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...masks and other disciplinary measures proved to be failures in California from November 2020-January 2021. The state had the most severe lockdowns and mask mandates with enforcement...The state, Los Angeles county in particular, proceeded to see the most catastrophic increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths of anywhere in the country, anyway.
Not factored into your statement: vaccinations were not available to much of the general public until around March, 2021.
Obviously, you view the wearing of masks as a "disciplinary measure" as opposed to what a mask is intended to do, which is to help slow transmission.
There are no metrics provided which indicate an end. And, there's no reason to believe we will ever reach the point where there are no Covid infections. There's just the attention paid-or not paid- to case rates that keep it "alive" in some sense. (I'd argue, like the President has, that the end has already arrived.)
As I've pointed out before, masks and other disciplinary measures proved to be failures in California from November 2020-January 2021. The state had the most severe lockdowns and mask mandates with enforcement (the small city of Hermosa Beach literally paid people to walk the streets and strand along the beach to ticket people for not wearing masks!). The state, Los Angeles county in particular, proceeded to see the most catastrophic increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths of anywhere in the country, anyway. And that was with a variant believed to be about 1/18 as transmissible as what's currently floating around. If the closures, cancellations, prohibitions and mask mandates didn't stop the huge wave at the end of 2020, we can be certain they wouldn't stop infections with variants eighteen times more transmissible, either. And all of that is to be considered even without getting into the costs and downsides of such disciplinary measures, as well as the deeply unethical abuse of "state of emergency" power in subverting democracy and democratic rights.
It's the same, disingenuous argument to "let it rip." Nobody says COVID-zero is attainable any time soon. Having a low case rate is the important thing. A set of measures, including medical-grade face masks, could achieve that in not a very long time and permanently retaining some (like test-to-fly and rapid tracing) could prevent anything from growing beyond small, local outbreaks.
It's the same, disingenuous argument to "let it rip." Nobody says COVID-zero is attainable any time soon. Having a low case rate is the important thing. A set of measures, including medical-grade face masks, could achieve that in not a very long time and permanently retaining some (like test-to-fly and rapid tracing) could prevent anything from growing beyond small, local outbreaks.
You remain completely unable to explain why such measures utterly failed in California with a variant 1/18 as transmissible as current variants. The measures failed miserably when forced upon people two years ago with a much less transmissible variant, but, now they'd totally work.
You remain completely unable to explain why such measures utterly failed in California with a variant 1/18 as transmissible as current variants. The measures failed miserably when forced upon people two years ago with a much less transmissible variant, but, now they'd totally work.
You remain incapable of recognizing that your position is wrong.
I was saying in the summer of 2020 that COVID measures were not strict enough. There has never been good contact tracing here (if anywhere in the USA), and flight-related actions turned out to have many holes. Never have N95 masks been the default outside hospitals, and many people secretly were having maskless gatherings early on (plus dining at restaurants, which even now should be strongly discouraged). Fix enough of that, and the virus should be controllable, despite the mutations into higher transmissibility.
Last edited by goodheathen; 11-23-2022 at 02:53 AM..
You remain incapable of recognizing that your position is wrong.
I was saying in the summer of 2020 that COVID measures were not strict enough. There has never been good contact tracing here (if anywhere in the USA), and flight-related actions turned out to have many holes. Never have N95 masks been the default outside hospitals, and many people secretly were having maskless gatherings early on (plus dining at restaurants, which even now should be strongly discouraged). Fix enough of that, and the virus should be controllable, despite the mutations into higher transmissibility.
Amazing.
So, to make sure I understand, you're saying that you wanted MORE severe, unprecedented restrictions (emulating China?) than what we had, AND you want to usher in those more severe restrictions NOW, nearly three years after the beginning of the pandemic, and more than 18 months after vaccines were readily available to all, free of charge to citizens?
Do you believe that a majority of citizens would vote to impose such measures if given a chance to vote in an election? Do you believe that the (extremely leftist) state legislature could pass into law a bill mandating those disciplinary measures? Or do you simply think the people should have those measures imposed upon them even if a strong majority opposes it? Do you know what trade offs are? To what extent, if any, have you considered the costs and consequences of banning or strongly discouraging basic activities like gatherings? Why do you think people (including the Governor) gathered in groups during the pandemic? Did they sense a certain need or benefit in gathering with others? Or are they just bad people who should be admonished sternly?
So, to make sure I understand, you're saying that you wanted MORE severe, unprecedented restrictions (emulating China?) than what we had, AND you want to usher in those more severe restrictions NOW, nearly three years after the beginning of the pandemic, and more than 18 months after vaccines were readily available to all, free of charge to citizens?
Do you believe that a majority of citizens would vote to impose such measures if given a chance to vote in an election? Do you believe that the (extremely leftist) state legislature could pass into law a bill mandating those disciplinary measures? Or do you simply think the people should have those measures imposed upon them even if a strong majority opposes it? Do you know what trade offs are? To what extent, if any, have you considered the costs and consequences of banning or strongly discouraging basic activities like gatherings? Why do you think people (including the Governor) gathered in groups during the pandemic? Did they sense a certain need or benefit in gathering with others? Or are they just bad people who should be admonished sternly?
It's Thanksgiving, but as usual you just look for an opening to rant.
Last I heard, the majority supports a mask mandate for public transportation. And there's no vote required and enough people in LA would/do comply with that.
There likewise would be no vote for N95 requirements in many public-facing jobs and factory jobs.
A campaign to educate on how much more effective N95 is versus the kinds primarily used by the public before this year would make that go down easier.
There also needs to be a campaign that years into this COVID-19 not rarely does harm to people whose health initially was okay, sometimes with the problems coming months after infection.
Things like that, along with accelerated ventilation improvements to buildings, stops the pandemic even without good vaccines.
It's Thanksgiving, but as usual you just look for an opening to rant.
Last I heard, the majority supports a mask mandate for public transportation. And there's no vote required and enough people in LA would/do comply with that.
There likewise would be no vote for N95 requirements in many public-facing jobs and factory jobs.
A campaign to educate on how much more effective N95 is versus the kinds primarily used by the public before this year would make that go down easier.
There also needs to be a campaign that years into this COVID-19 not rarely does harm to people whose health initially was okay, sometimes with the problems coming months after infection.
Things like that, along with accelerated ventilation improvements to buildings, stops the pandemic even without good vaccines.
In a democracy, not strangled by an arbitrary "state of emergency" declaration, new laws DO require a vote by democratically elected representatives. That's how we came to have laws regarding seat belts, for example.
As the diehard leftist that you are, shouldn't you express concern about employee rights? Surely you can anticipate that some/many employees may find it an extreme degrading of working conditions if they are forced to wear an N95 mask for 8 hours a day. What about those people? Do they have no rights?
Campaigns are used to persuade others. They are no different than other forms of advertisement. Of course they are protected speech. Sometimes they work. Trigger warning: sometimes they do not work. Sometimes the public gains knowledge about whatever the campaign is promoting and they decide they're not interested. So, how do we grapple with a public that overwhelmingly does not support mask mandates? We let it go! Quit with the mask perversion. If you absolutely want permanent masking (or masking until some undefined, impossible to reach point), contact your representatives and ask them to pass a bill into law mandating masks. Maybe the representatives will conclude that their constituents want the mask mandate, they will write a bill, present it to the legislature, and get it passed into law! Of course, you people don't want any part of that process. Instead, you want to force your way onto citizens, because you know they'd never approve of it democratically. "Bio-fascism" is an appropriate way to describe this.
In a democracy, not strangled by an arbitrary "state of emergency" declaration, new laws DO require a vote by democratically elected representatives. That's how we came to have laws regarding seat belts, for example.
As the diehard leftist that you are, shouldn't you express concern about employee rights? Surely you can anticipate that some/many employees may find it an extreme degrading of working conditions if they are forced to wear an N95 mask for 8 hours a day. What about those people? Do they have no rights?
Campaigns are used to persuade others. They are no different than other forms of advertisement. Of course they are protected speech. Sometimes they work. Trigger warning: sometimes they do not work. Sometimes the public gains knowledge about whatever the campaign is promoting and they decide they're not interested. So, how do we grapple with a public that overwhelmingly does not support mask mandates? We let it go! Quit with the mask perversion. If you absolutely want permanent masking (or masking until some undefined, impossible to reach point), contact your representatives and ask them to pass a bill into law mandating masks. Maybe the representatives will conclude that their constituents want the mask mandate, they will write a bill, present it to the legislature, and get it passed into law! Of course, you people don't want any part of that process. Instead, you want to force your way onto citizens, because you know they'd never approve of it democratically. "Bio-fascism" is an appropriate way to describe this.
You do not understand lawmaking. Many rules are not voted on, or not specifically anyway. The public can vote out politicians involved in issuing rules they don't like, which is very different. Sometimes the public cannot even do that, e.g., orders by the LA Health Department. Behaviors that inherently risk arrest probably have to first be outlawed in a voting process, but that's largely irrelevant to COVID-19 restrictions.
And I'm tired of the lie about my political beliefs.
You do not understand lawmaking. Many rules are not voted on, or not specifically anyway. The public can vote out politicians involved in issuing rules they don't like, which is very different. Sometimes the public cannot even do that, e.g., orders by the LA Health Department. Behaviors that inherently risk arrest probably have to first be outlawed in a voting process, but that's largely irrelevant to COVID-19 restrictions.
And I'm tired of the lie about my political beliefs.
We've seen people hunted and arrested for violating covid "restrictions", including some who were arrested for surfing in the ocean. And, covid restrictions have been extremely invasive on basic rights, and should not be allowed to exist outside of our democratic process. The key problem there is this "state of emergency" declaration, which seems to be able to made for literally anything, and could conceivably last forever given the lack of limiting principles in place. We desperately need clear, specific, objective guidelines in plavce around when a state of emergency can be declared, how long it can stay in place before specific, objectively measurable criteria are needed to sustain it.
TL;DR: Public health departments need to be limited to making recommendations, not laws and mandates.
We've seen people hunted and arrested for violating covid "restrictions", including some who were arrested for surfing in the ocean.
One paddleboarder in Malibu was arrested on a misdemeanor charge, at the very beginning of the stay at home order, over 2 1/2 years ago. You engage in so much hyperbole, it's astounding. The lockdowns were over in 2020. Move on.
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