Nobody would want that either and I hate seeing hospitals full of little kids with Covid, good thing is I have never seen hospitals full of little kids with Covid, because little kids aren't affected by Covid.

I think we're making progress. We've moved on from thinking about granddad and gran mama to thinking about children now.

The vaccine is variously 85%-95% effective. That's great but not perfect. We also know it helps in 2 ways: keeping the vaccinated from being infectious if they get it and mostly keeping them from getting it (85-95% of the time).

But masks add a second layer of protection when worn by the unvaccinated which is why the CDC guidance still says they should. And now too many of them won't because they can enter stores and other places unmasked--nobody will even ask their vaccine status.

So you are wrong. Even if you are vaccinated, there's a lot less to be afraid of but still something that you wouldn't need to be afraid of if the unvaccinated were still forced to wear a mask when sharing indoor spaces with you.

As far as I'm concerned, the ideal solution would be vaccine "passports" and a requirement to show them if entering stores and other places unmasked but it's pretty much settled we aren't going that route. Continuing to require masks indoors is the alternative even if you don't like it.

This is 100% false.

It's only false in the context of saying that little kids don't get cancer, however we don't shut everything down because some very very very very unfortunate kids get cancer.

When has anything in life ever been 100%?

I'm not wrong to move on with life, when there has been a vaccine available for 5-6 months for our most vulnerable for a virus where 99%+ survive.

Which is, of course, more BS.

Hospitals in the US aren't "full of" COVID patients of any age right now, but there are plenty of kids hospitalized:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-1...=hp_listb_pos3

And this doesn't even mention the severe syndrome when the immune system runs amok which is seen almost exclusively in children.

Your COVID fatigue is blinding you to the fact this isn't over yet and in order to do the more important things like open the economy back up, we need to continue to do the simple and harmless things like keep a mask in our pocket and slap it on when going into a crowded store.

There used to be a lot of noise about whether covid is worse than the flu, or how horrible it is to compare covid and flu infection or fatality rates. John Ioannidis became a bit of a pariah for talking about covid IFR derived from his usual meta analysis approach which pre-covid was pretty non-controversial.

How does average historical influenza risk in the 2010's compare with covid for a vaccinated person where risk of becoming infected is down by maybe 10x+ and risk of serious illness is down by even more? Were public health officials in error in 2018 for failing to implement mask mandates? Why is it insufficient for a person who is concerned to wear their own N95 mask?

Irrelevent. You just want to believe it's all good now but it isn't yet.

These kinds of arguments apply to serious issues like shutting down the economy, restricting people to their homes, limiting their ability to travel and so on. They seem petty when the issue at hand is, as I said above, keeping a mask in your pocket and slapping it on for a few minutes when going into a store.

You can still have unmasked social events with people whose vaccination status you trust. You can go indoors without a mask when whoever controls the space actually checks vaccination status (as some sports venues have done).

But to run into Walmart or the supermarket, it shouldn't be a big deal to ask you to slap it on your face for a few minutes until most of the developed world (at least) has no new cases most days and very low positivity rates on testing which is a place we can reach in a few months.

Why not present us all with Covid mortality rates of Americans under the age of 18?

And is that mortality rate a reason to keep things locked up?

Your opinion is that this is trivial? If a governor of some state had decided to tell everybody they had to wear masks in Wal-Mart and similar environments in 2017 for an arbitrary reason, there would have been no reason to object because it doesn't really matter.

I think some perspective is in order here and wearing a mask is not the end of the world but I also don't think mask mandates are nothing and could continue indefinitely with no significant downsides.

Cancer isn't caused by an airborne virus.

Then wear one but I don't think rest of us should be required to do so now that things are headed in the right direction and vaccines are widely available. I have no plans on wearing one in places that don't require them and will opt to go to these places over those that do...e.g., CVS over Walgreens, Home Depot over Lowes.

For reference the flu is an airborne virus that kills up to 150 (188 on the maximum side to be exact) kids per year.

It’s unreasonable to expect the bolded part to ever happen, and none of these rules should be kept in place in the hope that it does.

If you’re a “zero Covid” lunatic then you can suit yourself but don’t expect anyone else to go along with it.

COVID is deadlier than the flu. COVID is more contagious than the flu. And it is apparently quite common to have long-term effects from COVID and nobody really knows why.

To whom?

Some flu strains affect young people more, some affect old people more. Covid very much affects old people more. Many flu strains are more dangerous to young people than Covid.

Many long Covid symptoms are consistent with pneumonia, as people with severe Covid can develop pneumonia. Persistent symptoms doesn’t mean permanent symptoms and the pandemic hasn’t been around long enough for any of these to really be “long-term” yet.

True, but that is not the case for kids and that is what we were talking about before you tried to change the subject.

Also true. The Spanish flu killed young people, fortunately Covid did not. It killed people of age and with conditions that would have ultimately killed them sooner rather than later.

I work for a village in suburban Chicago...

We no longer are required to wear masks at work! It was so refreshing. It was also nice seeing residents come in without masks, back to normal!