Masks on planes requirement dropped by some UK airlines
cnn.com
cnn.com
But now, there’s a frigging war going on in Europe, so Covid might as well not exist anymore.
Not to say it's not a good idea to disinfect your shopping cart handle - and the downturn of the last years in non-covid infectious diseases as part of hygienic measures being made mandatory or at the very least somewhat followed proves that -, but it won't help much against covid.
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3372341/
I now always phone ahead if I've got sniffles and ask permission. There should be better ettiquette around things like this.
In western culture it seems like the agreement is that coughs are completely uncontrollable and are acceptable anywhere.
Maybe those that can't control their coughs should wear masks but those healthy enough to suppress coughs do not have to.
You are much more likely to get sick from someone coughing in a small confined space with you vs. if someone has diarrhea in the water next to you.
An alien looking upon this world would probably think it strange and illogical that we are generally okay with the coughing scenario but not with the pool scenario.
There’s so many people that don’t want to wear seatbelts, what hope is there for masks.
Wouldn't it be better to make it it the social norm to wear masks when you have an active respiratory illness - like it is in asia - or when you are at risk rather than forcing everyone to wear them?
I got COVID from one event 3 weeks ago and it threw my plans around.
It wasn't that big of an issue as I have a booster but I planed to visit a close friend who does cancer treatment and I was quite happy that he had no time for a short visit as I learned about my COVID invection two days later and I don't want to put him on unnecessary risk.
Let's see and hope covids route to endemic is getting easier and easier.
Edit: just to clarify, I don’t have anything against anyone who believes in the mask effectiveness and wants to wear it. But I don’t see the point of enforcing the half assed way things are being done.
Also keep ventilation from above right on you at least a little...
Much more frightening were all the people in queues at the airports, bad ventilation, coming close, not wearing a mask at all.
Why so scared? Same reason, didn't want to get even a single day wasted for the first and quite costly vacation, glad it all worked out!
That claim has been made but is questionable. The masks were designed to reduce exposure to the wearer, not so much from the wearer.
It's a matter of physics: When you inhale the suction generated automatically pulls the mask tighter on your face such that the air you breathe in essentially all has to pass through the mask but when you exhale, not so much.
In designing a mask there is a choice between a finer mesh or a looser one. If you pick a very loose mesh - say, cotton gauze - then air is easy to push through when you exhale but so are virus particles. On the other hand if you pick a very tight mesh - say, N95 or better - then air is much harder to push through but exhaling forces the mask slightly away from the face such that moist potentially virus-laden breath puffs out the sides and top. This is why your glasses fog up when wearing an N95 - moist air is escaping out the top of the mask completely unfiltered. (You can find youtube videos demonstrating this process with cigarette smoke). Double- or triple-masking doesn't help either - that makes it even harder for air to pass directly through the masks so even more air pushes out the side and top instead.
If your N95 is VERY well fitted and the strap VERY tight - tight enough to make your ears hurt - you'll get less escape, but wearing a mask that way is sufficiently uncomfortable that almost nobody does it.
In short, an N95 does plausibly filter nearly all the air you breathe IN, but if you want to filter the air you're breathing OUT, you really should be wearing a cleanroom suit.
In theory you don't have to do anything mate. Just lie down in a coffin at home, shut the door and I bet you you won't catch COVID or any other mild respiratory illness. If to you the meaning of life is to get born, not catch COVID under any ridiculous circumstances and then die then this is a dead sure way of achieving your dreams!
I rather live life, take risks, feel my heart beat, go out and spend intimate time with other people, feel the thrill of being close to other human beings, feeling the joy of a person's touch, seeing their beautiful face when they laugh, share food and drinks without being paranoid and indulge myself in everything the world has to offer. Getting a mild cough or feeling a week a bit ill because of a flu every few years is a small price to pay for all the amazing memories I'll collect along the way.
The conservative (true sense of the word) position on this is so frustrating to communicate, because those who want to keep these sorts of policies and patterns are so often coming from people with a risk tolerance profile that I genuinely can’t understand or relate to.
There was and still are good reasons to be careful.
It would have been just stupid to get COVID out of yolo.
Now doctors have much more experience with it, vaccines exists.
There are studies about it.
You don't get infected with COVID just because it's a mix of your own immune reaction, the amount of particles etc.
A mask is really easy to wear and reduces your risk.
I'm not advocating for mask mandates at this point or let's say I don't care about it but if you want to reduce the risk of having COVID while on holiday, I would suggest trying to wear a mask.
Independently of it, in Germany the hospitalization is currently high and plenty of personal is sick. I still don't want to be in a situation of having something really bad and having to be in a hospital right now.
They are nice to wear for this reason.
But when I'm wearing them I do have a proper mask.
Germany is now at 150000-200000 daily new cases.
We have not had this before. This means that you chance to get it and perhaps you being sick for 1-3 weeks is much much higher than before.
It was just something I wanted to share so that you might plan ahead for this case or weir a mask to reduce the risk and have a great holiday.
And for the last few weeks way more people got COVID around myself than ever before.
This is also, next to intensive care capacity, a big risk if for example too many people from police, medical sector, fireman get sick in parallel.
Do we really have any definitive answers around masking effectiveness in different situations, there must have been some decent research by now?
Please, is there real science to back up wearing a mask but still being 18 inches away from each other, for hours on end, or is this just the flight attendants union?
I beg your pardon, but I Really hate masks on planes and I think it’s total BS.
However an airliner is extremely well ventilated - the entire cabin air is refreshed every 3 minutes, through a combination of HEPA filters and fresh outside air. In addition, the airflow in the cabin is vertical - new air is introduced at the top through the nozzles you're used to, and the intakes are by your feet. This means the risk from ambient aerosol transmission is much reduced and direct droplet infection becomes the primary risk vector. I would absolutely expect to see a reduction in transmission if everyone kept wearing masks.
Do they admit they were wrong? Or do they conveniently forget they ever said anything like that and move onto the next conspiracy (which currently is likely to resemble toeing the Kremlin line)?
So I'm guessing option 2.
Sure, I agree it sets a dangerous precedent, but we have been setting those kind of precedents for like 150 years. In that time we’ve had totalitarian states and liberal democracies.
The issue here is that vaccine passports currently have no medical justification but are persisting purely as a punishment (I'd say incentive, but anyone here who hasn't yet been vaccinated will never be swayed by vaccine passports at this point). I of course do expect these to go even in my fairly strict jurisdiction, but now the precedent of punishing people in this way has been set. Was quarantine, mask mandates, vaccine mandates used to punish people in this way previously?
I don’t think mask mandates punish in the same way as a vaccine mandate. You can change your mind and wear a mask instantly. A vaccine takes time and has greater consequences. Mask wearing is also an altruistic act; you put yourself through mild discomfort mostly to benefit those around you. It’s polite because it makes others feel more comfortable. A vaccine, especially when it comes to Omicron, protects you without really effecting risk of infection. So it’s more of a personal choice. Except at the population level where collective vaccine uptake have helped protect hospitals.
Except the UK is an a joke in relation to vaccine passports.
The politicians spout "authoritarian" "libertarian" bullshit as an excuse for not using vaccine passports.
But then THE VERY SAME GOVERNMENT is very happy indeed to introduce a requirement for people to produce ID when voting (Elections Bill). And yet somehow none of the same politicians make any mention of "authoritarian" or "libertarian" when it comes to mandating ID for voting.
Or indeed we are talking about THE VERY SAME GOVERNMENT that is busy trying very hard indeed to introduce laws to limit protests (Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill).
And THE VERY SAME GOVERNMENT that is trying very hard indeed to bring in laws (Nationality and Borders Bill) enabling them to remove British citizenship from someone even if it renders them stateless.
Its an absolute farce.
I can agree with some of the other concerns you've listed, but if you're going to mix them in with reasonable actions by the government like protecting the integrity of elections, I wouldn't be surprised if those other concerns are undermined.
Regardless, election fraud has happened many times in the UK, most often from the politicians[1][2][3] (the links would be endless, I'll stop at three), and the idea that the Electoral Commission is going to produce investigations of any worth is sheer fantasy given some of their previous missteps[4].
However, an audit[5] was undertaken by Democratic Audit, who are funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (both are non-partisan), and here is what they found:
> The emergence of evidence of electoral malpractice in English elections during the 2000s ranks among the most concerning emerging developments identified by this Audit. Evidence of malpractice began to mount from 2005 onwards, after an election court convened in Birmingham found five men guilty of large-scale electoral fraud, involving thousands of postal ballots, at local elections in June 2004. In his written judgement, the election commissioner, Richard Mawrey QC, referred to ‘evidence of electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic.’
> While the Birmingham case represented the most systematic proven case of attempted ballot rigging, there have been numerous other convictions for electoral fraud in the UK since 2000. Court cases relating to large-scale fraud in local elections in Slough in 2007 and Peterborough in 2004 resulted in six convictions each. Following a lengthy police investigation and two re-trials, five men were eventually convicted in September 2010 for electoral fraud offences in the Bradford West constituency during the 2005 general election (the first relating to fraud in a UK general election for almost one hundred years). In total, more than 100 people have been found guilty of electoral malpractice in the UK since 1994. The vast majority of convictions have involved postal or proxy ballots, often in conjunction with attempts to manipulate the electoral registers by registering bogus electors or adding electors to the register at empty properties.
> The emergence of electoral fraud as an issue in UK politics cannot be divorced, therefore, from changes in electoral law since the 1990s, which introduced provisions for proxy voting and the widespread availability of postal voting. In particular, the introduction of ‘postal voting on demand’ via the Representation of the People Act 2000 created obvious opportunities for malpractice, especially when combined with a ‘rather arcane’ system of electoral registration.
They go into more detail but I would suggest alleviating yourself of the notion that the current system isn't being tested by those looking for unfair advantage. If you read the Election Commission's views on these incidents you might come away thinking they were small things, yet it's also become easy to see they are not entirely fair nor are they fit for purpose.
Bring on the improvements.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39289195
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutfur_Rahman_(British_politic...
[3] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/rahman-gets-the-gang-bac...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/19/pro-brexit-...
[5] https://www.democraticaudit.com/2013/11/26/what-is-the-exten...
The obvious reason to not “improve election security” is when that’s not the reason it’s being done. When it’s being done to attempt to suppress voter turn out.
If the end result of as many valid votes of willing voters as possible being counted while no one fraudulently gets votes.
I don’t see much difference between one candidate who loses a portion of the votes they would have gotten because of “election security” laws and provisions that were not done only to improve security.
I’ve personally not heard of people bringing up ID related voter security measures who didn’t have a partisan interest in making voting harder/lowering votes of whatever party they are against.
Is this different? Not specifically how you feel. I’m not questioning You. But the politicians who are pushing for this. Are they pushing for election integrity truly just for that reason? I skimmed a bit on the UK. It doesn’t appear as if the politicians are much different than most other places. But I didn’t read up a lot
Firstly, that’s not true. As quoted above:
> The vast majority of convictions have involved postal or proxy ballots, often in conjunction with attempts to manipulate the electoral registers by registering bogus electors or adding electors to the register at empty properties.
That requires processes that are slack about identity. The requirement to prove/provide identity at certain points in the process would render these problems moot. If you wish to focus solely on in-person voting then say so, but that’s not the same as there being no relationship.
Secondly, as with any conspiracy theory, you would have to:
- show me how you knew their intentions without recourse to mind reading
And with restpect to this particular case:
- show how needing ID would reduce (legitimate) votes cast (I hope it’s not something like this[1])
- explain why increased security is a bad thing (taking into account the ease and low cost of this solution)
It would be just as easy to claim that those who are against such measures wish to benefit from the fraud. That wouldn’t be possible without mind reading and I lack that ability. However, it does correlate, those against better election finance protections tend to benefit from them (Conservatives and Labour). Those against better proxy vote, postal vote and in-person voting fraud tend to benefit from it (Labour). In either case I don’t care, to improve the legitimacy of elections via simple measures like showing an ID are reasonable, cheap, and easy. What’s the downside?
I hope the next link isn’t to a right wing influencer “owning the libs” by debating college kids who don’t spend dozens and dozens of hours a month on the topic.
—-
A downside or more so against the “well why not” is time committed to this. There is limited time for things. In the US there was a viral video that showed things that actually occur at the state/provincial level. Where legislators vote for absentee legislators. Something like that should be handled first.
I know two people who didn’t have any form of [valid] ID for a year and multiple years, in each case. Recently. As adults. Forget going through research, studies, and such. Not letting either of them vote seems to be a downside to me. It took months of slowly prodding along to get each identification. Stuff that isn’t easy to do. Takes time. Obstacles that might be near impossible to do depending on your stage in life and if you have no one to help you.
> conspiracy theory
I don’t think being incredulous and doubting the words of major western political parties is a conspiracy theory.
Why are you for a conspiracy to withhold voting from people I know like above? /sarcasm
—
From a higher up comment: > the idea that the Electoral Commission is going to produce investigations of any worth is sheer fantasy given some of their previous missteps
[Completely] Doubting the electoral commission seems to fall in line with your viewing my take as a conspiracy theory.
It's virality or not is irrelevant, and what slant is possible from the simple questions those people were asked? Maybe you could ask for a livestream instead of a video next time, to remove the edits… but why?
> I hope the next link isn’t to a right wing influencer “owning the libs” by debating college kids who don’t spend dozens and dozens of hours a month on the topic.
If it's relevant then perhaps.
> A downside or more so against the “well why not” is time committed to this. There is limited time for things.
People are so rushed that they don't have time to get ID? You said the "viral meme right wing video" "isn’t any better than what an average liberal person is thinking" and yet that sounds like the responses in the video.
> In the US there was a viral video
This is starting to smell of hypocrisy
> that showed things that actually occur at the state/provincial level. Where legislators vote for absentee legislators. Something like that should be handled first.
No, something like that:
a) can be handled simultaneously
b) isn't relevant to the point we're discussing
c) and I already pointed out that stuff like that should be handled.
> I know two people who didn’t have any form of [valid] ID for a year and multiple years, in each case. Recently. As adults.
And?
> Forget going through research, studies, and such.
So no viral meme right wing videos, and no research, studies, and such. Are we going to be left with only your protestations as valid evidence?
> Not letting either of them vote seems to be a downside to me.
They are allowed to vote, they simply need to provide ID.
> It took months of slowly prodding along to get each identification.
Security is often in opposition to laziness, yes. I do not fall down on the side of sloths though.
> Stuff that isn’t easy to do.
That is utterly false.
> Takes time. Obstacles that might be near impossible to do depending on your stage in life and if you have no one to help you.
We're back to the slanted and partisan video. Maybe it was an accurate portrayal of the views of a certain group of people?
> > conspiracy theory
> I don’t think being incredulous and doubting the words of major western political parties is a conspiracy theory.
You're not being sceptical, you're mind reading and asserting things to be true that can only be so if there is a conspiracy. Not all conspiracy theories are wrong, conspiracies happen, but the desire to paint your opponents as evil and divine their intentions while dismissing evidence contrary to your view and the use of self-defeating logic is a sign of the pejorative sort of conspiracy theory.
> Why are you for a conspiracy to withhold voting from people I know like above? /sarcasm
Did I mention something about painting opponents as bad people?
> From a higher up comment: > the idea that the Electoral Commission is going to produce investigations of any worth is sheer fantasy given some of their previous missteps
> [Completely] Doubting the electoral commission seems to fall in line with your viewing my take as a conspiracy theory.
The Electoral Commission has been showing in open court to be incompetent. Their plan wasn't a secret either. Do you know what a conspiracy is?
I don't even pretend to know exactly what thoughts are occurring in his head but form the outside he appears to hold several logically inconsistent ideas at the same time and is desperately trying to find a causal relationship between them.
As for forgetting, they never forget. More noise and ideas are added to the same pool of thought and consistency is never resolved. I suspect you either grow out of it in some way or go insane.
I never went to any protest, not just this but in general, but I was very pleased that there were huge protests in the UK and elsewhere at that time, because I had enough of restricting my own life for the sake of others.
Also, not everyone is selfish, you're projecting the way you see the world onto other people.
Why did the DANMASK RCT fail so spectacularly?
> Also, not everyone is selfish, you're projecting the way you see the world onto other people.
Uncalled for. You might consider that to impose your views on others could easily be considered far more selfish than someone unwilling to participate in an activity, even one with such unimpeachable, proven benefits.
Because it had too few participants, or happened when the overall infection rate in society was too low. The number of infected in both groups were too small to conclude anything confidently.
If I remember correctly the group without masks were infected about 20% more than the group with masks, but since the absolute numbers were too low is could have been due to random chance.
From the study[1]:
> A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear masks, and 2994 were assigned to control; 4862 completed the study.
That's more than enough people.
> or happened when the overall infection rate in society was too low
The study was conducted in April and May of 2020, there were clearly enough infectious people in the population[2] to warrant the study showing some importance.
> The number of infected in both groups were too small to conclude anything confidently.
From the study:
> Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%)
> Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.
Don't you think it's strange that proven benefits are so hard to substantiate in a randomised controlled trial? These proven benefits can't be proven or shown to be beneficial across thousands of people, during a pandemic?
That's not going to fly with me, especially since every other RCT done on masks prior to the pandemic failed to show efficacy against influenza, even in clinical environments.
Maybe we could rerun the study now, while the highly infectious Omicron variant is running rampant, which apparently masks and vaccines are rubbish at preventing.
It's almost as if the proven benefits aren't proven and hence, not benefits.
Forgive the sarcasm but if people want to make bold claims then I suggest I may be able to poke holes in their case by mocking it, as I would with people knocking on my door claiming the apocalypse is nigh, or those telling me to change my behaviour because of whatever other pie in the sky belief they hold. When they come back with the RCT that shows the efficacy of masks - something, I might add, that should be possible in a pandemic - then there'll be something to discuss. Otherwise, the criticisms of the study, which weren't given before it was published I might add, are all quibbles.
[1] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817]
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
When making bold claims, the claimant should provide evidence for those claims. Supply me with the RCT that proves the benefit of wearing masks.
Do you have it?
The issue for me, and I'm reading it in a lot of these comments is that there is no endgame. The times I've been asked "where is your mask?" I've never had an empirical answer to "when does it stop?"
I get your point. And the UK didn't lockdown. But this statement is a stretch.
Did you not consider the possibility that the government bowed to pressure, such as the protests, and didn't lockdown?
Also, these protests werent just against lockdown. There were enormous protests against vaccine passports, and they were successful - the govt had vaxpasses ready to go in the summer and pushed them back repeatedly before cancelling them in the face of public pressure and tireless campaigning from civil liberties groups like Big Brother Watch. If it hadn't been for the protests then you wouldnt have been able to go to Sainsbury's in the last six months without scanning your QR code.
Finally, there were also protests against vaccine mandates, and in particular the vaccine mandate for NHS staff. Personally I found those protests silly - I would have thought that NHS workers of all people would understand the importance of getting vaccinated, but the facts are that the government initially announced that NHS workers would be fired if they didn't get the jab then walked this back when it became clear that enforcing this rule would mean firing tens of thousands of intransigent NHS staff and they couldn't afford the shortages. There was a gigantic protest in London in January against the NHS vax mandate (not that you'd have heard about it on the news) - a protest which unequivocally achieved its goal.
If you don't think people were protesting against anything real or that the protests didn't achieve anything then you haven't been paying attention.
It was, therefore a class / social / demographic issue, but there is indeed crossover with the foreign healthcare worker but its on that class rather than where they come from.
I think (but I didnt discuss it with the expert) that the doctors themselves were on the whole opposed to compulsory mandates for ethical reasons. E.g. first do no harm extends to respecting a persons conscience.
It's easy for me, as an affluent middle-class white guy, to say "shut up and do what you're told because the experts know best" - but on some level I really can't blame people from less advantaged demographics for being so distrustful of the "experts". After all, it's not like the governments and corporations pushing these vaccines have always worked in the working class's favour in the past.
To be clear, I believe that the vaccines are safe and effective and that everyone should get jabbed. But I can't help but feel like all this demonisation of the unvaccinated is driven at least partly by good old fashioned snobbery and class hatred. "How dare these lower class inferiors not do as we say? Why can't they be smart and sensible like us, the wealthy enlightened?"
> I can't support the mandating of vaccines in this scenario
He goes on:
> If you want to mandate people to have vaccines you have a moral duty to provide evidence that it's necessary, and now the evidence isn't just lacking that it's necessary, but the evidence that is now coming out is demonstrating that it doesn't help reduce transmission from healthcare workers.
Intensive care consultant Milena Chee[2]:
> What I’m against is the vaccination status to be tied to employment rights. I’m against the language of hatred, which is rampant. We are supposed to be such a tolerant society, but all of a sudden have become the complete opposite.
Professor of oncology at St George's and infectious diseases expert (notably, HIV, which has similarities to COVID-19), Angus Dalgleish:
> I think it is absolute madness to have a mandate for everyone to be vaccinated at this stage… The people who are not vaccinated have all given very good reasons.
> Just do an antibody and a T-cell test. If you did that in large numbers it would be cheaper than giving everybody a booster
He goes into more detail[3] which you may enjoy if you're interested in the immune system.
Dr Tony Hinton, retired consultant surgeon on the mandate[4]:
> It makes no logical or scientific sense whatsoever
> Many of the people I speak to have had their 2 jabs but do not want to take a booster.
From NHS100k's open letter to the government[5]:
> We as a collection of professionals pride ourselves on our ability to critically analyse fact based, evidence-based, and science-based information to apply in our practice.
> 1. Emerging scientific evidence that is contrary to the narrative of mandatory vaccinations:
> We point to the work of Dr. Gunter Kampf of the University of Greifswald published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe on 19 November 2021. In this published article Dr. Kampf pointed out: ‘It appears to be grossly negligent to ignore the vaccinated population as a possible and relevant source of transmission’.
> Weekly reports from the UK Health Security Agency3 consistently show that among adults, the number of cases of Covid 19 in vaccinated population greatly outnumbers that of the unvaccinated population since the rollout of the vaccine programme. We point to the work of Singanayagam et al published on 29 October 2021 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases which showed that people with breakthrough infections have the same viral load regardless of vaccination status. It further adds that regardless of vaccination status the rate of spread from an infected person is the same among household contacts.
> This is not an exhaustive list however we are highlighting these articles as examples to cast reasonable doubt on the assertions made by the Secretary of State, Sajid Javid. Mr Javid declared that our ‘Duty of Care’ towards our patients could only be discharged through the act of inoculating our bodies with a product, that there is now growing evidence of it being inadequate in preventing the transmission of this virus.
The letter is actually damning of the kind of narrative the mainstream media, along with the government, has fed the public. The letter to Chris Witty is similarly damning[6].
Lilith, a paramedic and founder of NHS100k[7]:
> What we're concerned about is the precedent it will set. If you can mandate these vaccines for the NHS, when will it start occurring to the public. When does our health become our choice or when does it become the government's choice? We're very much ralliers for the right to choose. It's such a core issue for healthcare professionals where we must respect patients' decisions
Mr Ahmad Malik, consultant orthopaedic surgeon[7]:
> On one hand we've got mandates and on the other hand we've got freedom, personal freedom, bodily autonomy, informed consent. If you think you can have both, you're gravely mistaken, because they're the exact opposite.
> [Consent] is the cornerstone of medical ethics. Having the ability to choose what's done to your body or what's not done to your body is something we've taken for granted for centuries.
> If we have this mandatary vaccination coming through, that's earthshattering, that demolishes that whole concept of personal bodily autonomy and we're opening a Pandora's box.
They underline your last paragraph, but I think your employment expert needs to familiarise himself with the actual people opposing this instead of making hasty generalisations that act as easy dismissals of a view that may by sincerely held by well educated people.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRApq2IRqn4
[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/nhs-medics-p...
[3] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1367946743636118
[4] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=274024381492297
[5] https://nhs100k.com/Resources/Static/NHS100k%20CEO%20Letter....
[6] https://nhs100k.com/Resources/Static/Letter%20to%20Chris%20W...
Its feasible that vocal protests helped push back against further tyranny.
i dont want to go down the who was right and who was wrong rabbit hole of covid policies. just dont use hindsight to try and retroactively prove your point.
No.
> "See, it didn't happen because I yelled about it on the internet"
this is a gross misrepresentation of the anticovid policy sentiment. it wasnt misanthropes on 4chan and twitter warriors with no skin in the game - there were, and still are, millions of people down through grass roots and local politics up to sitting major political party members.
the chess pieces we're playing with are very serious on both sides and the original comment i replied to - "i bet those conspiracy theorists feel stupid now" - is disingenious and a badly formed argument.
How does a minority protest stop the evil masterplan? This makes no sense at all. Either there is a master plan and you have to have 90% of the people on the street opposing this, or there was no master plan from the get go.
The conspiracy theory crumbles under its own weight.
Why can there not be a master plan that is difficult to implement where there is resistance? Why can the plan not have several stages and levels of implementation? Why can it not be that at different levels of resistance the plan may have to be shelved completely, in part, or be paused to try again in future?
To reduce a plan to take over the world so reductively as to make it a dilemma can only be the product of black and white thinking. I know it's best to be sceptical of outrageous claims but I would assume that anyone who reads HN knows that a project with any level of complexity couldn't be characterised in such a way, let alone one to take over the world!
However, my problem with the post above is the dismissal, it's incredibly reductive. I have issue lists longer than 2 items for programs that aren't comparable with the complexity involved in taking over the world, the idea that the grandest of all plans can be made black and white in a clearly absurd fashion is, well, absurd.
Or perhaps I should ask those making such out of hand dismissals to help me with bug fixes and architectural decisions, they're clearly masters who would probably be better employed hatching evil plans to take over the world but are at a loose enough end to spend time shooting them down.
We have mandates for how wiring and plumbing need to work in private homes, apartments, offices, etc to maintain safety. We have mandates for how fast cars can drive, which lanes they can use, how they need to signal turns to maintain safety. We have mandates for what chemicals farmers can spray on fields and what chemicals factories can dump into sewers.
The mask mandate is so utterly trivial compared to everything else in our lives. The airplane also makes you wear a seatbelt, is that a violation of your rights?
UK studies show IFR for COVID for those vaccinated/immunized is now lower than seasonal flu [1]. We never wore masks during the flu and I am not sure why anyone would advocate this continuing. Moreover if someone wants to wear a mask, nothing stops them from doing that, but don't force it on everyone ages 2 and up.
https://www.ft.com/content/e26c93a0-90e7-4dec-a796-3e25e94bc... [1]
At some point people learn how to get back to life. Others can shut themselves in their house and have everything delivered to quarantine box outside their door.
So.. What's wrong with living life in masks for the foreseeable future then? Is that not "life" to you? If not then you are seriously privileged and need to realise that.