We've been behind the curve on Covid mitigations. At this point, we should be able to see the error in removing masks, right?!
When the wastewater data and/or hospitalization rates are low but STARTING to rise, that's when we need masks to be mandated. Instead, we wait until hospitals are overflowing to suggest maybe, if it's not too much trouble, we could put them on. And, as soon as cases start to decline, we take them off again, which makes cases rise again, ad infinitum. At the very least you'd think hospitals could keep them on permanently.
Chesterfield Royal Hospital in England got trounced after making this statement:
"Clinical update: Masks - Recently we re-introduced mask wearing for everyone in clinical areas. We are pleased to say that we have had no outbreaks during this time and sickness and respiratory illness rates have now dropped significantly. This reduction means that we are now ceasing the requirements to wear masks in clinical areas."
It's getting harder and harder to tell reality from parody anymore:
This move incited a plethora of responses along the line of "Masks work so well, we're going to stop using them," but with condoms, seatbelts, washing hands, cleaning water, healthy eating... As if it's at all reasonable to just implement safety precautions for a while, and then if things go well to stop doing that useful thing that actually works. My favourite is from CovidCaution:
"Firefighters have reduced the wildfire to 50%, therefore we've decided to stop fighting the fire."
Crazy, right?
Because we know that if the fire is mainly out, but not all the way out, and the firefighters all leave, then the fire will take over again really fast. We need the fire to be completely out before they stop fighting it.
With Covid, it's ridiculous to take off masks because cases are going down again. We need to keep wearing masks until it's all the way out. That would be amazing!
Some people think the account was hacked when they added this bit of "clarification" the following day:
"We wanted to clarify - and sorry to have caused confusion on an earlier post - our position on mask wearing: masks are still being worn in a number of clinical settings and where it is a personal preference - this is respected across the Trust. To protect everyone, and in line with the updated national guidelines, colleagues and visitors will be asked to wear a mask when less than a metre from a patient with symptoms or diagnosis of an illness that is spread through airborne particles."
In a pandemic. With an AIRBORNE virus circulating. In which most spread is from people WITHOUT ANY SYMPTOMS!!! And how do visitors or other patients know what people have been diagnosed with as they're walking past the many patients lined up in the hallways or crowding the ER??? And they attached this image which says,
"If you would still like to wear a mask, this is your choice."
Okay, it's basic human nature to wait until we see danger before acting on it. I get that. We are notoriously bad at longterm measurement, and Plato went on about that a couple thousand years ago. I don't expect it to change anytime soon for the average person out there. But I would expect that the leaders in our highly advanced civilization would have this skill to understand the issue and act on projections from data.
We've hit the whole problem with voting that Plato raised.
Plato's desecration of the state in a nutshell: An aristocracy (rule by the wisest - those with moral intelligence) is best but can fall apart if undervalued by the masses and the military takes over. Then the military rule glorifies competition, which the rich win, and they rise up (like the U.S.) -- but then the rich/poor divide leads to crime, and the poor can't pay taxes needed to keep the government afloat, so you end up with a democracy, like Plato's Athens, which he hated in part (surely) because they voted to execute his bff, Socrates. But treating everyone as if they're equally apt at decision-making means being guided by the dim as much as the wise, and then one of the masses will rise up to rule, which is a tyranny (Republic VIII), in which "Resentful, unreliable, immoral, friendless, and unjust, the tyrant give room and board to every vice" (IX).
The democratic system seems best and free and equitable, but when each passing fancy is given full rein, as the top 10% are largely experiencing today, no sense of morality rises for the people to emulate. Instead, they crave freedom and choices at all costs.
Thomas Hobbes explained, 400 years ago,
"It came to pass amongst the Athenians, who thought they were able to do anything, that wicked men and flatterers drave them headlong into those actions that were to ruin them; and the good men either durst not oppose, or if they did, undid themselves."
We've ended up with crappy leaders surrounded by sycophants, and it's our own fault because we voted them in, but - not so fast - of course we voted them in because the majority of people can't make longterm decisions very well. When the majority rules, we end up with people in charge who promise us cheap beer in the corner store. For this type of system to work, we need a highly educated population - and educated specifically in logic and ethics, but the leaders have made so many cuts to schools maybe because - if they're actually wise and evil instead of a bunch of money-hungry doofuses - they want an ignorant populace to keep voting for them!!
And we've known this cycle for eons, but we still can't learn from it.
The only way out is through. We're not going to have philosopher kings in charge anytime soon, so we have to try to educate the populace through social media, one person at a time, if it kills us (or if they kill us, which is entirely possible given the increased vitriol and direct threats to healthcare workers trying to enlighten the rabble), and through letter writing and petitions to governments, public health, hospitals, and schools. As it stands, as long as good people don't oppose it, we will be watching the fall of our civilization.
So, if you get that we need to take precautions in order to stop Covid, spread the word not the virus.
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Well-fitting N95s reduce transmission by about 95% - even higher if everyone wears them; cleaning the air helps by about 30%, and vaccines reduces hospitalization by 60%. Put together, we could ALL be 99.999% protected from this mess!
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