To everyone posting
When you're making "to all the haters" posts, it's time to log off for a bit.
Mask wearing is good and you should do so in crowded, indoor spaces especially if you can't be sure that everyone in the room is vaccinated.
Scaremongering about how vaccines don't work or how one variant is going to destroy everything or how occasionally getting a drink with your pals is genociding the immunocompromised or whatever is factually incorrect r/politics style moralizing that has no place on a leftist forum.
One variant very well can "destroy everything", where "everything" is current vaccine efficacy, pushing us back another 6-12 months.
And yes if you're taking on risky behaviors that make it not particularly unlikely that you'd get and spread the disease, you are putting the vulnerable at risk. I don't know what "getting a drink with your pals" means, exactly - whether you're all vaccinated, indoors, how long, etc - but no it's not worth prolonging a pandemic and endangering your neighbors' lives. Because you could, you know, drink outdoors with vaccinated people, rather than partying indoors. That's the marginal sacrifice to reasonably control the spread. That's what someone is asking you do to when they correctly point out that high infection rates are dangerous for escape mutations and that wearing a mask is very little to ask.
You're arguing the same thing that this person is saying, though. They aren't saying go out and lick doorknobs. Nothing that you're ranting against is something they said is ok to do.
It's not clear what they're saying to do because drinking with pals could mean a lot of things - so I acknowledged that and qualified it. But they definitely pushed back on the idea of variants ruining anything and set up the comparison between drinking with pals and putting the vulnerable at risk.
There was a comrade in the other thread who can't get vaccinated. You have to wonder what solidarity means when there's seriously a discussion about their health vs. drinking venue.
This is part of a larger reactionary trend on this website. There is nearly always a struggle session when anyone is asked to consider changing their own behaviors.
The person you responded to qualified worrying about individual variants with PK's last post (and other posts) about a possible outbreak of a variant which proclaim the end of life as we know it and have turned out not to happen.
Maybe I put my own perception on things, but I took it as them saying to stay cautious in behabiors but to wait and see on variants.
I'm not going to disagree with you on the fact of struggle sessions here stemming from people being asked to change behavior. However, (without trying to sound like the tone police) I think this place falls into the internet trap of yelling past at people to change instead of actually trying to talk about it.
The person you responded to qualified worrying about individual variants with PK’s last post (and other posts) about a possible outbreak of a variant which proclaim the end of life as we know it and have turned out not to happen.
It's not something you can easily estimate the chances for, but you can definitively say that high infection rates vastly increase the chances. Allele generation rate vs. population size is population genetics 101.
With that fact and the consequences in mind, there are plenty of denialist and fundamentally sociopathic responses to be found in both recent threads. In response to a minor ask to protect others, even marginally, half the comments are embarrassing reactionary, sociopathic positions justified by "well if it's not collective action it's pointless". Some of them using the false pretense of a scientific position.
PK's position is reasonable.
Maybe I put my own perception on things, but I took it as them saying to stay cautious in behabiors but to wait and see on variants.
But they poo-poo'd the idea of escape variants being catastrophic and brought up a comparison between drinking with pals and genociding the vulnerable...
We have vulnerable comrades and comrades with vulnerable loved ones. Do you think they feel like these folks have their back? Just about the smallest ask you can think of - a stupid-ass cloth on your face - and a large minority of edgy deniers come out of the woodwork peddling straw men and their theoretically relevant cynicism.
I’m not going to disagree with you on the fact of struggle sessions here stemming from people being asked to change behavior. However, (without trying to sound like the tone police) I think this place falls into the internet trap of yelling past at people to change instead of actually trying to talk about it.
Nah I've also done the effortpost route and careful explanations and get the exact same responses. A large portion of this site have never left behind their earlier reactionary tendencies and cannot do self-crit without first fighting a lot.
I'm not gonna dive into a reddit-brain breakdown of this.
There is a way of calculating it. PK has even shared the lancet study that theorizes it.
Nobody's (that I've seen) saying go spit on the vunerable. You're building up what I and the person you originally responded to to be something were not saying.
I’m not gonna dive into a reddit-brain breakdown of this.
When you think that responding thoroughly to eat you say is dismissable as reddit-brain, there's nowhere to go with this conversation. You had just gotten done saying that, "I think this place falls into the internet trap of yelling past at people to change instead of actually trying to talk about it."
Maybe ask yourself why being personally dismissive seems like the right thing to do at this point in our discussion. Rather than acknowledge that the toxicity I pointed out, you're going in a new toxic direction. Really ask yourself why you did that and whether it's a healthy way to hash things out with comrades that are trying to respectfully disagree with you.
Look, I genuinely would love to talk about these things with you. I truly would.
But, if you're going to quote dissect what I'm saying in order to repeat points you've already made and I've addressed without getting to my main point which is that you started out arguing against things that the person you responded to wasn't saying. There really isn't anywhere to go with it after that.
If my comment was dismissive I apologize, I should have phrased it better. However, I'm being talk passed (past? Idk) so its not really something I'd like to continue engaging in.
Nothing I said was quote dissection. I quoted three whole paragraphs in order to make it clear what I was responding to.
You were obviously dismissive and again, I am unironically asking you to ask yourself why you thought that was the right tack. It's also incompatible with actually wanting to discuss this, so please make up your mind about how you want to engage with this comrade here. Is it frustration venting targeted at me or are you talking to a human that's respectfully disagreeing? You can't have both.
I disagree that I'm talking past you. I'm actually trying to address exactly what you're saying. Quoting you is part of that - the thing that you believed was good enough reason to personally dismiss me. If you think I'm missing your point, nobody is stopping you from communicating that productively.
The point is to remove your contribution to that problem by taking on the smallest inconvenience imaginable.
Wearing a mask reduces both the chance that you get infected and the chance that you spread the virus if you are infected. This is not a fact that is only true when everyone else does it.
Nobody is saying that you, alone are going to end the pandemic on your area.
If YOU catch it due to being maskless and go on to infect even one person that otherwise wouldn't have gotten it, that should be more than enough reason to keep wearing the mask. If that's not enough for you, I truly don't know what to say.
You won’t kill roughly 9*0.001=0.01 person, you can calculate more precisely of course w and w/o mask ifr, but the logic is the same.
Not sure how you could've read it like that, but no. Do you have any questions?
How do we get large amounts of people to start wearing masks again?
Probably not going to happen in anti-mask areas without a new scare. Though a new scare is also made more likely by anti-mask areas.
There is a window for decreasing infection rates, however. Vaccines are effective, just not permanently so since infectious agents can mutate. Every little bit decreases the chances of infecting others and of escape variants arising.
:this:
I felt like an enlightened centrist for thinking this but there really is a middle ground here.
Well I mean that's the fatal flaw of this and OP's argument. You're right; you're absolutely right, but being right doesn't matter.
People are emotionally broken by a year and a half of being cooped up by pandemic protocol. Of course they're going to throw off their masks the second someone says it may possibly be kind of ok in certain circumstances in certain areas. Expecting people en masse to do otherwise, even leftists, is idealistic.
Like I understand the frustration, truly I do. But what does shouting into a digital void "you're all irresponsible idiots except me" accomplish? It's grandstanding. Cathartic maybe, but not helpful.
It's a question of what can be done, isn't it? If explaining - correctly - that the CDC's decisions are short-sighted and economically motivated is what you want to do, great. But painting yourself as a tortured Cassandra for the whole country, and lashing out at people making individual decisions based on their own specific circumstances, is liberalism.
What else would you call individualizing a problem that can only be solved by state appartuses over which the people currently have no means of control?
Individual decisions are complete and utter bullshit though, there are necessities and freedom of will, the more you know - the less choice you have actually. Here there is no choice for a leftist, but to wear a mask, as an informed person. All the rest is people rejecting that information for their convenience.
Here there is no choice for a leftist, but to wear a mask, as an informed person
But this is still describing the world as you want it to be, not as it is.
Leftists are just as capable of moral imperfection as anyone else. Many will wear masks out of a sense of solidarity and moral duty, and that's great! But many will also choose not to wear a mask becuase there is no personal consequence for that decision. Until those consequences exist, getting mad about it is just stewing. It goes nowhere, it does nothing.
Well, yeah, that means they’ve chosen actually between two things - and I judge them for that decision.
You sound like a “this is an individual problem” lib.
When there is no organized collective action, you are left with building from discourse with individuals. And there are no clear tools for addressing public health through party organization or other traditional socialist means within the context of being a minority with a capitalist hegemonic state, so what do you expect?
If you're tossed in a hole along with someone with broken legs and someone gives you a spoon, do you say, "fuck this and anyone who tells me to use the spoon to dig" while the other person drowns in a foot of water? We all know the spoon is problematic, but you should help dig so that our comrades suffer less.
How the fuck are we going to do a communist revolution if you can't even be asked to keep wearing a mask? People are really showing their boater/PMC side here.
Not from what I've seen, they're pretty eager to ditch their mask because the CDC said so.
Weird, must vary by region. It's pretty lib out here. Most vaccinated people I come in contact with are still masked up, myself included
I live in a pretty blue area and as soon as the word came down from the CDC mask use plummeted.
when there’s literally no fucking reason to anymore if you’re vaccinated
The jury’s still out on that one, comrade:
- https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01290-3/fulltext
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01377-8
except for all of these reasons outlined in this thread, ignore those and we're peachy
Some people's opinions, sure. A lot of people don't have strong feeling on the topic, same as with ideology and religion. They can be moved one way or the other.
I dunno. I know a whole a bunch of people whose opinions on such topics can be changed at least temporarily if someone tells them something with an air of authority.
Good take, that absolutely sums up how I feel about it after being stiffarmed into "discussing" it with nosy customers for the past 12-18 months
I’m just judging people without masks as shitheads, and will continue to do so behind my mask :jokah:
It's just amazing to me how a surgical mask has become this gargantuan thing to people, especially americans. You're so ready to fight WWIII with China and yet you can't even put on a cloth mask. Good luck with that!
these kinds of comments are indistinguishable from the ones chuds made all through 2020. I get people are fatigued with the shit but seems a bit early to be chomping at the bit when we were just making fun of biden and libs for being all "mission accomplished" about this shit like 2 weeks ago lol
gonna take down the bourgeoisie by not wearing a mask which if there's any ill effects of to society will definitely not hurt my fellow proles. this is not an expression of my individualism obsessed imperial core brain, i'm a communist and this is a class based pov.
I didn't isolate myself for an entire year just so selfish assholes like you could make it all for naught and require me to be scared for the rest of my life. I live with severely immunocompromised family who can't get vaccinated and whom covid would most likely kill. Fuck you, you don't get a cookie for giving up after a year because wearing a mask is somehow hard
Wearing a mask scares you for life? Boy do you get a surprise coming your way
I don't know what I was thinking before, but I think I'll be wearing masks even after the pandemic ends (lol) when I'm recovering from a cold or something. I'm cool with not spreading my germs to others. Shit just makes sense. Don't know why this is ever an issue anywhere after the shit we've all been through.
comments about how society just “has an acceptable level of death” that we just have to shrug our shoulders over and deal with!
It literally does though? Like, people didn't start dying because of covid. It's not the first disease. The issue with covid is that it is a very contagious and very deadly new disease. If it gets to the point where it is just something like the flu, then that's not good enough reason for everyone to lose their shit forever and ever. It is a good reason however to maybe not visit grandma if you aren't feeling so well, but idk about you, I was already doing that before. Now it's maybe not a good idea to start behaving just like before even if you are vaccinated yet, but maybe stop living in constant mortifying fear? For some reason doom is like a drug in communities like this and it's not the healthiest thing.
It literally does though? Like, people didn’t start dying because of covid. It’s not the first disease.
OP is saying that you don't actually have to put up with the prevailing wisdom of society's acceptance of death. This doesn't address that.
Now it’s maybe not a good idea to start behaving just like before even if you are vaccinated yet, but maybe stop living in constant mortifying fear?
The suggestion was to keep wearing a mask, the most minor of inconveniences, to do your own minor part in reducing the spread. This is honestly a chud-level straw man, the kind of shit I saw on Reddit from anti-maskers in May last year.
For some reason doom is like a drug in communities like this and it’s not the healthiest thing.
I remember you arguing that vaccine-resistant strains were so unlikely that we shouldn't entertain them as a danger of high and prolonged infection rates. Maybe adjust your idea of what interventions are appropriate on a "cost" vs. risk basis.
OP is saying that you don’t actually have to put up with the prevailing wisdom of society’s acceptance of death.
And do what? Just stop death? In general? The acceptance exists because diseases are inevitable. Covid in particular wasn't, but now it is what it is, and after a certain point it will either just go away completely or it will be some other virus that lurks around and functions kind of like a flu, at which point you just run with it.
The suggestion was to keep wearing a mask, the most minor of inconveniences, to do your own minor part in reducing the spread. This is honestly a chud-level straw man, the kind of shit I saw on Reddit from anti-maskers in May last year.
When someone feels they have to have a weird outburst and shout at everyone that you're definitely not doomjerking or whatever then it's definitely doesn't seem like a simple cool headed suggestion any more.
I remember you arguing that vaccine-resistant strains were so unlikely that we shouldn’t entertain them as a danger of high and prolonged infection rates
Totally vaccine resistant, yes. Which we haven't seen, still, even though I remember it was already the ones that existed by winter last year that were supposed to totally escape them. Neither do we see high infection rates in highly vaccinated countries any more, even though they have largely lifted restrictions, and even though pretty much no country has yet reached the predicted level of herd immunity in vaccinations. Although the ke It's the same thing every single time. People are straight up looking for reasons to panic. First it was that the mRNA vaccines would never be able to be distributed en masse. Then it would be that the capitalist west fucked up vaccines and we would all die from horrible side effects and it's like Tuskegee or something. Then it was the UK strain that would make vaccines useless. Next it was the Brazilian strain or the South Africa strain. Now apparently it is the delta variant which, yeah, it's definitely reason to worry because of how fast it spreads, but vaccines deal with it fine.
The big problem was and still is that poor countries don't get vaccines. Patents is the major issue. Panicking over someone who is vaccinated not wearing a mask or whatever is just misery fuel.
They tell me to wear a mask i wear a mask they told me to stop so I did. Like idk you can get mad at the cdc fine but getting mad at individual people seems like a waste of time. It's literally what they told is to do. Still going to wear them to the store for the foreseeable future
Garbage public health policy is a major factor but I'd say that when comrades are asking something of us, we should at least listen.
Do i always trust the cdc? No. But combine that with with my real dumb Guy understanding of science that vaccine = don't get sick, hospitalizations going way down, deaths at zero in my local area, and the people in my life I generally consider smarter than me taking their masks off, i thought it was okay to do the same. I'm sorry I didn't read the same studies as you. I am so so deeply sorry I was excited at the prospect of not wearing a mask. How could I be so reactionary
Seeing people's reaction to this subject, I'm surprised this site wasn't largely anti-mask from the beginning.
• Why should individual actions matter when institutions should be responsible?
• Lots of people die from other causes.
• Covid's never going away anyway, we just have to learn to live with it.
• We can't live in fear!
• Look how badly other people are handling it, why should I bother to do anything?These are all arguments than have been thrown around since day 1 of covid. If people on this site are starting to commonly agree with them, you could have just used this reasoning to ignore the pandemic all along. I'm sure you would have had more fun that way.
Anytime the CDC was discussed on this site, it was to talk about how it had mishandled the pandemic response at every stage, largely because its actions were driven by capital and political purposes, but when they cause a critical mass of people to visibly call it quits and go back to normal, that's too much to resist apparently.
