And the honor system is horrible? Now your neighbors are the police? I don’t think my neighbors are my keepers.
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I could be wrong but the demographics of my area would suggest that if there are middle aged men in the Aldi with masks on, they are vaccinated but didn’t read the sign at the front of the store.
This is a great story; Michael Lewis’s new book The Premonition has an in-depth treatment of other warning signs that did not get proper attention.
Why the honor system probably doesn’t work: “For every single activity polled, unvaccinated Americans were dramatically more likely to say they’d be comfortable going maskless than their vaccinated counterparts.”
So yeah, my grandkids are never going to be able to enter a public building for the foreseeable future.
@Twoin18 thanks for posting! That was an interesting read!
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^This is what I am hearing from a lot of midwesterners in my social media. They still believe the whole thing is a hoax, masks don’t work, and/or it’s just the flu. Less than half of adults in my home state are vaxxed. More potent strains of the virus are going to be spreading among half the population there unhindered by masks, social distancing and vaccinations. This is the reason I believe there will be another significant wave in the fall that will lead to more business closures and schools having to go back to remote learning at least for a short while.
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What does “more potent” mean in this context? Unless vaccines are ineffective against them, which to date has not been the case for any variant, even a more rapidly spreading variant will be significantly “hindered” by 50% of the population being vaccinated, especially if others have already had COVID, because there won’t be as many susceptible contacts to infect.
More importantly, you will be fine if you are vaccinated, and you can get on with your life. And if highly vaccinated states have almost no infections and are moving forward with life as normal, why would less highly vaccinated states decide to shut down (as opposed to simply ignoring any outbreaks), given that would require the politicians and wider public to admit that they were wrong?
Some of the variants, such as B.1.351, appear to be moderately less resisted by immunity from vaccines or prior natural infection with older variants of the virus*. Vaccination (at least with the vaccines available in the US**) is still a big help against them, but the moderately lower effect against some of the variants helps make them variants of concern.
“Fortunately”, the B.1.1.7 variant that seems to becoming dominant in the US appears to be less vaccine-evasive than some of the other variants of concern. However, it does appear to be significantly more infectious (has to be in order to become the dominant variant). Basically, the selective pressure on the virus is to become (a) more infectious, and/or (b) more vaccine-evasive. It is possible, but not known, that there may only be a limited number of possible mutations that effect (a), and that a mutation that causes a significantly higher degree of (b) may do the opposite of (a).
*For example, a real world observation in Qatar found that the Pfizer - BioNTech vaccine was 89.5% effective against B.1.1.7 and 75.0% effective against B.1.351 – still very good overall, but not the 95% found in trials when older variants were circulating.
**Seychelles is finding lots of cases among vaccinated people, but the vaccines in use there are Sinopharm and Covishield (= AstraZeneca, which was rejected by South Africa due to ineffectiveness against B.1.351 that was circulating there).
I am only talking about how the virus is going to spread among unvaxxed folks. Yes, some of them may have some natural immunity (lower immunity than from a vaccine though) from having had Covid already, but most of them will not. We already know that the vaccines are LESS effective (not ineffective) against some of the variants which are also more contagious
More importantly, you will be fine if you are vaccinated, and you can get on with your life.
I live on an island on the west coast where most people (75% last time I checked) are vaxxed. I am not worried about getting Covid myself.
why would less highly vaccinated states decide to shut down
With the possible exception of some local closures, I don’t think politicians are going to shut them down, even if that becomes the prudent thing to do. I think SOME business and schools are going to have trouble staying open when a fall wave hits. We know for sure there will be a fall wave. It is logical to think that will be worse is less vaccinated areas.
But if there’s a strong correlation between states being less vaccinated and pre-disposed to remain open, it still seems very unlikely that a third wave in those states will lead to more shutdowns.
Are there any states where vaccination uptake is low but the governor and legislators have been in favor of more onerous restrictions than those recommended by the federal government?
I think maybe you meant to reply to me. As I said in my post, I do not think shutdowns will be mandated by politicians.
I got a $25 gift card in the mail today from DSW (I joined their reward program a few years back to get a discount, although I seldom go shoe shopping). Their web site says all stores still require masks. I haven’t worn most of the footwear I own in the last year or so, having lived in slippers, sneakers, and sandals, but seems like it’s time to go shopping,
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CT dropped its mask mandate this past Wed, but any business can still require. We went to our local, small grocery store tonight (no sign stating masks were required) and everyone had a mask on. The package store was a different story; I think I was the only one wearing a mask there.
I shopped in various stores yesterday and today. Only one store still required masks. A local produce store had a sign stating that unvaccinated people needed to wear masks. The other stores had no mask rules posted at the door.
In all these stores I only saw one shopper who wasn’t masked.
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Lol. I just got one of those as well. I think the last pre-COVID purchase I made was my mother-of-the-bride shoes I bought there for an April 2020 wedding. Yeah, the “bride” went ahead with the marriage and is expecting grandbaby next month. They might have a “wedding”/reception at some point in the future. I hope the shoes still fit.
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We were given a mask at Costco audio that they wanted us to wear in connection with our good fitting cloth masks but said my 81 year old mom didn’t have to (told them we were both fully vaxed by March). We were with the audio tech in a quiet book for 30-45 minutes.
Our state still has mask mandates for indoors. Outdoors and uncrowded, no masks required.
I went to Target and TJ Maxx yesterday. Overall I have not observed barely a sole maskless in a store for months. Target may have removed their mask requirement (I didn’t note the door when I walked in) but there were several people without. It felt WEIRD. TJ was still requiring masks. However there were definitely people NOT masked. That made me angry to a degree. The store has a right to a policy. You can chose to not shop the store but you should not abuse the policy if you chose to shop there.
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First day of no masks required in most places in Maine. I will always remember May 24, 2021. I just worked out at my small gym with no mask. It was fabulous! I would say about 15% of people were wearing masks. Now I’m off to the grocery store and won’t wear a mask. Maine’s breakthrough rate is less than 0.5%. It will be MUCH riskier for me to drive 15 minutes to get to the store.
I will gladly wear a mask anyplace I’m asked to, of course.
ETA: Oops the breakthrough rate in Maine is not 0.5%. It’s 0.05%!
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I went in my local Target yesterday. The mask signage has been removed and a mixture of employees and customers were mask-less. I am fully vaccinated and joined them on not wearing a mask. If I had to guess I’d say about 15% of the customers were mask-less, not sure about employees. It felt good to not have to wear a mask in that wide open space. I’m glad they modified their store policy.
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I would say only about 10% of people at the grocery store just now were maskless. It wasn’t crowded and it felt really great to be able to smile at people.
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