Cutting Edge Computing

No Guarantees July 28, 2021

Yes, I’m writing about Covid-19 again.  After returning from a road race in Florida, where masking discipline is nonexistent, I have to confront the reality of people’s excuses for it being so.

First, you can’t tell me with any level of seriousness that 98 percent of people anywhere are vaccinated.  Yet that’s about the percentage of people who don’t wear masks in Florida, indoors or out, according to my admittedly unscientific estimate.

Certainly we might consider Florida an exceptional case, where the governor has mandated, well, the lack of a mask mandate across the state.  You can’t fix stupid.  But this has largely been the case in other states (North Carolina, Alabama) I have visited this year.  In fact, in Key West in January, the police were enforcing masking even on the streets.

Not now.  People are using a wide variety of excuses to shed masks.  Whether it is my choice (not really), personal freedom (absurd as a logical statement), government imposition (the government can impose health measures), experimental (but still tested with tens of thousands of subjects), infertility (I can’t think of anything more stupid), I think just about everyone would agree that we declared victory too early.

Much of the blame lies with the CDC.  Rather than saying unmask willy-nilly, it should have provided a step-by-step rollout of relaxing restrictions.  Now it is reinstating masking guidance, even for the vaccinated.  They have managed to confuse just about everyone, including me.

Vaccinated people are apparently getting frustrated.  If around 80 percent of the population were vaccinated, there is a good chance we would be beyond this point.  But too many people don’t care a whit about public health.

One of the more pervasive, yet stupid, arguments against vaccines is that vaccinated people are still getting Covid, so why should I bother.  Um, there are not, and were never, any guarantees with any vaccine.  We are greatly improving the probability that we won’t get Covid, but if we do, it is far more likely to be a light case.  That’s what the vaccine provides us, not guarantees.  Get it through your heads, people.  There are no guarantees in life.  But we do have chances to greatly reduce risk.

Now, I want to say something personal.  I am a reasonably healthy, 60+ year old male who had priority on the vaccination list in my state, and took full advantage of it.  I mask, and I wear a face shield and gloves when traveling.

People are still dying.  Covid-19 cases are increasing dramatically.  We can fix this.  Why do people still insist in acting against public health?