“Then I’m laying out my winter clothes
And wishing I was gone
Going home
Where the New York City winters
Aren’t bleeding me
Leading me
Going home”
Ex-SWoo
1960
Pre-COVID, outdoor masking during Flu & Allergy season is very common. What’s new now is indoor masking - and that’s not always going so well.
Now - you see a lot of restaurants doing temperature checks during entry and creating more single-seat dining experiences with plexiglass barriers between people - so honestly not too different from what restaurants in the West are trying. I guess the main difference may be the level of compliance to those measures.
Nesrie
1961
The people freaking out, and I do mean freaking out about being forced to take a COVID vaccine that doesn’t even exist yet has no idea that we’re not going to wake up one day, have a vaccine and somehow they’ll be first in line.
I know there is very strange idea that Americans are the stupidest people on the planet, that because we don’t have some undefined Asian culture we have no chance of ever changing for the common good. When someone gets that hopeless or that angry… I think we just to remember we are the new normal. Many things that exist today, habits, what we think is or is not acceptable… these behaviors were adopted after that last large flu epidemic. We don’t have to imagine it’s possible to get behaviors to change and not realize the end of everything we know. We’ve already done it once before and some of the same measures we invoked today were used before too. That pandemic might’ve been forgotten, but some social norms just were not norms anymore and those of us born after it don’t think twice about it.
Yeah, it’s 41 degrees today where I am. I would be uncomfortable seated outside.
One restaurant near me put up a tent, which seems to defeat the purpose of eating outside when you are in an enclosed tent.
Winter is going to be tough. I am sure we will have a bad case of cabin fever. About all I can do is bundle up and go for walks.
Seems to me you’d need a bunch of 4-seat tents. And for larger parties you can just push the tents together.
Sigh.
In MA the rule is one side of the tent needs to be open. Now, with the cold some places are putting heaters and the like in.
I do agree, and once we start hitting the colder weather this isn’t a real option.
I believe that’s how this restaurant set it up as well, but it doesn’t seem safe to me.
Also, as inconvenient as outdoor dining is for waitstaff in nice weather, its that much worse when it’s cold out.
Not sure if you were responding to me but, if so, that was not what I was suggesting. I agree that masks aren’t a magic bean and was not looking to make sweeping generalizations about Asian culture or psychology. My point was merely that mask wearing, while novel in the US, has been more widespread in other countries prior to Covid. In some places I believe it had as much to do with pollution as with disease prevention but I’m not an expert on the subject.
My intent in pointing to areas of the world where many folks had already integrated masks into their lives was to refute the idea that Americans will collectively decide to abandon masks if the crisis extends too long. People adapt and cultures adopt new norms all the time.
Nesrie
1968
Yeah those Asian cultures, they learned from us. There was a time when were doing the same thing, responding to the same crisis. We can learn again. It wasn’t something baked into those countries that caused that cultural shift nor is it even as complete as others think. There’s still get the flu, colds… it’s not an only solution kind of thing.
They kept doing what what he helped create long after we stopped doing it. But again, changing our daily lives due to a pandemic; it’s happened before. We can do it again even though we are no longer leading that effort as a world leader.
Food for thought. (I looked specifically for articles written before 2020 to avoid covid-19 biased info)
Why do you assert this so definitively? I’ve seen no science to point to COVID mutating like flu. What other reasons would there be for an annual requirement?
Alstein
1971
It’s what folks believe will be needed to keep the immunity up.
LeeAbe
1972
You would be surprised. I was in Korea in 97 and the government was hurting for money. They asked citizens to donate their gold. People were lining up around the block to donate. It was shocking to me as an American. Mask wearing was also just part of the culture, nothing to do with the government. When they were sick, they wore a mask. Everyone I knew there did it and no one thought twice about it.
Nesrie
1973
I lived in Japan for awhile. My experience and understanding is not based only on what I have read.
I think he’s going off some early reporting in this spring / early summer about the half life of antibodies, and the belief that maybe there will be a need to have high titers of neutralizing antibodies in to avoid serious infection.
The real answer is (yes, this is all-caps because I’m screaming my head off)
WE DON’T FUCKING KNOW.
We do know SARS-COV2 doesn’t have the same ability to change year to year that the flu does, so we wouldn’t need a new vaccine based on new “strains” of SARS-COV2. But we don’t know if we need to maintain high levels of antibodies, or if our memory T-cells will “remember” the virus after the first infection and quickly ramp up production of those antibodies right after infection.
WE’RE WAITING ON THE DATA. CHILL.
[not directed for @Mark_Weston to chill in particular, more of a general statement.]
Believe me, lived in the city for 6 years. I know. Loved running on the snow, though, and being unable to open the door to my apartment due to froze hands.
But it worked there for Spring into Fall, and we can do that all year round for most of the country, yet our politicians are idiots who don’t see that a solution for this problem has already been found.
Do we have counter-examples where people maintain high antibody levels for long periods of time? I (a layman who barely pays attention except when there’s a pandemic on) have always had the vague impression that memory T cells were the usual mechanism for long-term immunity.
FTFY
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong too, btw. Sure, there is always going to be those who are anti-vax, but if a vaccine comes, I am pretty sure that the vast majority of Europeans will accept taking it without any trouble. You just need to look at the huge interest for the flu vaccine this year - I don’t see any reason to expect that interest for a Covid-vaccine would be any less.
Maybe there are places that have been as infected by stupid as some areas of the US, but I doubt that you’ll find much resistance to a vaccine in most European countries.
Alstein
1978
I was referring to masking every time you go outside, not vaccination. I have faith most Euros will accept vaccination (I suspect Americans will fall in line if properly motivated- and if I was Biden, I’d make that motivation part of a stimulus)
