Coronavirus
- Thread starter Highlander
- Start date
bustaheims
Well-known member
Joe S. said:
I'm not so sure you are. Not in Toronto, at least. Most people I see are still masking.
I agree with you. Dropping the mask mandate felt overly optimistic and poorly thought through. Really would not have been much of a hardship to keep it going into the summer.
Peter D.
Moderator
Joe S. said:
Agree or disagree, COVID is never going anywhere. So we either learn to live with it within its constraints, or live our lives scared of it and never moving on. Especially now when the majority of the population is vaccinated.
Do I agree that masks should have been kept intact for a bit longer? Sure. Especially coming out of March Break. But nothing is stopping anyone from continuing to wear a mask. Whatever everyone's comfort level is. I know people unvaccinated who continue on with their lives as if it were pre-pandemic, and others triple vaccinated who still are scared to go anywhere or do anything. I think the former are a bunch of inconsiderate a-holes at this point, but nothing is going to change them or their mindset.
Personally speaking, I'm pretty much back to how things were before. A bit cautious interacting with people who are knowingly unvaccinated. For their own good more than mine, particularly my closest family. But beyond that, we're all destined to get COVID eventually, so I'm putting my faith that the vaccines will do their job in minimizing any effects from it when the time comes.
Unless someone with better medical understanding can correct me - I think the biggest problem is people don?t understand how masks work.
Yes I can continue to wear a mask, but that protects the other person and not me as much. Masks lower spreading not catching. So me wearing a mask but half the people around me aren?t, then prevention isn?t as robust.
That?s the part that I don?t think people appreciate about masks. Just casually saying ?just wear a mask if you want to? is just not a correct statement to protect yourself.
Yes I can continue to wear a mask, but that protects the other person and not me as much. Masks lower spreading not catching. So me wearing a mask but half the people around me aren?t, then prevention isn?t as robust.
That?s the part that I don?t think people appreciate about masks. Just casually saying ?just wear a mask if you want to? is just not a correct statement to protect yourself.
Highlander
Active member
For what its worth we went to our neighbours for dinner, just 6 of us. No masks, today I just got out of bed at 10Am and am heading back shortly. Hitting me like a freaken truck. Now we are second guessing why we went to socialize in the first place. Although we did have a splendid evening.
My recommendation is to keep on masking.
My recommendation is to keep on masking.
I have asthma so it always goes haywire and need my puffer when sick but nothing else besides that and stuffy nose. Even my energy level seems fine. I can totally see how people too lazy to test could be spreading it like no tomorrow. In normal times I would've went to work all week.Highlander said:
Only downside is I still have a dark red positive line [emoji854]
It was mostly to vaccinate people. The case to death ratio and case to hospital ratio is a lot, lot lower than it was in the beginning. Unfortunately we only have finite health resources. We're definitely going to have to fund health care way more adequately in the future.Joe S. said:
To me it simply didn't make much sense to keep the mandate if you're going to allow eating and drinking and maskless socializing in congregate settings. I wouldn't want to be the manager at a grocery store if the govt kept mask mandates there but not at bars or gyms.bustaheims said:
I think to some extent why people stopped wearing masks when the mandate dropped is we can't make informed decisions in that we don't know how much covid is out there and when it's a good idea to go out somewhere and when it's not. People would rather be ignorant.
Kin
Active member
Peter D. said:
You keep using this phrase and I keep wondering what it means beyond what we've been doing for the last two years. Even at the absolute height of the restrictions, I feel like I managed pretty well. We lived with it. It wasn't easy and we made sacrifices but we lived with it.
Because more and more it feels like people using the phrase "learn to live with Covid" really mean two things. One, we should stop trying to manage the spread of the disease and two, we should prioritize the people who want to pretend things are back to normal over the people who are likely to get sick and die if they get it. Why does "learn to live with it" mean dropping not just all of the fairly sensible restrictions on the unvaccinated people? I'm not interested in changing their minds at this point, I'm interested in protecting cancer patients and people with immune deficiencies who might also like to get back to some semblance of normalcy. Why does "learning to live with it" mean getting less information from the government about the spread?
You keep talking about "people being scared of it" like that's an irrational fear for some people but some people do have high risk factors and are no less entitled to live their lives than the obstinately unvaccinated. By adopting this strategy of "Nothing we can do, might as well let the disease spread as much as it wants" you're making their fears more and more grounded in reality.
Peter D.
Moderator
Nik said:
I think "living to live with COVID" is pretty self-explanatory. In that it is never going to go away. It'll be a part of our lives forever. So we can either continue with restrictions in place, or slowly lift things and get back to a somewhat "new normal" . Sure, I managed pretty well too in the sense I'm still alive. But it's nice being able to have family/friend gatherings again. Playing and coaching sports. Eating in a restaurant. Going to a game. Doing a boys' cottage weekend. Watching a movie. Etc. Our way out of this was through vaccination. The majority have done that. And we're still expected to hunker down? Until when? COVID Zero is never happening. So yes, we have to learn to live with it.
Yes, I agree, the masks should have stayed on for the time being, despite the whole contradictory premise behind that too.
But what's your solution? If we aren't changing the minds of the unvaccinated, well, that gets us nowhere. No one is saying that the elderly or those who are more susceptible have any less right to their lives. But again, what's the solution -- what are we going to wait for for everyone to be able to do so?
Do I think the government has bungled the whole thing about gathering info as well as letting it rip through now? Absolutely, but it's clearly evident it's all political.
And yes, people do have an irrational fear of it. My brother for example wanted us vaccinated, despite our resistance. Okay, done...boosted too. Yet he still won't have a dinner indoors with us? Won't let us hug our nieces? Won't shake hands? Thinks it's weird I'm playing hockey indoors? Sorry...if he wants to fear COVID, yes fear, for however long, that's his choice. But please, for the love of God, stop thinking that everyone (those vaccinated) who is resuming a more realistic pre-pandemic lifestyle is some sort of crazy person.
Kin
Active member
Peter D. said:
Well, my solution is that if we're going to slowly open up some areas of life that were previously restricted, we have to be vigilant in doing what we can to mitigate the spread as best we can whether it be through individual mandates like vaccine passports or mask mandates or through adherence to good public health measures like a significant testing program with public policy support like paid sick leave so the people who have it can effectively isolate and, again, mitigate the spread. Even the people who look at things like publicly funded sick days as the creeping advance of nefarious socialism may have to bite the bullet and look at it as the cost for returning to a measure of normalcy(to say nothing of, you know, it being good policy anyway).
The vaccine passport was not about trying to change the minds of the obstinately unvaccinated. It was about saying "Look, these people aren't going to change their minds, so we have to have policies in place so that the damage they can cause is minimized". That doesn't "get us nowhere". It's a common sense approach to dealing with people who have caused major damage to our society. If you and your vaccinated pals want to have a pint down at the bar, great! But the unvaccinated guy who's much more likely to end up in hospital if he gets it? Well, he doesn't get to hang out at places where the virus is likely to spread because we're trying to limit the number of unvaccinated people who burden our health care system and make hospitals, a place where medically vulnerable people need to go, less bogged down by people needing treatment for a contagious airborne disease.
Imagine us trying to get society healthier like an individual person trying to get healthier. You're not going to completely cut out the unhealthy things in your life which in this analogy are things that increase your chances of spreading/catching Covid(playing hockey indoors, going to a movie) but you realize that you may have to compensate for that by eating a better diet and exercising more(testing capacity, vaccine and mask mandates) and, yes, maybe doing the unhealthy things a bit less. You don't just say "Well, we're all going to die someday so might as well have the entire bottle of scotch and never get off the couch". The "new normal" doesn't have to mean being locked in your house all the time but it shouldn't mean pretending Covid isn't there either.
Peter D. said:
I don't dispute that some people fear Covid. I have an Aunt who is turning 68 this year and has been fighting cancer the last few years. She fears Covid. I think, all things considered, it's a pretty rational fear. She's very lucky that she can work from home and is financially secure enough to do a lot of her shopping online but she still has to go out in the world which is why I'd prefer knowing that unvaccinated people aren't going to be out and about as much or that the person working the register at Shopper's doesn't have to worry about missing rent if they have to be out sick for a few weeks with Covid.
I don't know your brother. I don't know if maybe he's a little overweight and has read some of the frightening stats on how that affects your Covid outcomes or if he has a medical condition, maybe one he hasn't told you about, or whatever. Maybe he's completely healthy and just paranoid, I can't say.
But what I feel relatively confident in saying is that after the two years we've just had, paranoia is justified to some extent. We're all traumatized to some degree and the danger's not over(to say nothing about the possibility of the danger increasing via a new variant). That's precisely why the measures I'm talking about are so important. We're all on edge so maybe some measures, even if they were largely perfomative, have value just in easing some people's concerns.
That said, I don't think any of the things we're talking about are performative. I think that if we really want to "live with Covid" and find a "new normal" it means both reopening society while shifting policy to one of mitigation and containment and the responsible solution means holding firm to the idea that you've got to finish your broccoli if you want some ice cream. Either you see it as a contingency or you don't.
Andy007
Active member
Great posts Nik.
All I can add is as someone who has now had 3 (2 of which were/are closely affected) family members dealing with a cancer or potential cancer diagnosis during the past two years, I can't put into words how frustrating it is to see appointments and treatments continually delayed because idiots think their "freedom" trumps (unintended but apt pun) everything else.
All I can add is as someone who has now had 3 (2 of which were/are closely affected) family members dealing with a cancer or potential cancer diagnosis during the past two years, I can't put into words how frustrating it is to see appointments and treatments continually delayed because idiots think their "freedom" trumps (unintended but apt pun) everything else.
Highlander
Active member
Thanks for the good wishes, yes we did AZ first shot, then Moderna and boosted with Moderna. I can't imagine not having these vaccines, it would have been way worse than it is and its still not very pleasant.Bender said:
Surprising is we all got it from one dinner party, everyone and now my son as well.
Kin
Active member
'https://twitter.com/paldhous/status/1510966020965650437
From the "learning to live with Covid" files, one of the problems with the idea of living with Covid by effectively letting it run rampant is as we can see when a lot of people get sick and have to miss work, that can disrupt the economy just as much as making people stay home.
From the "learning to live with Covid" files, one of the problems with the idea of living with Covid by effectively letting it run rampant is as we can see when a lot of people get sick and have to miss work, that can disrupt the economy just as much as making people stay home.
bustaheims
Well-known member
Nik said:
If not more, considering how hard it can be to build contingency plans around not having enough healthy employees available. Unexpectedly removing large swathes of people from the workforce due to illness or death is much more chaotic and difficult for organizations to deal with.
herman
Well-known member
Not just acute illness: this is a massive influx of long term disability across all sectors
https://twitter.com/elisaperego78/status/1510764907083481092
This list is mostly just the physiological damage. Things like chronic fatigue and mental health related issues are also going to play a factor.
https://twitter.com/elisaperego78/status/1510764907083481092
This list is mostly just the physiological damage. Things like chronic fatigue and mental health related issues are also going to play a factor.
Peter D.
Moderator
Nik said:
Going back to your earlier post, and in conjunction with this one: Do you disagree with arenas, theatres and places of worship going back to full capacity? What are your thoughts on John Tory effectively telling employers to get their employees back in the office so the downtown core can see a resurgence? All those outdoor festivals slated to come back -- right or wrong? Indoor activities resuming full bore with any and all parents, siblings, friends and other family to attend? Rules regarding visitors to hospitals and LTCs being loosened?
I've yet to hear a reasonable "exit strategy" where it lays everything out where we can say, "Okay, this is when we can and are to move on."