95 masks, which were meant to "protect the wearer from contact with droplets and sprays that may contain germs."[1] Then we all switched to wearing these homemade masks and the messaging turned to wearing them was important to stop the spread to other people. And it had to be done in every single circumstance.
> Constant debating over which situations were safe or not for going maskless would have harmed our overall responnse to the virus.
That is legitimately up for debate. One could make a good case that a noble lie to the public does more harm because it erodes trust in the institution that fibbed in order to "keep it simple". Part of the reason we were in this mask controversy mess is because the authorities were saying one thing and scientist were saying other things in many cases. Not always, but in some cases.
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
I’m not proposing keeping the mandate.
No, you absolutely are not killing people. This is absurd alarmist propaganda designed to guilt people into acting a certain way.
> If they aren’t needed, and you do wear one anyways, no harm has been done.
This is a particularly insidious argument. First, you’re required to agree to your first point about killing people. Second, you’re required to agree that compelled mask wearing has no harm.
Neither of these statements are true.
Over here in my parts of Eastern-Europe the government just announced yesterday that starting tomorrow (Saturday) the mask won't be mandatory anymore in almost all outdoor spaces for everyone, a statement which was received with joy and relief by almost everyone, no matter their political orientation.
There is perhaps a correlation between masks and political leaning, but there is also cross correlation between those things and higher education, age, race, urban residence, and other confounding variables.
Moreover, I think it's a greater signal to refuse to wear a mask. At least where I live, pretty much everyone goes along with the mask guidance despite a large Republican presence. So if you're simply wearing a mask, there's not much ground to assume anything about your political affiliations.
This would have been unthinkable yesterday.
This is how critical thinking works. If an organization advises something you think might be risky, you question it, and maybe don't do the potentially-risky thing until you have more information. But if an organization advises you to do something they claim reduces risk, you go ahead and do it. If information later comes out that this risk-reducing thing wasn't useful, then you stop doing it; you haven't lost anything by trying it.
Regardless, we've all seen what happens in places where restrictions were lifted earlier than they should have been. Being cautious is the right move.
As for myself, I'll be fully protected by the vaccine in about two weeks. I'll likely continue wearing a mask in public in order to help others around me feel more comfortable (because they have no idea if I've been vaccinated or not), but among people I know, I'll take the mask off. Once the vaccination rate is high enough around here, I'll leave it off in public, too, assuming state/local mandates allow it.
My point is that last year, the party line was "the CDC is above questioning."
> If information later comes out that this risk-reducing thing wasn't useful, then you stop doing it; you haven't lost anything by trying it.
Pretty much every COVID mitigation has some negative effect, so I don't think "you haven't lost anything" is accurate.
My personal hesitation is that people are just going to ignore the explicit condition of full vaccination. Worst case outcome could result in dragging the pandemic out and providing opportunity for new variants to develop.
A concern closer to home is that this will increase risk for my parents, who have been hesitant about the mRNA vaccines and refuse J&J because is produced using a fetal cell line.
And it’s not just my own parents. Like 30% of the US seems like they are not going to get a vaccine any time soon, and I worry that the guidance critically depends on the assumption that unvaccinated people will still mask up and distance. I don’t think it’s a very good assumption (would love to be proven wrong), and I don’t know what that means for the public health outlook of this new guidance.
This is a super emotional topic for a lot of people, so it doesn’t really make a difference for them that there are no PERC.C6 cells in the actual vaccine, or that the cell line is from the 80s, or any of that. I can at least understand this hesitancy, unlike the misinformation-fueled notion that the mRNA vaccines will change your DNA or something.
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-johnson-aborted-id...
https://www.janssen.com/emea/emea/janssen-vaccine-technologi...
The point is, how much does this new public health guidance depend on the assumption that people will accept the responsibility to either mask up or get vaccinated?
Also, for the mRNA vaccine, you may want to emphasize that this is the result of several decades of research, not a one-year crash program in new technology.
The Catholic Church's position is that the J&J vaccine is acceptable if it's the only vaccine you can get, but you should not get it if any of the other vaccines are available to you. Your comment makes it sound like they consider it acceptable unconditionally, which isn't the case.
I have no idea if that helps the poster's parents decide to get vaccinated, but it's very clear that the Pope wants them to take the J&J shot if they don't have an alternative. And they currently don't have one they will accept.
None of the other vaccines are available to the poster's parents (held up mRNA technology fear, even though they are available via distribution), so the Church's logic should still hold