tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post4268948663032447296..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Apples, Oranges, and Gun ControlAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-16818775069118915542020-12-24T16:37:03.150-05:002020-12-24T16:37:03.150-05:00Lots of very good thinking there, some of it catch...Lots of very good thinking there, some of it catching me by surprise but valuable. If you start your own blog notify us and I will make an effort to come over and to link to you.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-17810587420225899672020-12-24T14:03:08.685-05:002020-12-24T14:03:08.685-05:00Or to use a loose analogy- social distance is like...Or to use a loose analogy- social distance is like abstinence. It works the best, all the time. It's easy, costs nothing, and does no harm. But every so often we need to go farther- masks are face condoms.<br /><br />It's a loose analogy- social distance isn't as uniformly easy as abstinence. You have to work to keep people 6 feet away if you're out of home at all. Abstinence is by comparison a default you have to work to change. Similarly, social distance doesn't cover surfaces, so it's less perfectly effective than abstinence for what it's trying to prevent. Still, similar situation and both enhanced by clean hands. Similarly masks possibly nowhere near as effective as condoms, but similar as tier 2 mitigations and similar problems of materials and application.<br /><br />Yeah, rambling. The analogy just tickled my fancy. Also, at work and avoiding a task.<br /><br />Soon I will do that task and go home.<br /><br />Merry Christmas to all.random observerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02348644823854777418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-35426151259663636292020-12-24T13:54:59.425-05:002020-12-24T13:54:59.425-05:00cont'd
So it goes with masks.
I sympathize ...cont'd<br /><br />So it goes with masks. <br /><br />I sympathize with the right almost exclusively, even the American hard case libertarian tropes to some degree, even though I have a large element of fairly hard core statist right in me as well. <br /><br />I remember that we got very different expert views on masks in the spring, and then and now I think that was all smokescreen to keep the supply for those who really needed it. I suppose I respect manipulative gambits like that in many ways, but I'd rather my country's experts treat me like a grown man. Just say 'we're hoarding all the masks for medical workers, and right now there's little to be gained for ordinary people if they do what we say and social distance'. That probably would have caused hysteria too because my country is not really populated by grown men and women anymore, but it's the message I would have respected. Instead we got 'masks don't help' suddenly switched to 'everybody wear a mask' after a few months. I remember that.<br /><br />I even respect a bit of macho posturing- there are times and places and issues in which fearmongering will be a problem, solutions will be wrong, and those who object will turn out to be right. <br /><br />But-<br /><br />I think governments actually have inherent powers, and that includes war, rebellion and plague countermeasures. The US may have overdone it, or not. Or in some places. Or underdone it, in many. But these things can be done, even the horror or horrors of movement controls in a free society or takings of property. In a bigger emergency, these tools will be used again, and more. We can and should always evaluate them against circumstances, but they're not always or inherently tyrannical. The US Founding Fathers all knew it and said so, even if they differed on points. The anti-federalists less so, but I bet many thought their states had inherent powers.<br /><br />Mask mandates seem to have fit conditions- Canadian cities have mostly not required them outside, because that is not needed. I don't know if such rules made sense in some hard hit US cities, so perhaps their more strict mask rules made sense. <br /><br />Masks are neither expensive nor burdensome. I do want to leave room for those to whom they are a real hardship to have a say, but I'm having trouble getting it. I've been wearing one in indoor public places for hours at a time for months, even outside because sometimes it's tough to get it on and off in a hurry when carrying stuff, even walking and climbing stairs that give me trouble in general. Never is the mask the problem. <br /><br />I wonder that if one has enough breathing problems that wearing a mask is impossible, should one not be among those staying at home all the time, and shouldn't society be supporting that choice? If you can't breathe with a mask, are you not inherently among the very most vulnerable to COVID?<br /><br />I have a slight hearing deficit, so I appreciate maskmouth as a communication problem. I've had my ear turned to the plexiglass barrier at coffee shops many a time to hear the barista. Those with worse hearing probs maybe have it worse- for most of us this is a trivial challenge, but I could see where someone would need accommodation.<br /><br />But little if any of the anti-mask movement seems to be about these marginal issues.<br /><br />Years ago on the web somewhere on some relatively classy site purporting to advise men on fashion, grooming etc., some wag commented that real men don't use umbrellas, they just get wet. I responded that real men invented tools, and real men use tools to do jobs, to solve problems, or to prevent problems. Umbrellas, weapons, or masks, or anything else, are tools. We wear masks because they are tools, even if marginal ones.random observerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02348644823854777418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-24169863005965659822020-12-24T13:54:45.309-05:002020-12-24T13:54:45.309-05:00bs king adds a good angle with the comparison to a...bs king adds a good angle with the comparison to abstinence. <br /><br />It works perfectly to prevent pregnancy and STDs every time, all the time, without failure or penalty, and is the only thing with a 0% failure rate. It's worth mentioning all that to teenagers, indeed worth driving it home again and again, even if it means objectively silly things like making them carry flour sacks or watermelons around and get up to "feed" them at night.<br /><br />Still, teens are all stupid and walking hormone bags, so some extra instruction on the mechanics of what goes on and of the things they are trying to avoid, as well as the tools of further mitigation and their failure potentials, are all also worth doing. It really ought to even be possible to offer this within a framework of supporting the families' own moral frameworks for sexual activity. <br /><br />I really would like to balance the scales between the current more or less endorsement of free-for-all [presuming nothing like harassment goes on...] and the traditional [as recently as a few decades ago] pervasive ignorance of the basics and circulation of silly notions backed up by parents incapable of talking about grown up things as though they were grown ups.<br /><br />Although I had to struggle to get to this point- growing up in the 80s I had probably lower than average interest, and way lower than average capacity to get girls' attention, if indeed I ever even tried, and super shy personality. I wasn't tormented by this- I didn't care that much and was also balls-out terrified of AIDS even though that was in retrospect silly for my time and place, and despite everyone saying that the authorities kept us in ignorance of AIDS back then. All that to say, I wonder who was getting all the teen sex.<br /><br />random observerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02348644823854777418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-25777045730128846942020-12-24T08:26:43.865-05:002020-12-24T08:26:43.865-05:00Gun control is a good comparison, as is sex ed. Ab...Gun control is a good comparison, as is sex ed. Abstinence may work to prevent pregnancy, but abstinence only sex ed is not always well correlated with a reduction in teen pregnancy. bs kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871717971078952304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-738094194401153312020-12-23T12:02:57.654-05:002020-12-23T12:02:57.654-05:00"you can make the argument that 400,000 death..."you can make the argument that 400,000 deaths isn't a lot,"<br /><br /> You can make any argument you like. The numbers are going through 330,000 right now with about 3000 deaths a day. So about 25 days to get to 400.000 dead. I don't expect this to go down soon, so you will blow through a half a million dead pretty soon.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com