[davidf560]

What's happening in Illinois seems to be like a smaller version of what happened in the US. The northern part of the state near Chicago got hit early on in March-May, and that has quieted down a lot. Now the downstate areas closer to St. Louis are getting hit, as well as other more rural areas of the state (and some of the suburban Chicago areas as well which had been spared somewhat initially).

It's nearly impossible to draw firm conclusions (obviously, though so many are trying), but to my non-expert eye it certainly seems like this virus just burns through areas until some threshold level is reached (either due to some form of immunity kicking in, or the local population getting sufficiently scared to take their own measures more seriously, or something else). And it looks more and more to me like there's only 2 kinds of places: those that have been hit already and those that will be hit. It's unclear if the lockdowns really did much beyond delaying the inevitable (which, to be fair, is what we were told they were supposed to do in the beginning - it was "slow the spread", not "stop the spread").

Even looking at other countries, areas that were being scolded for doing a bad job seem to be nearing the end of their curve while areas that were touted as doing successful mitigation measures are flaring up. And of course there's counter-examples to everything that can be found as well.

It's hard to shake the feeling that no one really has any idea and everyone is just guessing. Even mask usage isn't clear - in the US it is getting near universal recommendation from our experts, while quite a few European countries with their own experts are not recommending masks, saying that there's little proof that they help and possibly some evidence they may do harm. It's mind-boggling how little agreement there is, even on something relatively simple to do like wearing a mask (fwiw, we wear ours because intuitively it seems they should help and it's a simple thing to do if it helps in any way).

[nradov]

When evaluated within an evidence-based medicine framework, there isn't yet any high-quality evidence to support mandatory cloth mask wearing in public.

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...

To be clear I am not arguing against wearing masks. It's just that issue isn't firmly settled and we need more research.

[djsumdog]

I can't wear masks due to a medical condition. For a while I just drove one state over to get groceries or ordered online for drive-up/pick up.

I went to a restaurant with some friends last weekend. "Do you have a mask" I was asked, a clothes pin holding my t-shirt around my face. The server said, "We'll give you one," and when I said I had a medical condition. He said, "That's fine," and I was glad that was it ... but I still felt so awkward and filled with anxiety and shame, even at our table where they weren't required. I just saw all the wait staff around and it made me my focus narrow and want to panic.

I think they have a negative mental effect and I think there's good scientific evidence they're not very useful:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/#masks-...

I probably will just switch to drive-up pickup for groceries and only go to outdoor seating restaurants for the rest of the summer.

We're creating a world of shame and judgement over wearing PPE, and on top of that, there are thousands of people out there with PTSD and Anxiety disorders, with deep, personal, sometimes traumatic reasons, for being unable to wear a face covering. We're making people who refuse feel like they're killing grandma even though there is science that says that's unlikely. We're creating a new religious belief.

A man in a Tim Horton's was pepper sprayed by a cop for not wearing a mask. Another Canadian man was shot by police.

History will not look kindly back on this period of our humanity.

[ithkuil]

> We're creating a world of shame and judgement over wearing PPE,

I think this would happen anyway, because of psychological dynamics in group/societies (cases of public shaming, drives to and against conformism etc abound throughout history).

However in your particular case the issue is exacerbated by the fact that PPEs effectively became part of identity politics.

It's possible that quite a few people who are shaming you for not wearing a mask are doing so because they don't believe you're honest bout your medical condition and instead you're making this up in order to "stand your ground".

People are kinda silly; we all hope that people from "our side" of the political spectrum are not, but once identity politics dynamics kick in human beings tend to lose quite a bit of their rationality.

[jaywalk]

>It's hard to shake the feeling that no one really has any idea and everyone is just guessing.

Even more than just being "hard to shake" it's really the only conclusion I can reach now. In the beginning we were told we had to wipe down our groceries and anything else we brought into our homes, and now they're saying that wiping down any surfaces is mostly pointless because it doesn't spread effectively that way.

It's a complete mess.