CANCEL EVERYTHING - Yascha Mounk, Contributing writer at The Atlantic March 10, 2020
Do you head a sports team? Play your games in front of an empty stadium.
Are you organizing a conference? Postpone it until the fall.
Do you run a business? Tell your employees to work from home.
Are you the principal of a school or the president of a university? Move classes online before your students get sick and infect their frail relatives.
Are you running a presidential campaign? Cancel all rallies right now.
All of these decisions have real costs. Shutting down public schools in New York City, for example, would deprive tens of thousands of kids of urgently needed school meals. But the job of institutions and authorities is to mitigate those costs as much as humanly possible, not to use them as an excuse to put the public at risk of a deadly communicable disease.
On May 14, 2021, the same writer said in his Substack newsletter Persuasion:
TAKE OFF THAT MASK- If you are fully vaccinated, the time to resume normal life is now.
It's time to stop. Over the past year, we have had to make all kinds of adjustments to our everyday lives to combat a deadly pandemic. The reason to take these actions was to save lives, not to adopt a superior lifestyle or show off our virtue. For those of us who are fully vaccinated, those actions are—at least until the situation changes, as it one day might with the emergence of new variants—no longer necessary. If a restaurant or coffee shop requests that you wear a mask, do so. But when and where possible, it is time to resume normal life.
Apparently not. People still want everything to be canceled and many others aren’t ready to take off their masks - for many reasons.This being the most bizarre:
Some of us are supposedly free to take off our masks if we choose. The people of New York State are still waiting for guidance from the number one scientist in the world-the governor. So no, we aren’t free just yet. That might change with new science any day now-who knows.
All of that notwithstanding, I am curious about the narrative of mask wearing and how wearing one was ever supported by The Science.
Just two weeks ago, masks were worn to protect others, not yourself. Now it’s about self-protection? Fascinating!
The last CDC director said this:
"I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine, because it may be 70%. And if I don't get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will."
It seems to me that we are free to take off our masks or to wear them if we so choose. What's the problem with that? Let It Be.
Can we just appreciate that spring of 21 looks much more promising than spring of 20?
How is the weather where you are?
Update:
“Effective Wednesday, NYS will adopt the CDC's new mask & social distancing guidance for vaccinated people.
Unvaccinated people should continue to wear a mask.
Masks will still be required on public transit, in schools & some communal settings. Private venues may require masks.”
So take a deep breath, with or without a mask
Some of us are supposedly free to take off our masks if we choose. The people of New York State are still waiting for guidance from the number one scientist in the world-the governor. So no, we aren’t free just yet. That might change with new science any day now-who knows.
All of that notwithstanding, I am curious about the narrative of mask wearing and how wearing one was ever supported by The Science.
Just two weeks ago, masks were worn to protect others, not yourself. Now it’s about self-protection? Fascinating!
The last CDC director said this:
"I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine, because it may be 70%. And if I don't get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will."
What does the face mask do?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Did masks really work in stopping the spread of COVID?