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?
While I appreciate your optimism Covid would sadly not have ended that summer even if operations to reduce it would've continued. That is while the US was a great generator for new strains there were enough other places (Bolsonaro's Brazil, UK, parts of South Korea) which did at that point due to bad handling of the situation created conditions in which other strains, too, were created and others kept afloat.
This means that while a Zero Covid policy in the US would've greatly reduced their death (like hundred thousand less dead, many more without lasting damages) and the global impact, it would not have been enough if it was just the US which would've changed their actions.
We could see that this is the case form China and that even with their better response even in mid and late pandemic they still had a marginal number of cases, till very quick infective strains arrived that were hard to test for.
Still you are absolutely right in everything you substantial say, the two main points I wanted to do were: we are living in a global world and thus need global solutions, even good handling doesn't save you in an interconnected world.
I'm operating under the assumption that whatever miracles that would have to take place to achieve this in the US would also have an effect in other parts of the world that take cues from the US.
If everyone did half of what China did by spring 2021, there probably would have been no delta variant or epsilon variant as we know them.
That is very true. Though it would expose an interesting bit cause the national capitalist and nationalist political elites of the UK for example would be in tension with the US goals.