[mywittyname]

> If you're unhappy with how the pandemic has affected your business, you should ask the politicians why the CARES act gave the rich $5T and the rest of us a one-time $1200.

Better yet, ask why half of them won't get off their ass and appeal for everyone to wear masks. Call it a civil duty; call people who wear their masks patriots/hero; equate a refusal to do so is like kneeling during the national anthem or burning the flag. I don't really care what, but they need to do something.

There's a lot of science supporting mask wearing as an effective way of mitigating the impact of covid. If everyone wore masks in public and around any person who is not a member of their household, the economy would not be so stressed; hospitals would not be so stressed; and we could largely go back to "normal."

At this point, every time you go out in public without a mask, you are lighting cash on fire. You are hurting American companies and helping foreign ones. No amount of government stimulus is going to bring back all of the people who died or were permanently crippled from covid. Nor will it give back the year of schooling that children have lost due to covid.

The cynic in me thinks that some leaders are dragging their feet with the goal of dragging the American economy into the toilet so that they can blame the next guy for it.

[jessaustin]

Is anyone in USA so inspired by politicians that they would slightly inconvenience themselves in response to a polite request by a politician? If anything I'd expect the effect to be negative, especially with polarizing people like Pompeo or Pelosi. (You'll never convince me that a significant portion of mask-wearing in "blue" states isn't due to Trump's famous opposition to masks.) Many of those who wear masks do so because we are aware of the respiratory pandemic underway, and not pathologically selfish.

Certain sports stars or perhaps "country" musicians could have a one-time effect on mask rates if they really went hard, but each time we fire one of these bullets it's used up. If "Florida Georgia Line" go all-in on masks, they won't be cool enough to tell us about vaccines.

[mywittyname]

Politicians are one thread in the tapestry of news and information that blankets the country. Yes, people listen to them.

It's abundantly clear that the entire GOP coordinates with Fox News and other sources (reddit, FB, etc) to deliver consistent messages that are curated and on-brand. So when I say politicians, I really mean this entire machination.

If the entire Conservative Messaging Platform decided to tackle this problem and encourage mask wearing, we could get a critical mass of people to do so. They could have Laura Ingram, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell, and a bunch of lesser known pundits/politicians harping on this day-in and day-out. While having facebook and r/conservative bots posting pro-mask memes.

We know this is an effective way of influencing behavior, because we've seen it work numerous times throughout the past decade. Too bad it's never used for anything good.

[jessaustin]

You probably aren't wrong with respect to coordination between politicians and "news" firms. When I read "GOP with Fox" I heard "DNC with MSNBC" as an echo. (My father watches MSNBC so I see more of it than Fox, just by mistake.) Just like the latter (to be more correct, the same) machine, however, it isn't magical. There are a set of buttons and pressing them has a set of effects. Some choices make others impossible. Trump could have made mask-wearing a conservative thing in January. In December that's not an option. Everyone, even his fans, would just laugh at him. No other Republican has any power to change red-staters' minds about anything. Eventually there might be a different Republican with influence, but until then many Americans must be reached in other ways.