Here's a letter to the editor in the Anchorage Daily News today.
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| For sight impaired, see letter written out below |
I have to admit he packs a lot into such a short letter.
Personal liberty: He's trying to curtail other people's personal choice to wear masks. Wonder how he feels about tattoos.
- What about people who have made or purchased attractive masks and now enjoy them as a fashion statement?
- What about people who have relished the ability to hide a disfigurement on their face or just something they don't like about how they look during this time when many others wear masks?
- What about people with low immunity who need a mask for more than just COVID?
- What about scuba divers and snorkelers?
- I was going to say 'what about' here too, but we already know that these people never liked face coverings that some Muslim women wear.
- What about White Nationalist protesters who want to hide their identity from surveillance?
Halloween: His 'No Masks ever" is pretty broad. Is this also part of some religious group that thinks Halloween violates sacred beliefs? Will they still be yelling 'no masks ever' three months from now?
Ideological Symbolism - People who are so emotionally upset by masks, it seems to me, see masks as rebukes to their belief systems. Every mask, to them, must seem like someone saying, "You're wrong." I'd note that many of these same people also get irate about people of color complaining about racist language. They tell them to not be so 'sensitive.'
Willful Ignorance - Who is guilty of mask stupidity? It seems to me it's the anti-maskers. [Does anyone else think it's bizarre that we even have that word?] In answer to the question in the letter - vaccinations protect about 90-95% of the vaccinated from getting COVID. But we don't know who that 5-10 out of 100 are. It appears - the scientists are studying this as it happens and evolves so most conclusions are tentative - that for most vaccinated people who do get infected, there will be mild or no symptoms. However, they can infect others. So the masks both protect the person wearing it and other people. But people like the letter writer do not seem to care about other people, at least those who disagree with their world view, so it's hard for them to understand such feelings as empathy or caring.
Ultimately anyone has the right to wear a mask for any reason, except those committing crimes with a mask to hide their identity. I'm actually hoping that masks will become a fashion. At least with masks, unlike with tattoos, you can change them or just leave them off.
[Technology that reads the internet for those with sight problems can read text and make it into audio, but cannot read text in images, so it helps to write out such text.]
The Letter:
"No Masks
Stop this mask stupidity. If you're vaccinated and it works, why wear a mask? This ridiculous nonsense must stop. No masks ever.
-Nicholas Danger, Anchorage"
If you think these people are acting stupid now, just wait till the new mask mandates start kicking in. They will be coming out from under rocks.
ReplyDeleteI believe Alaska has not yet started the surge from the delta variant so you are probably not yet feeling the panic that we are in the south. Case count has tripled within a week or so; a dozen vaccinated people have died in Missouri; kids go back to school next week without vaccine. I am as scared now as I was in March a year ago, maybe more because I know how bad it can get and how stupidly people can behave.
just a note of cheer for your weekend.....
kathy, thank you for your weekend cheer. I'm afraid that despite Alaska's initial strong reaction to the virus, we did eventually get a surge. Then we got Test Positivity down to .99 again on May 18, 2021 Back then we had days with under 10 new cases. Some days with 0. Today's two day count was 528 new resident cases, almost all non-vaccinated. Today Test Positivity was back up to Dec 2020 levels - 5.65. Despite our small population, Alaska reported 5 COVID deaths this week! There's a tab up top the gets you to my regular Alaska COVID updates. It's down to three days a week because that's all Alaska reports now. Today's update began: "First the good news. Oh. There isn't any."
ReplyDeleteWhen this all started Anchorage had a mayor who believed in facts and science and we had lockdown and masks. We were doing well. We got vaccines early and after initial hiccups we were the most vaccinated state. But then it stopped and we've fallen behind. The backlash to the lockdown elected a mayor who questions if there even is a pandemic happening. If we are behind you, it's not by much.
In every dark cloud..... Texas has passed New York's horrendous covid death total after trailing by 29k deaths. A large number of Texans don't want any government interference unless it is to supply additional burdens on women exercising their right to terminate a pregnancy.
ReplyDeleteI sit and wonder, at times, how many anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers would need to perish before Dems could win elections even with suppressed voters in all red states.
These past few years seem like a really bad episode of Dallas, the television night time soap opera. This can't be real America.
Wearing masks is a kind of socialism - we are being asked to help the greater good.
ReplyDeleteQuite frankly, I am literally anticipating a variant to emerge very soon that the vaccines do not protect, and that we cannot develop a vaccine for, and that has a 75% mortality rate.
Five months till new years Eve.
Remember Steve you made a choice not to wear a mask. You let other people do your shopping for you who were making 8 to 10 dollars a hour and most likely people of color who were twice as likely to die of the virus. Wear a mask, wash your hands and social distance it was not rocket science. But you chose not to do it. The difference between someone not wearing a mask and putting people at risk, and someone who put people at risk by not doing their own shopping is?
ReplyDeleteOliver
I wasn't disputing the privilege in that situation, just saying that you saw it there, but you don't see it in the homeless situation. Using your homeless logic, you could say those people who delivered my groceries should have gotten better educations and better jobs.
ReplyDeleteI always had a face covering when near people outside and inside until well after being vaccinated. But I never stopped masking when inside public places.
I'd also note that the people who delivered to our house were tipped well. At the market, they didn't accept tips. I offered.
And at that time younger people were thought (and given the early strain of the virus apparently were) less likely to get seriously ill than older people. All the people who did groceries for us were at least 30 or 40 years younger than me.
You also say that the people working at the store for $8-10 per hour were "most likely people of color who were twice as likely to die of the virus."
1. Minimum wage in Alaska in 2020 was $10.19; 2021 $10:34 (tho that's a minor point)
2. Less than 20% of people who got us groceries were people of color
3. People of color were more likely to die of COVID BECAUSE they worked low paying jobs w/o health benefits and didn't have easy access to vaccinations. They weren't inherently more prone to the virus. So people of color doing the same kind of job as whites wouldn't have been twice as likely to die, because part of the higher rate of contracting the disease has to do with having jobs that expose them to people with COVID. Lack of access to health care would be less of a factor here because they'd have the same access as their white co-workers. But treatment of people of color at hospitals would still be a factor. See this report.
I thought this was interesting..... https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/sports/outdoors/2021/08/06/wisconsin-deer-wild-whitetails-found-coronavirus-antibodies/5482405001/
ReplyDelete60% of whitetail deer tested in Michigan show signs of covid anti-bodies. So, if your friends and enemies don't infect you, maybe Bambi will turn the trick.
I have no idea what happened to opening line in above comment.
ReplyDelete