It isnt going to be mandates, it is going to be local social mores.
Didnāt NY adopt itās mask mandate before the CDC guidance? Iāll admit spring of 2020 is a bit of a blur in hindsight. I think states like NY will be slow to release it. Hopefully.
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Early signs are this is going to end the mask
mandate in a lot of states. That said, outdoor mask mandate ended in my state and people are handling it correctly. Go to distanced outdoor spaces and no masks. Go to anywhere with density and still nearly everyone masked. Iām hopeful indoor masks will operate the same way. Social pressure will still keep most masks on
Canāt sleep lol, been up since 7am with a sore arm after my shot, I hate taking pain tablets so decided to sleep it off with unfortunately bad results. 
Taking the day off though.
ā¦
The southsiders of our city have been send letters yesterday asking that everyone goes for a Covid-19 test because of the Indian varient, but unfortunately Westminster decided to also try to remove 2 refugees in the same area and everyone was out either watching or taking part.
The letters went out before the incident on the morning
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7DMA in the US down to 35k and if the trend continues should be down to itās lowest level since June of 2020 by this weekend. The slope of the 7DMA decrease keeps increasing as well. Hopefully the new mask rules donāt fuck it up, but otherwise, still a lot of real world proof that the vaccines are highly effective including against the variants.
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As a scientist, the opening of sports attendance and mask mandates expiring at the same time is confounding. If cases spikes up which will we blame?
BLM protesters.
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My 5 year old is now on her third quarantine of Covid, all three from her school, which is really good with masking and social distancing. The last two have been caused by students (the teachers are all vaccinated).
I have a hunch that we see about 2 more weeks of modest declines and thenā¦yah. Hope Iām wrong.
In the more good news department:
Looks like the remaining holdouts will indeed be white trumper deplorables after we get the hard to reach lower income minority groups.
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I just want to take a moment to appreciate how far weāve come. In November of 2020 I thought Iād be happy to be getting my first shot by the end of April. I got that in January. I thought we wouldnāt have availability to everyone 12+ until the fall at the earliest. That happened this week. I thought we were in for another summer of excessive illness, death, and lockdowns for those of us who care. All signs point to that hopefully not being the case.
The vaccine development is just insane. We ran so insanely good to have the scientists create such effective vaccines in such a short time frame. Obviously the rollout has not been ideal and theres still a whole lot of work to be done, but this is clearly one of the biggest, if not the biggest, medical achievements weāll ever see. Itās easy to be angry, sad, and frustrated at humanity throughout this whole ordeal - but itās important to take some time to appreciate the good.
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I agree, and as frustrating as the rollout is experience shows that processes get efficient by repetition and refinement, not design. Any large scale undertaking that is being done for the first (and possibly only) time is going to be clunky as fuck. It was probably worse than it ācouldā have been just because neoliberalism has greatly undermined the idea of centralized mandatory collective action, which is what was needed. So that should be a takeaway for many people but I donāt think it will be. Our culture has a deep commitment to wilfull ignorance.
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Amen.
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Our soon to be 7 year old got accepted into the Pfizer study for the next group a few days ago. Hoping she getās the real deal and not the placebo. She was pretty damn excited, though a little nervous at the thought they may have to draw blood to test (we actually donāt know the details of the study yet). We are obviously gonna hook her up with lots of gifts for going through this process.
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How we going to tell the democrats from the republicans?
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My 5 year old and 2 year old are in the same study, although they keep pushing back the start date, so prepare yourself for that. At least the study that weāre in there are going to be several blood draws, so itās a good idea to prepare her for that as well.
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The ones wearing the masks to protect themselves from people who have been vaccinated are the republicans.
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Unless there are long term effects or complications of course. You didnāt caveat your statement with that.
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Science really can do some amazing shit, and it does make me feel optimistic for other crises like the climate, although I know itāll have to get to the point where weāre truly backed into a corner before we do anything. Like I could totally picture that within a year of Florida and some island nations literally going underwater, weāll suddenly manage to systematically plant a trillion trees and invent some sort of insane advanced carbon scrubbing tech; absolutely zero chance it happens before it gets that bad though.
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+1. Myself, my wife, and my 16 year old are all 4+ weeks from our second shots. My 12 year old gets his first shot tomorrow. Even at the beginning of this year I would have bet all the money against that.
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