The CDC has made it official, or at least as close to official as we are likely to get: If you’ve gotten all the vaccination shots for COVID, you don’t need to wear a mask — definitely not outside, and possibly not inside a shop or restaurant.
If you haven’t gotten the vaccine, you should be wearing masks inside and probably outside as well.
If the world were a truly rational place, the vaccinated would be a lot less likely than the unvaccinated to wear masks.
But our world is upside-down and backwards, so that’s not how it’s working out at all. According to a new Gallup Poll, some 90 percent of fully vaccinated people are still wearing masks — while less than half of those who aren’t fully vaccinated are wearing them on at least a somewhat regular basis.
The worst that you can say about the vaccinated who are still wearing masks is that they are erring on the side of caution, and as a way to gently nudge the unvaccinated to keep their masks on. Wearing a mask you don’t need to wear is a little bit of a hassle, but it hurts no one.
It’s the unvaccinated-and-maskless who are putting themselves and others at great risk of catching the bug. Yet ithey’re the ones lashing out at vaccinated people who are still wearing masks.
As Dave Weigel of the Washington Post notes
Republicans are far less likely than Democrats to say they’ll get vaccinated, and Democrats are far more likely to support masking, fretting that vaccine skeptics will go maskless and keep spreading the virus. Vaccinated liberals who still intend to wear masks outdoors — a minority, but a vocal one — have quickly become punching bags for Republicans.
According to an article by David Kamioner reposted on the right-wing LifeZette, the mask is a sign of “conformity” and “cowardice.”
“You can see them everywhere,”Kamioner declares.
People driving alone wearing masks. People wearing masks outside. People wearing masks in establishments that don’t require it. On their cars the Biden bumper stickers predominate. In other instances, in the elderly, the sad echoes of the most conformist generation in American history, the 60s, shows itself once again to possess an inherent love of the herd mentality.
We’ve seen this before. Black shirts in Italy in the 20s. Arm bands in Germany of the 30s. The “peace” symbol of Americans in the 60s. All the same vicious conformists who played upon the collective inclinations of people who think like sheep.
So waving a peace sign is the equivalent to wearing a swastika armband? That’s a … revealing take on things.
Wearing the mask provides them today with an opportunity to virtue signal and scold at the same time. That puts them in hog heaven. Holier than thou and pulling a Karen is their own personal apotheosis. But what it really denotes is shame and profound cowardice.
Meanwhile, on a site called MAGAinstitute, CJ Wheeler says that “The Time Has Come To Openly Mock Mask Wearers.”
The cost of having [a] free mind is walking into a store surrounded by masked people glaring at you all year, and knowing they are being brainwashed. Knowing that they have fallen under the spell of the Washington Post, The Guardian, and many other of Bill Gates’ Paid COVID Fear-Porn Media Outlets.
Having a free mind this last year meant you were a complete and utter outcast and at any moment you could have someone make a shame video of you in a store that would go viral. Maybe they would scream and yell at you as an extra bonus. Or worse, be arrested when you hadn’t committed a crime. We saw that almost every week of this past year. …
Still think it’s too much to openly mock and laugh at those continuing to perpetrate this mass-delusion of mandatory masks?
Ridicule Is LONG Overdue!
Cartoonist and opinion-haver Ted Rall, writing on Unz.com, was a little more gentle:
Go ahead, wear a mask indoors if you want to, despite being vaccinated. Wear one outside if you feel like it. However, you are — sorry, Dr. Fauci — acting irrationally. …
Masks have devolved from medical imperative to virtue signaling. …
What’s the harm in a fashion accessory that, as the vaxxed-yet-masked crowd informs you, merely tries to make other people feel more comfortable while also sending a subtle anti-MAGA message? It’s about thinking straight. Democrats can’t credibly claim the scientific high ground unless they adapt to the latest medical consensus.
On Townhall.com, Jason Garshfield warns that the fate of our society hangs in the balance, or something.
Masks are not just another assault on personal liberty. They are uniquely demeaning and dehumanizing, to a far greater degree than most other nanny state overreaches. Face covering, as a legal or social norm, stands in fundamental opposition to basic Western principles of individual self-determination and accountability. …
Face masks, all told, represent a serious threat to our collective well-being as a society, and now that any American who wants the Covid-19 vaccine can get it, there is no longer any rationale for their widespread use. …
For my part, I would prefer to live in the world of individual liberty that the mask-obsessed have denied us. Short of banning face masks, though, we should do all we can to ensure that they are not further ingrained as a social custom, that those who choose to neurotically wear them past the point of all common sense become the rare exception rather than the new normal.
Sure, if people get the vaccine, they can safely ditch the masks, in most circumstances. If they refuse to get vaccinated, going maskless isn’t “common sense”; it’s potentially deadly. Garshfienld and Rall’s arguments only make sense if the vast, overwhelming portion of the population has been vaccinated. Not getting the vaccine is bad enough; the vaccine-fearers shouldn’t compound their errors by going maskless. There’s no common sense in that.
If you want to go maskless, get the vaccine. If you won’t get the vaccine, at the very least keep your damn mask on.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
Sure – wearing a mask in indoor spaces or crowded outdoor spaces is virtue signalling if you’re fully vaxxed which I will be in a couple of weeks (had 2nd jab but giving it time to kick in). I’m signalling the virtue of protecting myself, the people around me and public health generally. That’s not a bad thing. Where I am in the UK masks are rarely worn in outdoor spaces, and yeah I don’t mask if it’s not crowded.
@karalora : what you say, and also they feel very important to have scapegoats. The actions of the scapegoats will *alway* be the wrong one, they will reverse analyze to find a reason for that.
Note that they have several scapegoats, who work like russian nested dolls. The heart of their hatred are jews, then colored people, then non-straight people, then women, then liberal.
I am vaccinated and still wear a mask in my building, and indoors in general. My spouse had to delay her vaccination a while and I saw how nervous it made her when she saw more and more maskless people as she was in the process of getting vaccinated and I want people around me to feel comfortable. I do take it off outside, mostly because outside transmission was always very unlikely, but I don’t really care if people mask outside.
For work, I personally want the option of going into an office, I am sick of sitting int he same chair at home everyday and my apartment is not really set up for two people to work from home (my spouse is freelance and always worked from home). But I really understand why folks DON’T want to stop WFH. Right now my commute to the new office my company is moving to is a 20 min walk. But I used to have significant commutes, sometimes 45m-2hr drives one way. The amount of time people get back by eliminating commutes is huge and I think more and more people realize that.
@ Karalora
They might also often just want to take choice away from those who they think are abusing it. Their in-group can handle the responsibility, but they can’t trust others with it.
As I recall, Gilead was big on “freedom from” for women instead of “freedom to”.
I think it’s about domination. Business cares more about exercising power over workers than even profit. When you’re working remotely, your manager/s can’t breathe down your neck. At my work, we’re not supposed to have our cell phones out, even when there’s downtime. Since I’ve been doing WFH, I have both my laptop and cell out for use during downtime and it’s caused no problems with my productivity at all. Widespread WFH is exposing how wrong the standard management thinking, that workers must be micromanaged or they will not do their jobs properly, is wrong. That’s really threatening to the status quo.
@Alan
We had Air Force One fly over the house a couple of hours ago! I like to think it was the plane carrying Biden.
re. Littlejohn, its surprising he doesn’t look more shown up in that vid. The man is shameless.
This. After all, what’s the point of being rich if it doesn’t allow you to lord it over other people?
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee, @Lukas Xavier:
Indeed, my greatest annoyance when doing office work is having to stop working because someone comes in and asks me what I’m doing; it often causes me to prioritize tasks that look busier over ones that are actually more important, because I find it so hard to get back on track after interruptions.
@Karalora:
It’s kind of in the name. Conserve everything exactly as (I perceive) it’s always been.
Reminder to all European and UK Mammotheers to go outside Thursday at 11:10 BST and enjoy the maximum of the partial eclipse – clouds permitting.
Edit to add: for anyone else, the Observatory in Greenwich will be livestreaming it. Since that’s just up the road from me and we’re expecting 9/10 cloud cover, don’t get over excited though.
@Karalora
I have never seen it summarized so well.
@ lollypop
It seems they landed Air Force One at Exeter. Which is a bit odd. Newquay airport has the third biggest runway in the world. It was a space shuttle emergency site. President Biden must have wanted something we don’t have in Cornwall. Like Greggs, or tax disks.
But to get back on topic. I am contractually obliged to post this.
https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/18/bmjnph-2021-000272
@WWTH : specifically, it’s because there’s way too many middle managers, and they are aware of their redundancy. Micromanaging is a way for them to do something, to justify their existence. They barely have anything to do so they think no one is working.
Bullshit jobs don’t just lead people to depression. It also lead to have armies of middle managers that barely have anything legitimate to manage.
Those middle management positions are, in effect, sinecures, a form of welfare-for-the-privileged to ensure that a certain subset of white people with middle class backgrounds and the right connections/good-ol’-boy networking/fancy private school alumnus status will always have a middle class, white collar, salaried-full-bennies position available to them in the private sector. It’s downward mobility insurance for a specific privileged group, those close enough to the ruling class.
Needless to say, we pay a steep, steep cost to ensure that the sons and cousins and good friends of board members and hedge fund managers never need resort to renting their home, flipping burgers, or (shudder) public assistance. All of those salaries and bennies have to be paid for somehow, after all, and the businesses they work for pass those costs on in the price tags of their products and services. Even if they are B2B, their clients’ higher costs for those products and services get passed on in turn, and sooner or later the extra expense grounds out somewhere familiar, like a price sticker on something on the shelf in front of you at the store, or one of your utility bills, or your rent, or even your taxes, since many of these same businesses have various levels of government among their clients.
And to keep them in office space (and enable one to have the prestigious corner-office-with-a-view, and dangle that prospect in front of others, and other power-politics stuff) costs even more. Those giant, useless office towers that are, as often as not, kept lit up all night cost a lot to light and heat and air condition, and in upkeep. The giant, useless commutes to and from those giant, useless office towers guzzle time, guzzle fuel, and pump out greenhouse gas. Highways have to be widened, at public expense, to accommodate all these useless commutes with a tolerable level of traffic jams, and said widenings also are GHG-intensive processes. Mixing concrete and pouring asphalt both produce copious CO2.
Work-from-home could wipe out much of this, and allow converting those useless offices into desperately-needed housing stock, lowering housing prices. And the privileged private school brats lose their sinecure-welfare and much of the equity in their real estate ownership, and everyone from the upper middle class up to the billionaires has a sad. And when billionaires have a sad we get stock market crashes, recessions, cuts to social services, and wars ginned up as supply-side stimulus. And when the upper middle class has a sad, they go Nazi in large enough numbers for Nazis to start winning elections …
@Karalora: brilliantly put.
@Surplus to Requirements: Geez, that’s a dark take.
The new delta variant that’s becoming more predominant becuse it mutated to infect better has already killed one double-vaccinated person and more who were on their first shot. The arseholes who won’t mask and superspread are edging us closer to a variant that is not going to be eliminated by the vaccines we have. This isn’t over yet.
@Snowberry : Surplus is optimistic here. The reality is bleaker.
Some are explicitly welfare for rich sons, but that’s the minority (and the best paid one). For most, the people who got theses positions got it as reward. While race and social skills are obviously at work, in general they all did stuff they are proud of to get here, and most middle managers have a genuine sense of having earned their position. Quite often, for good reasons. Stereotypically, the average middle manager started by cleaning plates and “worked his way up”.
If you wonder why so many of them are fucked up, that’s because the dissonance being them having been promoted and celebrated and the realization that their position is useless is doing a number of them. It fuck up with the brain and the sense of self ; and the main reason to not be sympathetic with them is that since they have people nominally in their care, the natural consequence of that torture is them torturing the base level of people. Since future middle managers will quite often come from the base level, it’s a circle of abuse.
Surplus is optimistic, in a way a bit like WWTH, because he attribute intentionality to all that. Which have a lot of positive consequence, like being directly addressable by pressuring the management enough. While in fact, it’s an indirect consequence ; middle management exist and in small dose is actually useful, but it’s also where inefficient jobs are among the hardest to spot, and moving to management is a natural way to make people move up in an organization. So when a corporation is trying to reward his worker, it tend to overload on middle management positions, which themselves tend to behave in a shitty way because of their not-so-visible pointlessness and the fact the corporation can actually get away with having quite a lot of useless positions.
Further to our recent discussions, the chap who initially raised the ‘lab leak’ theory has dialled his claims back a bit.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/leading-biologist-dampens-his-smoking-gun-covid-lab-leak-theory
i and my spouse and housemate are all disabled, with my spouse and housemate being immunocompromised. im the only one who hasn’t gotten my first vaccine yet (being in a poor area of the UK, age plus unknown allergies means even more waiting) and even when we’re all fully vaccinated we plan to continue to wear masks because not getting the flu or sick all year was great. now that our kid is in nursery we’ve had TWO different noncovid viruses back to back and it’s been absolutely hell. I don’t know how we tolerated this before.
i always liked the aesthetic of masks anyways (worked in art studios so it was frequently necessary protection and I just got used to it years ago). gammons and magas can complain all they want, I will be wearing masks well after the pandemic is fully over. and it’s sure as hell no where near over so long as people are choosing to go unvaccinated (for non health reasons) and while we have new variants emerging because of lockdown restrictions loosening too early. people seem to forget we DON’T know if the vaccines have the same efficacy for the variants yet. it isn’t over yet and people wanting to go back to “normal”, vulnerable populations be damned, is horrifying.
Mortem,
YES. I feel like people (those who are not seriously affected by covid) are getting bored with it. It’s like our attention spans have decided that covid is old news, so 2020, passé. Honestly, one thing that disheartens me the most about our society is how quickly we move on to the next new thing…like a fresh new problem means the old problems are solved, or at least less important. I think this attitude of “I’m bored, are we still talking about this?” is one of the things that really allows prejudice of all kinds to continue.
Clearly that’s a perspective of privilege. Those who are affected by a given tragedy (or, as mortem points out for covid, immunocompromised) don’t get to “forget” and move on.
@Simon: I believe you, but can we get a link?
Surplus has it correct. You can’t lord it over the peasants slaving away if they’re at home dressed comfortably, not having to put up with co-workers’ annoying habits, and not having the boss stand over their shoulder. And the lords do get a sad when their investment portfolios decrease by even a tiny amount.
We in CA will be wearing masks until next week. Well, supposedly; I had to get my truck smogged yesterday and most of the people in the waiting room weren’t masked.
And yet? Fully vaccinated Hambeast wore her mask, played solitaire on her phone and glared at precisely no one while she waited.
Businesses will be able to require masks after next week if they want to.
That being said, I have never enjoyed such good health as I have this past year; no covid, no flu (despite opting not to get a flu shot this year), no colds, and as a bonus, way fewer hay fever symptoms, especially when working in the yard.
Further, I have eczema around my nose and mouth and even a breeze can start the hellish itching, so that’s been another boon, as long as I stick to cloth. Not to mention the mask hides the rashiness when the eczema does flare up.
Yes, masks are hot and make my glasses fog up, but I gotta love the upsides!
I made a weak time travel joke here the other day, won’t pass moderation, sorry if I will trangress community standards with it. 🙂