While some governors are flexing their mask muscles to address, whether in reality or appearance, the concern for the next variant of Covid, Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, has taken a very different approach to masks.
All hail Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who liberated himself from the “forever COVID” mentality that has gripped far too many lawmakers.
Ever think you would see “all hail” a Dem in the New York Post?
“The emergency is over,” Polis said in an interview. “Public health [authorities] don’t get to tell people what to wear; that’s just not their job.
“There was a time when there was no vaccine, and masks were all we had and we needed to wear them. The truth is we now have highly effective vaccines that work far better than masks. Those who get sick, it’s almost entirely their own darn fault.
As of now, the availability of vaccinations is ubiquitous. And there’s no shortage of masks for those who choose to wear one. So if people, given the information available about the risks one assumes from choosing against being vaccinated and choosing not to wear a mask, why mandate masks?
“Just to put it in perspective, of the about 1,400 people hospitalized, less than 200 [or 16 percent] are vaccinated. And many of them are older or have other conditions,” Polis added. “Eighty-four percent of the people in our hospitals are unvaccinated, and they absolutely had every chance to get vaccinated.”
This is the political equivalent of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” Of course, 16% of vaccinated people being hospitalized is nothing to sneeze at. And then there are children under 5 for whom the vaccine isn’t yet available, even if their risk is low.
But the other side is that Polis has decided not to turn the state into the mask police, and more importantly, not to turn businesses into the mask police on behalf of the state.
Contrast one Democratic governor’s strategy with another’s: New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul, who took office when now-disgraced Andrew Cuomo scurried away from the governor’s mansion. She instituted a statewide indoor mask mandate that went in effect Monday, forcing all businesses to either check people’s vaccination cards or require them to wear a mask while inside, even in private offices. Fines could be as high as $1,000 per violation.
The authority of some aspects of Hochul’s mandate are dubious, and the efficacy of requiring businesses to go to war with customers and employees should they refuse, for whatever reason, or just take umbrage at their handling, presents the potential for some serious problems.
Is Polis right? Is it time to treat people like adults and live with the consequence of their choices while others go about their lives without the state telling them what to put on their faces? Or is this a reckless approach, which not only allows the people who make poor choices for themselves to serve as incubators for those who tried their best to make wiser choices. Bear in mind, 16% is still a significant number of people, and they didn’t ask to be infected.
And as variants keep arising, and the effectiveness of vaccines developed for the last strain remains a question as to the next gen, should those who dutifully get boosted suffer for other people’s choices, not to mention the ICU beds, equipment and medical staff that are eaten up and won’t be available for the rest of human medical needs because of people that don’t seem to care about the pandemic and just keep going on as if everything were normal?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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With communicable diseases in circulation, every individual’s choices affect other individuals’ risk levels. Mask and vaccine rules are appropriately decided by democratic processes. It is impossible to live without imposing some risk on other people (i.e., car crashes, pollution, etc.), and we decide democratically what the rules are that govern the risks people can impose on others. Both Polis’s and Hochul’s rules are within the realm of reasonable for American society.
We accept ~ 100 deaths a day from car accidents, ~ 100 deaths a day from guns, ~300 deaths/day from pollution, etc. Right now we are seeing ~1300 deaths a day from Covid, but that is less than 100 for the vaccinated and greater than 1200 for the unvaccinated. Only the risks people impose on others, not the risks they take themselves, are appropriate for coercive measures. The risk to vaccinated people from Covid is comparable to many other risks we allow everyone to impose on everyone else. Polis’s stance is in line with other population-wide risks, therefore it is reasonable. Hochul’s is more restrictive, but of the ~100 deaths/day among the vaccinated, the vast majority are among older people. The Covid risk to vaccinated older people is still significantly more than most risks we allow people to impose on others. It is also within the realm of normal, in the American societal context, to protect our elders. Both decisions are within the realm of reasonable, and the local voters can decide at the next election if they think their elected leaders are choosing appropriately.
This is far too agreeable. When governors rule from on high without direct input from the legislature is that sufficiently “democratic” for you not to raise an objection? Are governors supposed to be out there saving us from ourselves? Are they supposed to act like actuaries? Are we all at the whim of the personality of individuals (governors)? You’re being servile and washing your hands of the blood. Disagree with me.
I disagree with you. There are emergency situations where governors (or presidents) are empowered to take action because the time it takes for legislatures to respond is too long. Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not this is such an emergency. There is no question that 1300 deaths/day nationwide from a communicable disease is a large number. Legislatures have recourse if they don’t like the governor’s actions.
“Are governors supposed to be out there saving us from ourselves?” No, and I said that. They are supposed to protect us from others.
“Are they supposed to act like actuaries?” Of course. If 130 people were dying per day rather than 1300 there would be no mask rules. How else would one make rational decisions?
“Are we all at the whim of the personality of individuals (governors)?” Yes, in very many aspects of life. How is this not obvious to you?
Much, much better, thank you. “Reasonable minds may differ” is a lame punt. Pick a side. One decision is more rational than the other especially if we’re applying actuarial science, or do we not all value human life the same? It’s horrific that you could offhand suggest 130 people dying per day is vastly different than 1300. I’m not sure how you know that. I’m getting a sort of Stalinistic “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic” vibe from your comments, and I don’t like it.
“How else would one make rational decisions?” By thinking really hard about it, of course, or at least that’s what Kant told me, kind of.
You are a horrible person for making your opening satire insufficiently obvious.
I agree with you.
Too soon for the 7,000,000 immune compromised.
Case rates where I am in Connecticut have increased four-fold since the beginning of the month. It’s no longer safe to assume none of the shoppers in the grocery store are contagious. Now, if the health care system works perfectly and immune compromised persons who get sick get monoclonals promptly, they will probably, but not certainly, be okay. But there are lots of opportunity for delay.
However, the new AstraZeneca monoclonals, given before exposure, are supposed to give 6 months of protection at near vaccine levels, and the Pfizer antiviral pills should make a big difference, maybe as soon as Jan/Feb. At that point, the Guv’s position is arguably reasonable.
When has it ever been “safe to assume none of the shoppers in the grocery store are contagious”? That has literally never been the case.
Locally we have been running at 200-250 cases per day in a state of 8 million till the last few weeks, despite this, I wear a mask in the grocery store. But the odds of a random person being infectious are pretty low. On par with walking across the 4 lane road this morning with the lights red. Someone could run the red light at 100k+ It would be safer to walk 500m to the pedestrian crossing, but I did not.
I have my doubts about the near vaccine levels. last week in Newcastle we had 700 young adults walk into a nightclub theoretically 100% double vaxxed and theoretically following the 5 month rule for boosters. 200 walked out with delta. Certainly there has been nothing on the news about the nightclub letting un-vaxxed in and the population in general is 90%+ double vaxxed.
Case rates in NSW have jumped four fold over the last 3 weeks.
Evidence suggests masks are at least partially effective, evidence also suggests masks are not 100% effective. After all they mostly just a piece of cloth.
If the mandates where clear they might be followed better.
In NSW the rules where masks are not required while walking in the open air, masks are required while standing outside shops, bus stops, etc.
The police ministers explanation when asked for clarification was. Anywhere he could get out of his car and put a mask on, you should have a mask on. That did not clarify it for me at all.
People tell me,
If the heads of the NIH and CDC hadn’t been found out to be such inveterate liars, perhaps more people would “Follow the Science” without so much governmental coercion.
If the pharmaceutical companies hadn’t been given immunity from law suits over injuries or death caused by their vaccines because of incomplete or hurried clinical trials. Sure the shot(s) are “free.” But someone has to pay for them American taxpayer.
Too many Governors and Mayors got a taste of that sweet authoritarianism and decided they liked it.
Just be glad you don’t live in Australia where the military is hauling people off to quarantine camps…or Germany where the police push through crowds with two meter sticks to make sure people are social distancing and wearing masks.
Look at all the small businesses that were destroyed because of the shutdowns and mandates and all the people that lost their jobs. If you don’t have proof of the shot and boosters, you can’t fly or eat out in restaurants.
And people are finally getting back to work only to find out if they don’t get the vaccine or any future boosters, they will lose their jobs. The federal government mandates, so far, have all been temporarily shot down by the courts, but the fed is counting on private business to enforce the mandates anyway.
People are over it. They’re tired of the dictates and mandates. They just want to go back to normal. They’re tired of the political leaders telling them to wear masks and stay indoors, while they go out unmasked and party like it’s 1999.
* Thankfully, I’m retired and live in a red state so I don’t have to put up with the bullshit. I feel a little bit sorry for people who do.
Absent the immunity from lawsuits over vaccine injuries, there would be no vaccines right now. Vaccine makers have been immunized from liability since 1988.
How long should the clinical trials have run? 2 years? 5 years? 20 years? All while thousands died from Covid.
Prior to last year, we had not had a pandemic of this size since 1918. Knowledge of the virus changed daily. I am not sure what you think should have been done, but your implied “do nothing” attitude would have caused many more deaths than we’ve had.
Last July Dr. Eric Topol (no friend of Big Pharma) said, “So that’s the data, that’s the science. It’s unequivocal. And if you don’t believe it, then you’re just basically signing up to the anti-science world. If you think there are side effects of the vaccines, well, they’re remarkably safe. And the side effects of getting COVID-19 are remarkably bad.” Did you mean head of NIH (Francis Collins) or director of NIAID (Anthony Fauci)?
Colorado lives and dies with local control over many things that places like NY handle at the one size fits all state level. Home rule cities and counties have immense power and the power of state government is as a result very limited. Many counties and cities have imposed mask mandates. This means that Polis has much less pressure on him to act. Demographics is also the key as the Denver metro area has 53% of the state population. And the front range counties from Ft. Collins to Colorado Springs have 94% of the state’s population in 10 counties and many of those cities/counties now have or have in the past had mask mandates in place. Denver now requires masks at all public places with indoor gatherings which can be ignored if the venue requires proof of vaccination for entry. In short, because of local action on mandates and restrictions Polis doesn’t need to adopt the NY approach.
It’s hard to imagine a worse issue to leave to local control than response to a highly communicable disease. I understand that you are mainly talking about the political situation in Colorado, but immunologically that isn’t optimal.
Approach restaurant door. Don mask as you open the door. Step into restaurant. Remove mask as you release the door.
That’s the ‘settled science’ here in California. (And if you are serious about science, you know that much of it is less settled than you would expect. Much of science is the best guess at this point in time.)
If there’s going to be a mask policy for restaurants, why would it be take off the mask as soon as inside? Shouldn’t it be (what I’ve seen a few other jurisdictions) that the only time the mask should be off in a restaurant is while seated?
SARS-CoV-2 has, what one Harvard paper referred to as, a unique inclination for mutation. In fact, in comparison to the common flu, it is not twice, three times, or even five times more likely to mutate. It is twelve times more likely to mutate. That’s very bad.
Each significant branch in the SARS-CoV-2 phylogeny exists because it was provided with the opportunity to mutate among those who can not or will not take the vaccine. It is, of course, possible that a variant will emerge that brings all of us, including the duly vaccinated, back to square one. Or worse.
I think the problem with Gov. Polis, and any others who are either stupid or genuinely believe individual civil liberties will always outweigh the exigencies of a public health crisis, is a lack of imagination or institutional memory for how bad things could get for civil liberties, if a strain more virulent, more deadly, and that spreads more effectively than the OG COVID19 emerges.
Given that Covid will always be with us and always mutate (it is a cross species disease after all), are we to just give up our rights and liberties forever in the name of combating this disease?
If so, then we don’t have rights and liberties…we have permissions. If not, where do we draw the line?
Your first question is based on a flawed assumption. Diseases have been/can be eradicated. The chances of eradication are historically correlated with public compliance with health policy whether voluntarily or by force.
Your second question is spurious. In the context of public health, that ship sailed decades ago. State, local, and federal governments have had the authority to force compliance for a long, long time. We’re presently in the semi-voluntary phase of dealing with SARS-CoV-2. It can always get worse and the government doesn’t need our permission to deal with worse accordingly because it already has it.
We’ve never been able to eradicate a cross species disease. To this day, there are still instances of the bubonic plague. Do you really think it is possible to eradicate a disease that can be found in deer, bats and other animals? So exactly how is my first statement a flawed assumption?
You’re right. I stand corrected, my use of the word ‘eradicated’ was inaccurate. It’s true, there are still an infinitesimally small number of cases of many once devastating diseases, because, even at the tip of a spear, a few morons will still do things like keep Armadillos as pets or refuse common vaccines.
Show me when the last general vaccination for a bubonic plague, outside special cases like some travel or certain health care workers, happened.
Vaccines are good and I’m fully vacced myself, but I don’t think the entire country should be held hostage to the minority that refuse. Let us go about our lives and people assume the risk they’re comfortable with.
I guess this point is not sufficiently obvious: Unless we banish the intransigent class from society, only a drooling moron would intentionally leave decisions that could impact population health during a deadly, rapidly-evolving infectious disease event, to the idiosyncratic risk tolerances of the least informed among us.
I see, so it’s re-education camps for everyone who disagrees with you. Perhaps you want to put them in secret, unnamed, cities in the interior of Alaska above the arctic circle as well?
Welcome to the revolution comrade!
Have you not met Jake before?
Let me be absolutely clear: When it comes to protecting lives in a deadly pandemic, not only would I support marching the willfully ignorant and non-compliant off to FEMA camps, I’d volunteer to beat the marching drum.
“I see, so it’s re-education camps for everyone who disagrees with you.”
Nice try, but no. Agreeing with me on this matter is irrelevant because I’m not a public health official. I know this can sometimes be hard to understand, but the goal is not always agreement. In some situations, the goal is to stop as many people from dying as possible. Under the best circumstances, that goal is accomplished with facts and reasoning. Historically, under the worst circumstances, violence.
Not agreement, and certainly not by appeasing individual feelings on the matter, which may only serve to cause more death.
Something you might have heard before.
“My Body My Choice!”
“Each significant branch in the SARS-CoV-2 phylogeny exists because it was provided with the opportunity to mutate among those who can not or will not take the vaccine.” This is simply wrong. Consult a geneticist. Vaccine escape mutations happen in vaccinated patients with breakthrough infections, because that’s where the selective pressure to overcome the vaccine exists. In unvaccinated patients, these mutations are counterproductive – all of them necessarily reduce the virus’ reproductive potential compared to the wild type which has been ‘optimized’ by generations of circulation already – and can’t compete against the ‘original recipe’ virus.
Don’t make people dumber with uninformed assertions.
“Don’t make people dumber with uninformed assertions.”
Take your own advice, Andy.
Some of my information is sourced from an article entitled “How the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated for COVID-19: A Darwinian perspective” published by the National Academy of Sciences and written by Professor Emanuel Goldman of the Department of Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers.
“SARS-CoV-2 has shown that it can mutate into many variants of the original agent. An unvaccinated pool of individuals provides a reservoir for the virus to continue to grow and multiply, and therefore more opportunities for such variants to emerge. When this occurs within a background of a largely vaccinated population, natural selection will favor a variant that is resistant to the vaccine.”
Where did your information come from? Professor Joe Rogan?
When read carefully, that paragraph doesn’t actually say what you seem to think it says. Moreover, its premise has unfortunately been proven inadequate by real-life experience: since vaccinated people fairly easily become asymptomatic carriers, and there have now proven to be environmental reservoirs in the form of other animals, even total vaccination uptake will not eradicate the virus, only more or less eliminate the possibility of severe disease (pending a vaccine escape mutant). There are many papers on the effects of vaccine-induced selection on viruses, in general, which you can peruse at your leisure; in the meantime, I will summarise.
Viruses go through many, many generations within each infected person before ever infecting another person. During this time, there will be hundreds if not thousands of separate mutant variants developing together, produced by random chance, within that single person. The net result is that the viral genotypes best adapted for infecting that person will be the ones that win out under selection and are then spread – the effects of selection on viruses are far stronger than genetic drift and easily overwhelm it, which is why we only see a handful of major strains with obviously selected coordinated mutations rather than thousands and millions of strains worth of randomness.
If humans were less similar to one another, as populations of some animals are, this could actually hobble viral diseases completely as they overspecialize to one group and become unable to spread to others – while humans, again, are too similar to one another for this to happen, it can still make it harder for a virus to jump between different populations, as we saw in the very early weeks of COVID before the virus had acquired key mutations that helped it spread effectively outside the ethnically homogeneous Han population it “grew up with”. Notably, and importantly, these mutations were first selected for in non-Han people with mild infections – no matter how long you let the virus circulate among one particular population, it would never pick up mutations that only “work” on a different population until it infects that population for the first time.
The effect is the same when the populations under examination are “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated”. That is, unvaccinated populations will never produce vaccine escape mutations on their own, since such mutations reduce their effectiveness (as a necessary tradeoff) in those unvaccinated populations for no benefit there. This applies to all viruses and has been known since at least 1998 (see, for example, Mortara et al., “Selection of Virus Variants and Emergence of Virus Escape Mutants after Immunization with an Epitope Vaccine”, J Virol. 1998 Feb; 72(2): 1403–1410), and was widely acknowledged, including by Dr. Fauci, in the first few months of 2021 when there were fears that low COVID vaccine supply could (and probably did) lead to increased selection for escape variants in people who were only partially vaccinated. Since the immune response is weaker in the partially vaccinated, such individuals have an easier time getting infected and are therefore more likely to produce escape mutants, but the principle is in fact the same in the fully vaccinated, and, since we now know that the fully vaccinated can often become asymptomatic or nearly asymptomatic carriers, escape mutants in such individuals are virtually guaranteed. The widespread variant strains since at least delta show clear evidence of selection and cannot have been produced by drift – and that selection can only occur if the variants developed in vaccinated people where the vaccinated immune response is providing direct selective pressure, not merely near them.
There may have been a time, during the dynamics of the pandemic, when unvaccinated people were the primary route of infection for vaccinated carriers and breakthrough infectees. At that time, it would have been reasonable to say that the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated. However, given what we now know about reservoirs and about the vaccine’s effects, and given the statistics on vaccine uptake – not merely how widespread it is, but how much it clusters geographically so that many vaccinated people only encounter other vaccinated people – it is simply absurd and silly to say this now. Almost everyone with a breakthrough infection will have been infected by another vaccinated person, possibly an asymptomatic carrier – and many who weren’t will have been infected by an animal. This is especially the case in places where the unvaccinated are still required to wear masks, while the vaccinated are not. Since the vaccine effectively prevents severe disease, and asymptomatic carriers usually do not know they are infected (and nobody else can tell and react accordingly either), if anything, it is far more likely that the vaccinated present a threat to the unvaccinated. In either case, though, assigning blame is stupid. The vaccines are effective and will continue to be effective for however long pure chance allows, and if and when a total escape mutant (that is, one for which the vaccines are useless – so far, this has not happened and even the partial escape variants are still well-controlled) occurs, it will not be anyone’s fault.
Well Andy, stranger on the internet, you have certainly convinced me that you believe what you’re selling.
You may have succeeded in finding someone with some combination of letters and titles next to their name willing to back your position on the internet. And hell, it might even be someone with the credentials that matter, but then all you will have only succeeded in demonstrating that among the scientific community, the jury is still out.
Leaving only what I suspect is a fundamental difference between you and me: When millions of lives hang in the balance on a wrong decision, I believe prudence is advised.
>Of course, 16% of vaccinated people being hospitalized is nothing to sneeze at
Respiratory puns aside, the above is very poorly worded. 16% of vaccinated people [in Colorado] are not hospitalized. 16% of people hospitalized for Covid [in Colorado] are vaccinated. Those are two VERY different numbers, the former being less than 200 as noted, and the latter being greater than 500,000.
Apologies for being pedantic, but as you often point out, words mean things.
It’s nice that Polis has decreed that the emergency is over.
Before the scientists even know how serious the latest variant is.
The aerosolized virus is much smaller than the pores in a mask and easily passes through, like water through a screen door. So I’m not sure what level if any non-sealed N95 masks reduce transmission. I think Fauci was probably right the first time about masks for this virus.
The new AstraZeneca monoclonals are probably going to be reserved for specific very high risk populations unresponsive to vaccination, such as patients with leukemia, patients taking Rituximab who are sero-negative after vaccination, etc.
People are becoming less and less willing to accept arbitrary rules. The management at my company recently decided that they wanted the engineers to return to the office and are allowing us to be unmasked at our desks which is in clear violation of state mandates. Most of the employees are in the office maskless despite being in a very blue college town in a very blue state. We are getting tired of the masquecharade.
“When you hear the price they paid
I’m sure you’ll come and join the masquerade
The players try to leave the room
Frantic puppets on a string
And all the while the music sings
And still sometimes remember
The masquerade’s forever
They reached for tomorrow
But tomorrow’s, more of the same”
It could be something as mundane as Polis realizing he needs at least a few votes from the cow counties to put his re-election effort over the top, coupled with assurances that the urban dominated local jurisdictions will continue the mask mandates
I think even reasonable people are suffering from COVID-fatique at this point. It’s reasonable to question, almost 2 years into this, what the endgame is. Those who want the jab have gotten it. Those who don’t, largely won’t. And 95% of that is based on politics at this point.
Polis’ move is generally reasonable. Those who want to be protected, are. But, I’d ratchet it up a bit. Hospitals need to stop diverting care to the terminally stupid who refuse an otherwise-safe vaccine. Reserve no more than 10% of your facilities for the unvaccinated, and send the rest packing. Let Darwin do his job, and let people face the consequences of their blind faith in a fascist demagogue.
The risk of mutations is present no matter what we do, and drawing this out longer just makes it worse. Let the terminally stupid die and we’ll be past this thing much faster. They can carry their precious “freedoms” all the way to an early grave.
There are very real concerns about govt overreach at this point, and I’d argue this is a reasonable compromise: we’ll back off, but you are on your own to face the consequences of your decisions. They’ve chosen to be the control group in a vaccine study. Let them
‘Send the rest packing’
I thought that health care was a fundamental human right. My Bad.
The death panels said to let the dumb ones take their chances on the street.
At the point that hospitals are rationing care, someone is having that “right” denied no matter what. Seems more reasonable to deny care to those creating the emergency by refusing to listen to medical science, than to deny it to those who would otherwise have received it without a problem were it not for the throngs of idiots.
I keep hearing this argument. I’m vaccinated, but vaccine refusers are nothing new, whether for mumps, measles, etc, and we don’t deny them emergency care or hospital beds because of their choices if they do get sick. Same goes for gun criminals who get shot when they engage in gunfire over gang disputes. Even people who are shot by the police after they pull a gun or a knife on the police (or a potential crime victim) still get emergency care.
If your argument is “this is a unique situation, because these people are especially dumb and we’re in a pandemic”, that’s just special pleading based on sentiment. Medical care is always being rationed. If we’re in a pandemic, maybe then hospitals should expand ICU capacity rather than denying people care because “they’re dumb”, as if stupid people getting themselves grievously ill or injured and turning up in the ICU is anything new? Countries in Latin America and East Asia have rapidly built more ICU units to handle the increase in emergency cases, why can’t we?