I love the covid-aware community, but goddamn if I am not bored to tears from hearing about how few people y'all saw wearing masks at the grocery store.
It's been this way for years now. We know! We get it!
The question is, what are we doing about it?
#Covid #Covid19 #CovidIsNotOver #WearAMask #LongCovid @longcovid @novid
I think masking in public is the best thing that we can do.
My mother resumed masking, after she saw a handful of people wearing masks at the grocery store, for example. So many people seem to decide whether to mask or not based on social cues instead of science
@Njord "I wear a mask" strikes me as an individualized solution to a collective problem, like fighting climate change by riding a bike. A handful of people are still masking, but are they convincing a majority of others to do the same? Let's be honest: They aren't. We know this, because the situation hasn't changed for years. Individuals choosing to wear masks isn't making a dent in the pandemic. It isn't enough to make a difference. We need collective action to change policy.
@pixplz @Njord That's true. Yes. Nobody is being convinced. Nothing is improving at all.
I'm just very disillusioned. We had mandatory masks for a while here, with theoretically even impressive fees, and I remember very well how that went. Also I know that 100% of political parties in parliament, plus all the bodies responsible for e.g. medical care and hospitals here want to ignore Covid. It's not about campaigning to give more weight to one group as opposed to the other when there's no group. Nobody wants to get involved with anything. There's individual doctor's offices that mask, but they don't even want to advertise that.
I'd love to do more for clean air. I started with our school and kindergarten. Originally I had the naive idea of getting the other parents who care together. Turns out, there aren't any. It's a collective action of one. It's me. (Occasionally there's a grandparent with a mask picking up a kid, but they don't want anything to do with anything else.)
I wear a mask, yes, but not as a statement, that's just a side effect. I talk to the teachers about the air in the classroom. They open windows. I check if the windows are open in the morning. I tell everybody how important clean air is. Because of cultural reasons there's a widespread belief that cold air and drafts cause disease (you catch a "cold"), so people do not want open windows in classrooms. Air cleaning machines are very suspicious and dangerous (the filters will spread disease!), whereas getting a bit sick all the time is no problem at all. So right now my campaign is stuck at the educational stage, telling everybody who listens how much I enjoy not being sick and how great clean air would be. Comparing it to water. Explaining air filters. I'm tired of it. It's not helping.
Stronger climate policies have a larger part of the population and even of the political establishment behind them. Not enough, not by far, but climate change is coming while Covid is over, haven't you heard.
Btw, I strongly believe that we have to do both, individual small actions and the large collective revolution. Don't stop biking because fossil fuels are still subsidised. Keep meeting outside, wearing masks, opening windows, and explaining airborne pathogens, even in the face of ignorance and political evil.
Thanks for bringing it up. It's not nice but we need to talk about it.
@dasgrueneblatt @pixplz @Njord I do agree with you and have the same feeling about masks and clean air but every body sticks his or her head in the sand ( as we say in the netherlands-) when they don’t see it, it’s just not there is doesn’t even exist till the prime minister says that it really exist because the hospitals are filled with patients. Till then noone will where masks not even in hospitals I visit them weekly and haven’t seen masks for months ,only mine
@UberAirQuality How? And, without major changes to public policy, how long do you expect it to take?
@pixplz via public policy. People who don't care enough to mask themselves won't be legislating masking requirements.
@UberAirQuality When do you expect this to happen?
@pixplz when enough of us to decide to make it happen. Meanwhile I'm here masking, starting conversations, explaining the reasoning to people in my community, and I am doing that indefinitely.
So yeah a collective response is absolutely required. I'm putting my personal action towards promoting that outcome, well aware that people are dying and being disabled en masse in the meantime.