Posted on 12/04/2020 4:23:27 PM PST by cann
The New York Times asked 700 epidemiologists to describe their COVID-19 habits, how their thinking has changed since the pandemic began, and when they think it will be safe for normal life to resume. Dismayingly, several answered that last question with a resounding never.
"I expect that wearing a mask will become part of my daily life, moving forward, even after a vaccine is deployed," Amy Hobbs, a research associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told The Times.
Marilyn Tseng, an assistant professor at California Polytechnic State University, said life would never revert to the way it was, though the preventative measures currently practiced—masks and social distancing—will feel "normal" in time. Similarly, Vasily Vlassov, a professor at HSE University in Moscow, said life was perfectly normal now because this is the new normal.
Others disagreed. Michael Webster-Clark of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said he expected "further relaxation of most precautions by mid-to-late summer 2021" following widespread availability of the vaccine. Some epidemiologists said their own risk aversion would decrease after they were vaccinated, but many said they would remain just as cautious until "80 percent or more" of the entire population had received the vaccine.
On the whole, the epidemiologists were less wary of touching surfaces than they were at the start of the pandemic, and some thought young children could go back to school. But just 26 percent said they either had or would have allowed their children to return to the classroom, or even attend an outdoor play date with friends. Only 29 percent were willing to get a haircut, even though the most infamous case involving two hairstylists who had COVID-19 resulted in not a single infection among their 139 clients. A mere 11 percent were willing to ride the subway.
Epidemiologists are free to take whatever precautions they deem necessary in their own lives, of course—as are the rest of us. But for too long, their pessimistic dictates have provided cover for politicians and government employees to make people's lives miserable. To take just the most obvious example, schools are still closed in many major cities, even as new scientific information has generally found that resuming in-person education would be perfectly fine. Teachers unions have echoed the choruses of the most alarmed public health experts, scrawling not until it's safe on their school reopening protest signs.
One of the blessings of liberty is that everybody shouldn't have to follow the same script. If a person has reasons to be extra cautious, or even just prefers the feeling of knowing that he is doing absolutely everything to reduce his own risk of catching the disease to as close to zero as possible, then he is free to live in accordance with that goal. Other people may decide their own circumstances don't require the same level of zealotry, or that their extremely low chance of having a negative health outcome justifies a greater degree of flexibility. Others may say they are fine with certain precautions—masks, avoiding large events—but need to resume small in-person social gatherings for the sake of their mental and emotional well-being. Still others may take larger risks but test themselves frequently and quarantine aggressively before traveling or visiting the elderly. The circumstances on the ground matter tremendously; a person's willingness to relax his social distancing habits should track with the rate of infection in the community, which will necessarily be different in different areas of the country.
But these choices need to devolve to individuals to the greatest extent possible, especially in the coming months, as the population becomes vaccinated and we move past the crisis point of the pandemic. The order of the day should be respecting people's preferences. If a convenience store doesn't want customers to enter unless they've been vaccinated, the store owner's wishes should be respected just as if the matter were shoelessness or shirtlessness. If a restaurant decides it really needs full capacity dining in order to stay in business, the government shouldn't deploy the police to stop them.
We all have to work it out for ourselves, and everyone who wishes to recapture the old normal is within their rights to dissent from the epidemiologists' contentment with the way things are now.
There must be bodies everywhere.
Sounds like they won’t be happy until we all move back into caves.
They want Lone Rangers give them rangers alone. Do they have SS security?
NWOdor. They stink.
All the medical experts have to do is release HCQ and Ivermectin and pandemic over, death count will go to zero......The vaccine will take care of itself.
I won’t comply. Only the old and infirm are dying. No point except for government control. Again, don’t comply now, and I won’t.
I do not care what schoools of higher brainwashing they came from. They are not very astute and/or “Useful Idiots.”
New Danish Study Finds Masks Don’t Protect Wearers From COVID Infection
https://fee.org/articles/new-danish-study-finds-masks-don-t-protect-wearers-from-covid-infection/
<< “I expect that wearing a mask will become part of my daily life, moving forward, even after a vaccine is deployed,” Amy Hobbs, >>
She probably thinks it improves her appearance.
They sound like anti-vaccers....what’s the point of taking the jab if nothing changes?
I’m confused. How are we expected to be herded into camps if we also must be 6 ft apart?
We cannot allow businesses to start requiring that customers be vaccinated. That is too much.
The only place I can think of that requires vaccinations is public school. And the more I think about that, the less I agree with it. Especially when you consider just how many vaccinations kids have to get these days. It’s up to something like 72 shots for a dozen different diseases, and you can be sure that is what they have planned for all of us...
Heard on the Andrew wilkow show today a speech by the not so incoming Biden treasury secretary yellan. She went through a litany of plans to create an equal and just society. We all know another lock down means more small businesses will close for good. There aim is to use CONTINUED lockdowns to permanently kill them and in doing so she has stated that the federal government with our tax money will offer low interest loans and grants ONLY to blacks minorities transgender, women and gay to replace those businesses the state and thier agenda has killed purposeless. WE NEED TO HIT THE STREETS
I wonder how that vaccination for kids thing is going these days.
I know there was concern in the early stages of the lockdowns, when medical care was being rationed, that infants were not getting their usual 2/4/6 month injections.
I haven’t heard that anyone has suffered from it or there’s been any outbreak of disease the vaccines are meant to protect against.
It should be interesting to track the health of those children who have not been vaccinated and see what the consequences of not receiving them is.
I am not inclined to necessarily believe that vaccines cause autism, but this would be a good time to check that out statistically.
One, I doubt, make that I don't believe for one minute, that they asked 700 epidemiologists, when things would go back to normal. That's a ton of people to contact to ask this question to. Not credible.
"....Dismayingly, [only] several said it would never be safe to return to normal life..."
And yet the headline reads, ".... Many epidemiologists want social distancing and masks forever—even after the vaccine....". Well good for them. They sound like a bunch of mindless, liberal zombies who can't think for themselves.
The NYSlimes can't have it both ways. Only "several" answered never and yet they claimed many said "forever". Which is it?
This is not reporting. This is fake news. Made up to support the Left's "control the population" narrative.
These are the same people who advocated for ‘no smoking’ EVERYWHERE, despite the fact that scientific proof indicated that second hand smoke didn’t result in increased lung cancer cases. My sister developed lung cancer 10 years after quitting the nasty habit of smoking... The lung cancer she got wasn’t associated with smoking... It was associated with asbestos.
Interesting fact... Of all the people who worked in asbestos mines, most did NOT contract cancer.
I heard that too. Andrew painted a clear picture. Tear everything down by lockdown and then a taxpayer funded rebuild with government picking winners and losers. A dark winter.
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