The public is tuning out the danger
Areas with more people vaccinated are found to have lower rates of infection. I’m tempted to add “You don’t say!” but the Post reports that in fact that wasn’t true until now.
As recently as 10 days ago, vaccination rates did not predict a difference in coronavirus cases, but immunization rates have diverged, and case counts in the highly vaccinated states are dropping quickly.
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But experts worry that unvaccinated people are falling into a false sense of security as more transmissible variants can rapidly spread in areas with a high concentration of unvaccinated people who have abandoned masking and social distancing.
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Local public health officials fear the public is tuning out the danger as they see news reports of cratering infections and scenes of reopened bars and entertainment venues across the nation, assuming vaccinations are no longer necessary.
Missouri’s Polk County — where less than a quarter of the population of roughly 30,000 is fully vaccinated — has reported nearly 90 new infections in one week, an increase after several months of decline.
Just get the damn shots, people. This isn’t a game.
Kim Lionberger, director of the [Sweetwater, Wyoming] county board of health, said her staff is doing the best they can to provide scientific facts about the virus and the vaccines. But they are also competing with skeptical residents who prefer affirmation to information and find it from anti-vaccine doctors and questionable reports on Facebook.
“The mentality of people in Wyoming is that rugged individualism where they do their own thing and don’t want people telling them what they should be doing because they are going to do what they want to do,” said Lionberger.
Also known as utter heedless selfishness.
Stachon isn’t sure what she would do if a highly contagious variant tears through the community and some have already been detected. The Wyoming legislature restricted the powers of public health officials like her to put disease control measures in place.
“For me to try to say we need to go back and mask or do anything like that, I would almost think I need police protection,” Stachon said. “It’s just sad. You feel impotent.”
Sad and infuriating. More infuriating than sad, really, because the heedless selfishness harms others as well as the heedless selfish people.
Our school has announced 100% capacity for fall classes, removal of mask mandate, and today they informed us they are removing the sneeze guards. Our community is not to herd immunity (or even that close) but almost no one is wearing masks, and social distancing is ignored.
My husband and I went to a movie last night for the first time in forever. We were in a theatre with three other couples. The first couple came and sat right behind us. The second couple sat behind us about a foot away. The third woman kept moving and moving and moving, getting closer to us with every move. We moved. I am not prepared to take any chances when the vaccine appears effective, but is so new we don’t really know how long that will be.
And our community continues to careen toward…whatever it is they are careening toward. It is certainly not best health practices. It is…full reopening, everywhere, no restrictions. The great unmasked will not be happy until we reach that, and we just about have, but businesses are still allowed to require masks. Only the nationwide chains are mandating masking for the unvaccinated.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand—beyond in an academic sense—the resistance to getting the damn vaccine.
Iknklast that is so crazy, the people moving to get CLOSER. Wtf?
It seemed that way to me on the street sometimes – people would choose to cross the street by aiming right at me instead of aiming at a spot where no one was. I figured maybe it’s an unconscious way of steering. But in a nearly empty movie theater? Good grief.
Some people can’t afford to take off time from work to get it. I’m sure there are other fathomable reasons.
I heard on This American Life (Episode The Herd, I think) that more than 250 public health officials across the country have resigned because of threats, the greatest exodus in U.S. history.
That’s weird… Even in normal times sitting near people on purpose in a movie theater (assuming it’s not in the best viewing spot) isn’t something you’d think anyone would do.
Can a culture/society perhaps be at a stage where it is culturally suicidal? I think the United States may be at this stage. Maybe because so many of the underlying structural elements of our culture are being called into question? Fundamentalist Christianity, racial superiority, pull yourself up with your bootstraps capitalism, unquestioned military and economic dominance.
Throw in climate change and automation’s destruction of all but the most high touch jobs means things are not looking good for most people. Add in the sheer volume of fake news, conspiracy theories….
I am glad I am old.
@6 I wish I understood this phenomenon better too. I even get it in grocery stores, as soon as I stop to look at something, it seems to become the place everyone wants to be. Maybe it’s just my own standoffishness, I was social distancing before it was cool. Now quit breathing on me. ;)
@3 I don’t get that very often, because I don’t often walk where there are sidewalks and crosswalks. What I do get however, is people walking with traffic instead of against it. I was taught to walk against traffic at some point in youth (if there are no sidewalks) so that you can see what’s coming instead of having cars and bicyclists racing up behind you. It always made sense to me, but there are those who obviously never learned this.
Amateurs. :P
@2 I have an irrational fear of needles, and I avoid shots whenever I can. I have never had a flu shot, and I have lied several times when asked when my last tetanus shot was. I don’t give blood, and I have opted out of getting blood tests. I would rather be hit with a shovel than get stuck with a needle.
Yes, I went and got the vaccine (both doses) I just white knuckled my way through it. So I don’t understand it even in an academic sense, or even what the academic sense is.
Well there is one exception to that, which I suspect most women are aware of. My first experience of it was at age 12. It wasn’t my last.
Unfortunately from our species’ point of view, but fortunately for the Covid virus and it variants, one can be infected without knowing it, and can play the role of a perambulating virus sprayer wherever one goes. In self-defence terms, a mask is the closest equivalent we have to a Mediaeval suit of armour. Maybe labelling masks to that effect might bring that fact home to the ‘rugged individualists’, or monumental shitheads, or whatever descriptor might be realistically applicable.
Arabs battling with desert sandstorms came up with appropriate clothing to deal with them centuries ago, with unfortunate later social consequences in the form of the compulsory bourker. It would be ironic, would it not, if bourker-clad people today had better survival chances against the Covid virus suite than those rugged shitheads who prefer to defy storms of tiny flying particles by striding out into them stark naked.
Ophelia #3
I think I’ve met the same people! Last April, streets deserted, as far as the eye can see just me, the dog, and The Guy Who Crosses The Road Diagonally So As To End Up Directly In My Path. I mean I knew women become “invisible” as they get older, I just never thought it would quite so literal.
Heh. Right? It’s SO annoying.
Or was. One of the top noticeable benefits of being vaxxed and being able to assume most other people are too is not feeling that constant hostility while outside. I really hated it.
I get a lot of people leaning right over me to grab stuff or even shout to someone on the other side of me, now that I’m in the chair. They don’t seem to perceive my personal space. Or perhaps they think my airspace is fair game.
I hate it at the best of times, but when they’re ejecting COVID-ridden sputum all over my head, I enjoy it even less.
It rarely works out well for them. Perhaps they also believe the fiction that cripples can’t be angry, vengeful arseholes. I’m delighted to be in a position to persuade them otherwise.
A lot of sorry feet around your area. Good.
Ankles. Always go for the ankles.
Ah yes of course, much more deniable.
Get some spikes on those wheels.