538: Biden's own fault he got Covid, has been too lax about pandemic

[politicallefty]

I'm not "pro-pandemic." I want this pandemic to be over, but wishing it doesn't make it so. Quite frankly, I'm appalled that this D-majority site is so anti-mask. It's not a big inconvenience.

I share this sentiment. Anti-lockdown turned into anti-mask (and for a subset, anti-vaccine). I'm 100% against lockdowns so long as hospitalizations and deaths are under a certain level. If we reached a point where hospitals are completely swamped and overwhelmed and deaths are 4k+/day, we would need to consider more drastic action. Fortunately, the vaccines are preventing that from occurring, despite the attempts by the anti-vaxxers to create a more virulent strain.

Even this far into the pandemic, I still don't understand the anti-mask sentiment. There is something in between always masking up and the people that apparently think they should burn their masks. It's called masking sometimes. If cases are way up, we mask up. When cases are way down, we can feel free to take them off. I really don't see the issue here. I'm not even calling for mandates, just recommendations (although most government mandates over the private sector on this aspect have essentially functioned as recommendations, so maybe it should be a mandate functioning as a recommendation).

[politicallefty]

I'm not "pro-pandemic." I want this pandemic to be over, but wishing it doesn't make it so. Quite frankly, I'm appalled that this D-majority site is so anti-mask. It's not a big inconvenience.

I share this sentiment. Anti-lockdown turned into anti-mask (and for a subset, anti-vaccine). I'm 100% against lockdowns so long as hospitalizations and deaths are under a certain level. If we reached a point where hospitals are completely swamped and overwhelmed and deaths are 4k+/day, we would need to consider more drastic action. Fortunately, the vaccines are preventing that from occurring, despite the attempts by the anti-vaxxers to create a more virulent strain.

Even this far into the pandemic, I still don't understand the anti-mask sentiment. There is something in between always masking up and the people that apparently think they should burn their masks. It's called masking sometimes. If cases are way up, we mask up. When cases are way down, we can feel free to take them off. I really don't see the issue here. I'm not even calling for mandates, just recommendations (although most government mandates over the private sector on this aspect have essentially functioned as recommendations, so maybe it should be a mandate functioning as a recommendation).

Part of the issue is "cases" ebb and flow with absolutely no regard to whether anyone is "masking up," so it's like watching people do a rain dance and being absolutely convinced it will bring rain. Another part of the issue is that "cases" aren't even all people who are actually sick -- hell, I'd argue the majority of "cases" at this point are people who wouldn't have been considered sick by pre-2020 standards (just some sniffles or whatever).

So, to sum up, you have people: 1) obsessing over an irrelevant metric, and 2) operating under the delusion that the ritual of mass mask wearing is affecting this metric in a positive way, when it isn't.

It is mass psychosis, and if you're wearing a mask "just because of an uptick in cases" or "just out of an abundance of caution" or whatever namby-pamby justification you've copy-pasted from MSNBC or the Washington Post to rationalize this ridiculous behavior, you are feeding that mass psychosis.

That's the issue.

Ah, I see. MSNBC and/or WaPo said it might be a good idea, so it must be wrong. There's apparently no logical reason to reduce airborne transmission of an airborne pathogen. I assume you'll be taking your weekly/monthly/(or whatever) regimen of ivermectin and snake oil soon?