While mask wearing has become far more common, it is far from universally accepted. Instead, whether to wear a mask or not has become a new front in America’s bitterly partisan culture wars.
In broad terms, wearing a mask has become associated with the progressive side of politics. Not wearing one has become a symbol of conservative defiance.
Americans are compelled to do this for every possible thing huh
It used to be that paragraphs like the above would make me wish for a deadly plague to kill everyone, but now we know that even a deadly plague is not enough. There is no escape from this hell.
I don’t know, from where I’m standing these days (at a Canadian customer-facing “““essential””” job where maybe 10% of customers are masked), [convincing 50% of the population to wear masks in exchange for giving up on the other 50%] vs [what we have now] seems like a genuinely difficult choice.
(especially if you can convince a half that’s disproportionately young and therefore disproportionately likely to be asymptomatic carriers…)
Though I find it a bit confusing that the people known for actually giving a shit about purity and contamination are the people *against* masks. I mean, I suppose there’s a distrust-of-hostile-authorities thing at play here, but that seriously outweighs the filth?
@rustingbridges replied:
are masks not mandatory in your region? my area is mixed politically but last time I was at the grocery store I saw one person not wearing a mask (out of maybe 50-100 people)
God, I fucking wish.
*Overall* I think Canada has been handling this better than America (though it’s certainly no South Korea or anything), and overall the Ontario conservative government has been fairly competent (certainly relative to American conservatives), but they are not pushing masks anywhere *near* hard enough.
My last five-hour shift, I was literally the *only* person wearing a mask. I saw a co-worker (the one who made fun of me the first couple times I showed up masked, and you *bet* your ass I isolated a clip of that for when I’m no longer dependent on this place for food money and can afford to rat them all out to corporate [link]) *carrying* a surgical mask on her way out of the store, but she didn’t wear one on duty. Not one customer was masked.
A couple shifts previously a pair of (non-masked) people walked in, looked at the menu for a minute or two, and walked back out, and the franchise owner insinuated that they’d left because I’d scared them off with my mask-wearing. (Though it’s a good sign that he’s stuck to insinuations: it suggests that he doesn’t think he can get away with overtly telling me not to wear it, that he *believes* I’m in the right, even if he doesn’t like it.) (Also, the customers–actual customers, who actually bought stuff, they’re not your customers by right just because they walked into your store dude–immediately before *and* after that pair *were* masked.)
A shift or two before that a (non-masked, age maybe fifties or sixties) customer tried to *commiserate* with me over “having” to wear a mask and gloves at work: I told her that while the *gloves* were mandatory (they always have been), “masks are not mandatory, but they didn’t *stop* me”, and she made some backtracking noises about “whatever makes you feel safer”. (You know what would make me feel safer? If *you* were wearing a mask. Surgical masks have saved my bacon–including against pathogens–too many times for me to ever believe the claims that they’re *useless* for the wearer, but I’ll absolutely believe the claims that it’s far *more* effective to convince your *interlocutor* to wear one. Also I’ve since had to switch to cloth masks for work, rationing my few remaining surgical masks for the fortnightly Errand Days where I’m probably coming into contact with more people.)
The last three or so fortnights I’ve finally started seeing other grocery shoppers with masks. Uptake is somewhat higher there, probably because even non-assholes need groceries, but I’d guess it’s only maybe 30%.
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Maybe New York has had the seriousness of this beaten into them more by having so many cases? I was gonna say “official stats are that about one out of every thousand people in my regional municipality† has had COVID-19 (though tests are rationed enough that who knows what the real stats are)”, but apparently even with our growth being more linear than exponential it’s up to 1/550 now. Although it’s majority nursing-home residents and staff, so I suppose if you don’t have contact with nursing homes you should re-weight your probabilities accordingly. (OTOH, how *much* of it being majority nursing-home people is that nursing-home people are high priority in the test triaging?)
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†Like a county, but with more of the government operating at county-level rather than town-level.
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#I’ve been thinking about this so much that it’s hard to keep track of #which of these things I’ve said publicly and which I’ve said privately and which I haven’t said at all #I hope I’ve included the correct amount of context‚ let me know if I haven’t #replies #rustingbridges #our home and cherished land #home of the brave #politics cw #illness tw #covid19 #in which Brin has a job #discourse cw? #rants
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