{"id":32155,"date":"2021-04-27T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=32155"},"modified":"2021-04-14T23:46:41","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T03:46:41","slug":"covid-spreading-among-the-mask-karens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/27\/covid-spreading-among-the-mask-karens\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid spreading among the Mask Karens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our country is swimming in vaccines, partly shut down (state of emergency continues until morale improves here in Maskachusetts<\/a>), and populated by Mask Karens. How is coronavirus still thriving?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this month I saw a father and daughter flying a kite on the Cambridge Common. It was about 5 pm, windy enough to fly a kite, and nobody was within 100′. Both were wearing masks. A little later I went to a friend’s backyard for dinner around a propane fire pit. Except for me, everyone there was vigilant about being masked, including for kids down to age 5 or so. They were concerned about COVID-19, but as with airline travel<\/a>, the mask protocol made them feel safe enough to leave their bunkers and gather closer than 6′.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then some people took off masks in order to eat and\/or drink. And some people took off masks in order to hear or be heard better. By the end of the evening, nearly every pair of guests had spent a fair amount of face-to-face unmasked time. If they hadn’t had faith in masks, I think they would either have refused the invitation and\/or been more careful about staying farther apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of the virus thriving… I know a married couple who spend nearly 24\/7 at home together. The husband caught what seemed like a bad cold, got tested for coronavirus, and tested positive. The wife also felt sick, got tested (two-day delay to schedule then three-day delay for result; cost $105 at Emerson Hospital even though testing is supposed to be free due to some fine print (she didn’t have a primary care doc’s referral)). Her test came back negative. She got another test a few days after that, this time from Regional Express<\/a>, which actually was free. The free test came back within 24 hours… negative. Neither lost taste or smell. Do we guess false positive for the husband? False negatives for the wife due to not enough virus camping out in her nose? They both caught respiratory infections at the same time, but they were different infections?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(I tried to reach the wife every day during this ordeal, offering encouragement such as “We dug a grave for you in th backyard in case you need it.” Most of the time she wasn’t available. I asked, “If you’ve got COVID [presumptively from the husband’s test] and you’re stuck at home, how can you be unavailable?” She responded that she had been in Zoom meetings. “You have COVID and aren’t taking a sick day?” She replied, “Sick days are for wimps.”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In case you object that it doesn’t make sense for laypeople to diagnose other laypeople via FaceTime, here’s what Herodotus had to say….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following custom seems to me the wisest of their institutions next to the one lately praised. [The Babylonians] have no physicians, but when a man is ill, they lay him in the public square, and the passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had his disease themselves or have known any one who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to them; and no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking him what his ailment is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It worked 2,400 years ago, so it should work today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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