The COVID-19 Wild West Thread (Read 601 times)

I'm used to how stupid our politics is but it still shocks me sometimes that one party has turned something as basic as wearing a mask to prevent the spread of a highly contagious and deadly disease into a partisan issue.

I agree with this, but they definitely botched the messaging early on when they said masks don't make a difference. Hell, even the WHO didn't recommend masks until just a couple of weeks ago.

Totally. I know Fauci said part of that was that due to a shortage they didn't want to create mass buying that would divert masks from frontline healthcare workers but they definitely botched the messaging. Job 1 of our public health ecosystem should be to publicly own that mistake and hammer the messaging that masks are hugely important to stopping the spread and opening the economy.

If the administration took any effort to broadcast a message of "we're all in this together; help your fellow american;  6ft as patriotic duty", they could have easily sold it as a patriotic duty to make your own mask, and save the N95 masks for the front-line.

Alas, this is not in this administration's toolkit.  They think transactionally.  They think selfishly.  And so the message they sent out was to prevent selfishness, which as we saw from toliet paper, probably wasn't far off the mark.

Public health policy also has the difficulty of conveying simple messages for complex sliding scales of risk.  From what I understand, 6ft is better than a mask -- it's also free, in infinite supply, and doesn't suffer from poor usage practices.  As a public policy it is a better health policy.  But Mike is right, the messaging was botched.

 

If the administration took any effort to broadcast a message of "we're all in this together; help your fellow american;  6ft as patriotic duty", they could have easily sold it as a patriotic duty to make your own mask, and save the N95 masks for the front-line.

 

Alas, this is not in this administration's toolkit.  They think transactionally.  They think selfishly. 

Perhaps President Trump would be more receptive to a young attractive woman with a cute Slavic accent:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhNo_IOPOtU&t=5s

You should be wearing a mask pretty much everywhere.

Even better the orange menace wants to take away health insurance during a pandemic AND from all those who lost theirs due to layoffs"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-obamacare-supreme-court-overturn-affordable-care-act/?fbclid=IwAR2iy-wvVYoyuxMsknWiqBADzfGZodu2BDKijR0fn-lREsOzl94tbeoj4

Daughter's delayed college commencement ceremony has been officially canceled.  100% expecting, but getting the official word was still hard on everyone.    We had to pay for the hotel room ahead of time, but at least they agreed to give everyone refunds.

Hey! I might have caught it!

Felt crappy waking up yesterday and it got worse as time went on, I've been in bed since noon yesterday. I'm sitting up at my desktop now, but still not feeling well. No coughing, but a fever and lung infection pain like angina (but wrong area, and now it's gone), no trouble breathing. It might very well be something else, but I don't know what. I've been pretty careful, so something less contagious doesn't seem possible. There's free testing sites near me, if I feel good enough to drive tomorrow I'll get a test.

Man flu?