Mask Burn Party

[ray1970]

There are typically a few convenience stores that typically hit in the mornings. I have pretty much stuck to these stores because all throughout the past year they haven?t really catered to the mask wearing crowd.

Anyways, there is a convenience store that I know is usually pretty busy and definitely always see everyone masked up so thought I?d pop in there this morning on my way to work. Out of the three employees that I saw and roughly eight or ten customers I was the only one not wearing a mask.

I didn?t get any dirty looks from anyone.

I?m thinking the lack of media coverage surrounding the latest guidelines (easing of restrictions) has left a lot of people out of the loop. Certainly everyone in the store this morning couldn?t be choosing to mask up just because they wanted to? I assume they are still playing along with the last executive order?

[Irving]

Culver's in Rifle has a sign that says no mask if vaccinated.

[Mtneer]

FWIW in the People's Republic of Boulder, only one of the four businesses I visited today required a mask. The one was for a haircut and I get that's a lot of up close time, vax or not. But Home Depot, pharmacy, and grocery were mask-free zones. I'd guess that 90% still had masks (both customers and employees) but nobody gave me any grief for walking face naked. In a couple weeks, a lot more will be comfortable going au naturel again.

Personally, I didn't hesitate to get the shots and I strongly recommend it to anyone I know. But you do you.

[Little Dutch]

I was mildly irritated my son's preschool decided parents still have to wear masks while on grounds for the last few weeks of school.

I am one of the few who has not worn one, with a few exceptions, for the duration. I have had been asked to put on a mask at 2 businesses, both of which offered me a free one, and I was in and out. I didn't even try at the medical buildings and the one time I had to go in to my bank, I just complied like a good boy. The rest of the time people have almost universally been extraordinarily friendly to me. I think that may be attributed to me having the only human face in a crowd of masks. Short women ask me to hand them stuff from the top shelf while shopping, people I don't know stop to talk to me and say hi to my kids, smiles and nods abound...it's been interesting.

I have no interest in being involved in round one of experimental drug. Not with the super low risk I run from the china flu. If it was a serious threat, I'd probably change my mind on that stance. With that said, I do get a flu shot every year. Whatever that indicates.
https://www.fda.gov/emergency-prepar...-authorization


Edit to add - My wife works for a California based corporation. They have indicated they will not be dropping the mask mandate any time soon. It's ridiculous.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Even the mask proponents don't seem to understand the rationale or science behind this but the rationalizations from the anti-maskers also make me cringe.

1) The purpose behind having the general population wear fairly low-grade masks was and is to lower the spread from infected individuals (symptomatic or not). The point was to reduce the spread from -- not protect -- the mask wearer.

2) If you had a high risk from the WuFlu, you should be wearing a much higher grade mask than the cheap disposables or handsewn reuseables to protect you.

3) The people most at risk of spreading it were asymptomatic infected people so while none of the vaccines are 100% effective, it's most important for the unvaccinated to wear the masks (or was -- herd immunity tends to ameliorate this). I might not have bothered with the vaccine myself if it wasn't for family pressure but the personal risk from the vaccine is probably even lower than from the disease. You can be infected and have a low enough viral load to not feel it but high enough to spread it -- that's been shown repeatedly. The vaccine increases the body's defenses so that low viral load is fought off immediately and reduces or eliminates the potential for spread; hence the push to vaccinate even people who are at low risk for the disease.

4) Most people I know don't like to be the dick tattling on or getting in the face of the non-wearer. In fact, they will probably overcompensate by being particularly friendly to the person to their face.

[hollohas]

Literally EVERYONE has heard the "masks protect others" argument ad nauseam. (Still weird how masks didn't "protect others" early on though). None of us need anymore 'educating' on that subject.

And it no longer applies anyway, as has been shown by states the stopped mandating them months ago (and others that never did).

"Protect others" is tired. Time to give that narrative the rest it deserves.

[Little Dutch]

Even the mask proponents don't seem to understand the rationale or science behind this but the rationalizations from the anti-maskers also make me cringe.

1) The purpose behind having the general population wear fairly low-grade masks was and is to lower the spread from infected individuals (symptomatic or not). The point was to reduce the spread from -- not protect -- the mask wearer.

2) If you had a high risk from the WuFlu, you should be wearing a much higher grade mask than the cheap disposables or handsewn reuseables to protect you.

3) The people most at risk of spreading it were asymptomatic infected people so while none of the vaccines are 100% effective, it's most important for the unvaccinated to wear the masks (or was -- herd immunity tends to ameliorate this). I might not have bothered with the vaccine myself if it wasn't for family pressure but the personal risk from the vaccine is probably even lower than from the disease. You can be infected and have a low enough viral load to not feel it but high enough to spread it -- that's been shown repeatedly. The vaccine increases the body's defenses so that low viral load is fought off immediately and reduces or eliminates the potential for spread; hence the push to vaccinate even people who are at low risk for the disease.

4) Most people I know don't like to be the dick tattling on or getting in the face of the non-wearer. In fact, they will probably overcompensate by being particularly friendly to the person to their face.

Numbers 1 through 3 are no longer relevant anyway, and all are the same "you hate others if you won't wear a mask" argument. Number 4 is classic though. Number 4 implies that not only are mask true-believers cowards too afraid to stand up for what they truly believe in, they will also have the gall to smile in my face and then shit talk about it later. Probably claiming to their cohorts that they "got me good" with "a look" or something. Classic stuff.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Literally EVERYONE has heard the "masks protect others" argument ad nauseam. (Still weird how masks didn't "protect others" early on though).

Oh but it did -- in areas where the mask wear was implemented effectively (Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.). I've noted ad nauseam that the measures in those locales went against American constitutional protections and some values but the fact remains that general mask wear is effective against respiratory viruses and it's precisely the asymptomatic infected population that needs to exercise it the most. The problem with an infectious agent is that it doesn't take a lot of people ignoring the protocols to render them ineffective (the same thing holds for computer security protocols BTW).

None of us need anymore 'educating' on that subject.

Clearly some of us do because some of us are still spouting nonsense equating the mask wear to personal protection. Even a year later, it's clear a lot of people on both sides of the issue don't really understand what general mask wear was supposed to do.

And it no longer applies anyway, as has been shown by states the stopped mandating them months ago (and others that never did).

I agree it never made sense as a universal mandate because many locales were not conducive to the spread of respiratory viruses. I've said before that treating a small town that was generally isolated from visitors and had residents spread far apart anyway like it was Denver or NYC was ridiculous. OTOH, wailing about mask Nazis because "my risk is low" ignores the point -- and that's one reason we DIDN'T lick this thing last spring/summer and gave the Dummycrats excuses to change election procedures and put a senile figurehead in the Oval Office.

"Protect others" is tired. Time to give that narrative the rest it deserves.

Fauci's and the CDC's missteps and bureaucratic overreaches don't mean the general idea was incorrect nor do they mean that knee-jerk anti-masking or anti-vaxxing is correct. The ads and TV commercials make me nauseous too but they actually gain support in the general populace from people being openly defiant -- it's a lot like the open carry zealots who insisted on slinging an AR or AK over their shoulder before heading into Starbucks or Wal-mart. Japan and Taiwan learned from SARS and MERS and had the issue licked before we even took it seriously.

[hollohas]

OTOH, wailing about mask Nazis because "my risk is low" ignores the point -- and that's one reason we DIDN'T lick this thing last spring/summer

You mean after the make believe scientists demanded we NOT wear masks and screamed "they don't work!" all while encouraging people to aggressively confront anyone wearing a real respirator in public to shame them into giving their proper PPE to the authorities? No new science was discovered when they went from "masks don't work!" to "wear your mask to protect others". They knew masks worked then too but were more interested in politics and covering up their own failures for long enough to secure what they wanted before they changed the "science" and let the general pop in on it.

The scientists beat EVERYONE to the punch with mask misinformation BS long before anyone wailed about mask Nazis.

Even worse was the political pressure to leave our borders OPEN until it was too late. That was the worst misstep of all and 100% politically motivated and supported by....the "experts".

Sure, some citizens didn't/don't comply, but the worst offenders of all are the so-called experts and politicians who KNEW better all along but chose to play games instead.

Most of the population was more than willing to comply until it was obvious we were being lied to daily. Lied to about masks not working. Lied to about closing borders. Lied to about numbers (remember when they said millions and millions would die even with prevention but turns out the models were known to be complete garbage and published anyway). Lied to about the vaccine (Dems and experts said it wouldn't work and it wouldn't be ready, but lied on both accounts). Lied to about where this originated. (Now all of the sudden the experts say there is evidence that it came from the lab even though they spent a year of fact checks saying otherwise. Anybody who wanted to could find evidence way back in Feb 2020 that the lab was actually producing bat born corona viruses). We have been knowingly lied to constantly this entire time.

I started following the virus mid January and started shoring up my preps aggressively on Jan 22nd 2020. And I'm just a dumb dumb commoner. I had plenty of respirators, sanitizing products, other PPE, etc before February. Do you really expect me to believe the CDC didn't know before me? Ha! I wore respirators in public once it hit Colorado even when the experts told us not to, because I didn't know how bad it would be. People yelled at me to turn my PPE over to the proper authorities because that's what the experts said they should do. Those same people yelled at me when I stopped consistently wearing masks too. The experts and authorities f'ed this up, not anti-maskers.

The biggest thing I've learned throughout this is "science" is for sale and TV scientists can't be trusted for a single second.

[MrPrena]

I do not trust 100% on WHO, NIH, CDC, FDA, SG, White House medical correspondence, Former HUD secretary (LOL), and etc. However, I do trust enough to take medicine and med procedures which was approved by many abc med agency which has a track record.

Either that or herbal home/family remedies for cancer, disorders, and infectious disease..

I also do not trust 25% of the hospitals including and not limited to popular univ hospitals.