The Unmasking Thread

[someone123]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

But that's just the media habits of the generation. I don't blame my age cohort, I blame the government for not getting its messages out properly to segments of the population who don't have cable TV, don't listen to medium wave radio and don't use social media. You can't force people to consume media forms that they don't want to consume.

Yes. I would contrast the approach to collective blame by age with the approach to ethnic minorities. When BC had its banquet hall and wedding issues (are they even resolved now? Surrey still has a lot of covid cases), John Horgan thankfully didn't go on TV and rant about Indians. That would have been unfair and unhelpful. I don't believe they have published any case numbers by ethnicity for BC (this is done in the US in some cases). Media coverage of effect on minorities mostly revolves around the unique challenges they face and challenges of communication. We hear little about how younger and poorer people are at higher risk for reasons that they have no control over.

Many 20-39 year olds have been following the rules (it would be unlikely for BC to have the low level of spread it has had if this big chunk of the demographics of the province wasn't mostly limiting its interaction compared to normal times), and it is unfair to blame them for the behaviour of others who just happen to be around the same age, who they have no control over.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

I've seen the opposite in Metro Vancouver, personally, and I overheard two people chatting outside about this very subject, saying they'd seen a distinct change in how friendly people on the street have been in recent months. I've also noticed a change since last summer.

This may not be entirely Covid-related, however. Some people have also been on edge because of some recent incidents involving alleged stalking of women in both Vancouver and Burnaby, and on local Facebook and Reddit groups I've seen a sharp increase in people concerned about the intentions of strangers. I can't say I blame anyone for the higher vigilance these days.

Still, I think the social isolation of the pandemic has been silently having an impact on our social lives and even our identities as social animals, especially for those of us who are single and don't have immediate family nearby, and it's something that hasn't been adequately addressed by public officials. I know myself that after months of not being allowed to gather with anyone that I've mostly lost interest in talking to anyone, outside of work I pretty much only talk to my parents and a couple friends who don't live in BC. I just don't feel motivated to talk to anyone anymore, including on the street, although I have a couple people locally who reach out to me occasionally which is a help. Connecting to group video chats online is of zero interest to me.

I have observed the same thing as you when it comes to friendliness here, and have written about it before.

We don't have the tensions or anxiety you are referring to going on in my city, but people are clearly colder to strangers and feel way more mistrustful than before.

Friendly banter with random service staff like supermarket cashiers ("bonjour mon cher monsieur") used to be fairly common here but it's pretty much dried up.

Thankfully (most of the time ) I am living with several family members and so that means I am not really isolated personally, but on a societal level it most definitely feels like I am living in a far less "human" place.

As an extrovert it'd be a lot tougher if I were living alone.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Doug Ford blamed "younger people" for spreading the virus here the other day as well, being now that they make up the majority of cases - which uh, should be the case given that most of the older population is now vaccinated. Who else is going to be getting infected if not those who aren't yet eligible for vaccines? Especially when they're the ones going to work (still without any paid sick leave) as the province opens up.

Yeah, it's even more ridiculous in light of vaccination campaigns working their way down by age.

Since the beginning there's been an attitude that clueless (infected due to poor decisions) younger people are "cluttering up" the hospitals for the real victims (infected through no fault of their own, maybe by young relatives who accost them without consent or something), older people. Damn privileged diabetic line cooks partying it up with their 7 roommates! Most -isms are now verboten but not all, so there are still some opportunities to shift into tribal thinking mode and let our collective IQ drop by 30 points.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

my ancestors

Originally Posted by rousseau

Bring back the woke thread!

Pure evil. Both of you!

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I have observed the same thing as you when it comes to friendliness here, and have written about it before.

We don't have the tensions or anxiety you are referring to going on in my city, but people are clearly colder to strangers and feel way more mistrustful than before.

Friendly banter with random service staff like supermarket cashiers ("bonjour mon cher monsieur") used to be fairly common here but it's pretty much dried up.

Thankfully (most of the time ) I am living with several family members and so that means I am not really isolated personally, but on a societal level it most definitely feels like I am living in a far less "human" place.

As an extrovert it'd be a lot tougher if I were living alone.

The friendly banter is still there in some cases at businesses, especially ones where I'm a regular. I can at least be thankful to have a good independent coffee shop nearby, which is one of my only in-person social outlets right now. I could make my own coffee at home, but I prefer to walk to a nearby shop to get a takeout coffee and have a brief interaction with the staff.

But I do find the grocery stores are not the same. I had a particularly cold cashier last time I went to Safeway, basically a robot telling me to wait for him to clean the conveyor before I put anything on it. A bit of an edge case, but grocery staff just aren't as friendly as they used to be. I can't really blame them either at this point, they're probably just thankful I'm not an anti-masker. Next time I'll use the self-checkout so I don't have to deal with the (rightfully) miserable staff.

Generally the vibe I get in the community is that most people don't trust each other anymore. But that's a combination of Covid and various incidents in Metro Vancouver in recent weeks. The random brazen stabbings in North Vancouver on Saturday won't help with this either, and neither will John Horgan's comments to 20-39 year olds yesterday.

I would consider myself part introvert and part extrovert. It's the extrovert side of me that is having the toughest time.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I have observed the same thing as you when it comes to friendliness here, and have written about it before.

We don't have the tensions or anxiety you are referring to going on in my city, but people are clearly colder to strangers and feel way more mistrustful than before.

Friendly banter with random service staff like supermarket cashiers ("bonjour mon cher monsieur") used to be fairly common here but it's pretty much dried up.

Thankfully (most of the time ) I am living with several family members and so that means I am not really isolated personally, but on a societal level it most definitely feels like I am living in a far less "human" place.

As an extrovert it'd be a lot tougher if I were living alone.

That seems to fade.

We had it a bit here also. On VOCM's Open Line, the host Paddy Daly even went on at length about it one day, talking about standing in line outside a grocery and no one even looking at each other. "B'ys, ye can still hello, how are ya. We can be physically distant and still interact with each other! Crack a smile, b'y, I'll pay for yer stitches!" That was back in March of April of last year.

It's definitely long gone now, and back to normal.

The only thing I notice now is that SO many people give thumbs up. It's... delightfully nerdy, but I guess they're just trying to express a smile/approval through a mask. Thumbs up everywhere, all around, all the time.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Doug Ford blamed "younger people" for spreading the virus here the other day as well, being now that they make up the majority of cases - which uh, should be the case given that most of the older population is now vaccinated. Who else is going to be getting infected if not those who aren't yet eligible for vaccines? Especially when they're the ones going to work (still without any paid sick leave) as the province opens up.

There's also the blame being assigned to younger people for becoming hospitalized - though the data shows ICU rates have held steady, and while hospitalizations have risen, they've also risen for every age group under 70 (who nonetheless still make up the bulk of hospitalizations). The average age of hospital/ICU admissions is falling, but again, that should logically be the case as older people are vaccinated first:


https://twitter.com/rubiconcapital_/...471816/photo/1

Those are interesting stats, I didn't realize hospitalizations were still primarily among people 60+. I just assumed it had mostly shifted to below 60, the way politicians and the media have been talking.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Those are interesting stats, I didn't realize hospitalizations were still primarily among people 60+. I just assumed it had mostly shifted to below 60, the way politicians and the media have been talking.

Here's a BC report: http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-Site...ion_Report.pdf

In the last couple months there were 103 individuals in the ICU in the 20-39 age bracket and 274 in the 60-69 bracket. Note that 20-39 adds up to 1,432,743 people and 60-69 is 673,131 people in BC according to the report.

If we look at some infection rates (% of population that had positive tests) during the period:

30-39: 2.19% (singled out by John Horgan for bad behaviour)
40-49: 2.05% (not singled out by John Horgan)

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Those are interesting stats, I didn't realize hospitalizations were still primarily among people 60+. I just assumed it had mostly shifted to below 60, the way politicians and the media have been talking.

Number of new admissions might be more helpful. If elderly people stay in hospital, say, 50% longer than younger people then those stats would be somewhat misleading in terms of the number of discrete individuals we're talking about. I have no idea if that's the case, though. Also, the age profile of people in ICU at a given time could partly depend on how busy the system was and how much triaging was going on then.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

The friendly banter is still there in some cases at businesses, especially ones where I'm a regular. I can at least be thankful to have a good independent coffee shop nearby, which is one of my only in-person social outlets right now. I could make my own coffee at home, but I prefer to walk to a nearby shop to get a takeout coffee and have a brief interaction with the staff.

But I do find the grocery stores are not the same. I had a particularly cold cashier last time I went to Safeway, basically a robot telling me to wait for him to clean the conveyor before I put anything on it. A bit of an edge case, but grocery staff just aren't as friendly as they used to be. I can't really blame them either at this point, they're probably just thankful I'm not an anti-masker. Next time I'll use the self-checkout so I don't have to deal with the (rightfully) miserable staff.

Generally the vibe I get in the community is that most people don't trust each other anymore. But that's a combination of Covid and various incidents in Metro Vancouver in recent weeks. The random brazen stabbings in North Vancouver on Saturday won't help with this either, and neither will John Horgan's comments to 20-39 year olds yesterday.

I would consider myself part introvert and part extrovert. It's the extrovert side of me that is having the toughest time.

The grocery store clerks I have spoken with are often quite exhausted and the extra cleaning and COVID protocols make the job difficult so they just aren't in the mood to talk. Totally understandable. I usually do my shopping later in the day as well.

One cashier was telling me that the masks make it difficult sometimes because some customers forget that their masks are hiding their facial expressions. And they can't tell if the cashier is smiling or whatever. The last one who served me was telling me how the grocery store has zero tolerance towards verbal abuse and for those who don't wear a mask. She was saying that almost everyone who came in without a mask was there to be challenging and wanted a shouting match. They get an immediate warning and if they don't comply they are banned from the store.

[O-tacular]

On the topic of people I know and formerly respected outing themselves as wingnuts my aunt who is a teacher just posted an article of ‘31 Reasons Why I Won’t Take the Vaccine’. The 31 reasons all boil down to 1 reason. No one can tell me what to do and I don’t trust authority. But please take my word for it that tons of younger people are dying immediately after having taken the vaccine without evidence.

[SignalHillHiker]

Hatred for Trudeau seems to be a gateway for these sorts of people. We had an excellent example here this week...

A former Progressive Candidate candidate and Mayor of Roddickton-Bide Arm on the Great Northern Peninsula shared a Facebook status (not authored by her) that was explicitly anti-immigration, and of course had anti-Semitic dog whistles.

Sharing racist Facebook post gets president of Municipalities NL ousted from her position

Sheila Fitzgerald is no longer the president of Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador, after the organization removed her from the role for sharing a racist Facebook post.

Fitzgerald shared a post, written by someone else, on her personal page over the weekend that included anti-immigrant rhetoric and made claims about Indigenous land rights and vaccines.

"I never even fully read it. I was just scrolling through, and you know, mindlessly shared the post," Fitzgerald, who is also the mayor of Roddickton-Bide Arm, said.

She said she was tired after wrapping up a 10-week provincial election — Fitzgerald unsuccessfully ran for the Progressive Conservatives in the district of St. Barbe-L'Anse aux Meadows — and shouldn't have been on Facebook in the first place.

The post states Premier Andrew Furey plan to grow Newfoundland and Labrador's population will involve "foreign immigrants" instead of people from the province who have moved elsewhere. "Goodbye NL culture!" the post states.

After someone flagged the post's contents to her, she said, she removed it and that she never meant to hurt anyone.

"I own it. I apologize for it. I feel terrible. I sincerely apologize to the people that I hurt, and that I offended," Fitzgerald told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show on Tuesday.

The post caught Municipalities NL's attention, and on Monday night its board of directors met and voted to remove her as president of the group, which advocates for municipal concerns.

What makes this case so interesting to me is... I believe her. I genuinely think she was scrolling through her Facebook feed, read the first line or two of the post and saw it was anti-Trudeau, and shared it. She obviously has all the ignorance that systemic racism engenders in us ("I'm not a racist!", "I never said a slur!", "I'm good friends with so-and-so!", etc.) but as far as I can tell she's been consciously pro-diversity and pro-immigration in the past. Certainly, the PC Party and Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador are both pushing for the province to significantly increase immigration. It's one of the main unifying issues across basically all of society here - from Chambers of Commerce to school districts to employers in many sectors, especially tech, aquaculture, and the fishery.

It would be highly unusual for someone who is anti-immigration to choose to run for the PCs. Certainly if she'd won a seat, she'd already be kicked from their caucus. Her whole career is finished now, likely because she just mindlessly thinks Trudeau is the worst leader ever.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Hatred for Trudeau seems to be a gateway for these sorts of people. We had an excellent example here this week...

A former Progressive Candidate candidate and Mayor of Roddickton-Bide Arm on the Great Northern Peninsula shared a Facebook status (not authored by her) that was explicitly anti-immigration, and of course had anti-Semitic dog whistles.

Sharing racist Facebook post gets president of Municipalities NL ousted from her position



What makes this case so interesting to me is... I believe her. I genuinely think she was scrolling through her Facebook feed, read the first line or two of the post and saw it was anti-Trudeau, and shared it. She obviously has all the ignorance that systemic racism engenders in us ("I'm not a racist!", "I never said a slur!", "I'm good friends with so-and-so!", etc.) but as far as I can tell she's been consciously pro-diversity and pro-immigration in the past. Certainly, the PC Party and Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador are both pushing for the province to significantly increase immigration. It's one of the main unifying issues across basically all of society here - from Chambers of Commerce to school districts to employers in many sectors, especially tech, aquaculture, and the fishery.

It would be highly unusual for someone who is anti-immigration to choose to run for the PCs. Certainly if she'd won a seat, she'd already be kicked from their caucus. Her whole career is finished now, likely because she just mindlessly thinks Trudeau is the worst leader ever.

That does seem to be a common theme.

[O-tacular]

So I went for groceries after 9:00 pm tonight at Save On Foods and there was not 1 but 2 plague-rat fuckheads parading around the store without masks. One started down an aisle I was in and I stared him down until he went elsewhere.

WTF?!? 2 days in a row with close to 900 cases and variants making up a third of overall cases now. Don’t think I’ll be returning to Save On.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

So I went for groceries after 9:00 pm tonight at Save On Foods and there was not 1 but 2 plague-rat fuckheads parading around the store without masks. One started down an aisle I was in and I stared him down until he went elsewhere.

WTF?!? 2 days in a row with close to 900 cases and variants making up a third of overall cases now. Don’t think I’ll be returning to Save On.

I haven't seen a person without a mask in a store since early December. I was in a busy grocery store, Shoppers and Home Depot today and everyone had a mask on.

However, there are some older men who stood uncomfortably close to me in line at Shoppers and at the grocery store. The floors were clearly marked where to stand but they stood halfway between the markers behind me. I actually saw people bump into each other at Home Depot which I don't think I've seen since the pandemic began. Normally you get that a lot in Timmins as so many people here are clumsy and/or impaired.

[SpongeG]

I have unfriended a number of people on Facebook in recent times on their views on the pandemic. My own brother it seems is a Trump lover so that's a subject we don't discuss. I suspect he's also into Qanon.

I also have read things posted by people I went to high school with who were frankly losers in high school and are still losers now and they are anti-maskers and saying the virus is fake blah blah blah. We were never friends on Facebook but the dumbasses don't know how to make their pages private so it's easy to read what they post etc. Most of the time they show up as "suggested" friends, I don't search em out.

[esquire]

My purely anecdotal datapoints:

-No one I know has fallen down the antivax QAnon conspiracy theory rabbit hole. I do have some relatives who are, shall we say, a little dismissive of recommended public health practices, but nobody has gone off the deep end. Then again, my contact with relatives has been pretty minimal for the last year and I'm not on Facebook, so I may just not be aware.

-In my experience, people tend to adhere to recommendations quite well in public around here. I haven't seen any belligerent scenes with people who refuse to wear masks, although then again I do my best to try and avoid busy big box stores where those situations are likely to happen. One thing I do see from time to time is faulty mask wearing (e.g. noses exposed) but I chalk that up to ignorance.

-One thing that continually surprises me is how badly people suck at social distancing. So many people fail to give a wide berth when passing, or stand right behind you in lines, etc. That is truly annoying. I mean, it's been a year, it shouldn't be that hard. It's a good lesson in how hard it is to get through to some people.

[Skygazer]

Originally Posted by esquire

-One thing that continually surprises me is how badly people suck at social distancing. So many people fail to give a wide berth when passing, or stand right behind you in lines, etc. That is truly annoying. I mean, it's been a year, it shouldn't be that hard. It's a good lesson in how hard it is to get through to some people.

Standing too close in line is definitely annoying but I don't see the passing thing as much of an issue. Time plays a big factor in exposure risk and it's extraordinarily unlikely that you could catch COVID from being within someone's space for a couple of seconds when they're passing you on the street or whatever. And of course on small sidewalks and such it can be impractical (if not impossible) to give someone 6+ feet of room when walking past them.

[esquire]

^ Don't be part of the problem. When you have the option to give someone a wide berth when you're walking down a store aisle or whatever, take it. Give people their 2m.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Skygazer

Standing too close in line is definitely annoying but I don't see the passing thing as much of an issue. Time plays a big factor in exposure risk and it's extraordinarily unlikely that you could catch COVID from being within someone's space for a couple of seconds when they're passing you on the street or whatever. And of course on small sidewalks and such it can be impractical (if not impossible) to give someone 6+ feet of room when walking past them.

It's about making the effort in the space available. Sometimes there isn't and you need to pass.

The lineups thing is ridiculous. There are markings on the floor, how hard is that to figure out?