Naw, I think it is more about the reason a person distrusts the government here vs where Alpha grew up (which, I don't know, so certainly I'm speculating a bit.)

My opinion on this has definitely changed some in the time of Trump, but I would say libertarians and conservatives are always distrustful of government. Even when their party is in power. Liberals and progressives seem to trust the government itself, just not some of the people in it.

Again, I've moved a little on this. One reason is that many conspiracy theorists who like Trump suddenly became ok with the idea of martial law. Another would be that despite being our "sort of anti-war party" Dems didn't jump on board when Trump was indicating he wanted to get out of my he middle east.

From 50 years ago:

Well here it's a mixture of both, most think Boris is an idiot and also can't trust anything the science says. Using clowns that say stuff like half a million are going to die when they've previously projected a nine figure death count from bird flu tends to do that

PT and Cactus, good points. I'll leave it at that as I fear I'm taking us down a political road.

Record number of cases in the US yesterday, and today it's been topped by a couple thousand.

lol, interesting lyric from The Boxer, great song ....but quite the stretch to fit this topic.

This shouldn't be all that shocking:

US travelers 'unlikely' to be allowed into EU as bloc reopens, diplomats say

Florida Bans Alcohol Sales at Bars

Effectively shutting down all bars


Texas Governor Orders All Houston Bars to Close AGAIN


We are effed.

Meanwhile, during the White House's Press Briefing on the Pandemic, Vice President Mike Pence cant even say the word "Mask"

FMP.

I wonder if they are going to cancel my flight to Europe, but if it’s going daily right now that shouldn’t change?

Please see the first few pages of any covid thread

I have not kept up on the news from Texas or Florida,

Does either Florida or Texas mandate people wear masks in public or socially distance .... ?

Brazil, Russia and most u.s. states will be excluded from travel to EU

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...rs-coronavirus

Guess I should have known better than to ask that....

Of course not.

DeSantis held a press conference today to explain that, apparently in Florida, unlike the rest of the world, "masks don't work".


As for Texas, the Governor punted to county and local authorities to act, something he previously denied they had authority to do. Fortunately, Harris County (Houston) and Tarrant County (Fort Worth) have made masks mandatory. (Dallas or San Antonio ?)

OTOH, federally, masks seem the word that cannot be uttered .... Pence went on CNN, was asked about failing to cooperate with State and local officials and the near complete lack of masks at the two recent Tulsa and Arizona campaign rallies ....so he talked about freedom of speech and the right of assembly, as if wearing a mask would prevent the exercise of either.

Given that you mentioned earlier you were on some special exception, who knows?

LOL.

Seriously, though, not many states have face mask requirements, and certainly not FL or TX.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/us/st...rnd/index.html

As for distancing, I don't know that I've heard of ANY state or country trying to mandate that, outside of complete lockdowns. I think that would be tough to enforce. Usually they put that burden on places of business.

Yeah, and regardless of rights - they were asking him about recommendations. Pence, they're not suggesting the campaign team were required to wear masks, thus infringing on their precious constitutional rights - they were asking why they wouldn't be wearing them to set an example; to support rather than undermine your own experts' recommendations.

It’s not really an exception, it’s a passport. So as long as there are flights, I can travel between Europe and the US. Since that new development just means that the US won’t get removed from the travel restrictions list, nothing should really change for now.

But if airlines decide to stop offering flights, there’s not too much I can do about it. No idea how much worse it would have to get for that to happen though.

You're going to have to be a bit more specific than that. Europe, however much certain people want it to be so, is not one country and Sweden's going to take a different line than Germany who are going to take a different line from the UK etc etc and it's changing rapidly, and even within countries, Bavaria can have different rules to Hesse can have different rules to Berlin etc. Here (UK) we had an idiotic "quarantine all incoming visitors" policy, in a week or so it's going to be dependent on where you're coming from, who knows where it'll be in a month

Shame, there's no science that says masks do anything whatsoever but certain groups are making out that they're some kind of magic thing that'll stop this

No mask studies have been done?

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/41...-masks-prevent

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sci...troversial/amp

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.was...outputType=amp

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-ne...uidelines.html

That's just a few. Is this left wing propaganda, or what is this time?

Other than every infectious disease expert, public health expert, government health organization in the WORLD says they help prevent spread.

I would google the "science" for you but you will just respond with a statement from a "doctor" on Fox and Friends that says masks don't do anything and then a lawyer on Tucker Carlson's show who says any mandate to wear masks is unconstitutional.

It depends on what people think the non-N95 masks are supposed to do. Protect the wearer from getting the disease? No, they wouldn't do that much if you were to find yourself surrounded by infected individuals.

Prevent the wearer from transmitting the disease to others via respiratory droplets? Yes, this is what they're for. It's ALL they do, which is why the notions of social distancing and proper hygiene continue to be reinforced. (It's also why I question your notion that any "certain groups" believe they are some sort of panacea.) But they do help with that one function.

I'll go back to an analogy I made a while back, probably in this very thread. Imagine someone is shooting a gun at your while you're standing in an open space. An N95 mask would be like wearing a Kevlar vest. Short of having that, the facial coverings would be like having a chain link fence halfway between you and the shooter. One layer of fence wouldn't do that much. Two layers? Now it's harder to shoot through. Three layers? Even tougher. Now imagine the openings in the fence are smaller and smaller (like a better fabric for the mask). Even better. And so on. Still no guarantees, and you really should be trying to distance yourself from the situation. But it does help.

There’s a million different rules but if you’re a citizen of a country they usually can’t deny you entry. They can order you into quarantine though.

Oh c'mon man, this is just silly. First of all, no one credible is suggesting masks will magically stop the spread. But they can help. Even without the science, that should be obvious.

If you want to argue they won't do much, depending on the situation, I'd have a lot more time for that. To give you context - I've worn a mask exactly twice so far. Once when I got my hair cut, and recently when I went to Costco (they don't require them in Canadian Costcos, but they recommend that people wear them, and so I did). Mask wearing isn't very widespread here at this point, since things have been going very well, relatively speaking. The only public health recommendation is to wear one if you're somewhere that you can't distance.

I mention all this to demonstrate that I'm not one to jump all over people for not wearing masks here, of course, since I'm rarely wearing one either. But even though I very rarely wear one, even I know that it will do *something* to slow the spread - less stuff coming from my mouth and nose can only help. In my particular scenario where I'm never anywhere that I can't distance, and we have very little community spread, I feel the benefit is quite small (and therefore believe it is mitigated by a couple of negatives). But for people in different situations, and certainly in places where cases are still on the high side, the benefit can be quite a bit greater. Saying "there's no science that says masks do anything whatsoever" is ridiculous.

Well, you say that, but everything I've read is indicative that the method of transmission of coronaplague is such that masks do nothing - it's all through particles too fine to actually be blocked either in or out. But I'll play devil's advocate, let's say the masks do something and it can actually be spread by methods that team handsanitiser think - I don't really want said mask wearer to be letting the contagions all accumulate in one place, start adjusting the mask, collecting the coronaplague on their hands, touching the same stuff I do etc etc.

Frankly the main concern right now should be to work out methods of treatment for the small percentage of the population that are seriously at risk from coronaplague, and to indicate to everyone else that we're not actually in Chernobyl 2.0, that you can actually go to your doctors and not have other illnesses go ignored or misdiagnosed, that we don't have people dying as a result of treatments being cancelled or other physical/mental conditions deteriorating, and that it is safe to do normal things again

edit - and I'm very thankful that at least here the government's actions are currently subject to pending judicial review

That speaks more to your chosen newsfeeds than any scientific basis.