[nexuist]

There is a worryingly large constituency, mostly on Twitter, who believe that any unjust death at all is damning evidence that all of our institutions and economic systems must be destroyed and rebuilt. Of course unjust death is tragic, but it's not an excuse to throw out all of society and start over again. I think many of these people saw mask mandates as that "rebuilding society" step, and to get rid of it so quickly (despite it being like a year) is evidence that the state "learned nothing", so to say. I even saw someone say something like "I can't believe the anti-maskers won" which so succinctly ties up the stupid reality of our political atmosphere: you can't do anything, anything at all without it being seen as a goal attempt into the other side's net.

I really do believe that a large amount of people do want 0.000% risk, and they'd be happy to wear masks until 2030 to guarantee it.

As for myself, I'm fully vaccinated but will continue to wear masks to make other people feel comfortable. But even before being vaccinated I didn't care too much if people wore masks around me and I certainly won't care now.

[bb123]

I’d be pretty careful drawing any conclusions about the mood of the nation from Twitter. The Twitter crowd are very loud and quite extremist but I believe they are small in number. To be honest I’d just avoid Twitter all together. Nothing good comes out of it.

[kodah]

Debating how small or big they are is fruitless when their power and impact via their network effect is palpable. "Avoiding Twitter" and it's collection of extremists (and their followers that signal boost) is not possible. These people have their tweets and reactions in the news, they are constantly quoted on blogs and websites.

I'd argue the opposite that you are. Twitter extremists influence the rest of the nation and it's easy to see how the network effect has some decay on their ideas, but the thorny points remain.

At some point you have to stop treating Twitter and Twitter users like an isolation zone.

[Gene_Parmesan]

If you are someone who is active on Twitter, your thoughts about how important Twitter is are biased by your engagement with it. None of the actual people I know and talk to in real life harbor any sort of extremist views one way or another. Literally none of them ever mention Twitter in daily conversation. (And many of them are software devs.)

IMO their statements are amplified by things like national media because of their extremism; the extremism generates strong feelings (whether positive or negative), and strong feelings leads to more eyes on the media for longer. That doesn't mean the people consuming the media also have those extremist beliefs.

[kodah]

> If you are someone who is active on Twitter, your thoughts about how important Twitter is are biased by your engagement with it.

I don't have Twitter.

> Literally none of them ever mention Twitter in daily conversation. (And many of them are software devs.)

Network effects do not cause or force you to acknowledge a source. They merely require you to trust the mental gymnastics of the person who communicated the idea to you.

> That doesn't mean the people consuming the media also have those extremist belief

Generally the people adopting will adopt bits an pieces, this is what I described as "decay".

The rest I agree with.

[jbjohns]

I wish companies and politicians would follow your recommendation.

[kbelder]

You could post this in nearly every hackernews thread and I'd upvote you each time for being the most relevant comment on the page.

[swiley]

I wish these people would go after cars, they're much worse and they seem to be effective at changing policy.

[ixacto]

The individuals on Twitter are an extremist “mob” on both sides of the political spectrum that really has little relevance to larger society, except for politicians and the like who use it for communication.

Follow the science and draw your conclusions for your own life and don’t let the mob bully you, they are living in a world where dogma/politics trumps science [full disclosure that is word choice, I’m independent btw & not a Trump supporter].

I double masked up until 2 weeks after the second mRNA shot (early April), at which time COVID was effectively over for me. If others want to wear masks for years of that makes them feel better that’s totally ok, but the reality is that the pandemic is over for the vaccinated, although I’d get a booster if needed.

Also if we do have to wear masks for another pandemic I absolutely will, but not any longer than needed they really mess with my ability to read facial expressions and communicate.

The political landscape has also changed now so that the government is forced to admit that and now the fully vaccinated can go shopping without masks. It is about damn time. This pandemic has damaged the mental health of the nation but finally rolling back restrictions is the best way to give everyone an end to the pandemic that is in sight.