No to Masks. Or Yes to Masks. But No to Madness.

I don’t think we need mask mandates in schools. The media has done a sensational job playing up fears about COVID in schools, but as even the left-leaning Atlantic has pointed out, the fear is ahead of the data. Elementary school children are not vectors for the disease, even with the delta variant.

Teachers in Florida who died of COVID after school started were both unvaccinated and got it before school started. The media hyped that story. The mass outbreaks of infection of kids were of teenagers who were mostly infected before school started.

But facts are subservient to the narrative and the narrative is that Florida and Texas are awful because their Republican governors banned masks.

I actually disagree with them. I do not think there should be mask mandates. But I think if local communities want them, let them. The irony is that the communities most likely to insist on mask mandates are also the most likely to get vaccinated and therefore not need them.

I and my family are now vaccinated. We have stopped wearing masks unless a business owner asks us to. It is their business. We will be good neighbors to them. In Atlanta, the mayor has ordered a mask mandate. Few people are wearing them except in Whole Foods.

Masks have become a security blanket. We now have a year of data to show that people are mostly getting COVID in small groups, not large gatherings except when Obama throws a party. We now have a year of data that progressives demanded masks in settings they were not appropriate like being outside alone. We now have a year of data of people wearing masks below their noses. We now have a year of data that masks are effective at the margins of the spread, but do not contain the spread and only work when everyone uses them, which not everyone will do.

Let businesses decide for themselves. Let local communities decide for themselves. I think mask mandates are foolish. I think bans on mask mandates are foolish. Let local areas and businesses decide for themselves what is in the best interest of their communities and employees.

But let’s also keep the real picture in mind.

Daniel Darling @dandarling

This is why politicizing COVID is ridiculous. Here is a chart showing Hawaii and Texas: opposite approaches and yet same trajectory. Adjust your narratives accordingly

Deaths are higher in Texas than Hawaii, but always have been given population variations and deaths in Texas are far less now than this past winter. Hawaii is highly vaccinated and masked. Texas is the opposite.

Greg Abbott gets tested every day as Governor. He tested positive yesterday and is vaccinated. The vaccine is highly effective at stopping people from dying. It is highly effective at preventing people from getting COVID. But it is not perfect. It is an improvement that should help us stop hospitals from getting overwhelmed. But hospitals are still getting overwhelmed because enough people chose not to get vaccinated.

In every single state in the nation, the percentage of people in hospitals with COVID is over 95% unvaccinated. Lots of people demand to know about obesity, etc. But the control is the vaccinated pool of people. A vaccinated obese person is far less likely to wind up in the hospital than an unvaccinated obese person. A vaccinated non-obese person is far less likely to wind up in the hospital than an unvaccinated non-obese person. A vaccinated person with co-morbidities is far less likely to wind up in the hospital than an unvaccinated person with co-morbidities.

That does not mean the vaccinated won’t get COVID though — they are just less likely to get it and far less likely to be hospitalized and even far less likely to die.

The ghouls who think Greg Abbot got COVID because of karma should be ashamed of themselves, but are not. They’ve been broken in some way. They cannot separate their public policy desires from their personal rage machines any more than others can. Except they think they are better than those other people. It is shameful and graceless and that’s the age we live in.

I disagree with statewide mask mandates and statewide bans on mask mandates. I think too many people are defining themselves by what the other side is against or for. Our politics on COVID is fear-based and childish on all sides. Our policy demands are more and more likely to be based on fear and hatred of the other. This is post-Christian America and the post-Christian right is becoming like the post-Christian left.

If you’re that upset, get vaccinated. The data shows you’ll be fine even if you get COVID. You don’t complain about people not getting the flu vaccine. So stop complaining now.