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?
In the early days of the pandemic, the surgeon general tweeted, all caps, "STOP WEARING MASKS!!" Fauci gave an interview in which he agreed with a suggestion that wearing a mask could increase you chances of getting Covid, and CNN published an article claiming that masks were a "psychological coping mechanism."
The kind Vladimir Ilyich would have shot everyone here. Liberals will either try to gaslight you into thinking these things did not happen and that you're a nut for claiming it, or they will repeat the lie that the advice changed in light of new evidence, adding another to the spiral of lies that birthed the anti-mask movement. This lie validates anti-mask claims by suggesting that the government's anti-mask position was grounded in scientific evidence - and then, somehow, in the span of about two weeks, some immense yet unnamed new evidence emerged that rendered it completely, obviously false and purely the domain of nuts and conspiracy theorists.
The reality is that the anti-mask position never had any sort of evidence behind it and always belonged purely in the domain of nuts and conspiracy theorists, but the government, including top health officials, choose to knowingly lie in order to cover up the fact that pandemic preparedness supplies had been gutted and sold off. So they lied about masks and then they lied about why they had lied. This repeated betrayal of public trust in science is infuriating and earns each of them a special place in Science Hell (in addition to regular Hell for the whole mass death thing). Of course, at any point, they could have stopped the spiral of lies and own up to what happened, but then somebody important would have to take the fall for it and face actual consequences, and obviously nobody important ever faces any kind of consequences in America, no matter how many lives they destroy.
Now, if you start to smell that the CDC ghouls are full of shit, where do you turn for information? Well, for us Soros-funded globalists, we can recognize that there is a world outside of America, and the corruption of the CDC does not invalidate the entirety of science. For example, we can look at how people in China and Vietnam somehow knew to wear masks from the start, despite this mysterious phantom evidence that libs claim justified the CDC's position. We can understand that capitalism can sometimes corrupt scientific institutions, and look at information from a variety of sources with a critical eye towards ulterior motives.
But what if you're not us? What if, rather than an internationalist perspective, you have a nationalist perspective, and you fear, distrust, and look down upon other countries, especially rivals like China, who the media is actively stoking fear and distrust of? Who do you turn to then when your government is telling you blatant lies? The answer is that the next largest source in your circle is, most likely, grifters. Alex Jones types who rant and rave about the globalists and are also trying to sell you snake oil supplements. Well, for grifters, a massive pandemic is a great opportunity, especially after the government completely botches the narrative and betrays public trust. Because lying is more profitable than telling the truth, and there's nothing that stops them from lying, the truth is silenced beneath the noise and suddenly they all become anti-maskers.
The kind Vladimir Ilyich would have shot the grifters too right after purging the CDC
Chuds generally don't have any problem with doublethink. I mean, most people don't, but chuds don't seem to care about truth value very much, if at all. It's all vibes.
In countries like Japan masking up was completely normal for years and years before Covid. It was done as a basic courtesy toward your fellow human beings, you know, not wanting your germs making other people sick. According to a video I once saw in Japanese class, people also use masks in public for other reasons, like just wanting to hide your face because you feel like it
Unfortunately Westerners are mostly selfish little piggies that start squealing and shitting themselves when you try to corral them to do anything collectively
I think this is the best answer. Every country masks better than the USA because this country was founded on individualism. Masks are a collective effort to keep people safe. Neither libs nor chuds care about masks at this point because they (believe) they have sufficient wealth to protect themselves from covid, while covid itself continues to devastate more vulnerable people whom they view as a drag on their finances.
I think the fact that Asian countries were heavily masking and China doing a proper lockdown also made Americans inherently think all these things were bad and for "brainwashed sheep'
Because I'm an AMERICAN and ain't no liberal commie cuck SJWs are gonna tell me what to do!!!
I'm 99% sure it's that simple and stupid
Yeah it really is just this. The woke want you to wear masks to summon the devil and disparage the name of Jesus or some shit.
I still mask up. I'm immunocompromised.
I have no idea why they became a cultural war. Everything is a culture war now. There is no escape.
There was a lot of money spent to get us where we are today. They manufactured the fuck out of that consent. #n95forlife
Do you think there is any real substantive reason as to why people opposed masks so greatly?
"We must do the opposite of what the liberals and Joe Brandon tell us to do! We must die from covid-19 to own the libs!"
Yankees are born into a culture that prioritizes thinking as an individual above all else. Broader perspectives, recognizing oneself as a part of a larger entity, usually just doesn't happen. It's been impacting everything. This is why conservatives (and scratched liberals) freak out about 'cancel culture' -- they aren't practiced at conceptualizing how their freeze peach will be interpreted from a general perspective. That requires thinking of social consequences, which doesn't gel with a perspective that begins and ends with my personal, singular 'freedom'.
Masking is kind of the ultimate pressure point to this perspective. The reality of virology necessitates think of things on a broad social level. Even worse, the incentives agree; I mask for other's benefit, they mask for my benefit, sickness is avoided and everyone lives better. If you're not used to thinking like this, it seems like an sinister, alien perspective... and when this message is being backed by the state, that just riles them up to a whole nother level.
As I understand it, this 'culture of the individual' is also occurring in other western capitalist countries. The United States, by its conditions and history, is just where this process is at its most developed and pronounced.
I wonder if Americans fail the Prisoner's Dilemma more than other cultures?
Jhoseph henrich- https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/WeirdPeople.pdf 2010 is a good article about diferent psicholkgical tests in different societies. While there is no prisioners dilema thera are other cooperation games. Maybe in searching for wimilar articles you may find something.
Joe thinks he is a lot smarter than he actually is. And latley has developed lots of really stupid belefs, so try to read the peer comentaries, many of those cover points he cant understamd.
There is a huge percentage of people who just hate to do things when they are told they have to, doubly so if it's from the government. Americans are especially bad with this but it's not limited to the US. It doesn't matter if it's actually meant to stop them from killing themselves or not.
Covid was extra bad with this because the effects are not immediate due to the longer incubation period, and the mask was meant to prevent others from getting sick rather than yourself.
If covid had 1/10th the mortality rate but it made your dick half an inch shorter, we would have been locked inside our houses in the first month of the pandemic.
I think it was just the perfect catalyst for reactionary thinking. They've been doing this for ages by calling public health laws "nanny state intervention", complaining about health guidelines that don't even require you to do anything, making fun of people who make personal choices with an eye towards living longer and more comfortably, etc. There was the snafu with Fauci in the early days of COVID, and frankly he should have resigned when it became apparent how badly he fucked up, but IMO the seeds for health guideline rejection were all planted in the American Reactionary subconscious for decades and there was basically no other outcome.
I think a huge number of Americans are moronically stupid. Also for a significant percentage of the population - being a proud member of Team GOP or Team Dem trumped (and trumps) science.
Early on in the pandemic the right-wing started to hate masking because in their mind it infringed on "freedom". As months passed - even seeing somebody wearing a mask triggered their anger. That made (and makes) no sense but they are crazy. Libs were happy to wear masks to show they care and to have a rare own of the GOP.
But once Biden was president and we had a "real" president again - libs started to do something they wouldn't admit to. They started to jump on the "freedom" bandwagon. Biden wanted to declare victory on covid way back on July 4th, 2021! The NYT (and similar media) continually were saying it was already time to go back to brunch.
The dislike of seeing masks had become bipartisan. The vast majority of Americans didn't want to see them in public. The GOP can say "Fuck anybody that doesn't agree with us," but libs can't do that and remain libs so lib media were extremely careful to pretend immunocompromised people don't exist.
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NYT May 24, 2020: U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, An Incalculable Loss
NYT February 5, 2022: 900,000 Dead, but Many Americans Move On
July 2021 was the lowest that covid infections ever got. If they had managed to stick to the procedures, they could possibly have ended it that summer.
But after a certain time, it became the common liberal frustration of "nobody is doing what's obviously the best choice" and it became politically impossible.
Covid was one of the reasons Trump lost but Biden knew that after his inauguration following the science could be risky. Maybe - very roughly - around July was when Biden decided to follow the politics instead. Libs and independents were joining the GOP in wanting covid to be "over". ~1.1m dead and countless numbers of Americans (10,000,000s?) will suffer from long covid but Biden's ghoulish pivot proved to be an electoral winner.
Nothing will fundamentally change.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You know that meme about the shopping cart test? Like if you can't put your cart away after shopping then you are no better than an animal?
Well the entire world was subjected to that very same test with masks. It costs no one anything to wear a mask, it helps and protects others, there are literally nothing but upsides to doing it. It only takes a few seconds of personal inconvenience to do so. And millions of people failed the test.
I get mad sweaty and any good mask was seriously uncomfortable for any length of time. Just like 10 minutes in my upper lip is sweating and condensation from my breath collects.
Extrapolate that to millions of sweaty burger eaters who are only concerned about their comfort, and a reason to make an excuse for operating along that comfort, and you get anti-maskers, regardless of if they're actually uncomfortable.
It covers your mouth
That's about the extent of most mask hater thinking as far as I can tell.
