COVID-19: Chapter 8 - Ongoing source of viral information, and a little fun

[anon10396289]

@Sean

If you are going to stores unmasked then you are likely stressing out other people because they will assume that you are an unvaccinated deplorable.

So, safety theater? For how long is this literal charade necessary?

[iron81]

I wrote the poll to compare Unstuck to the CDC guidance (option 4). My philosophy is that people who differ from the official guidance by one notch (3&5 in this question, but not specific to this question) are within the realm of personal choice and not worth stressing out over.

I chose 5, the only person at 5&6. For people who are two or more notches away from the guidance in either direction (masks & vax required in the poll), I think it would be beneficial to reevaluate why you differ so much from the guidance.

[anon10396289]

The CDC mask guidance doesn’t seem to make any sense at all for vaccinated people. There is tremendous evidence the vaccines are extremely effective and zero evidence that vaccinated people are significant, or even minor, spreaders of covid. What is the evidence that vaccinated shouldn’t be able to completely return to normal? That’s the direction that the burden of proof ought to be in.

[iron81]

That the 90% effectiveness of vaccines isn’t 100% and it’s reasonable to assume that vaccinated people who get sick can spread to others. Just another subjective risk tolerance thing.

[amead]

Wearing a mask is now normal, so you’ll be back to normal while continuing to do that for the foreseeable future. We’ll let you know when you can take it off, but it’ll be a while.

[WichitaDM]

Even here in Oklahoma City with no mask mandate, mask wearing in the grocery store is like 90%. The masked people may be the weirdos eventually but we aren’t there yet.

[Churchill]

@anon10396289

The CDC mask guidance doesn’t seem to make any sense at all for vaccinated people

Yeah right like that about 3 days where CDC guidance was ‘vaccinated don’t need to be masked’ then they walked back extremely quickly when they realised no other country were advising the same.

The CDC entire response to the pandemic has been giving the same advice other countries earlier in the pandemic gave some months beforehand (other than the no masks which was quickly reversed)

[MrWookie]

It’s not a charade. It’s the conditions under which the efficacy of the vaccine was verified. There will be a point when I’d be comfortable unmasked in public places indoors, but case loads will have to come down a lot first.

[Sean]

It’s not safety theater when my kid hasn’t been vaccinated. If masks are optional indoors, that effects my child. When you go mask less, you are providing cover for the unvaccinated do the same.

[anon10396289]

Like I said, I’m wearing a mask everywhere it is required. I doubt I’ll run into your kid at my poker game or gym or indoor restaurant.

[anon10396289]

The controls were also under those same conditions. There is no reason to think that removing masks and social distancing would increase the risk of the vaccinated catching a serious covid case compared to the increase in risk of the unvaccinated catching a serious covid case. It’s possible, I suppose, but so is the reverse: that the efficaciousness of the vaccine would increase as social distancing and masking is removed. Intuitively the latter seems more likely to me.

[Churchill]

@iron81

You would be ok attending a backyard barbecue with 10 people. Occasional indoor trips for the bathroom or cooking.

• 74%OK with you vaccinated, masks optional/uncommon

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• 15%OK with masks and vaccines required

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• 7%OK with masks required and you are vaccinated, others aren’t

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• 4%OK with masks, you are not vaccinated

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• 0%Unsafe

• 0%YOLO

27voters

Show vote

Hey, thanks for accepting the invite. You’ll will be pleased to learn Uncle Sanjay and family have also accepted - wouldn’t you know it they landed back from Delhi just before the travel ban! But fear not, Sanjay had the first dose 5 days ago, variants aren’t real and Pfizer have a booster coming out September 2021 (for some reason).

Still coming unmasked and bringing the rest of your clan?

• Yes
• No
• Hey, it’s BBQ so ya

[MrWookie]

@anon10396289

There is no reason to think that removing masks and social distancing would increase the risk of the vaccinated catching a serious covid case compared to the increase in risk of the unvaccinated catching a serious covid case.

This seems like a remarkably poor reason to support going maskless indoors. The fact that a risky behavior is much riskier for someone else doesn’t mitigate the risk you’re taking at all.

[Basic]

@bobman0330

For 2020-2021, I think ~all of the schools that were closed should have been open

I tend to agree with your position, but wouldn’t this have led to the opening of many densely populated schools in densely populated areas that may have been experiencing spikes in cases at a time when we still didn’t know whether the vaccine would have meaningful efficacy?

[anon10396289]

I was addressing your point about the efficacy of the vaccine being measured wearing masks and social distancing: it isn’t at all obvious if that efficacy will change without masks, or which direction it will go if it does change.

I’m saying the risk to an unmasked vaccinated person is minuscule right now. My county has a new case rate under ten per 100,000 and it’s been under ten for over two months. So in any week I might have a .1% chance of catching covid. Except I’ve been vaccinated, so it’s really a .01% chance. And say I’ve got a 3% chance of dying from it: 0.0003%. Except the vaccines almost completely eliminate serious cases. So decrease that by say tenfold. So once in every three million weeks or so I might die of covid.

Obviously the chances I somehow spread covid are much higher than that astronomical figure but it seems like that risk is very low as well. Certainly lower than going out and doing normal things during a serious flu season, which I never thought twice about before.

[anon12304106]

Yeah, I dont see mask mandates indoors in blue states going away for a long time. If I had to set an o/u, early 2023? There’s some case that some indoor mask mandates are just part of the new normal.

For example, mandating mask wearing on public transit seems like a pretty miniscule cost to freedom and certainly seems less intrusive to me than requiring vaccination to use public transit.

[CaffeineNeeded]

Calling what amounts to different risk tolerances ‘security theater’ is just dumb. The cost of being too cautious wrt mask wearing for a bit longer than necessary is quite small. The cost of being wrong is a potential disaster.

It’s also not theater to take into account other people’s reactions, that’s just being a decent human being that thinks about others.

[nano]

The mask mandate is nicely coinciding with my broken teeth (rollerblading).

[MrWookie]

@anon10396289

it isn’t at all obvious if that efficacy will change without masks, or which direction it will go if it does change.

My point was that even in the context of masks and distancing, vaccinated people still can get sick, and the behaviors that have the highest risk haven’t changed now that you’re vaccinated.

@anon10396289

I’m saying the risk to an unmasked vaccinated person is minuscule right now. My county has a new case rate under ten per 100,000 and it’s been under ten for over two months. So in any week I might have a .1% chance of catching covid. Except I’ve been vaccinated, so it’s really a .01% chance. And say I’ve got a 3% chance of dying from it: 0.0003%. Except the vaccines almost completely eliminate serious cases. So decrease that by say tenfold. So once in every three million weeks or so I might die of covid.

This is great at all, but a one week probability of catching covid isn’t all that interesting. A 0.1% probability of catching it in a given week is an average across all people, not a static probability for everyone, including the people engaged in the riskiest behaviors. And you’re rolling the dice every week, not just once.

That said, a case load of single digits per 100,000 is pretty darn good, and 2-4 weeks of that being sustained is about what it’d take for me to consider going maskless indoors or taking my girls out. We’re two orders of magnitude above that around me right now.

[Trolly]

I’ve been going pantsless everywhere, no regrets so far.