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Still Masking... Because People Suck
May. 23rd, 2021 05:04 pmIt's been over a week now since the CDC released new guidance that it's safe for people who are fully vaccinated— like me— to go without masks in most indoors situations. I was in the rural Inland Northwest when the news filtered down to the "man on the street" level. Hawk and I dined indoors at a restaurant for the first time in several months. It quickly became apparent, though, that "the man on the street" was misinterpreting the CDC's guidance. Deliberately. Business owners and locals alike were repeating, "Masks are over now."
Wrong! It's not "masks off for everybody"; it's only masks off for the approximately 37% of the adult population who've completed vaccination. The other near-two-thirds need to keep their masks on. And in some of those rural, Trump-voting counties where the vaxx rate is as low as 25%, it's 3/4 who need to stay masked. But that's not how conservative politicians, news, and bloggers are promoting it. They're the source of the deliberate misrepresentation that "Masks are over now."
State governments, county governments, and business are stuck in a tricky situation. There's pressure on all of them to loosen mask mandates to align with the CDC's latest guidance. But the problem with having as a policy, "All non-fully vaccinated people must wear masks" is that we don't know who's fully vaccinated or not. There's effectively no way to know.
We could have known if we'd set up vaccination passports of some kind. The idea has been shot down by conservatives who complain it would be the start of a police state. We're left with handwritten paper cards that aren't much different from what health authorities used in the time of the 1918 flu pandemic. And even those paper cards can't be used for ID, conservatives argue, because HIPPA prohibits requiring disclosure of medical records. But that's a deliberate misrepresentation repeated by conservative politicians, news, and bloggers, too. HIPPA pertains to how a person's medical provider can disclose that person's medical records, not how a person themselves may be asked to disclose their own personal information to, say, enter a business safely.
So, with no reasonable controls in place, and with a significant portion of the population putting everyone at risk through misinformed or deliberately malicious behavior, the only alternative left is to continue playing it safe. I'm going to continue not eating in restaurants when I have any kind of reasonable choice, and I'll avoid shopping for all but the necessities if there's too high a percentage of deniers around. Fortunately, where I live, that's not a problem. State and local laws still require masks, and local compliance remains high.
At least now, with vaccines easily available for most of us who care, the stupid people who refuse are mostly hurting themselves.
Wrong! It's not "masks off for everybody"; it's only masks off for the approximately 37% of the adult population who've completed vaccination. The other near-two-thirds need to keep their masks on. And in some of those rural, Trump-voting counties where the vaxx rate is as low as 25%, it's 3/4 who need to stay masked. But that's not how conservative politicians, news, and bloggers are promoting it. They're the source of the deliberate misrepresentation that "Masks are over now."
State governments, county governments, and business are stuck in a tricky situation. There's pressure on all of them to loosen mask mandates to align with the CDC's latest guidance. But the problem with having as a policy, "All non-fully vaccinated people must wear masks" is that we don't know who's fully vaccinated or not. There's effectively no way to know.
We could have known if we'd set up vaccination passports of some kind. The idea has been shot down by conservatives who complain it would be the start of a police state. We're left with handwritten paper cards that aren't much different from what health authorities used in the time of the 1918 flu pandemic. And even those paper cards can't be used for ID, conservatives argue, because HIPPA prohibits requiring disclosure of medical records. But that's a deliberate misrepresentation repeated by conservative politicians, news, and bloggers, too. HIPPA pertains to how a person's medical provider can disclose that person's medical records, not how a person themselves may be asked to disclose their own personal information to, say, enter a business safely.
So, with no reasonable controls in place, and with a significant portion of the population putting everyone at risk through misinformed or deliberately malicious behavior, the only alternative left is to continue playing it safe. I'm going to continue not eating in restaurants when I have any kind of reasonable choice, and I'll avoid shopping for all but the necessities if there's too high a percentage of deniers around. Fortunately, where I live, that's not a problem. State and local laws still require masks, and local compliance remains high.
At least now, with vaccines easily available for most of us who care, the stupid people who refuse are mostly hurting themselves.
