Masquerade

There's a joke going round that the Finns are protesting the 2 metre social distancing rule, because it's far too short.

@RalphieRaccoon Speaking as one who's friends are on the opposite side of the Atlantic, I appreciate the Finnish position. :-)

@RalphieRaccoon There's a similar joke about my country as well. Latvians are waiting to get back to the usuall 6 m distance, 2m is too short. Could it be typical for northern people?

@Baronese Yeah... When visiting Riga (so that my kid spends time with her babushka) and riding the tram I can almost feel the angst generated by the others around because having to sit so close. The experience was similar in Helsinki.

What always fascinates me is that people apparently do not understand that they should not wear the masks to protect themselves, but everyone else around them.

In my opinion, there can only be two reasons for this:

1. they really don't understand
2. they do not care

And neither of the two possibilities makes me feel positive about those people.

@DerDings Don't care. Definitely in the 'don't care' category.

The American obsession with freedom has fetishized 'freedom from' and demonized 'freedom to' to such an extreme degree that sometimes trying to get a population to do anything is like trying to convince a spoiled child that immediately shrieks I DONT WANNA at the top of their lungs at the merest suggestion of being asked to inconvenience themselves for something that doesn't immediately satisfy their personal pleasure.

Freedom from includes freedom from responsibility, after all. And in the storm of right wing 'personal responsibility' hooting is an undercurrent of rejection of responsibility to family, to community, or to country, in addition to always trying to wriggle out of as many personal responsibilities as possible.

The US wouldn't have needed masks either if the entire country had shut down all at once with people actually observing it right when this thing started. There was such a patchwork of policies across the country with contradictory and scientifically incorrect information being given out by certain political figures that the US never stood a chance.

@Namtekcor Aye, it's as though centralised authority has broken down in the US at this point

@Skrynesaver
You realize it's a 'states' thing yeah? I mean it's like saying "The EU wouldn't need masks if the EU had just shut down all at once..."

@Skrynesaver No, we never really had centralized authority to begin with, and the current abomination we have as President is now trying to assert is authority by having troops occupy cities whose mayors belong to the opposition party. These troops attack citizens for speaking out in public against racism and police brutality. So honestly, even centralized authority wouldn't be a lot of help given who'd be exercising it. At this point, I'm just wondering how much longer we're even going to have a country that can be saved.

@Namtekcor Either a coordinated and complete shutdown, paired with robust social programs to keep people afloat while the economy and civil society is on pause, or a universal mask approach, like Japan.

The Japanese approach of active and proactive precaution probably would ahve fit america best, what with it's puritanical culture of exploitative low wage indentured work ethic, but that's something that has to be implemented early and followed universally and for an extended period until such a time effective treatment and vaccination is developed, with the understanding that if you do it right you're left questioning if it was necessary.

Just on my way to the shop when an old lady in front of me lifted her mask, spat on the floor and then put it back on again

Like. That's disgusting at the best of times, but that's LITERALLY WHAT THE MASK IS THERE TO STOP

I can't fathom what goes through people's minds

@weelydangle This is the worst part, how those often at risk the most are the least willing to make even token sacrifices. It is an attitude similar to not wanting to wear seat belts, with the difference that you are endangering others more than yourself.

@weelydangle Nothing. Literally nothing goes through their minds. Some people look inside themselves and find nothing.

@DerDings I was going to reply that this implies things go through their minds, but you got there first.
Now I have to suggest that these people don't look inside themselves either, sounds like work...

@weelydangle For me it was an old lady on the bus who kept lifting her mask every minute to cough into her hand. Got off the bus fairly quickly.

America wouldn't've needed to resort to mask wearing if they had just followed New Zealand's example and stayed home to flatten the curve and got deliveries from the essential workers in supermarkets, etc.

But it seems a lot of America would rather Burn, Loot & Murder than stop the spread of a deadly virus.

@Zenon you're absoultly right, still masks should still be used when going out of necessary needs like buying food and supplies, the issue with all these protests and riots and people not wanting to go one fucking year without going to a partying and bars and wanting be around other people,
I swear extroverts are gonna kill us all

@AmericanButterfly
This may sound over the top for a lot of people, but I'm beginning to think that martial law may be the best way to combat the spread of the virus.

Social distancing, mask wearing, all the other rules that people should follow, all enforced by constant supervision by the law, and if push comes to shove, at constant gunpoint if need be.
Sounds terrible I know, but it would work, wouldn't it?

@Zenon yeah but half the country are rioting over the police and statues and stuff,
I mean not every protester are rioting and many are being peaceful but things can escalate quickly

@Zenon
Forcing people to stay home is just not an option here. We have an aversion to the government forcing us to do such things so even when in our best interest it can be seen as tyrannical. Trump could order it, but the Democrats would be sure to turn even the Republicans against him with a media blitz on it and he'd have to declare martial law in some states.

Even so, many states did flatten the curve. My state uses masks to prevent the curve from returning. Our biggest issue is that those in charge of our state neglected to engage the illegal immigrant populations who are rather disconnected so weren't as well informed and are atm the biggest outbreaks. Luckily they seem to be working with them now. I still don't know anyone who has had it though.

Really, it's all New York, they alone spread the virus to most the country. We should have closed travel out of that state. News makes it out as bad here mostly by making comparisons of totals to small countries, but it isn't bad. Many states are barely affected and smaller cities and towns are much less affected. We have 24 states with more people than New Zealand and I think 8 with more land and each state has it's own way of doing things and it's own government. They even have their own constitutions. A state governor has all the powers of a president. So lumping all the states together and directly comparing that to any one country is meaningless. The media leave that part out. The best you can do there is using ratios (per million people), but it still suggests the actions to stop this are coming from the federal government. Our country's response is that of individual states, not a country as a whole. The feds assist and advise states, only acting when the state has failed or a common need arises like needing virus tests and vaccines.

With the rioting & looting... no, it isn't America that would rather do all that. It's our political parties and our polarized media. None of them have the country's well being in mind and the majority of people get their information from the news on TV (CNN, FOX, ABC, etc...), but that same media is siding with one party or the other. It's all talk shows, not the objective news most people think they are. So the information we get ends up being what they want us to hear and people react as they wanted them to react.

These riots didn't need to happen, the media could have reported in such a way as to help calm people down, but instead they use aggressive wording and air stories with the intent to fuel the fire. They essentially have been inciting violence. At this point I'd like our media to be taken to the courts for causing the riots. It's all political, to make the current president look bad (as if he needs help).

There are people out there working to fix the problems with police, but such stories are ignored for the latest riot which they'll call a peaceful protest as if police just out of the blue started attacking. With all this going on and no source of information untainted by one party or the other, it's no wonder things are how they are right now. Right now the media is on their final push, I doubt all this crap will let up until the elections are over (I'm serious, watch for the pressure release). We can only hope the virus can be kept in check until then and masks seem a good way to do that for now.

@Zenon

Well, to be fair, our country was founded by two groups:
Hippie-like Quakers, and Witch-burning Puritans.
99% of our politics is still that.

@Zenon I'm sorry, am I the only one who thinks transforming BLM into "Burn, Loot & Murder" is extremely misguided, inaccurate, and inappropriate?

@OlJanxSpirit
Sure, black lives do matter, but let's be honest here, there's no point in sugarcoating the fact that all the arson, the stealing, all the chaos and anarchy stopped being about George Floyd and all that ages ago

The joke is going around that Norwegians are anxiously awaiting the end of 2-meter social distancing, so they can get back to their normal 6 meters.

@Ascender Same goes for Finns as well. The supposed normal has grown to 2 km...

Renowned physicist, Dr. Enrico Fermi (Italy) visited Dr. Neils Bohr (Denmark) -father of the atom. Dr. Fermi saw a horseshoe on the office wall. "Neils, surely you do not believe in luck." Dr. Bohr replied, "Of course not. I am a man of science, but I'm told it works whether you believe it or not."
Conversely, if you believe in luck instead of science, wear a mask. It works whether you believe in it or not.

@GaryM
And here is your rebuttal from the authors of that very paper

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2020836

Most Scandinavian countries are faring well. However, Sweden is not. Per capita they have more confirmed cases than the USA. Their death rate per case is also twice as high as the USA. It should be Iceland standing there. Not Sweden.

@Dearthly The swedish confirmed cases per capita is half those of the USA. The death rate per capita is around 10% higher then USAs. This does mean that the death/case is probably a lot higher too, but that could be atttributed to there having been a severe spread among care homes for the elderly earlier in the year. Of the 5,7k deaths in Sweden, 3,9k was 80+, less then 600 deaths under 60. I couldn't find a demographics breakdown for the entire USA, as the states appear very divided.

By being Nordic, where social distancing has been praticed for centuries. Frankly, I'm surprised R ever got above 1 in Finland. It must be all the foreigners in Helsinki.

"Honest Government Ad | A message from the White House" https://youtu.be/dpIkl2QnJeI Satire so deadpan and spot on you have to laugh or - well maybe some would go for the option of curling up into a corner in a fetal position - just saying.

@IceEB The thing is, it barely looks like satire at this point...