Why is everyone taking their masks off?

Yes, that did happen. But since people don’t have wear them, they won’t.

Because people are idiots and would rather risk getting or giving covid than wear a mask.

Because masks don’t work and never did. That is not an opinion, it comes from several scientific studies (Random Controlled Tests). The bigger question is why were they mandated in the first place?

Mask mandates are gone here too. I see maybe about 70% of people not wearing them anymore (including me). There hasn’t been a surge since, so, I don’t know, maybe it is finally coming to an end.

Guess the right sees that since they were not 100% affective they did not work at all,but between the masks, social distancing, and the vaccines people had a good line of defence of not contacting the virus.
But since none of those are a 100% they would rather just do nothing and chance it.
If it was just them at risk I wouldn’t give a shit but they put everyone around at risk with their quest to do nothing.

Because cases haven’t been surging as much as previously in the US. We have been in spring break for five weeks; people are traveling all over the country, and especially down here in Florida where I live.

We do need to keep in mind cases are now probably extremely under-reported, because the symptoms are milder and people can do home tests.

Deaths are down. If people aren’t dying then there won’t be a big rush for people to be careful or to have any mask mandates.

I still wear a mask in stores, but I also do zumba in a room with 70 people without a mask on. I pick and choose. I track the cases weekly in the three counties where I live and the cases are holding steady, and everyone is out in full swing for months now, mostly unmasked. Like I said there are probably many more cases than reported, but also where I live the vaccination rate is easily over 80%, I would guess over 90%.

@seawulf575 Just a question for you, as you keep saying that. Not a snarky question, I am honestly curious. If ”masks don’t work and never did”, then why do the medical personnel in operating rooms (not even speaking of Covid situations, here) all wear masks?

They’re just tired and wanna move on. It doesn’t matter to most people whether it’s right or wrong. All they know is they had to do something they didn’t want for awhile, things were uncomfortable and wierd, and now they want that over.

Masks were mandated because 600,000 people died for “no” reason at all other than people being stubborn. I’ve stopped wearing my mask because hospitalizations are down and so are the deaths. I do keep my mask with me just in case I feel uncomfortable and feel that I need to wear it. I’m still social distancing and avoiding idiots who wonder why we ever had masks mandates. I know why we had the mandates and I understand that they aren’t as necessary right now

Yes, there’s a good chance that this could come back to haunt us; but for now, it is a much welcomed break. If it does become necessary to wear them again, I’ll be ready to mask up as I still have a few extras for when needed

Some will get COVID-19 and die because they don’t think vaccinations work either !

Some will get it for second or third time. Must be a fun time, duh!

@seawulf575

It’s a scientific fact that N95 masks prevent the spread of Covid. Cloth masks are the ones that aren’t as effective.

Also, Fauci and officials lied about masks not being effective because they wanted hospitals to get them first. It was a horrible decision to lie to the general public like that.

It’s called NEEDING TO FEEL NORMAL AGAIN!!! I don’t leave my house without a mask hanging on my neck. I only wear it when I feel the need. I still self isolate frequently & I still social distance. I choose to shop during times when the stores aren’t so crowded. Once we got 45 out of the WH, people stopped dying so fast, and we started receiving some logical health info, I felt that I could make an INFORMED decision on what I should be doing!!!

I found it pathetic that the same people who were whining about the masks mandate thought that I should blindly inject bleach into my body to kill the virus!!! Oh yes, I almost forgot the dewormer that I should use!!!

NOT once have we heard that we should be injecting bleach into our system and I can guarantee you that IF 45 got the vaccines into production in record breaking time that 46 could have duplicated the process!!! Once the vaccines were received by 45, he immediately sent out 4,000 doses and that was to cover 2 shots per person…ONLY covering 2,000 people. When 46 received his supply, he sent out 4 million doses to cover 4 million people with a followup shipment of 4 million more to cover the 4 million smart people!!!

It appears that the vaccines are GREATLY assisting our bodies in fighting off the virus, so masks aren’t needed as much now. I find it interesting that once the TRUE SCIENCE was released to the public, we managed to know how to STOP the murders of over ½ million people!!!

A good friend of my family didn’t believe in masks nor vaccines. Her elderly, sick mother was living with her. When asked why she was risking mom’s life, she responded that she was putting mom in God’s hands. Now mom is lying in a hospice dying and she’s begging her friends for prayers. All it would have taken was to use some “common sense”

Because they can.
Because they are fatigued of what is the proper thing to do.
Because they have Superman complex.
Because they think they will not be affected.
Because they aren’t smart enough on their own.

Also, Fauci and officials lied about masks not being effective because they wanted hospitals to get them first.

That is not what happened.

They said the general public across the US shouldn’t waste the limited supply.

Because the virus had not yet spread across the country, but masks were scarce in hard hit places like NYC.

^^ That’s NOT the total truth either!!!

They knew that the selfish bastids that were buying & hoarding toilet paper would most definitely make a run on the masks & NOBODY would be able to find one!!! That one actually came true. One guy was buying EVERY mask that he could find & selling them for 10 times what he had paid for them. I think I read that he was arrested & put in jail for price gouging!!!

California dropped the mask mandate because over 80% of the population were fully vaxxed and also boosted. People who test positive now are experiencing mild cold and flu symptoms because they were fully vaxxed.

It’s now a bit of Libertarian Social Darwinism. Get vaxxed and stay safe, otherwise fuck you and die.

Covid fatigue.

I still wear one. My reasoning is probably different than yours.

Years ago, I worked for the phone company. We were told we had to chock our tires (put rubber or wooden blocks on both sides of a tire, to stop it from rolling downhill) whenever we parked. This made no sense to me. My truck never moved when it was parked.
An old timer told me that when you chock your tire, you are moving into a safety mindset. You are doing something to keep you safe, and you will continue doing that.
Putting on a mask reminds me of the continuing threat of Covid.

There’s video of Fauci admitting that officials lied about masks not being effective.

According to the CDC cloth masks are 56% effective against Covid. M-95s are better, but cloth ain’t nothing.

If everyone is masked then the cloth definitely help. Not everyone is masked now so the cloth are insufficient for protecting oneself. They still are worthwhile for protecting others.

Go ahead and take that thing off, unless you plan to wear it forever.

Well it depends on the country in which you are living. If you go Japan you will see masks every where but in India people are free to live like there own they don’t think about any other social rules for the society.
As they faces covid pandemic they need to wear mask on their mouth and nose but now the pandemic is no more so they think there is no need to fear from the pandemic that’s why they are taking off their masks.

The pandemic is not over. “Everyone” is not dropping their masks. It’s an inconvenient nuisance, but I’d still rather have that measure of protection against the nut cases around me who are afraid of vaccinations.

@filmfann, I really like your point about the safety mindset. I do a lot of things just as precautions; for example, I always put the cap back on a bottle of liquid right away, whether it’s nail polish or bleach or just water, to prevent spills. It’s a matter of everyday wisdom. Potential killer disease? I’m in no hurry to lower my guard.

Where I live, plenty of people are still wearing masks, and employees in drugstores, supermarkets, medical offices, and elsewhere are all masked.

Covid fatigue.

A lot of people are tired. They feel like they’re vaccinated and have done their part.

I still wear mine because while I may be vaccinated, other people might not be able to. :/

Masks are overwhelmingly the norm here. Most of the businesses still have signs insisting they be worn. The public transit systems still require them, and if I forget to don the mask in a senior moment, I am almost certain to be challenged. There is no convincing the skeptics, but my impression from the outset has been that the disease appears to be rather efficient at culling the antivaxers and mask skeptics from the rolls of the uninfected. There’s a poster of Herman Cain posted next to our front door. You can’t leave the house without seeing it. Thus, I never forget my mask. Poor Cain is sitting there crammed shoulder to jowl with his fellow Maga heads at that infamous Trump death rally. He didn’t last 2 weeks. The disease he’d been promised by the speaker at that rally to be but a nuisance, punched his ticket.

@canidmajor The history of the mask in the operating room is where the idea that masks work came from. Back in the 1800’s some doctor came out with the claim that masks helped keep down infections in the operating room. There was no study done, no actual evidence, just a claim. Doctors thought it made sense so it became the norm. Eventually people questioned this and actual studies were performed. What they found was that incidents of infection during and following surgery were no different if the surgeon and care staff wore masks or not. In fact one study showed a slight increase in the infections by the group that wore the masks. So doctors were now told that the masks are not really doing anything in the way of stopping infection.

What masks REALLY do in the operating room is to keep bodily fluids from spraying up and hitting the surgeon in the mouth or nose.

When asked during one of the studies why the doctors wear masks more than half said because that was what was done. Another portion still clung to the infection angle and many just didn’t want fluids hitting them.

@rockfan That is the popular narrative…that Fauci lied to make sure hospitals got the masks. The only problem with that narrative is that it doesn’t stand the test of time. It opens up a whole lot of then questionable things. Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that hospitals were running short and there was a fear they might run out. Then why not just say that from the outset? If masks were great, then why not say, from the start, that masks are great, they do a wonderful job, but there is a fear of shortage for the medical community. That wasn’t put out for a while after he said they were pretty much useless.

He also said that store bought masks (which are different from surgical or N95 masks) were useless since the virus was so small it would just go right through them. But then that changed several times, once to wear them if you want, then to they are better than nothing, then to they absolutely protect the public.

So now we have a situation where you have two options on how masks work and the outcome. On one hand they don’t work as was originally said in which case Fauci was correct and all subsequent mask mandates were nothing but government overreach and excessive control. The other option is that the masks DO work in which case Fauci lied and possibly caused the entire first wave of the infection to spread. Interesting choice, isn’t it?

@seawulf575 So every person in the OR is a sheep just blindly following tradition (lots of personnel are not in line for any fluids) and you are the (not educated in anything to do with microbiology, virology, infection transmission vectors, etc etc) one who knows better? You display your own ignorance. Not recognizing even the simple physics aspects of a barrier that stops the inhalation of infectious agents.

If you are in Japan and see someone with a mask on, you know to distance.

Here in America, I would always distance when I saw someone with a mask (I’m talking prior to covid) I don’t know if other people were clever enough to figure that out. Yes, I realize I just boasted that I’m clever on this one particular thing. I would ask them if it’s ok to come close if I needed or wanted to approach them or hug them.

I wish Americans could clue in that a mask means someone is sick or vulnerable or at minimum sending a message they are trying to be cautious.

If I’m near someone wearing a mask, I put on my mask too, for their comfort. My mask is almost always around my neck if I’m not already wearing it. If I do have my mask on my face or neck, please don’t try to hug me or shake my hand or breath right in my face. My mask should be telling you I don’t want to worry about getting sick. People need to clue the hell in. THINK a little about others.

It doesn’t even matter if the mask works, distancing certainly does for many illnesses. We saw over and over again people near each other at a party got sick, while others in the room were spared when it came to covid. For measles everyone in the room would get sick. For the common rhinovirus cold or influenza, being very close or touching germy services and then touching your eyes, nose, or mouth, would get you sick. For norovirus touching a virus filled service and then touching your mouth, or the sick person preparing your food who doesn’t use clean procedures, or swallowing aerosolized particles (like in a public bathroom) will get you sick. These examples show there are different types of infections and different avenues. You aren’t likely to get norovirus by talking to someone. You have to swallow that virus, not inhale it into your lungs.

Right now stomach flu is traveling through the US, so I wear my mask in public bathrooms. I dread that virus.

People here largely view the pandemic as “over” considering the low numbers, high vaccination rates, mild form of the current strain and eased restrictions. To be honest, life is more or less back to normal except work is permanently hybrid now.

Because medical experts and politicians say it’s OK to not wear masks.

Most people that I’ve seen wear face masks ineffectively with huge gaps and even with their nose uncovered. If your glasses fog up while wearing a face mask then your mask is not fitted properly. Also I still see people wearing masks with a purge valve. HA! Unbelievable! What a diabolical joke!

Cut and pasted from the third study linked by @seawulf575:
Background: Health care workers outside surgical suites in Asia use surgical-type face masks commonly. Prevention of upper respiratory infection is one reason given, although evidence of effectiveness is lacking.

Methods: Health care workers in a tertiary care hospital in Japan were randomized into 2 groups: 1 that wore face masks and 1 that did not. They provided information about demographics, health habits, and quality of life. Participants recorded symptoms daily for 77 consecutive days, starting in January 2008. Presence of a cold was determined based on a previously validated measure of self-reported symptoms. The number of colds between groups was compared, as were risk factors for experiencing cold symptoms.

Results: Thirty-two health care workers completed the study, resulting in 2464 subject days. There were 2 colds during this time period, 1 in each group. Of the 8 symptoms recorded daily, subjects in the mask group were significantly more likely to experience headache during the study period (P < .05). Subjects living with children were more likely to have high cold severity scores over the course of the study.

Conclusion: Face mask use in health care workers has not been demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds. A larger study is needed to definitively establish noninferiority of no mask use.

OK, so they studied 32 workers, 2 of whom had colds. That was the study. The last sentence says “A larger study is needed to definitively establish non-inferiority of mask use.”

Also, to those who criticize Fauci and other officlals for the changing narrative, remember that Covid was and still is a brand new disease. At this point it’s been around for 2 years or a little more than 2 years, so we know more about it, but when it first came out, everything about it was unheard of. It’s non like measles or mumps or something that’s been around for decades and has been studied extensively and that there is a ton of information about. Now there may be, because of the urgency over the past two years, but in the beginning, it was all new. Every day it was on the news with press conferences and everyone hung on to the officials’ discussions. Don’t insult the officials like Fauci. They did and are doing the best they can under the circumstances.

^Totally agree. At least they are trying to find ways to help the public and not just googling and spouting information that backs their beliefs from the comfort of their couch.

So I can breathe easier. When I have to wear a mask I pant.

Masks are unhealthy. When you breathe you breathe out CO2 which if you are wearing a mask will get trapped and you breathe it back in. Now without a mask the CO2 wont get trapped and you breathe fresh air.

@KRD Nope. Masks are gas permeable. The CO2 and the O2 exchange at a normal rate. I have a friend who has been an anesthesiologist for 35 years, and she has asthma, and has worn masks for many hours on end during a surgery and experienced no distress.
If the masks trapped the CO2, and you had to rebreathe it, you would pass out in minutes.

The federal mask mandate on planes and public transit has just been overturned.

By a federal judge appointed by 45, his body count is still rising.

^^^^ A Federal Judge who was deemed “Not Qualified” by the American Bar Association.

@jca2 Care to highlight the conclusions of the other studies I have shown? Care to actually produce an RCT that shows these are all wrong? No? Huh. What a surprise.

@jca2 Yes, Covid was new at the time Fauci was creating his story. Were masks also new? The science was out there showing that masks don’t do anything. And that was his original story. And if you can’t ridicule a guy that changes his story every other week, who can you ridicule? Better question: why do you BELIEVE a guy that changes his story every other week?

So what is your answer @seawulf575 seeing that masks do nothing ,the vaccines are worthless, you probably are against social distancing as well.
Cloth masks offer little protection but surgical ones do provide better protection.
As for believe a guy that changes his story every other week, REALLY?
from you a devote Trump lover?

@SQUEEKY2 Surgical masks provide better protection? Based on what? And do you wear a surgical mask and change it every couple of hours? I mean if you are serious, you should put out the money to have enough masks to be able to throw them away every couple hours. And they have to be surgical masks or N95 masks, not just cloth masks. See the problem with the masks? They aren’t the right quality, they aren’t changed frequently enough, they are likely getting contaminated by breathing and fidgeting with them (touching them) dozens of times an hour. So even if they did work, they are almost never used effectively. That means they don’t work.

Funny you should question social distancing. MIT recently did a study that pointed out all the fallacies associated with that idea. Basically in any normal setting, air is recirculated over and over. So if I exhale in one corner of a room and I have Covid, those viruses I am exhaling will enter the air and be spread throughout the entire area. So you, standing in the opposite corner, will be exposed even though I might be 100 feet away. They concluded that spending too much time in an indoor setting will increase your chance of being exposed. But hey, don’t let scientific studies stop your beliefs.

@canidmajor Obviously you and I remember things entirely differently. You asked me a question, supposedly non-snarky,: ” If ”masks don’t work and never did”, then why do the medical personnel in operating rooms (not even speaking of Covid situations, here) all wear masks?” Please note you did not specifically ask for citations. I responded to that question in a polite, non-combative way. What was your response? Well in part it was “You display your own ignorance.” Now this is obviously where your version of reality and mine totally split. That was in the very first response to my answer to your first question. That, to me, is the first dismissive insult. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you mean calling someone ignorant to be an insult? And dismissive? So I responded in kind. And I gave you a plethora of citations…you know, the things you are now saying you needed. And what was your response? More dismissive statements. Of course you didn’t actually care about the citations, since none of you lefty sheep really care about facts. You don’t want to actually debate them. You have no problem dodging though and getting insulting.

Tell you what, next time you have a “entirely curious, non-snarky” question I will not believe you. You have show yourself to be a liar. I will treat you with the contempt and distrust you have earned. Good with you?

Facts don’t matter to some people; they have their opinion !

@seawulf575 So the answer is do nothing and let them die where they fall?
I understand when you talk about the circulating the air, most buildings filter the air they are circulating.
But what you said then maybe the Government was on to something by limiting the number of people at events?
You still believe that if you have had covid you have the antibodies to prevent you from catching it again?
That only works for the variant that you had and only for about 6to 8 weeks,still better to get the vaccine.

@seawulf575: If you’re looking for studies where surgery was performed by professionals who were not wearing masks, I can’t imagine you’re going to find any. Imagine the liability: the hospital has a protocol, so first, you’d be looking for hundreds or thousands of surgeries to be performed in violation of their protocol. Secondly, if hospitals agreed to it and the patients became infected, the hospitals would be sued by each and every patient. Thirdly, what patient is going to volunteer for that one? “We need you to volunteer to run a high risk of infection and having your surgery get all fucked up. As a bonus, you might die. Step right up to sign up for this one!”

@jca2 I just gave you a whole litany of studies. Some involved actual performance of duties without masks, some involved masking and sneezing…things like that.

As for patients going along with something like that? It’s possible they did. Even not knowingly. Let me ask you…you got the vaccine, right? Did your doctor tell you what was in the vaccine? Did he explain all the possible side effects you might encounter because of the vaccine? I’m willing to bet they did not and likely that you never asked. Yet there were many people that got all fucked up by taking what amounted to an experimental drug. And yes, some died. Sound familiar?

@Tropical_Willie You are absolutely correct. I’m the only one on this thread that has produced any facts. Which side are you on?

@SQUEEKY2 I have a whole different view than most on this thread. I have indeed had Covid and got past it. I understand entirely about variants and that there are differences in the antibodies required to fight them off. But the point I see is that my immune system is working well and will likely be able to fight off most things it comes in contact with.

Interesting thought came to mind about the variants though. You are vaccinated, right? Got your boosters to protect you from the variants? Does it mean anything to you that the drug manufacturers themselves said their vaccines were not effective against the variants? Yet the government pushed getting to boosters to protect you. Even the studies showed the efficacy was severely limited with Delta and almost non-existent for Omicron. So why push ineffective vaccines that have some pretty severe possible side effects?

Want my view on how to deal with this disease? I’ve said it before and will say it again now. We are on a spectrum of action. On one end is “do nothing, let it run it’s course”. On the other end is “lock everyone on Earth into their homes until such time as the disease no longer exists” Every other action falls somewhere between these two. And anything short of locking everyone in until it no longer exists leads to the do-nothing side. You let “essential personnel” out…you are still spreading the disease and those people can bring it home to their families who are locked in. If you let people go to the store to buy necessary things, you are subjecting them to the disease and they will continue to spread it. They came out with “vaccines” that don’t stop the person from getting the disease nor from spreading it. People got these vaccines and felt safer then went on to spread the disease to others. People wore masks to keep from spreading it. The masks are not of any particular sort and do nothing to stop the virus from going right through. But they feel safer so they congregate around, spreading the disease. And with every one of these steps away from total lock down of the Earth leads to the spread of the disease.

What I would recommend is that people do simple things like not shaking hands, washing their hands frequently, not wearing their clothes more than one day, wash those clothes frequently, wash off their shoes (particularly the bottoms) every day at a minimum. Get more exercise. Get outside into the sun. Take Zinc to help build a strong immune system. Stop eating junk food. And Please Note that NONE of this requires the government to mandate anything.

It is a game of “follow the leader”. We know where that got us in the past.

Circulated air in a building is not an issue. Covid doesn’t float. It drops to the floor.

@Dutchess_III Then masks are entirely unnecessary. The virus is carried on water vapor. The moisture in your breath is enough to send it out. And that doesn’t settle very fast, if at all. But if it is your belief that it just drops to the floor then masks serve no useful function. They might stop large droplets during a sneeze, but then so would a kleenex or your shirt sleeve.

@Dutchess_III You are referring to droplets which are also created but COVID is an airborne disease meaning it travels far from an infected person via aerosol created by the infected. Circulating air in a building is the perfect storm for COVID transmission.

Just went to the dentist and I’m so glad they are still all masked up except for the patient while in the chair.

Went to McDonald’s (had a coupon) all the employees still had on masks.

Have a lot of friends saying they were so happy not to get sick for two years who took off their masks, even though they blatantly stated the masks helped them, and two of them have already been sick in the last few months since they stopped masking. SMH. Both have allergies.

It’s temporarily airborn @snip. It travels in the mucus of a sneeze or a cough. Then those drops fall to the ground.
Masks are effective. So is hand washing.

Good grief if it’s airborn travels in buildings air systems ,masks are useless against it, then under that theory the entire planet should have been affected the first couple of months into the pandemic.

Why is that countries that had strict lock downs had the least amount of deaths and infections?

@SQUEEKY2 All those countries that had the lockdowns eventually had to unlock. And when that happened, they started seeing the cases climb. That is what I mean when I talk about the spectrum. You can take actions you think are going to help, and they may help for a time.
But eventually you have to change or your nation will die waiting for the virus to go away.
And then you start seeing the increases. Interestingly, Sweden never did a lockdown and they didn’t see really a huge blast of the virus. They were one of the first to really get back to normal.

“Normal” requires some examination. There are several aspects to our lives which have shifted quite visibly for the long term and a lot of those will be permanent. I took the wife to the airport this morning, then hopped over to Costco where the computers were down and bedlam prevailed. There was not a single unmasked face to be seen at either place.