[waterglassFull]

I was in Portugal last week and was surprised by how safe it felt.

Everyone still wears masks indoors and in built up areas, sanitiser was available everywhere, people checked our vaccination status when sitting indoors.

They're not major points but it definitely felt like people went out of their way to be conscious of others and the virus which is different to how I feel people in the UK treat the virus now (eg mask usage on the tube is virtually non existent).

Most of this is largely anecdotal on my part but I feel countries that continue to do a little now will get long term benefits (eg mandatory mask use in public transport)

[mdp2021]

> how safe it felt

Some feel safe when they see that people are attentive - and only when people are attentive. Masks, sanitizers and checks are a formal practice that can easily be overlaid on radically dumb individuals and masses (for example, through conformity). That the acts are there, but not the presence, is still in the family of "superstition" (the ideas that survive their forgotten grounds and reasons).

Only minutes ago "a friend of mine" was forced to partial exposure because somebody in the street wanted to have a conversation, but while smoking, so mask on the chin: that means not having understood one meagre shard. This is not root-wise the behaviour of those who remove the mask when they want to speak and put it back when they have finished, which is more of a sign of deficiency of quantitative intelligence: it is instead a sign of defective presence to general contexts and specific situations - of shallow assimilation, together with radical inattentiveness. Very many people here show that.

Other words could be spent for those who assume that vaccination equals immunity (hence behave irresponsibly).

One will feel safe when the population will pass the basics of understanding their own behaviour.

And it is not just about epidemics.

[thebruce87m]

FYI, not all the countries in the UK have the same mask behaviour - the mask usage in Scotland is still pretty high.

[Proven]

> I was in Portugal last week and was surprised by how safe it felt.

That may be because you didn't know how many of those around you got their 2nd shot before last spring, and that masks don't significantly help. But it's important how you "feel", I get that.

"Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine antibodies gone by 7 months for many" - https://news.trust.org/item/20211001194329-xkwip

You may sometime want to consider the cost of government policies that has to be borne by other, unwilling participants in those schemes.

[smorgusofborg]

It may be that they feel safe because they are about as safe as before COVID existed. When I have examined the data of countries compared to their vaccination rate the substantially lower death rate has been very clear. Israel's quick Pfizer roll out had additional break through cases, but continued spread primarily cost non-vaccinated lives. For the rest of us we have a different flu season now.