Your ludicrously inapt analogy proves either bad faith or a failure to comprehend the concept of tyranny. A public health mandate to wear a mask for ten minutes inside a shop is nothing at all like anti-gay animus manifested in a ban that eternally denies the gay minority the basic human right enjoyed by the straight majority, to marry one's life partner. That's some epic disphittery right there. Lame.

Remember, misanthropic maskholes can legally and easily remain mask-free all they want--just not inside stores, bars, restaurants, etc. in jurisdictions where mask mandates for such spaces are in effect. You do have the choice, so spare us the snowflake sniveling about the easily foreseeable consequences of the choice you opt to make.

Good news for Pittsburghers!

I cannot speak to Chicago's situation specifically, but thanks to all the vaxxholes who refuse to do the right thing and get the jab, there are a lot of American communities right now without available ICU beds. The same thing happened here in LA earlier in the year, and that is why we have mask mandates right now--so it doesn't happen again. It sucks, but it is important to keep ICU beds open for people who have suffered heart attacks and strokes, been in car crashes, etc.

So does that mean you're travelling farther than you otherwise need to? If so it seem like wearing a mask is less a hassle.

OMG so wearing a mask to try and prevent hospitals from overflowing and people dying when they would normally be able to be treated but they can't because really dumb people won't get vaccinated and cry about wearing a mask when shopping for their diet coke is Tyranny?

I am vaccinated. I don’t care about people that aren’t vaccinated. They can die.

Hospitals just need to prioritise other emergency care over Covid cases, since we know that almost everyone requiring hospitalisation for Covid is unvaccinated by choice. Leave them in the fucking waiting room.

Anyway I’ve just been not wearing a mask, including on public transportation where it’s nominally required, and no one has said anything.

You realise that all of your zealotry about this just stems from your desperation to prove your anti-Trump bona fides, and that if you lived in a different country with a different politics context then you wouldn’t be nearly so passionate, right?

I agree. I wish unvaccinated people were turned away unless they are not eligible or cannot get one due to some health concern, which I really think is very very few people. I cannot think of a medical reason a vaccine would be worse than actually getting covid unless you know in advance you're deathly allergic .

I wouldn't expect anybody to approach you or anybody about not wearing a mask. I comply but don't really care about those that don't, but to bitch that having to wear one in some public spaces for the time being is tyranny is so dramatic. I certainly have no time to get into an argument in person with someone not wearing or wearing a mask.

I didn’t bitch about wearing a mask before vaccines were widely available. I spent 6-7 weeks last summer in Italy, where mask compliance was quite high (though restaurant staff would almost always pull theirs down to speak to you because you couldn’t hear otherwise, which was kind of hilarious). I did not like wearing one, but I could understand the logic and the benefit when there was no other way to reduce transmission and we all wanted things to be open.

But we are now in an ideological, or simply logical, debate between those that accept the reality of Covid being around for the foreseeable future and those that do not. There will always be cases, there will always be deaths, but vaccines are available which reduce your risk of the latter to a small, and acceptable, degree. If you choose not to be vaccinated, then that is a decision that you are making about your own health, and if you die from Covid then I simply do not care.

The argument that transmission breeds new variants and so we should all still wear masks and force people to get vaccinated by social coercion is nonsense. There will always be a large enough reservoir of humanity for this virus to continue to evolve and mutate, no matter how onerous American or European municipalities make life for hospitality staff or patrons.

There is no reason to believe that this dynamic will change for the foreseeable future. So we are now faced with a question about what we want life to be like for the foreseeable future. We can accept that there will always be cases which rarely prove serious, and people die in numbers similar to the flu, or we can ruin life for generation in a futile attempt to achieve the impossible.

You all know where I stand.

That's the nitty-gritty of it. Is the risk small enough and acceptable enough to use it as a reason not to wear a mask.

That, in part depends on how objectionable you find wearing a mask. For brief periods at least, I don't find it objectionable at all.

And now in my 6th month after completing vaccination, I believe the data shows I may have as much as a 20% chance of a "breakthrough" infection if exposed (or higher). Furthermore, a "good" mask--N95 or KN95--has been shown to cut down the exposure to the main way the virus is spread: aerosols.

So, masking is, for me, and I believe for most people should be a small issue with a substantial benefit. And therefore I disagree with you.

Strong evidence that the Delta wave peaked about 2 weeks ago in the New Orleans area. Percent positivity, weekly case counts are declining and the rate of new hospital admissions has continued to drop. Delta is playing out exactly like it did elsewhere in the world.

Yup. I heard second hand today Scott Gottlieb is saying the peak cases in the worst areas (not just LA but FL, TX and the rest) is this weekend. Hospitalizations usually follows by 10-14 days and deaths by an additional 2 weeks or so.

Here is a link to the all of the Louisiana data: https://ladhh.maps.arcgis.com/apps/o...c0eccda972d203

It's interesting to see how the Delta wave started in the more densely populated Southeast part of the state where cases peaked in early August, and now it's radiated out to the more rural Southwest, Central, and North Louisiana parishes where cases continue to rise an a week over week basis. Too bad we're reaching herd immunity the hard way down here with only 39% of the total population fully vaccinated statewide.

But there’s the logical debate.

The risk that remains after vaccination, however significant or insignificant it is to you subjectively, is as small as the risk will be for the foreseeable future. You mention a 20% chance of catching the virus, if exposed, but that’s not really important - the risk of serious illness is much much smaller. The additional mild infection might even boost you antibody response and extend the protection offered by vaccination.

You also need to realise that the trade off, between the negative of wearing a mask and what you call a substantial benefit, is different from person to person. Any benefit to me is clearly much less than it would be to you because Covid isn’t a danger to me.

The larger logical point is that Covid isn’t going away and these so-called “surges” are just the usual ebb and flow that we see with flu (perhaps just not, or not yet, so clearly seasonal). So either you plan to wear a mask indefinitely, or it makes just as much sense to stop doing so now, once you are vaccinated.

I have no intention of wearing a mask indefinitely. Apparently you do. And you can if you want, just don’t expect others to do so.

^ You don’t have a debate with Howard Hughes. You just humor him and give him a bowl of soup a few times a day.

We've seen an increase in cases for well over 5 weeks in the city. No major increase in deaths or hospitalizations.


If you are vaccinated, you have something like 15x more of a chance of being murdered than dying of covid.


This mask mandate is the mayor just wanting to show she is tough.

It starts when cases go over 400 a day but it doesn't end until we get under 200 cases a day. Whatever.

Dude, you are tyrannical.

You praise mandates and wish people will die if they don't get vaccinated. You're the exact person who shouldn't be making decisions like this. Yet, people like you are the ones big-city mayors are listening to.


I still see people wearing masks while riding bikes on the street at 530 in the morning. You people are brainwashed. I can't help but laugh.


And yes, I will continue to shop not only out of Chicago, but out of state. It is well worth the extra gas to avoid supporting a state and city that are overreacting because of their voter electorate who are scared of their own shadows.

It’s like a ‘wokeness’ thing now.

Yes, but usually the two track. Maybe they won't in Chicago for reasons but unless you understand the mechanism, it's reckless, from a public health perspective, to assume they won't. All for what, some minor inconvenience that may turn out to be unnecessary?

Yes but deaths and hospitalizations follow elsewhere, why can we be so sure we're different?

First that's probably not true (as you well know, the risk of being murdered is highly non-uniform across the population, more non-uniform than COVID deaths, so for me specifically that's likely untrue). Secondly, that's irrelevant, because this is a public health intervention, it doesn't matter if it benefits me specifically or not. Even if I didn't care about unvaccinated people at all, I still care about access to hospitals and whether or not my doctor or my friends who are doctors are overworked. Third, while I'm not at high risk, my wife is pregnant, so if she were to get a breakthrough case, as she's temporarily immunosuppressed, it may not be mild for her, not to mention potential effects on the fetus (or the ability to have in-person hospital visits, etc.).

I don't think she's doing it for political reasons.
Adding hysteresis to your control systems is a common (and beneficial!) practice to avoid instability.

:haha: and we're the crazy ones.

+10000 here. I think at this point, the whole mask thing is quickly becoming a new form of wokeness and virtue signaling for people who want to feel better about themselves.

Btw 10023 - How's life in London? I'm flying there on the 31st for a month, maybe two (depending on restrictions, etc). Seems like the UK is the only place right now that doesn't really have restrictions in place.

Also, not sure how this meme of hospitalizations not going up started. Hospitalizations are indeed going up.

https://i.imgur.com/s8BhGhM.png

There's plenty of room for now but not for unmitigated exponential growth.

Vaccines.

Vaccination “breaks the chain” (between cases and deaths), as they say. That’s true to a lesser extent in places like Alabama, because a lot of people aren’t vaccinated. In places where uptake has been better, it should hold.

And if wilfully unvaccinated people do die, who cares.

London is open now. The only place masks are still “required” is on public transportation, but if you don’t wear one on the tube no one says anything (there are people who are medically exempt, and they can’t ask for proof). I’ve only been to a couple of stores that required masks for patrons (out of their own wokeness), and just walked out and went elsewhere.

It’s a shame we’ve had such a shitty summer weather-wise, but it’s actually fine now (like 70 degrees and not raining as frequently).

From October 1st proof of vaccination will be required for more things (and it already is for some concerts, etc). That may be a small problem for you because right now they are only accepting the NHS vaccine app, which not even I can get because I was vaccinated in the US. Unfortunately the NHS is both technically incompetent and obtuse, so they’re unable or unwilling to find a solution to that.

Yeah, but only like 54% of Chicago (63% of eligible people) is fully vaccinated. That might have been good enough before but not with something more contagious like Delta. Astonishingly, only 70% of 65+ are fully vaccinated. Even if you don't care about those people, that's more than enough susceptible people to fill up hospitals if a large fraction gets sick in a short period of time (sure, they'll probably all catch COVID eventually, but we only have finite hospital capacity at any given point in time).

The difference? I am not demanding you do anything.

That should be clear, and its an incredibly important distinction.

It's not so simple in public health.

Public health officials err on the side of the caution and we want them to but they don't make public policy and they also don't have to weigh other issues. When a mask mandate is handed down, it is from your mayor who has far more than just a public health perspective to consider. Until, ICU beds are drying up and Covid cases start spiking, any mandates right now are purely a political measure.

That's the case here; unvaxx'ed are clogging up valuable ICU beds (and we have a LOT of them but I am not sure what solution is or even if there is one but the polarization is getting worse by the day. Even faced with their own mortality lying in a hospital bed, these morons still won't get vaccinated while everyone else are becoming even more resentful being asked to put their lives on hold.

In SF we saw cases rise, followed by hospitalizations. Now cases have downtrended for the past week or two, but hospitalizations are still going up, likely due to the known 2 week lag. I'm guessing hospitalizations should peak or trend down very soon.

Alabama has run out of ICU beds.

By the time ICU beds dry up, it's already too late, like putting sunscreen on after you already have sunburn.

My wife and I are of course vaccinated, and will get our boosters next month.

We are in a high vaccine community.

We largely don’t wear masks outside of our medical facilities where we work.

I’m more and more of the mindset that I don’t mind catching the Delta variant, best way to improve my immunity.

I think our society has lost a bit of common sense in this pandemic. We definitely don’t need the Government mandates, I think it’s overkill and I really think it’s hardly making a difference. It’s just the usual display of politicians trying to keep their jobs by appearing that they are “doing something”

But there's no indication that this is even happening. It's political theater until the data starts to suggest otherwise.

In a certain sense, the number of ICU beds is flexible. For example, one hospital is converting a burn unit to an ICU. Then there’s tents in the parking lot, parking garage or beds in the hospital cafeteria.

But what is less flexible is personnel, especially nurses, to attend to people in those beds. And critical care beds in non-permanent spaces will not have the built-in technology that regular ICUs do which means they will require a higher ratio of nurses to beds.

Look, here’s a basic question with I think a basic answer:

Should vaccinated people have to take on the burden of precautions (like masks) or restrictions (like social distancing e.g. table service only or capacity limits) because unvaccinated people might take up ICU beds?

The answer to me is quite clearly no.

Both on principle, and because I’m not sure it helps much. We shouldn’t go back into lockdown no matter how many anti-vaxxers die, and more moderate restrictions are just a pain in the ass that don’t accomplish anything.

I think you are ranting against the wind, at least in the US. We aren't going back into lockdown here. I don't know about other countries including the one where you chose to work.

If it’s true of lockdowns then it’s also true of going back to wearing masks.

Vaccinated people shouldn’t suffer (regardless of how significant or insignificant you personally consider the particular burden to be) for the sake of the unvaccinated. Or even be the ones that have to pick up the proverbial slack for them.

I think it’s deeper than masking. I think a lot of people are tired of their Governors acting like they are kings, and “what I declare is law”

I relate to that. Being against mask mandates is, in a sense, a show of defiance to that. To many, I think it’s less about masks and more about showing the finger to leaders who they think are acting like they are monarchs in what is actually a Democracy.

That’s the feeling I’m getting.

When does this end?

If in 2030 Chicago sees 401 cases in one day, we randomly go back to masking?

This is a religion to many now, and I am not converting to it.

anti-maskers confirmed as biggest babies on the planet. How easy it is to just throw on a mask in stores and go about your life. It reminds me of my niece throwing a temper tantrum because she doesn’t want to put on shoes before leaving the house.

That this has become the latest symbol of “freedom” for some fools is hilarious and pathetic.

^ Once again, I don't think it's as much about masks as you think. I will post again:

You are welcome to vote against the governor in the next election. And besides, the mask mandate in Chicago has nothing to do with the governor.

Do you feel similarly about seat belt laws, speed limits and mandatory childhood vaccinations?

If hospitals around the country are overflowing, probably, but by then, hopefully anti-maskers seem as rabid as anti-seatbelters. You guys sound like this guy: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...791-story.html

In fact, there's a good argument that mandatory seatbelts are more tyrannical, since seat belts don't really prevent spread of automobile collision injuries to others while the main benefit of masking is preventing spread to others.

Being forced to wear a seat belt is being forced to protect yourself. Being forced to wear a mask is being forced to protect the anti-vax. Na.

I mean, I agree mandatory vaccinations is a more effective and less invasive public health measure, so hopefully that will come soon.

The next problem with that will be this: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/heal...ines-what-then

You obviously misread my post. I will post it again:

Seat belt laws, speed limits, and mandatory vaccinations are laws. They were passed by general assemblies though a vote.

Mandates by Governors and Mayors are not the same thing. "I declare it so" is not democracy.

If you don't understand that, then you are being coy and you know it.

The mask mandates should've been tied to metrics. But I think we are past the point in the pandemic where mask mandates should be the focus of the government's efforts in controlling the spread. Mandates in certain scenarios make sense (hospitals, public transit, schools, etc.) but the focus should be on encouraging vaccinations. I think the reluctance by some execs to mandate masks broadly again is the right move for now.

You're right, they should be tied to metrics:

Positivity
Cases
Hospitalizations
Deaths

The CTU is arguing about how to go about this, which metric do you think they will go with? Its obvious. They will go with the one or two that mean the least amount.



If Chicago said once we hit X amount of people dying of Covid per 100k, I would be more than happy to comply. But they are simply using cases per day. They pick the most useless statistic while most of the city is vaccinated. Why?

The goalposts keep being moved.

If our hospitals were full and people were dying in large numbers, ok. I am not a neanderthal. However, this isn't the case in Chicago. Not even close.

Oh my fucking god.

A perfectly healthy person putting a mask on their face in order to be allowed to go about daily life is not, in any way, like putting on shoes.

I think he's referring to those flipping out when asked or required to wear a mask before entering an establishment. Just do what they ask, it's their business. I loath wearing one myself and haven't in a long while (not required anywhere) but I keep one in all my cars just in case I happen to go somewhere that requires them.