Oddbean new post about login | logout @3967703f I don't have any way to judge even on a local level, but my gut tells me it's herd behavior. If only 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 people wear masks at the supermarket, people unconsciously start thinking "Oh, I guess it's safe not to mask any more." And then that behavior becomes the general standard, at least until people start dying in droves again. This is greatly aggravated by medical personnel dropping masks too. But I think we're more like lemmings than we imagine. Homo stupidus.
@453ca0c7 And racism.
@3967703f I live in Maine where white folks are common as fleas so mostly we give Covid to other white people. But racism is incredibly stupid, so to be expected from homo stupidus. (Nobody cares about my rants but there is only one human species/race. Differences in skin color, eye shape, etc. give us an excuse to act abominably, but we are genetically all the same with trivial differences.) So, like I said, we're all homo stupidus and if we don't smarten up soon, we'll be extinctus.
@453ca0c7 Yep. Extinctus is a definite possibility.
@3967703f Some people aren't waiting for extinctus to happen en masse: they're taking it into their own hands: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/florida-auto-shop-owner-angry-customer-shot-death-103563754 Or the more entertaining(?) stories from the Darwin Awards website: https://darwinawards.com/ But time for me to return to local reality in which OllieTheDog--a fine exemplar of Caninus PrettySmartus--is patiently waiting for breakfast.
@3967703f @453ca0c7 Playing “follow the (racist) leader” produces racist society. Ditto ableist & ageist. Officials publicly endorsed each so overtly in pandemic policymaking that it was *explicitly part of their statement* that people marginalized by each *would die* … but the masks are still missing, which is tacit public approval. Just following the crowd is social murder & maiming, including kids, who have 1 in 7 odds of lingering symptoms even a year later.