Like would a Spanish flu level pandemic do it? How many bodies gotta drop before they’re scared into masking

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    Visible grossness. Boils, hives, rashes, as a result of infection.

    People really start to give a shit when that’s a factor.

  • DongWang [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    My mother always said that if people bled from their eyes or had massive losses of weight it might work. Might.

    I kind of see what she means, but I think they’d kill us all for the economy rather than shut down again.

    • FishLake@lemmygrad.ml
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      6 months ago

      My mom said if the first few waves had killed kids then maybe we’d have beaten it by now. Thing is that it did, and it continues to kill kids.

      Speaking as a teacher, it wasn’t a surprise seeing our school board spent that first summer reviewing recommendations. Only to send kids back in the fall without any substantial changes. No real protections other than a chronically divorced SRO who’d only be at our building on Wednesdays and who had an office for some reason. That and about 100 books we had to remove from the library.

      I don’t think things would much different if it killed the billionaire class’s children. You think Pharaoh gave a shit about Moses killing his kid?

    • sovietknuckles [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      The problem with covid is that its effects are delayed: My relatives don’t understand that asymptomatic spread means that they’re contagious before they have symptoms, don’t understand that even if their covid feels “very mild”, they can still get long covid, etc. People don’t correlate covid’s effects with covid itself because it’s not on the timeline they expect for a respiratory virus.

  • HexBroke [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    No, you’d need to social body to hold them in disgust for no masking.

    See how WW1 gas mask requirements basically killed the Western beard style of the time for a generation or two (with being clean shaven still seen as being more professional)

  • CDommunist [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    I think if covid gave you guaranteed dysentery/norovirus levels of shitting yourself for several days there would be a lot less anti maskers

    Death alone won’t work because these people refuse to believe they can die or suffer long term health consequences

  • TraumaDumpling@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    i want a reusable mask with replaceable filters but idk which ones work for viruses like covid. but i also worry how other people would react to me looking like a post apocalyptic raider, they freak out enough when i wear a paper or fabric mask. sometimes i kinda wish i lived somewhere with more gun control or a less toxic culture so that i could wear straps and pouches and stuff without people thinking i’m a terrorist, i’m just a dork that wants to dress like a futuristic ninja.

  • jaeme@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    As others have mentioned, law enforcement might be the only solution, but it could just be added fuel for “the goverman wants to silence us.” Also considering the fact that a non-trivial section of law enforcement officers are anti-maskers makes this even more difficult considering the fact that close contact with a cop is inevitable in America.

    Anti-masking is just another symptom of the whole host of problems that plagues a scientifically illiterate USA.

    • I feel like there are so many problems in the US that are impossible to fix without creating an entirely new kind of law enforcement because the current ones are vehemently opposed to any sort of good thing happening

    • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      It’s more than just scientific illiteracy. It’s just that Amerikkka’s reactionaries are extremely (and selectively of course) liberal.

      They might know it’s the right thing to do, but to the Amerikkkan eyes, that is what makes it all the more fun to rebel against.

  • anticlockwise [love/loves, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    A lot of these people went out and committed crimes during the pandemic and would not wear masks, even when masks would have helped in evading recognition by security cameras and the police. Pettiness or personal inconvenience or a skewed cost benefit analysis may not be the real problem: they’re polarized in a completely opposite direction from us, and at their worst, they actively seek to harm society and the people in it.

    From what I have gathered in conversations over the years, during the next pandemic, if and when a biological threat emerges that is severe enough that we will actually have to mandate masks or vaccination or quarantine, that many will start shooting or committing other acts of stochastic terrorism, or interfere with public health in other malicious ways. I’ve heard enough threats amounting to the same already. A lot of them are far fucking gone, and only going to get worse.

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    Like mass shootings or other disasters, the rich and their families and children have to be affected. If they’re free from all consequences, there will be no policy.