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by jkubicek 1651 days ago
> Right now, it's clear that they won't end until populations start revolting.

That's not at all clear. My very cautious Northern California county dropped the mask mandates when cases started dropping this summer and only re-implimented them when cases and hospitalizations started to rise again.

I don't see any reason for them not to drop the mandates again when infection/hospitalization rates drop down to acceptable levels.
1 comments
spookthesunset 1651 days ago
> acceptable levels

Define acceptable levels? And does this suggest we continue masking every winter when "cases surge"? There will always be a variant of covid. Always. It's never going away. Basing mask mandates of any metric, be it cases, hospitalizations or deaths means every winter you'll be wearing a state mandated mask.

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jkubicek 1651 days ago
Are you trolling or do you really think that "every winter you'll be wearing a state mandated mask"?

We've been in this pandemic now for close to 2 years. At every single point, government rules and guidance have lagged recommendations from the experts. I'm confident that there is exactly 0 chance that any governmental body in the US is going to continue to mandate masking after it's no longer necessary.

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spookthesunset 1651 days ago
> Are you trolling or do you really think that "every winter you'll be wearing a state mandated mask"?

At this point, in the states that have mandates? I'm honestly not sure. There sure seems to be no rush to remove them despite having low "cases" and hospitalizations not being an issue. And given none of these states have given a single hint as to when they will go away... who knows?

States that continue this are absolutely normalizing mandated masks. Vaccines were sold as the end of masks (and they morally should have been regardless of what politicians say). Vaccines are the best we can do. Mandated masks in a post-vaccine world makes absolutely no sense at all. What other target could a government reasonably set after a vaccine? "Cases"? "Hospitalizations"? Well... those will always be there. So do we just keep doing this forever?

And if you say "hospital capacity" shouldn't these governments have fixed that already? We gave them two years and it was an emergency so where is the hospital capacity we put our lives on hold for? I mean, its still an emergency right? Shouldn't people be super pissed that government hasn't dealt with the actual problem they keep saying we have?

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