Do you think there is any real substantive reason as to why people opposed masks so greatly? Was it a cultural issue? Was it a public health education issue? I was just thinking back to the heights of COVID and I don’t understand exactly the weirdly difficult issue with masks and public life. It was really odd that such a simple health tool was so opposed. I am not talking about the disease or vaccine but the act of wearing a mask. What was that such a point of contention?
I don’t think I ever heard a real reason why people were bugging out about them, was real just as simple as the minor inconvenience? The disruption of our already too busy lives were we all have so little power or control and this just another thing on top of that?
What do y’all think? Do you still mask up?
Anything and everything has the potential to metastasize into a culture war issue. The combination of clickbait and 25 years of partisan media-sphere development means that Americans are just itching to find more us-versus-them flashpoints.
The biggest failure was of messaging. The American people are not intellectual, to put it mildly. If you don't harness the conspiratorial lens, someone with different objectives will take it and run with it. The Red Scare and the War on Terror were so stunningly effective as domestic propaganda vectors because they painted a picture of a sinister human antagonist. If they wanted to be effective, they should have run with the "China virus" narrative- and let China run with the "America virus" narrative- while quietly cooperating on developing and distributing vaccines around the world. They should have clamped down hard while it was new, before people had time to process and reflect on it, instead of clamping down lightly for a longer period of time which did not get rid of the virus and also was harder for people to endure.
At this point as a society we have learned nothing from the pandemic. Perhaps as radicals we may have learned a few things about how to keep ourselves safe and healthy, how to use narratives, how to remain in contact despite not being in each others' company indoors. Maybe the next time a pandemic hits, the general population (especially the hogs) will be extra fatigued and not ready to do it again, and we will be able to take advantage of the passive weaponization of the pathogen. Maybe we'll develop subcultures, communities, oases within capitalism where people have to quarantine to enter.
I'm not using any precautionary measures right now, but I'm checking wastewater data weekly, and if it climbs back up, I'll resume all the measures.