Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
When we weigh costs and benefits, let's remember two things. The first is, having to wear a mask just isn't that much of a cost, no matter how much some people bitch about it, and no matter how much some people become emotionally committed to the idea that it's intolerable. Certainly not compared to the costs of dying of COVID, or getting long COVID, or having a friend or relative die of COVID, or having to work in a hospital caring for COVID, etc. The second is, when you don't wear a mask, you not only expose yourself to some additional risk, you also expose other people. Many people seem incapable of acknowledging or weighing that risk, in some cases because they're ignorant but in many cases because they are assholes. Not wearing a mask is a little like dumping garbage on your own lawn and saying, "it's my property so I'll decide whether it looks good," but it's also like dumping garbage on your neighbors' lawns and saying, "fuck all of you."
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If I had to guess, I'd say 5% of people I see are wearing masks. Even in a national museum I visited, it's a small number.
So it appears the overwhelming majority of people in the MidAtlantic are not masking. Therefore, anyone choosing to mask is probably not making much of a difference. And the virus is weakening as it mutates. (Could that change? Sure. But the likelihood of that is lottery odds.)
So doing what all the other Romans are doing is not dumping shit or piss or anything else on others. It's going along with the overwhelming majority of others. You can call that dumb, or selfish, or a sad form of herd mentality.
But what you also must call it is, How Life Works.
If you've ever had anything biopsied, which is scary, there's moment where you think, "It's all indifferent to me." And it is. The world will keep going. I'm sure in old age people have such reflections all the time.
That people will resiliently do what they do, even selfishly, is the oil in society's engine. Shit falters. Fuck, it looks like our political system is collapsing. Our economy is in a strange and possibly perilous state. Putin might nuke something and god knows what might follow. But people will get up and live their lives, and they'll live them according to behaviors, good or ill, that the majority of people decide are acceptable. And right now, those behaviors include eschewing masks.
I'm not saying you have to like it. Criticize it as you see fit. Your dissenting view has value. But I don't think it's wise, fair, or productive to analogize people at this stage dropping masks to litterers who don't give a shit about the rest of society. People move on with their lives. If the majority of them all moved on in masks, that'd be the rule. But that was never going to be the rule here, with a virus that's becoming endemic and isn't causing issues for most people.
And it's not because of Trump. The huge majority of people ditching masks are doing so because everyone is doing so. They're from all parties and backgrounds and, no - they're not doing it because MAGA nation normalized it. Not wearing masks was normal for millennia. It's still normal now. So people went back to the baseline.
We're not China. We err on the side of personal autonomy and that's part of what makes us dynamic in a way China will never be. It's bizarre to even compare what they do to what we do. Rote submission and reverence for authority without scrutiny is anathema to us. And I think disgust for any suggestion we should copy to even a small extent China's obedience-obsessed systems and culture is at the heart of Less's criticism. I give those who think China was or is on the right track with Covid policy the benefit of the doubt. Heart's in the right place. Less doesn't offer that. But Less and I both agree: If you're advocating that the Chinese approach, which would have trampled civil liberties, is workable or advisable here, you're nuts, and too credulous - dangerously so - to ever be given any kind of power in this country.
