8 ms·

This is the kind of thing that just drives me crazy. If the mandates were at the very least logically consistent, I would not consider them a burden. "You are

This is the kind of thing that just drives me crazy. If the mandates were at the very least logically consistent, I would not consider them a burden. "You are not allowed into the restaurant unless you are masked, but you may immediately take it off once you've walked 10 feet to your table" is nonsense. Forcing you to leave the coffee shop with everyone unmasking to drink anyway is nonsense. It is security theater. It is virtue signalling. And if you have the audacity to question the irrational rules, people unironically call you a murderer.

sjg007 5y ago
You walk by others while you are not at your table. What do you want to do? Hold your breath? Not to mention bathrooms and so forth. Presumably the tables are well spaced etc...
- pcmoney 5y ago
  In an open air room, the difference between walking past and sitting in the same room as is negligible. Total theatre, does nothing besides allowing restaurants and patrons to feel ok/that they are “doing something” and stay open.
  - sleepybrett 5y ago
    Which is why indoor dining rooms should still be closed. Pretending we aren't living through a pandemic that is respiratory in nature is fucking madness. Maybe if we had locked down harder for longer and treated this thing seriously in the beginning we wouldn't be almost two years into this with no end in sight.
    - pcmoney 5y ago
      No, Covid is low risk if you are vaccinated and elderly/at risk and extremely low risk if you are younger (vaccinated or not) It’s endemic. Its not going away. We are all going to get it. (Me: triple vaxxed, had covid 2x) Getting vaccinated is a personal heath decision (which I encourage) Time to move on.
      - a_shovel 5y ago
        This plan would kill a large portion of immunocompromised people worldwide.
        Closi 5y ago
        Why are the only deaths we seem to care about those that are Covid related? If we are worried about killing people worldwide, far more people die of hunger-related causes each day, but we aren't rebuilding our entire society to save those people. But I can't see a reason why deaths from Covid are more of a tragedy than those we left to starve. Or take smoking for instance - more people die each year from smoking than have died from Covid, but we seem more willing to ban human contact than to ban cigarettes? Seems backwards to me (especially considering c10% of smoking related deaths are from secondhand smoke in the USA!). I know these might seem like a silly point, but why are we so focused on one single cause of death right now? We lock down our entire society to 'protect unvaccinated people worldwide', but then have continually cut foreign aid? IMO - I think we have totally lost the plot and lost sight of what is important, but that's just my view.
        sleepybrett 5y ago
        Smoking, at least where I live is heavily taxed and regulated. You can't smoke in any building open to the public or place of employment, you can't smoke within 25ft of any entrance to any of those buildings either. Cigarettes are taxed to hell and back as well. I guess we could do that to the people unwilling to get vaxxinated. Tax them for their status and bar them from any building open to the public or place of employment.
        pcmoney 5y ago
        Why would we bar them? Getting vaccinated does not stop you from getting Covid and it does not stop the spread of Covid. I could see a tax break for being vaccinated as a viable incentive.
        pcmoney 5y ago
    - gherkinnn 5y ago
      No. At some point you've got to ask if these measures are worth living for. It's winter in the northern hemisphere. It'd dark and it's cold. Keeping people locked up at home for a third season is absurd.
      - sleepybrett 5y ago
        I live in seattle. It's dark and cold. Hell the mask helps, it's great for keeping my face warm. I don't consider myself locked up. I miss in person game nights the most, i miss dinner with friends (in a private home or restaurant) somewhat. We do gamenights online using videochat and products like roll20 and boardgame arena. It's not super awesome but it works for us for now. I leave the house, go on walks go shopping etc. But I take very reasonable precautions. I shop during low traffic times, get up early and hit the grocery store before work, I order food for pickup and wait outside for it. During the more temperate months we'd set up a few tables in the backyard and have friends over for meals, each 'pod' got their own table nicely distanced, we were probably a little louder than most dinner parties but it was nice just to have them around. For a friends birthday we wanted to go see spiderman, we rented a theater (it was actually not especially expensive) invited about 20 people who we knew were supervaxxed and responsible enough not to come if they though they might be exposed and had a grand, masked and distanced, time. I'm just trying to be responsible, I know several people that are immunocompromised and they can't even do half that stuff. I'm trying to be responsible so that they can. When some asshole declares that 'covid is over' I just realize how fucking narcissistic they are.
        pcmoney 5y ago
        You and your friends are well off and it looks like you dont have children and can work remote. Thats great! Unfortunately most are living under wildly different and much more difficult circumstances that they are being asked to bear month after month with no end and with dubious effect.
        sleepybrett 5y ago
        If half our population hadn't decided covid was a hoax and didn't take even the simplest precautions from the beginning we probably wouldn't be in the situation we are in now.
    - Closi 5y ago
      > Which is why indoor dining rooms should still be closed. Pretending we aren't living through a pandemic that is respiratory in nature is fucking madness. Maybe if we had locked down harder for longer and treated this thing seriously in the beginning we wouldn't be almost two years into this with no end in sight. We aren't living through a pandemic anymore, we are now living in an endemic. Omicron isn't going away anytime soon - and we can't lock down businesses forever. Omicron can't be stopped by lockdown anyway (see challenges of containing it within China). Secondly, it is highly unlikely that we would have got rid of Covid-19 even harsher lockdown measures earlier (e.g. see Omicron which happened because the original virus jumped to mice and back to humans - just humans locking down wouldn't have stopped this variant, we would have had to lock down all the rodents too). My personal view - we have to stop viewing life as nothing but a vector for disease, and stop re-architecting our entire society and culture to avoid Covid infections (at huge societal costs to education, standards of living etc).
      - sjg007 5y ago
        You need to look up the definitions of pandemic, epidemic and endemic.
        pcmoney 5y ago
        An endemic disease is a disease that is always present in a particular population/region. Ex. Flu, malaria, HIV, syphilis, and… COVID Am I missing something?
        sjg007 5y ago
        Go look up the definitions of these words and then read what Closi wrote again.
        tagoregrtst 5y ago
        Endemic also means, particularly in the context of disease, widely present in the area. Endemic for COVID, therefore, means that theres no locking it out because its everywhere. And since COVID can jump species, its done. Game over. It will be with us forever.
    - ericd 5y ago
      People over here in France are generally living pretty normally. Far from madness, it's pretty nice. Sure, everyone masks up and whips out their phone for constant QR scanning, but restaurants are still pretty full, trams busses and trains as well, and people are getting together. Schools are in person. It probably helps that home tests are cheap ($25 for 5) and super easy to get. It's frankly pretty weird that these comment threads are always so ragey and judgey, let alone the ones on Twitter. Everyone should chill a bit and stop reading the news stories stoking fears - at some point the mental effects are riskier than the physical ones, and I'd say that many in this thread are well past this point.
      - pcmoney 5y ago
        Jealous of your tests. Pretty sad we printed a couple trillion and didnt get testing etc with it.
      - Zanneth 5y ago
        Wearing masks and having to endure "constant QR scanning" doesn't sound like normal life to me.
        ericd 5y ago
        The masks are if you want to go into mass transit or peoples’ businesses, and it’s mostly theater in restaurants - they come off and stay off almost immediately. It’s just common courtesy to others to wear them in public places while omicron is raging. The QR code scanning is just for dining at the place (not takeout), and for things like long trains and planes. It’s not a big deal, except for the privacy implications. My point was mostly that people aren’t holding back from going out, despite very high infection rates, and things appear to be mostly fine.
      - caddemon 5y ago
        People bitching about restrictions in the US just want something to be mad about, because there really aren't any life-altering ones. Masks on public transit and in healthcare facilities, and in some schools (it is very variable by district). Some cities require proof of vaccination for indoor dining or large events. That's basically it, just as you describe it in France. The only things that have been cancelled lately have been due to staffing issues (e.g. concerts happen unless performers get COVID, schools are open except where the absence rate is very high there may be a brief shutdown, etc.). I'm in the northeast, and it has been this way for at least 9 months now. Just imagine how little life was impacted by restrictions in some other areas of the US. So IMO it's the people mad about "restrictions" that should calm down with the hyperbole. Yes there are also some hyper anxious pro-lockdown people, but reality doesn't reflect their opinion anyway. I don't get what there is to be upset about. For those that are so angry about US-based restrictions, what have you been prevented from doing in the last 9 months?
    - skillpass 5y ago
      Covid spread throughout the entire world very quickly. "Locking down harder" in any region simply delays the inevitable spike in cases once those lockdowns end.
    - krferriter 5y ago
      I mean if you want to argue to close all indoor dining rooms, that's a case you could try to make. I disagree, but at least it'd be a consistent thing to argue for. Opening dining rooms, but then requiring everyone to wear a mask while they walk from the door to the table is pure theater that does nothing at all.
nostromo 5y ago
The crazy thing is this is creating a breeding ground for conspiracy theorists. When the media, the government and "science" double-down on policies we all know are total bullshit, it makes people lose faith in the media, the government, and "science."
- LewisVerstappen 5y ago
  Science is based off independent verification of results i.e. the scientific method. The "Science" that we're supposed to "#believe" is based off peer review where a huge fraction (in some cases... a majority) of results cannot be independently replicated. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

sjg007 5y ago

You walk by others while you are not at your table. What do you want to do? Hold your breath? Not to mention bathrooms and so forth. Presumably the tables are well spaced etc...

pcmoney 5y ago
In an open air room, the difference between walking past and sitting in the same room as is negligible. Total theatre, does nothing besides allowing restaurants and patrons to feel ok/that they are “doing something” and stay open.
- sleepybrett 5y ago
  Which is why indoor dining rooms should still be closed. Pretending we aren't living through a pandemic that is respiratory in nature is fucking madness. Maybe if we had locked down harder for longer and treated this thing seriously in the beginning we wouldn't be almost two years into this with no end in sight.
  - pcmoney 5y ago
    No, Covid is low risk if you are vaccinated and elderly/at risk and extremely low risk if you are younger (vaccinated or not) It’s endemic. Its not going away. We are all going to get it. (Me: triple vaxxed, had covid 2x) Getting vaccinated is a personal heath decision (which I encourage) Time to move on.
    - a_shovel 5y ago
      This plan would kill a large portion of immunocompromised people worldwide.
      - Closi 5y ago
        Why are the only deaths we seem to care about those that are Covid related? If we are worried about killing people worldwide, far more people die of hunger-related causes each day, but we aren't rebuilding our entire society to save those people. But I can't see a reason why deaths from Covid are more of a tragedy than those we left to starve. Or take smoking for instance - more people die each year from smoking than have died from Covid, but we seem more willing to ban human contact than to ban cigarettes? Seems backwards to me (especially considering c10% of smoking related deaths are from secondhand smoke in the USA!). I know these might seem like a silly point, but why are we so focused on one single cause of death right now? We lock down our entire society to 'protect unvaccinated people worldwide', but then have continually cut foreign aid? IMO - I think we have totally lost the plot and lost sight of what is important, but that's just my view.
        sleepybrett 5y ago
        Smoking, at least where I live is heavily taxed and regulated. You can't smoke in any building open to the public or place of employment, you can't smoke within 25ft of any entrance to any of those buildings either. Cigarettes are taxed to hell and back as well. I guess we could do that to the people unwilling to get vaxxinated. Tax them for their status and bar them from any building open to the public or place of employment.
        pcmoney 5y ago
        Why would we bar them? Getting vaccinated does not stop you from getting Covid and it does not stop the spread of Covid. I could see a tax break for being vaccinated as a viable incentive.
        pcmoney 5y ago
  - gherkinnn 5y ago
    No. At some point you've got to ask if these measures are worth living for. It's winter in the northern hemisphere. It'd dark and it's cold. Keeping people locked up at home for a third season is absurd.
    - sleepybrett 5y ago
      I live in seattle. It's dark and cold. Hell the mask helps, it's great for keeping my face warm. I don't consider myself locked up. I miss in person game nights the most, i miss dinner with friends (in a private home or restaurant) somewhat. We do gamenights online using videochat and products like roll20 and boardgame arena. It's not super awesome but it works for us for now. I leave the house, go on walks go shopping etc. But I take very reasonable precautions. I shop during low traffic times, get up early and hit the grocery store before work, I order food for pickup and wait outside for it. During the more temperate months we'd set up a few tables in the backyard and have friends over for meals, each 'pod' got their own table nicely distanced, we were probably a little louder than most dinner parties but it was nice just to have them around. For a friends birthday we wanted to go see spiderman, we rented a theater (it was actually not especially expensive) invited about 20 people who we knew were supervaxxed and responsible enough not to come if they though they might be exposed and had a grand, masked and distanced, time. I'm just trying to be responsible, I know several people that are immunocompromised and they can't even do half that stuff. I'm trying to be responsible so that they can. When some asshole declares that 'covid is over' I just realize how fucking narcissistic they are.
      - pcmoney 5y ago
        You and your friends are well off and it looks like you dont have children and can work remote. Thats great! Unfortunately most are living under wildly different and much more difficult circumstances that they are being asked to bear month after month with no end and with dubious effect.
        sleepybrett 5y ago
        If half our population hadn't decided covid was a hoax and didn't take even the simplest precautions from the beginning we probably wouldn't be in the situation we are in now.
  - Closi 5y ago
    > Which is why indoor dining rooms should still be closed. Pretending we aren't living through a pandemic that is respiratory in nature is fucking madness. Maybe if we had locked down harder for longer and treated this thing seriously in the beginning we wouldn't be almost two years into this with no end in sight. We aren't living through a pandemic anymore, we are now living in an endemic. Omicron isn't going away anytime soon - and we can't lock down businesses forever. Omicron can't be stopped by lockdown anyway (see challenges of containing it within China). Secondly, it is highly unlikely that we would have got rid of Covid-19 even harsher lockdown measures earlier (e.g. see Omicron which happened because the original virus jumped to mice and back to humans - just humans locking down wouldn't have stopped this variant, we would have had to lock down all the rodents too). My personal view - we have to stop viewing life as nothing but a vector for disease, and stop re-architecting our entire society and culture to avoid Covid infections (at huge societal costs to education, standards of living etc).
    - sjg007 5y ago
      You need to look up the definitions of pandemic, epidemic and endemic.
      - pcmoney 5y ago
        An endemic disease is a disease that is always present in a particular population/region. Ex. Flu, malaria, HIV, syphilis, and… COVID Am I missing something?
        sjg007 5y ago
        Go look up the definitions of these words and then read what Closi wrote again.
        tagoregrtst 5y ago
        Endemic also means, particularly in the context of disease, widely present in the area. Endemic for COVID, therefore, means that theres no locking it out because its everywhere. And since COVID can jump species, its done. Game over. It will be with us forever.
  - ericd 5y ago
    People over here in France are generally living pretty normally. Far from madness, it's pretty nice. Sure, everyone masks up and whips out their phone for constant QR scanning, but restaurants are still pretty full, trams busses and trains as well, and people are getting together. Schools are in person. It probably helps that home tests are cheap ($25 for 5) and super easy to get. It's frankly pretty weird that these comment threads are always so ragey and judgey, let alone the ones on Twitter. Everyone should chill a bit and stop reading the news stories stoking fears - at some point the mental effects are riskier than the physical ones, and I'd say that many in this thread are well past this point.
    - pcmoney 5y ago
      Jealous of your tests. Pretty sad we printed a couple trillion and didnt get testing etc with it.
    - Zanneth 5y ago
      Wearing masks and having to endure "constant QR scanning" doesn't sound like normal life to me.
      - ericd 5y ago
        The masks are if you want to go into mass transit or peoples’ businesses, and it’s mostly theater in restaurants - they come off and stay off almost immediately. It’s just common courtesy to others to wear them in public places while omicron is raging. The QR code scanning is just for dining at the place (not takeout), and for things like long trains and planes. It’s not a big deal, except for the privacy implications. My point was mostly that people aren’t holding back from going out, despite very high infection rates, and things appear to be mostly fine.
    - caddemon 5y ago
      People bitching about restrictions in the US just want something to be mad about, because there really aren't any life-altering ones. Masks on public transit and in healthcare facilities, and in some schools (it is very variable by district). Some cities require proof of vaccination for indoor dining or large events. That's basically it, just as you describe it in France. The only things that have been cancelled lately have been due to staffing issues (e.g. concerts happen unless performers get COVID, schools are open except where the absence rate is very high there may be a brief shutdown, etc.). I'm in the northeast, and it has been this way for at least 9 months now. Just imagine how little life was impacted by restrictions in some other areas of the US. So IMO it's the people mad about "restrictions" that should calm down with the hyperbole. Yes there are also some hyper anxious pro-lockdown people, but reality doesn't reflect their opinion anyway. I don't get what there is to be upset about. For those that are so angry about US-based restrictions, what have you been prevented from doing in the last 9 months?
  - skillpass 5y ago
    Covid spread throughout the entire world very quickly. "Locking down harder" in any region simply delays the inevitable spike in cases once those lockdowns end.
  - krferriter 5y ago
    I mean if you want to argue to close all indoor dining rooms, that's a case you could try to make. I disagree, but at least it'd be a consistent thing to argue for. Opening dining rooms, but then requiring everyone to wear a mask while they walk from the door to the table is pure theater that does nothing at all.

nostromo 5y ago

The crazy thing is this is creating a breeding ground for conspiracy theorists. When the media, the government and "science" double-down on policies we all know are total bullshit, it makes people lose faith in the media, the government, and "science."

LewisVerstappen 5y ago
Science is based off independent verification of results i.e. the scientific method. The "Science" that we're supposed to "#believe" is based off peer review where a huge fraction (in some cases... a majority) of results cannot be independently replicated. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis