Precautions Still Make Sense

The National Post, a mainstream paper even, has a great article about why people are still wearing masks. Has the tide of media silence around Covid precautions turned?? 

"With three times more deaths and three times the number of hospitalizations than the pandemic's period of lowest risk, people still have reasons to wear a mask. . . . 'We're still running a significant excess mortality, which is a stand-in for how severe the problem is,' said Tara Moriarty, a University of Toronto infectious disease researcher and co-founder of COVID-19 Resources Canada. . . . Currently, the Covid risk is 'elevated,' according to Moriarty's team. The federal government frames it as low to moderate, but Moriarty's group estimates that Canada as a while has been under-reporting Covid hospitalizations by 1.5 fold, which would put the true number of people in hospital with Covid now at 2,862."

Marnie Wedlake, a registered psychotherapist and assistant professor in the faculty of health sciences at Western University said, 

"Masks are a visible reminder of Covid, something most people would rather not think about. They're a measure of protection; they protect against a disease that's known to be fatal or life-threatening for some, and that causes serious illness and/or disability for others. Most people want to get as far away from the effects of the pandemic as they can, including that sense of vulnerability that was experienced for so long by so many. Seeing someone in a mask pokes at the collective will to deny and avoid those feelings of vulnerability that we all want to be rid of. For some bullies, or aggressors, it's just an extension of their behaviour during the height of the pandemic. Bullying is essentially an expression of the bully's lack of capacity to manage their own discomfort with what they perceive to be weakness, vulnerability. This is one of the reasons we generally view bullying as a cowardly act."

The article ends with this bit of news that we almost never see anymore outside fringe groups on social media:

"Infectious diseases doctors say masks remain prudent in crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces."

Things are better than they've been for a while, so maybe it's being discuss because it's bad, but not so bad as to terrify people from reading about it.