el gato malo
this is one of those wonderful "exactly wrong" takes. masks do not stop covid. they do not slow spread, lessen severity, or have any beneficial effect at all for the wearer or (and especially) as source control. no one else's mask protects you. everyone used to know this. the last 3 years were just a nasty piece of soundbite suasion used to ethically invert perceptions of compliance and enable the anxious to demand useless behaviors from those around them. this is not a harmless practice: brainwashing vulnerable people into presuming that this false mitigation protects them has real consequences. you know what's more dangerous than not wearing a helmet when you play football? thinking you have one on when you don't. that's how you misjudge risk badly and wind up hurt. it is not polite or kind or "being an ally" to play along and allow these delusions to persist: it's harm. it encourages people to make bad choices based on pseudoscientific superstition. it is not "validation" to see people out sick, it's demonstration that masks are a total fail as protection and this sort of cognitive dissonance of "every time it doesn't work i just believe harder and think you need to comply more stringently" prior to this wild excursion into medical claptrap, this was widely known. there is a reason you never saw these masks before and covid is not some radical new situation unlike any before it. even those who turned mask zealot knew this. and it's time we all remembered. it's not safety. it's risk enhancement. this is not helping. it's damage.
Kelly
This is what we are subjecting our clinically vulnerable people to. This was a needed appt that I couldn’t skip. So I have to risk exposure to Covid & defend myself against accusations of anxiety only to be validated in the end when they confirm half the staff are out sick. /3
