8 ms·

He/she didn't deny that the vaccine kept him out of ICU. But once vaxxed+boosted, what more realistically can we do? I mean sure, let's maybe avoid coughing i

He/she didn't deny that the vaccine kept him out of ICU. But once vaxxed+boosted, what more realistically can we do? I mean sure, let's maybe avoid coughing into each other's open mouths. But apart from that, Omicron seems to be so contagious, we're all bound to get it eventually unless we literally lock ourselves at home for the next 3 years.

dragontamer 5y ago
We all know the gameplan. 1. Vaccines (most effective do it first). 2. Masks everywhere. 3. Lockdowns, if necessary. -------- The big question right now is if we should push button#3. Many of us hoped it wouldn't be necessary, but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button. Lockdowns are themselves staged. We can lockdown schools (already happening in many colleges effectively. I have cousins who are off of college because they've extended their winter break, to minimize COVID19 spread). --------- There's also lesser actions: I work in technology. All in-person meetings have been canceled. Schools are "sometimes online" in my area, depending on local conditions. Testing has gone up significantly, we try to catch the disease and encourage people to stay home asap to minimize spread. Etc. etc. There's plenty of actions we can do, even if we decide against lockdowns.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  Except there are so many options in between Nos. 2 and 3. Reduced capacity. Outdoor dining. Testing requirements. As well as the wide, wide gulf between total lockdowns and selective ones.
  - khazhoux 5y ago
    I'm still pissed that in California we handled the possible in-between steps so clumsily. My 2020 Roger Waters concert was canceled. Sure, that made sense -- 15,000 people all packed inside the venue. But at the same time, my hairdresser was shut down, not even a single customer at a time allowed. Made no sense to me.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    That's true. I think my overall point is that we're well into discussing options between 2 and 3 now. This Omicron surge is truly ferocious, and far worse than people predicted (or really, hoped for). There's also the evidence that Omicron subsides rather quickly (at least, in South Africa it did). So any such emergency measures would truly be temporary, more so than the original strain or Delta-surges of the past. Under these statistics / calculations, it makes more sense to perform bigger actions.
- bingohbangoh 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > The countries that have locked down the hardest (eg Australia, Canada) have seen no improvement relative to those with no lockdowns (e.g. Florida, Texas). This is a laughable assertion. Florida has 650 deaths per 100k people. Australia has 9.4 deaths per 100k people.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      What is the demographic difference between Florida and all of Australia? When I visit Florida it seems like half the population is at least 80 years old, but maybe that's just my impression.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Pick any US state and there's at least a roughly 10x higher death rate than Australia. Nationally, the US is at 254/100k.
      - bingohbangoh 5y ago
        Age adjusted, Florida is the 11th highest death rate in the US. NY is the highest iirc.
- kbos87 5y ago
  I put myself firmly in the camp of “vaxxed, boosted, and done”, and I’d say that’s the attitude of more people than we all might think. I think you have the theoretical game plan right, but I’d say that #3 is no longer within the realm of possibility in the US. There’s just no public support for it amongst anyone but the tiny percentage of the most cautious among us. On #2, I’d even say that yes, masks still make sense in crowded indoor non-optional settings - meaning places we all have to go like public transit, grocery stores, and hospitals. But I’m already past the point of ever wearing a mask outdoors, and I’d also argue that it shouldn’t be a requirement for vaccinated individuals in optional spaces like gyms, bars, restaurants.
  - Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
    Plus of course in bars and restaurants they are pointless theater- wearing a mask to walk to your table, then taking it off to eat, drink and talk loudly for several hours, does precisely nothing.
    - cure 5y ago
      Sigh. This is wrong, and I wonder why it is so hard to understand that it's all about probabilities. Being unmasked for 50% (?) of the time (while eating, say) you are in an enclosed space is obviously less risky than being unmasked 100% of the time.
      - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
        Except at a restaurant, the unmasked time is closer to 95%-99%, depending on how long it takes to get a table, and then how long you're there. My wife an I recently went out for breakfast. There was no wait for a table, so the masked time was basically less than a minute, but let's call it a full minute. Then, we were there for about 40 minutes unmasked. That's a 97.5% time unmasked, talking or eating. You cannot possibly convince me that the 1 minute I had my mask on made ANY difference. That said, the alternative to the "mask until you're seated" policy was never going to be "no masks", it would end up being "no indoor dining".
- thomascgalvin 5y ago
  > The big question right now is if we should push button#3 [lockdowns]. I think a more salient question is if we can push button #3. Nobody wants more lockdowns. The vaccinated are tired of the unvaccinated fucking everything up for us, and the unvaccinated have never been open to the idea. This is another thing pointed out by the article: there just isn't the will to do it, even if it was necessary. This isn't being made as a medical decision, it's being made as a political decision.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/rxwnbl/i_am_a_new_york_city_public_high_school_student/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/rxwnbl/i_am_a_new_york... You either do an orderly shutdown, or you get de-facto shutdown. In the case of this high-school, they only needed ~10% of students / teachers to get COVID19 before chaos reigned supreme. Students are now skipping classes out of fear of their own safety, teachers are collecting students into auditoriums (because too many teachers are sick, not enough substitute teachers to watch the students 30-at-a-time anymore, gotta collect all the students together to more efficiently watch over them). At this point, the high-school in this Reddit discussion should have just an orderly shutdown, rather than pretending everything is fine.
    - holbrad 5y ago
      If people aren't getting COVID and are staying at home because of a shutdown, then this exact same situation happens again just later in time... (After the school shutdown)
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        No it isn't. An orderly shutdown is better, because all the students remain at the same point of their lessons. If you're a calculus teacher currently teaching basic integrals this week... you won't be able to teach "integration by parts" (or other advanced integrals) 1 month from now, because 10% of your students were missing. ---------- In contrast, a formal shutdown means that _EVERYBODY_ gets held off at this lesson. You cut your losses, formally shutdown school, and start everybody up when times are safer. You can plan around a formal shutdown. You can't plan around a de-facto shutdown. All the students are going to have bits and pieces of knowledge and are unable to catchup, because they all randomly lost bits of information due to randomly missing class.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Where the hell are you that this is your reality? Here in Texas it is absolutely not the case that "but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button".
  - khazhoux 5y ago
    Is that because Texas numbers are good (I'm pretty sure they're not) or because Texas would never contemplate that button?
    - cryptonector 5y ago
      Both.
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      Texas has much lower per capita cases and deaths than a state like New York. But I also suspect that Texas values freedom relative to safety much higher than states like New York.
    - epakai 5y ago
      Texas leadership is focused on performing for their constituents. That relegates the contemplation to progressive city/county leadership who are willing to push back on statewide policy when the numbers get bad. A lot of this gets left to the choice of business owners and school administrators who have to balance their choices with fiscal concerns and public perception. There is no political leadership position for them to fall back on. Basically everyone's hands are tied, and some group is going to be upset whether buttons get pressed or not.
- cm2187 5y ago
  Until when? Until covid goes away (which Biden implied earlier this year, that the reason we still have covid is because of the unvaccinated)? Vaccines seem to do nothing to infections, it only reduces the risk of hospitalisation and death. In the UK the % of positive cases that are vaccinated is pretty much the same than the % of people vaccinated in the population. Covid isn't going away. So are you suggesting vaccines, masks and lockdowns forever? I don't think many will agree to that. I certain don't.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    If this is our new reality then this is our new reality. Given that our hospital systems are being pushed to basically their breaking point, we need to do what we can to help our the nurses / doctors handle this situation. A cloth mask is something like 30% effective. That's better than nothing, and certainly can slow down the spread if used universally. Booster-vaccines are something like 70% vs Omicron. You do what you can, with the tools you have.
    - cm2187 5y ago
      I don't know the situation in the US, but here in the UK, the only reason there is a strain on hospitals is not because of high hospital admissions, they aren't particularly high. It is because of mandatory self-quarantine requirement for hospital staff who test positive, which result in staff shortage. We wouldn't do that with a cold, and this variant, at least to the vaccinated, is little more than a cold.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        For crying out loud man... If you are sick, stay home. Don't infect your colleagues, don't infect your patients. Its not that hard. --- The fact that you're arguing for the opposite is incredibly callous and reckless of you. Its like the pandemic has removed you of common sense. That's literally why we have paid sick leave. Having 5% of your workforce stuck at home is better than those people coming in and infecting _EVERONE ELSE AT THE OFFICE_.
- dntrkv 5y ago
  In the US, there is no political capital left to even attempt number 3. Not gonna happen.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  You might find this video interesting: https://youtu.be/7s4Tp6MNhHw https://youtu.be/7s4Tp6MNhHw TLDW: lockdowns are ineffective because they focus on protecting the wrong people. They can also cause harm to people. They also touch on schools/colleges and say it makes no sense to lock them down because young people are very low risk.
- contravariant 5y ago
  Those are actions, they do not form a plan. There are several ways this could end, but the scenarios that could realistically keep most people from encountering the virus have proven implausible. So while you can use maska and lockdowns indefinitely, it's not much of a plan. Arguably boosting the entire population and waiting for the last wave to pass is a more realistic plan, even though nobody so far seems willing to admit they're planning to do this, they just are doing it.
- JSavageOne 5y ago
  Shocking to me that "lockdown", ie. population-wide government-mandated house arrest, was ever accepted by the public as a viable option. COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside, so mask mandates outside are at best useless.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside, so mask mandates outside are at best useless. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/07/deer-ohio-infected-novel-coronavirus-study-covid-19/9088013002/ https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/07/deer-ohio-inf... Are white-tailed deer commonly seen indoors? Or maybe, your assertion is full of crap.
    - JSavageOne 5y ago
      Straight from your article: "It's possible the deer in northeast Ohio contracted it from contaminated water, since the novel coronavirus is shed in human waste. But alternative sources — such as trash, backyard feeders, bait stations and wildlife hospitals — have to be considered, Bowman said." What does this have to do with masks again? Perhaps you can organize a scientific experiment equipping half the deer with masks, and report back to us with the results.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        You're saying that 33% of _ALL_ deer in Ohio were drinking from contaminated water? Maybe the original case came from water, but we all know that COVID19 is primarily a respiratory virus that spreads by breath and air.
        zarzavat 5y ago
        It certainly seems likely that deer engage in behaviours outside that humans do not, that leads to much closer contact. I can think of at least one such behaviour. I don't think that wild animals are a good model for human epidemiology.
- holbrad 5y ago
  I think answer to #3 is no and in fact in hindsight should have always been no. Here in the UK we are in a terrible position of having to eventually pay for insanely expensive lockdowns that effectively did very little. And we are now in the exact same place, as we were previously, having the same "discussion".
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  Let's be clear on this: The majority of humanity is not okay with the idea of wearing masks full-time in all public places, and shutting down densely populated activities forever. Masks make sense locally, temporarily, and as circumstances warrant. Such as a hospital or pharmacy during a flu outbreak, or when someone thinks they may be sick (cough or sneeze fits). There doesn't seem to be much we can do to stop this in the near term. The idea of stamping out COVID quickly like we thought we could do in the spring of 2020 is gone. It is time now to understand we live with it, to be cautious when we feel ill and isolate ourselves, and to get the preventative measures that help best (vaccines). #2 and #3 are for imminent emergencies.
millzlane 5y ago
Stay away from people who don't take the pandemic seriously, and take every precaution you know you would take if this virus was any more serious. We all knew what to expect. Sure it sucks, but would you rather catch the virus?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Melatonic 5y ago
In many countries in Asia it was already considered polite to wear a mask if you got sick. Got a cold and coughing everywhere? Wear a mask so your not spewing droplets all over your coworkers and people at the store. I am hoping that trend continues in the western world but who really knows
jmull 5y ago
> But once vaxxed+boosted, what more realistically can we do? ffs, wear a mask.
- khazhoux 5y ago
  TBH, I consider wearing a mask to be so low-effort, I take it for granted. I know for many other people in this country that's not the case at all, and wearing a mask to the grocery store for them is somehow akin to wearing a 20-pound iron ball chained to their ankle. But to me (and my family), a mask isn't a big deal. By "what more realistically can we do" I'm really talking about shutdowns, lockdowns, and capacity reductions. I'm ok with continuing WFH for people who can... so I suppose my stance is inconsistent: I want to get back to "normal" but I'm ok with WFH and masks. Overall, I'm frankly at a point where, double-vaxx'd and boosted, I really want to go back to not having to second-guess my decision to go out for a bowl of ramen.

dragontamer 5y ago

We all know the gameplan. 1. Vaccines (most effective do it first). 2. Masks everywhere. 3. Lockdowns, if necessary. -------- The big question right now is if we should push button#3. Many of us hoped it wouldn't be necessary, but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button. Lockdowns are themselves staged. We can lockdown schools (already happening in many colleges effectively. I have cousins who are off of college because they've extended their winter break, to minimize COVID19 spread). --------- There's also lesser actions: I work in technology. All in-person meetings have been canceled. Schools are "sometimes online" in my area, depending on local conditions. Testing has gone up significantly, we try to catch the disease and encourage people to stay home asap to minimize spread. Etc. etc. There's plenty of actions we can do, even if we decide against lockdowns.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
Except there are so many options in between Nos. 2 and 3. Reduced capacity. Outdoor dining. Testing requirements. As well as the wide, wide gulf between total lockdowns and selective ones.
- khazhoux 5y ago
  I'm still pissed that in California we handled the possible in-between steps so clumsily. My 2020 Roger Waters concert was canceled. Sure, that made sense -- 15,000 people all packed inside the venue. But at the same time, my hairdresser was shut down, not even a single customer at a time allowed. Made no sense to me.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  That's true. I think my overall point is that we're well into discussing options between 2 and 3 now. This Omicron surge is truly ferocious, and far worse than people predicted (or really, hoped for). There's also the evidence that Omicron subsides rather quickly (at least, in South Africa it did). So any such emergency measures would truly be temporary, more so than the original strain or Delta-surges of the past. Under these statistics / calculations, it makes more sense to perform bigger actions.
bingohbangoh 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > The countries that have locked down the hardest (eg Australia, Canada) have seen no improvement relative to those with no lockdowns (e.g. Florida, Texas). This is a laughable assertion. Florida has 650 deaths per 100k people. Australia has 9.4 deaths per 100k people.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    What is the demographic difference between Florida and all of Australia? When I visit Florida it seems like half the population is at least 80 years old, but maybe that's just my impression.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Pick any US state and there's at least a roughly 10x higher death rate than Australia. Nationally, the US is at 254/100k.
    - bingohbangoh 5y ago
      Age adjusted, Florida is the 11th highest death rate in the US. NY is the highest iirc.
kbos87 5y ago
I put myself firmly in the camp of “vaxxed, boosted, and done”, and I’d say that’s the attitude of more people than we all might think. I think you have the theoretical game plan right, but I’d say that #3 is no longer within the realm of possibility in the US. There’s just no public support for it amongst anyone but the tiny percentage of the most cautious among us. On #2, I’d even say that yes, masks still make sense in crowded indoor non-optional settings - meaning places we all have to go like public transit, grocery stores, and hospitals. But I’m already past the point of ever wearing a mask outdoors, and I’d also argue that it shouldn’t be a requirement for vaccinated individuals in optional spaces like gyms, bars, restaurants.
- Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
  Plus of course in bars and restaurants they are pointless theater- wearing a mask to walk to your table, then taking it off to eat, drink and talk loudly for several hours, does precisely nothing.
  - cure 5y ago
    Sigh. This is wrong, and I wonder why it is so hard to understand that it's all about probabilities. Being unmasked for 50% (?) of the time (while eating, say) you are in an enclosed space is obviously less risky than being unmasked 100% of the time.
    - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      Except at a restaurant, the unmasked time is closer to 95%-99%, depending on how long it takes to get a table, and then how long you're there. My wife an I recently went out for breakfast. There was no wait for a table, so the masked time was basically less than a minute, but let's call it a full minute. Then, we were there for about 40 minutes unmasked. That's a 97.5% time unmasked, talking or eating. You cannot possibly convince me that the 1 minute I had my mask on made ANY difference. That said, the alternative to the "mask until you're seated" policy was never going to be "no masks", it would end up being "no indoor dining".
thomascgalvin 5y ago
> The big question right now is if we should push button#3 [lockdowns]. I think a more salient question is if we can push button #3. Nobody wants more lockdowns. The vaccinated are tired of the unvaccinated fucking everything up for us, and the unvaccinated have never been open to the idea. This is another thing pointed out by the article: there just isn't the will to do it, even if it was necessary. This isn't being made as a medical decision, it's being made as a political decision.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/rxwnbl/i_am_a_new_york_city_public_high_school_student/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/rxwnbl/i_am_a_new_york... You either do an orderly shutdown, or you get de-facto shutdown. In the case of this high-school, they only needed ~10% of students / teachers to get COVID19 before chaos reigned supreme. Students are now skipping classes out of fear of their own safety, teachers are collecting students into auditoriums (because too many teachers are sick, not enough substitute teachers to watch the students 30-at-a-time anymore, gotta collect all the students together to more efficiently watch over them). At this point, the high-school in this Reddit discussion should have just an orderly shutdown, rather than pretending everything is fine.
  - holbrad 5y ago
    If people aren't getting COVID and are staying at home because of a shutdown, then this exact same situation happens again just later in time... (After the school shutdown)
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      No it isn't. An orderly shutdown is better, because all the students remain at the same point of their lessons. If you're a calculus teacher currently teaching basic integrals this week... you won't be able to teach "integration by parts" (or other advanced integrals) 1 month from now, because 10% of your students were missing. ---------- In contrast, a formal shutdown means that _EVERYBODY_ gets held off at this lesson. You cut your losses, formally shutdown school, and start everybody up when times are safer. You can plan around a formal shutdown. You can't plan around a de-facto shutdown. All the students are going to have bits and pieces of knowledge and are unable to catchup, because they all randomly lost bits of information due to randomly missing class.
cryptonector 5y ago
Where the hell are you that this is your reality? Here in Texas it is absolutely not the case that "but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button".
- khazhoux 5y ago
  Is that because Texas numbers are good (I'm pretty sure they're not) or because Texas would never contemplate that button?
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    Both.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    Texas has much lower per capita cases and deaths than a state like New York. But I also suspect that Texas values freedom relative to safety much higher than states like New York.
  - epakai 5y ago
    Texas leadership is focused on performing for their constituents. That relegates the contemplation to progressive city/county leadership who are willing to push back on statewide policy when the numbers get bad. A lot of this gets left to the choice of business owners and school administrators who have to balance their choices with fiscal concerns and public perception. There is no political leadership position for them to fall back on. Basically everyone's hands are tied, and some group is going to be upset whether buttons get pressed or not.
cm2187 5y ago
Until when? Until covid goes away (which Biden implied earlier this year, that the reason we still have covid is because of the unvaccinated)? Vaccines seem to do nothing to infections, it only reduces the risk of hospitalisation and death. In the UK the % of positive cases that are vaccinated is pretty much the same than the % of people vaccinated in the population. Covid isn't going away. So are you suggesting vaccines, masks and lockdowns forever? I don't think many will agree to that. I certain don't.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  If this is our new reality then this is our new reality. Given that our hospital systems are being pushed to basically their breaking point, we need to do what we can to help our the nurses / doctors handle this situation. A cloth mask is something like 30% effective. That's better than nothing, and certainly can slow down the spread if used universally. Booster-vaccines are something like 70% vs Omicron. You do what you can, with the tools you have.
  - cm2187 5y ago
    I don't know the situation in the US, but here in the UK, the only reason there is a strain on hospitals is not because of high hospital admissions, they aren't particularly high. It is because of mandatory self-quarantine requirement for hospital staff who test positive, which result in staff shortage. We wouldn't do that with a cold, and this variant, at least to the vaccinated, is little more than a cold.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      For crying out loud man... If you are sick, stay home. Don't infect your colleagues, don't infect your patients. Its not that hard. --- The fact that you're arguing for the opposite is incredibly callous and reckless of you. Its like the pandemic has removed you of common sense. That's literally why we have paid sick leave. Having 5% of your workforce stuck at home is better than those people coming in and infecting _EVERONE ELSE AT THE OFFICE_.
dntrkv 5y ago
In the US, there is no political capital left to even attempt number 3. Not gonna happen.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
You might find this video interesting: https://youtu.be/7s4Tp6MNhHw https://youtu.be/7s4Tp6MNhHw TLDW: lockdowns are ineffective because they focus on protecting the wrong people. They can also cause harm to people. They also touch on schools/colleges and say it makes no sense to lock them down because young people are very low risk.
contravariant 5y ago
Those are actions, they do not form a plan. There are several ways this could end, but the scenarios that could realistically keep most people from encountering the virus have proven implausible. So while you can use maska and lockdowns indefinitely, it's not much of a plan. Arguably boosting the entire population and waiting for the last wave to pass is a more realistic plan, even though nobody so far seems willing to admit they're planning to do this, they just are doing it.
JSavageOne 5y ago
Shocking to me that "lockdown", ie. population-wide government-mandated house arrest, was ever accepted by the public as a viable option. COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside, so mask mandates outside are at best useless.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside, so mask mandates outside are at best useless. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/07/deer-ohio-infected-novel-coronavirus-study-covid-19/9088013002/ https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/07/deer-ohio-inf... Are white-tailed deer commonly seen indoors? Or maybe, your assertion is full of crap.
  - JSavageOne 5y ago
    Straight from your article: "It's possible the deer in northeast Ohio contracted it from contaminated water, since the novel coronavirus is shed in human waste. But alternative sources — such as trash, backyard feeders, bait stations and wildlife hospitals — have to be considered, Bowman said." What does this have to do with masks again? Perhaps you can organize a scientific experiment equipping half the deer with masks, and report back to us with the results.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      You're saying that 33% of _ALL_ deer in Ohio were drinking from contaminated water? Maybe the original case came from water, but we all know that COVID19 is primarily a respiratory virus that spreads by breath and air.
      - zarzavat 5y ago
        It certainly seems likely that deer engage in behaviours outside that humans do not, that leads to much closer contact. I can think of at least one such behaviour. I don't think that wild animals are a good model for human epidemiology.
holbrad 5y ago
I think answer to #3 is no and in fact in hindsight should have always been no. Here in the UK we are in a terrible position of having to eventually pay for insanely expensive lockdowns that effectively did very little. And we are now in the exact same place, as we were previously, having the same "discussion".
unethical_ban 5y ago
Let's be clear on this: The majority of humanity is not okay with the idea of wearing masks full-time in all public places, and shutting down densely populated activities forever. Masks make sense locally, temporarily, and as circumstances warrant. Such as a hospital or pharmacy during a flu outbreak, or when someone thinks they may be sick (cough or sneeze fits). There doesn't seem to be much we can do to stop this in the near term. The idea of stamping out COVID quickly like we thought we could do in the spring of 2020 is gone. It is time now to understand we live with it, to be cautious when we feel ill and isolate ourselves, and to get the preventative measures that help best (vaccines). #2 and #3 are for imminent emergencies.

millzlane 5y ago

Stay away from people who don't take the pandemic seriously, and take every precaution you know you would take if this virus was any more serious. We all knew what to expect. Sure it sucks, but would you rather catch the virus?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Melatonic 5y ago

In many countries in Asia it was already considered polite to wear a mask if you got sick. Got a cold and coughing everywhere? Wear a mask so your not spewing droplets all over your coworkers and people at the store. I am hoping that trend continues in the western world but who really knows

jmull 5y ago

> But once vaxxed+boosted, what more realistically can we do? ffs, wear a mask.

khazhoux 5y ago
TBH, I consider wearing a mask to be so low-effort, I take it for granted. I know for many other people in this country that's not the case at all, and wearing a mask to the grocery store for them is somehow akin to wearing a 20-pound iron ball chained to their ankle. But to me (and my family), a mask isn't a big deal. By "what more realistically can we do" I'm really talking about shutdowns, lockdowns, and capacity reductions. I'm ok with continuing WFH for people who can... so I suppose my stance is inconsistent: I want to get back to "normal" but I'm ok with WFH and masks. Overall, I'm frankly at a point where, double-vaxx'd and boosted, I really want to go back to not having to second-guess my decision to go out for a bowl of ramen.