Pirate's Cove

Is anyone starting to get the idea that mask mandates are less about health than about forcing compliance, which makes people more susceptible to more forced compliance mandates? Is that more conspiracy theory, theory, or reality? Because Progressives/Modern Socialists are very much about government controlling people’s lives

A COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t mean that you can stop wearing a mask

Shipments of the Covid-19 vaccine are arriving, with frontline health care workers getting immunized — some for the cameras — across the United States Monday.

While these developments mark a historic moment and hold much promise, that doesn’t mean Americans can stop wearing masks anytime soon. CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and visiting professor at George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, explains why.

CNN: Does the vaccine protect people from getting Covid-19? If so, how come I still have to wear a mask?

Wen: This is a good question! It’s important to be clear about what we know and what we don’t know about what the vaccine does. What we know is that the Pfizer vaccine is very effective at preventing symptomatic illness and severe disease. That means the vaccine appears to prevent people from getting sick enough that they develop symptoms, and very importantly, it prevents people from becoming so severely ill that they end up in the hospital. This is really great news.

Here’s what the studies don’t yet show. They haven’t looked at whether the vaccine prevents someone from carrying Covid-19 and spreading it to others. It’s possible that someone could get the vaccine but could still be an asymptomatic carrier. They may not show symptoms, but they have the virus in their nasal passageway so that if they’re speaking, breathing, sneezing and so on, they can still transmit it to others.

This is the main reason why we can’t stop wearing masks right after we get the vaccine. The vaccine will protect you from getting ill and then ending up hospitalized. But it’s possible that you could still carry the virus and be contagious to others. So those who get the vaccine should still be wearing masks and practicing physical distancing.

But, if we all have the vaccine, why would we need to wear masks?

CNN: Does that mean we will need to wear masks in public from now on?

Wen: No, not forever, but for a while longer. It’s estimated that about 70% of Americans must be vaccinated before we get to herd immunity through vaccination. That’s the point where enough people have the immune protection that the virus won’t spread any more.

But, even after 230 million Americans receive one of the vaccines (thank you, President Trump!), they’re still hedging that people will need to wear masks. They will continue to find reasons to force mask compliance, because, again, that makes others easier, because it’s just a mask, right? No biggie.

If you're trying to convince people to get the vaccine, assuring them nothing at all will change if they do is not the way to go.

— Anna James Zeigler (@ajzeigler) December 16, 2020

Meanwhile, how about some SJW virtue signaling?

California May Consider ‘Historical Injustice’ When Allocating Coronavirus Vaccine

When Virginia Hedrick first heard about the coronavirus circulating on cruise ships off the coast of California back in March, it made her think back to some of the first ships of European settlers that arrived on American shores centuries ago, also teeming with disease.

Oh, good grief

Various outbreaks and epidemics spread across the continent in the following centuries, particularly measles and smallpox, and Indigenous people suffered hugely disproportionate rates of illness and death.

“So some would say that it was an unintentional spread of infectious disease upon contact. Others would say it was absolutely intentional,” says Hedrick, a member of the Yurok tribe who grew up on a reservation in Humboldt County. Now, during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, American Indians are 4 times more likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 than white people, and more than twice as likely to die. For all these reasons, past and present, Hedrick says, Indigenous people should be moved toward the front of the line to receive a vaccine.

“When we think about the historical injustice of this nation, of California, isn’t now the time to say that for the first time we prioritized Indigenous people?” she says. “We started to make reparations in the way that we handled and treated the Indigenous people of this continent?”

It doesn’t get better after that.