Originally Posted by James Brown
Hi Rod:
Ok, maybe obvious that Covid is not going away. I was agreeing with Greg primarily on our philosophical options as a society. I do not think there is the need or the civic will to go back to full-scale masking and even less for lock downs. A frightening new vaccine-resistant variant might change my opinion of course.
Curious what the situation in CA is like? Are most people still wearing masks? Are the restaurants and bars open? They are here in CO, and I hope that they stay that way. Our infection rate is manageable and the death rate is way down, just a couple of deaths/day. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/colorado/
You and the author of the Hill article are way over-politicizing the situation in Florida. It is not like all the Ds got vaccinated and none of the Rs did. I love the line in the article about Rs "politicizing this event." Although true that Rs have been way too political, it takes Davis-grade political blinders to be oblivious to the corresponding D political propaganda. See your original article or your post for examples. As Ralph Nader said once upon a time, "there is not a dime's worth of difference between the parties." On the issue of political Covid propaganda, I agree 100%.
Also, something is going on in Florida other than politics. Their vaccination rates are less than CA and CO for example, but not terribly so. See below. Going indoors during the heat of the summer is a big part of it I'd guess. Hawaii is spiking hard, and they have one of the best vaccination rates out there. Again, deaths are not nearly so high in HI. I agree with Greg that we need to tolerate some death from Covid. As long as the emergency rooms are not overwhelmed on a state-wide scale, I am happy to go maskless into public, now that I am fully vaccinated.
Jim
Chart from : https://usafacts.org/visualizations
Jim,
Los Angeles County has a mask mandate, and it's the largest county in the country. When I go to stores like Costco, Target, Sprouts and WholeFoods, virtually everyone is masked. Greeters at the front of the stores will give you a mask if you don't have one. But it's obvious that the ones who won't wear them and or take them off in the store are white and are either primarily older or younger adults with a couple of kids who unlikely to be vaccinated. In the cases I've seen, one older white guy took the mask off as soon as he entered the store and threw it into his shopping cart. In three other cases, it was younger adults family shopping with kids with one of the families looking like they were genetic throwbacks from a "WrongTurn" movie. Otherwise, people are generally abiding by the mandate.
Now, given the propensity of people to travel to Florida or Hawaii, it's not a mystery why covid cases are going up, despite higher vaccination rates in the case of Hawaii.
Additionally, death rates appear lower for two reasons: 1. Patients in hospitals now are getting better treatment than they were in the onset and surge phases of the initial covid pandemic. 2. Deaths from covid typically lag reporting of cases by anywhere from two to six weeks, depending on location. The Delta variant is more serious and warrants more vaccinations, including the likelihood of boosters and the wearing of masks to prevent infection. Those who believe otherwise or whose behaviors are contrary to a mandate are putting everyone at risk because of spread and the increasing potential for a vaccine resistant variant. Don't buy any of that crap that Davis posts where he blows off the death rates from Covid...
