Idk if this is directed at me, but I'm not some anti mask vaccine truther nut. It's just that the insanity is showing on both sides of the aisle

Yeah, I don't think it answers your question.

BTW Ottawa Police was forced to introduce mandatory vaccinations.

I am for masks staying for the near future.

I think it is worth thinking about masks vrs/along with vaccines, and the relative importance in day to day interactions.

My wife went to a massage therapist who was running a home business. When my wife came home she mentioned that the person did not wear a mask (my wife wore one and is fully vaxed). I asked if the lady even asked my wife if she was ok with that? She said no. (I should add that I would not have even let her start the massage with out a mask, but that is me).

Anyway, my wife phones her later and asks if she is vaccinated. She says no and my wife says that on principle she won't be rebooking. They agreed to disagree.

I supported what she did but said if the lady had a mask this probably never comes up. What I was thinking is that it is great my wife won't see this person anymore, but I think she stopped for the wrong reason. No vax I could live with, but no mask and now you are really showing you don't give a crap about transmission to your clients.

So, after seeing Alberta go through 3 or 4 waves, and I am all for masks because each time it has been the masks that have brought the case counts down and taken the strain off the hospital system and allowed things to reopen.

I think a real big issue is that by now the needle on vaccines is only going to trickle upwards - there will be no mad rush. But, the Alberta gov can (and is) mandating masks in public places, retail, concerts, etc.

People whine and say "but for how long." I think STFU... people went to WW1 and WW2 without knowing "for how long." Just wear a mask FFS and stop whining about how long, or what the end game is, or when things will be normal. The pressure on politicians to make things "appear" normal just keeps setting us back and whatever the new normal is just gets farther away.

IMO, people so desperate for things to "appear:" normal (as in no masks) are holding us all back just as much (or maybe more??) than anti-vaxxers.

Rant over lol

Yeah, wtf. Who cares if someone wants to wear a mask. We honestly should have already been doing it during flu seasons like a lot of East Asian countries do.

Wearing one when you're sick is a considerate thing to do. I don't see the downside.

Good article in wsj this week on Portugal’s success story - built on vaccines and masks

This. I'm hopeful that we in the west pick up this habit. I'm going to try to be better about it.

But muh raights

getting the flu is awful. if everyone wearing a mask reduces the flu by X, it's probably gonna be worth it, whatever X is

.

Well, if X > 0

While I agree with you on the sort of 'war footing' idea of how long WWII for example took, I don't really buy into the mask thing. They probably have some benefit for certain situations, such as maybe grocery stores and public transportation, but in settings such as restaurants and bars they're just nonsense. It makes zero sense to have people wearing masks as they enter or leave these places, and then able to take them off and spread their exhaled breath around to the other patrons while they dine.

I also disagree on the mask usage being the primary driver of bringing case counts down. I'm also in Alberta and I'll remind you that there was no strong mask usage during and after wave 1, as the local mask bylaws weren't enacted until wave 2 started in the fall (Aug 31 of '20, iirc). Further, the mask rules did virtually nothing to curb the case counts as the arc of infection remained almost exactly the same after it was implemented, and remained at about the same level until they shut things down in December of '20. So then they have limited reopening in spring of '21, and presto the fourth wave starts, lasts until June, we reopen, and now the 5th wave starts and is only now in October starting to fade away.

So, when you go back and look at the records, the cycle is mostly connected to things being open or closed. We close in spring of '20, cases start trending down. Re-open in the summer, cases start climbing back up. Close in December, cases decline, then reopen in the spring, back up they go. The cycle repeats again in the delta wave, with the exception being that now the 'lockdown' is essentially being applied only to the unvaxxed as we have the passport system now, and once again it works. R value is now well under 1 and cases are trending down again.

But I would submit that the masks had virtually nothing to do with this. Cases were trending up in late August and early September, they reinstitute the mask bylaw on (I think) Sept 8, but the arc of infection remains almost exactly the same once again, and stays there until the REP program takes effect on September 20. Ten days or so later, the case counts start decreasing.

That said, I do follow the rules when it comes to masking, but in terms of the actual effect they have on the case counts and infection rates, I think the data show it's pretty negligible. The real effect is felt from lockdowns and from vaccine rates.

Yeah Covid waves rise and fall regardless of masks. See Florida, Texas, California, NY... all had spikes, all went back down, some had masks, some didn't. The correlation between masks and lower Covid rates/hospitalizations/deaths is shaky at best.

I do think there is a downside to forcing masks on people who don't want to wear them, when they do little to help. Of course those who want to wear masks can still wear them. I was wearing a mask in March 2020, only person in my neighborhood. They all thought I was crazy probably. But at some point it's time to stop forcing (at best) marginally useful things on an unwilling populace.

I went to a fancy Eyetalian restaurant Saturday night to get a gift certificate for a friends birthday and the place was absolutely packed to the gills. Except for the people just walking in, not a single mask on anywhere in the entire place. Zero.

My only point is, you can't have two sets of rules, one for restaurants and one for every other business. I'm not saying I know what the answer is, but that ain't it On Oct 30, 2021.

“Masks don’t work” is the wrong conclusion to make. I think(hope) what you really mean is “mask mandates don’t work.” In most areas, mask enforcement was lax or nonexistent. Not to mention, many people who would “wear” one did so incorrectly. It absolutely can and does reduce the amount of virus being propelled into the air. It is hardly even debatable that they work.

I'm not sure how much I agree with that. If that was true, then Covid rates and deaths would be much higher per capita in places like Florida and Texas than they were in states like NY, NJ, and CA that have mandated masks all along (unless you assume 100% of people in those states were wearing them incorrectly).

The fact is when worn 100% correctly, at all times, they likely help to some degree. But that will not happen, so it's not really worth debating how things could be in a world where everyone did everything correctly. Nonetheless it is wrong to dismiss the negatives of forcing people to wear masks against their will, as just people whining or being anti-science Trumpkins or whatever.

Not to get too political, but there is a very good chance a right-wing candidate will become Gov of Virginia, a blue state that went for Biden by 10 points, in large part because parents there are furious about their kids being forced to wear masks. So you can tell those parents to suck it up and stop being babies or whatever... and if you do, you will end up with a Trump acolyte as Gov. Now multiply that across the country in the midterms. It is a policy with minimal benefit that can have very negative long-term impacts.

And aside from politics... the idea that masks are no big deal and we should be wearing them anyway is false imo. They are uncomfortable, I don't see or focus as well when I am wearing it, and I miss seeing my colleagues' faces. Note I still wear it because they are mandated where I live. But I've got 2 vaccines plus a booster. Cases are low. I'm ready to ditch the mask.

In jmakin-land (Orange County, CA) masks have already been pretty much ditched.

They were barely here at all. My city even imposed a mask mandate at one point. Never enforced as far as I’m aware.
Most non-chain stores would have zero employees wearing them. Many businesses didn’t close that were supposed to.

I think this trend was probably nationwide, because the government decided to put mask enforcement in the hands of businesses and overworked frontline employees.

FYI i am fully vaxxed and no longer wear a mask because rates are low in my area and I interact with basically no one on a day to day basis.

But if you travel north 20 miles to LA county, you see a different story with tons of mask wearing. However, it is dropping. Especially amongst the younger crowds.

In Vegas most people (80%) are wearing masks. The exception is people from Texas or Southern states. But if u are in a restaurant or bar no masks is 99%. Restaurants cant be a place where Covid doesn’t exist. Just try to think harder than that.

I really don't buy this. Sorry. I was in Nova Scotia in August and when I got there they had 34 cases and Alberta had 5933. The only real difference at that time (school was out..) was that NS had a mask mandate and Alberta did not.

The Premier announced that Alberta was "open" and the numbers continued to climb. NS kept the mask mandate. Alberta refused to budge. I was really frustrated because I was wondering how Alberta could not see what was happening in NS and why they are not acting on masks sooner.

Of course I knew the answer was a lack of political will and an unwillingness to upset the base in Alberta, but knowing that made it worse.

Anyway, the Alberta case count peaked on Sept 26th with 21,307 cases.

Today, Alberta has 7580 cases and NS has 166.

Here is another reference point.

-The total number of COVID cases recorded in Alberta is 324,199
-The total number of COVID cases in Nova Scotia 7413.

Let's multiply the Nova Scotia cases by 4 to make them comparable by population. That would give NS about 30,000 total cases to Alberta's 324,199.

The difference in vaccine rates (at least one jab) is NS 81% to AB 73%.

So, I can't see how anyone in Alberta could deny the effectiveness of masks when the vaccine difference between the two provinces is only 8% and the difference in cases counts in the 2 provinces is extreme. Also, the only appreciable difference in restrictions was NS had a mask mandate and Alberta didn't.

And, that last wave you talked about... the one that got Alberta to 21307 cases..... NS didn't even get that wave.... they were masked up.

I know you don't think masks make a big difference, but I think the data from another Canadian province that had a mask mandate while Alberta did not shows otherwise.

Oh, and nothing was shut down in NS while I was there....With cases so low it is/was not a big worry.

CA has significantly less deaths per capita than other states mentioned.

Yes true CA has done better than some of the others you are right. But still, MA NY NJ all have higher death rates than TX (higher than FL also... although I think MA and FL may be basically tied). So it's tough to say which pecific policies had an impact. CA may have had stricter lockdowns which made more of a difference than masks, for ex.

Which of these states has the higher death rate over the past 12 months?

Respectfully, I think you're over simplifying the differences between the provinces. In NS they were working under far more restrictions beyond just the masking, and furthermore their cases had been lower all through the third wave and they had limited operations during that time frame.

Compare that to Alberta which was essentially locked down in May and June and then you suddenly totally re-open in July with no restrictions at all, declare that we're moving to endemic phase, and see a mini boom at restaurants and bars, including things like the rodeos and so forth, plus tons of people returning to offices and other work spaces. Move into September and now you add the universities into the mix, with students who were locked down and studying from home during 2020 now suddenly back on campus and ready to party it up. So hardly a surprise that case counts start increasing so much.

But this is the garph of cases here from google, and I highlighted the points where masking was brought in. Neither time did it do anything to stop the rise in cases.



Also I don't really agree with comparing a small and fairly isolated province like NS with AB. There are fewer people in NS than there are in metro Calgary, they're far less densely populated, AND they had limitations on who could even enter the province during covid. I'd submit that the two provinces have way more differences than just the lack of masking -- particularly since that was the case in AB for only about 65 days. Hardly the main contributing factor to the rise in cases here.

JFC at anyone getting their vaccine advice from this guy.

He saw some fake thing while stoned about a whole knew species of chimp that stands 6' tall, kills lions, and swims underwater. Primatologist calls in at 5:40 to tell him he's wrong, and he just gish gallops her to death.