Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I suggested you were not terribly bright and were following the crowd, not that you were a heretic.
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Yeah, except that's an impossibility under the given facts. Qualifies also as a logical fallacy.
If the crowd isn't masking, as a matter of science, and epidemiology more specifically, any single person's masking becomes immaterial. The use of a mask nevertheless would have limited if any benefit. If one is irritated by masks and that irritation outweighs the scant potential (hypothetical) benefit to others, then wearing a mask would be unwise and irrational.
The mask thing in this country has demonstrated our national lack of facility with logic and rational thought. Or, alternatively, the left's and right's dislike of both.
Through most of the pandemic, not wearing a mask was illogical and irrational. Even if you doubted their efficacy, why take a chance? The cost/benefit could only run to one conclusion - wear a mask.
Now, unless you've a unique health issue, or are in regular contact with people with a unique health issue, if you're in an area where no one is wearing them anymore (which is most areas), the cost/benefit is turned 180 degrees. In that instance, where the chance of you harming others is negligible if it exists at all, do you nevertheless mask? One could make the argument that extreme vigilance is always warranted. That even if the risk is akin to being struck by lightning, one must gird against the possibility of that black swan. But that is not rational, or logical. That is the tail wagging the elephant.
Logic does not support the tail wagging the elephant. Logic supports doing that which is reasonable. At this point, where the virus is endemic and weakening with each uptick, it is eminently reasonable to, if healthy, ditch the mask.
The counter to this is a more emotional than logical argument. Hence, "selfishness" is usually invoked. This also fails, of course, as it's not selfish for society to tailor its vigilance to the level of risk. OTOH, the argument that people should address today's risk as though it were March 2020's could be seen as quite selfish. Society acts in a manner that's reasonable for the greatest number of its members. Asking it to observe extreme vigilance in the face of increasingly minuscule aggregate risk with no epidemiological basis for doing so seems the definition of unreasonable.
Where the rubber meets the road is some folks want a society where the protection of all at any cost is the paramount concern. This is a plank of progressive thinking. But its also something that will never occur on planet earth. Instead, societies apply a balancing of interests and that often appears insensitive. The people who desire the society described in the first sentence of this paragraph are, however, unable to express their goal in exactly that way. Because they know in response, pragmatists and realists will cite the fact that it is impossible and impractical, utopian. The tail does not wag the elephant, and it never will.
So instead, the people who desire a protection-of-all-at-any-cost society try to argue the merits. They claim the science supports them. Just as the people on the right did when they argued against wearing masks when the pandemic was raging.
People want the society they want, and the science they want. And neither seems to comply.
