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Karen Katzenyammer's avatar

It was quite the eye opener to watch my fellow citizens reactions to Covid. It was horrifying to see the leadership not let the right agencies be the leading voice. I was not very understanding of those who rejected the best known protocols from people who spend their careers working with viruses. It was obvious they had the closest thing to a good plan than the rantings on Twitter 'experts' or political gaslighting. So why is it so many people rejected the life raft handed to them, which may have not been perfect but would keep them and those around them alive? It felt insane.

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Jim Klein's avatar

Interesting. Mostly correct, but you join just about everyone in media, left, right, or center, in missing the point on masking. What we knew, fairly quickly, and know still today, is that well fitting N95 masks, or similar, work. Others are much less effective, and when worn by someone who doesn't want to be wearing it (for whatever reason), are just this side of useless. Better than nothing, but not a major factor toward safety. Mandating N95s early on, during a hopeless shortage of N95s, would not have been good policy. Mandating "any mask" was almost equally poor policy, especially later along, though for very different reasons.

Also, as anyone who has ever worked in a job that required N95 masking, for safety reasons, can attest, "fitting" is not a matter of guessing at size oneself, or even of trying several sizes. A professional does it for you. Masking with an ill fitting N95 is just another way of "playing at masking" without actually getting the benefit.

I get it - It's really HARD to give those who opposed masking MANDATES their due, but unless a given critic was also agitating against masking itself (not mandating, but even voluntarily wearing them) give him his due we should. Those who opposed the actual mandates that were actually issued were correct, and still are.

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