Masks Again

 My wife and I followed recommendations on covid throughout 2020. We wore the masks, avoided crowds, and did the “social distancing”. We went months without seeing our grandchildren except via video conferencing.  The only restaurant meals we ate from March though the end of the year were takeout. We cancelled trips and missed a family reunion. We took the Moderna vaccine as soon as it was available to us in January of this year and dutifully waited our two weeks after the second shot. I have consistently advised friends and relatives to get vaccinated.

I will not be following the recent directive to go back to the mask, not because I am sick and tired of the whole mess, though I am. I will ignore the directive because I do not  think it makes sense for someone in my situation.  Because of the vaccine my risk of catching covid is low. Also because of the vaccine, if I do get it, I very likely either will never know it because I had no symptoms or will have only the equivalent of a head cold. That is because, on the evidence, the vaccine works. I have never worn a mask or avoided contact with people to avoid colds or flu. I took the flu shot, washed my hands a lot,  and took my chances. Thanks to the vaccine my risk from covid is low enough that I will be doing the same thing now.

  I do not know if a vaccinated person with an asymptomatic and thus unknown infection can infect an unvaccinated person. It doesn’t seem impossible, but I’ve heard of no study showing it happens with any meaningful frequency. I do know that healthy kids under twelve are at very little risk of serious illness from covid, which makes me oppose orders for them to suffer through another year of masks at school. I also know that  adults who have neither been vaccinated nor recovered from the disease have made a decision to take their chances, and I see no reason to demand that others be inconvenienced to make that decision perhaps very slightly less risky for them.

I am lucky to live in a state that will not be calling in the cops to enforce the directive.  People here will have a choice, and I expect life to continue reverting to normal. But I do hope that more of the holdouts everywhere will go ahead and get vaccinated. It will be good for all of us to get this thing behind us, especially the poor people in the places that are locking down again at gunpoint.

As an aside this directive is moronically bad marketing for vaccination. It usually works better in selling something to someone to point out something he will gain or enjoy from it. Apparently our public health bureaucrats don’t see it that way and think it will work out fine to tell people they still cannot have normal lives even after vaccination but will be running around in masks indefinitely regardless. It also probably is not a good marketing approach for officials to tell people the reason they should obey the mandate is because officials said they should. The “do it because I’m the Mommy” technique does not work well kids, and sensible adults can find it really annoying, as they should.