Re: Corona Virus: is it the beginning of the end?
Accman, let me address a few things real quick.
1. You have enough time to repeatedly whine about how you're being guilt tripped, even after I've said multiple times that I'm no longer interested in actually changing your mind. You have enough time to bring up points that you feel I missed (you mentioned the DC situation twice overall, with at least a day between, just as one example). You have enough time to cherry-pick sources and make the same "I will not live in fear" speech literally over a dozen times. Yet you don't have enough time in your busy, busy day, despite all of this, to take thirty seconds, validate your claim -before making it - remember, this took me about thirty seconds - and either a) retract it afterword and admit you were wrong, or B) not make it in the first place? No, no, and no. This is called bad faith. This is classical excuse-making by someone who got cornered by inconvenient truth. Get over it. Admit you fucked up and be done. I'd have more respect for you if you could do that, but you seem allergic to just going, "You know what? Thanks for the catch. I didn't know that. I was wrong". End of story.
2. One of your points concerns the nonexistend double standard in the sighted population. Your argument runs that they wouldn't be willing to cover their eyes if it were necessary. You know what? On that point alone, you're almost certainly right; I foresee a lot of blowback there. But guess what? Thankfully, nobody is suggesting that sighted people cover up their eyes, so what we have here is a ridiculously inane attempt to deflect. It's a really silly rhetorical trick that only works on people who are generally not possessed of an eighth-grade education; news flash: I graduated eighth grade over twenty-three years ago, so I'm not fooled. I'll lay it out, not so much for you but for the folks in the back who might actually think you've got a point. Sight is a really, really greedy sense; it makes up for something like 90% of environmental data for sighted folks, last time I checked. If you asked a sighted person to wear nonpermeable eye coverings, you'd be removing up to ninety percent of the data they receive, and that would represent an enormous shift. It would fuck most people up pretty royally. I'd like to pause right here, though, and state that airtight but transparent goggles do exist, and I can't foresee any situation where the coverings on a sighted person's eyes would have to be opaque. This isn't Bird Box, after all. So, in order for your argument to have validity, I need to believe that you wearing a mask over your mouth and nose removes up to ninety percent of your environmental data. What about your uncovered ears? What about your sense of touch on the rest of your body? What about the fact that numerous users report that they can still smell things? I'm perfectly willing to believe that a mask might represent a 10-20% loss of environmental info if your environment is based really, really heavily on smells (say a mall) and your hearing wasn't too good. But you're a musician; unless you wrecked your ears playing and listening to too much loud music, you have four senses that function pretty well, and asking me to believe that wearing a mask puts you at 10% capacity is ludicrous. You are, in other words, drawing a false equivalency in order to try and draw sympathy. What you're aiming for is the "OMG, yeah, no, sighted people would never accept that, so why should I?". But they're not the same thing. It's not even fucking close.
3. Accman wrote: "You are just as likely to get this thing while wearing a mask as you are without it."
Hold the fucking phone. Did I just see you say that 1 is not greater than 0?
You have yet to demonstrate that masks are 0% effective at blocking Covid-19 transmission. You've been challenged to do this over and over again, but you just can't seem to manage it. This is because there is no credible source on the planet saying that masks are entirely ineffective. As such, your statement that getting Covid-19 while wearing a mask is equal to the likelihood of contracting the disease without it completely ignores mathematics. To quote a well-loved source: "Hello there, and welcome to a world called Earth, where actual minds do groundbreaking work". Obviously, wearing a mask is not a guarantee. I think we all recognize this, and it's not up to debate anymore. But lacking a perfect nonexistent alternative, it makes sense to use an imperfect one.
4. The argument that if you make a choice, you can't bitch, is ridiculous. I mean, sure, there are social situations where you're dead right. It would be unfair to tell your wife that you're okay with something, then snipe at her all day for her choice. But guess what? I'm not complaining to officials. I'm complaining to friends. I'm lamenting the state of the world. I'm grumbling about how fucking hot it will be if I have to wear a mask uninterrupted in the sun for hours. I have every right to do that without invalidating my position. Because you know what? I'm bitching, but I'm still right, and still -in the right. What I am doing is the equivalent of griping because you have to get up at six-thirty in the morning for your work commute. Sure it bites, but you do it anyway. I suppose your answer is, "Well then, you chose to have that job, so you can't complain?" I trust I don't have to explain how fucking silly this is.
Look, dude. Your reputation is destroyed, at least when it comes to this. You do you, and I'll do me. We established this long ago. But if you come around trying to justify yourself, I'll shoot it down. If you try to demonize social responsibility as "living in fear", I'll tear it apart. If you gleefully try and demonstrate hypocrisy with half-baked sources and lacking information, I'll just as gleefully take thirty seconds out of my day, cross-reference the facts, and no doubt be able to annihilate virtually any point you try to make. I can do this all year if I have to, if it means making sure that rhetoric like yours is given no place here. My advice is to quit while you're behind, put your head under that rock you keep talking about, and hope folks forget what a terrific mess you've made over this.
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