The COVID-19 pandemic

[danbrotherston]

First of all, this isn't necessarily true, you're assuming that believing people are lying is targeted at random, and there are fewer liars than non-liars. I think both are unlikely.

I expect the majority of people who claim an exemption to be lying. My basis for this belief is from my experience that masks provide very little impediment to breathing, therefore, one must have an extremely serious breathing problem to be unable to wear a mask. And number who would lie about having a medical reason, while still rare, I suspect is less rare.

I expect beliefs about people faking to be relatively well targeted, largely because people who choose not to wear a mask for reasons other than medical limitations, are unlikely to be quiet about those other beliefs, more, unlike someone with a severe breathing problem, is also likely to be very unafraid of the virus.

To be fair, I'm making a lot of assumptions, but we will see.

But I do think that it doesn't really matter, we only need 80% (My intuition is that the number is actually higher, but the study I've seen quote says 80%) to have an effective policy, and I still have hope that the asshole population in the region is pretty low, say under 5%.

Thank you for stating my assumptions. I should have done so better, and you have them right. Thank you also for helped me clarify my thoughts on the matter better.

I think it's impossible to set a universal bar of "legitimacy", but for the sake of the discussion can we agree on a doctor's note? I think they're relatively ease to get but that's actually not a problem for my position.

Anyway, whatever that bar is, it turns out that I think that if even one "legitimately" mask-less person gets credentialed in Waterloo Region within the next seven days, that act is more distasteful to me than thousands of assholes using the loophole to go inside places. I don't think there will be thousands who do, even out of the Region's full half million, especially after going out today when a _ton_ of people were masked compared to any time in the past 3 months.

There's going to be a couple of news stories about confrontations probably, and that cartoonist from Wilmot's going to have a take, but the argument is over in practice. The rest of the province is doing it, everyone here is doing it (I was out yesterday and today and the difference even between the two was notable), that culture war isn't one we're going to have at the same scale here. Our heat seems to be turning more towards police defunding. My take on our local Reddits even is that even they are mostly pro mask.

I just feel like everyone's going through too much actual shit for actually sick people to have to defend themselves over something that doesn't matter in practice in this very specific geographic area at this very specific point in time.

Yeah, I mean, a few thousand people in a region of half a million is a few percent at most, and even with my incredulity at models showing 80% is enough, I would think 95% is definitely enough.  I mean, masks aren't 100% obviously, but if they're anywhere close, it makes sense as transmission would drop precipitously. At a minimum, the biggest risks are going to be shifted to places where masks aren't worn--workplaces, parties, etc.

I think you're right, there will be lots of news of the few confrontations--it makes good headlines, but agree it will die down quickly. Popular opinion seems to be on the side of masks. It will end up more of a human psychology interest story than a human sociology one.

I do think the bylaw is basically having none of the "credentialling"..they aren't even going to attempt, which I think makes sense.  Responsive government is usually better policy, if 95% of people are wearing masks, I don't care that 4% are cheating.  But if we find that 70% of people are wearing masks, well, maybe we need to think about it.

A doctors note is certainly a reasonable standard, nobody but doctors should be setting that standard, and we have no better choice than trusting them. AFAIK it's already the standard for an accessible parking placard.

I hope you are right about the culture war in general however. Things here seem to be less in crisis, but no less...problematic I think.  One of the bigger issue I see in the states is that there is still no meaningful progress in most places.  Protests continue, but the media has moved on...people there (and here too) are ignored when they aren't violent.