I wasn't born when there were first laws design to encourage people to wear a seat belt when driving. I only know that if pulled over for any driving violation...a police officer can ticket a person for not wearing their seat belt. Further, wearing a seat belt does in fact save lives in car accidents versus not wearing a seat belt when involved in a car accident. My point, I wonder if people were equally reluctant to wear a seat belt when it first went into law ? Were they bitching about violation of their rights, complaining that seat belts don't save lives, its a violation of their rights considering their car belongs to them, did they storm state capitols with weapons in protest, if their were online forums back then...would they have posted online seat belts are a conspiracy theory of control by the government and that police get extra money when they listed a person killed in a car accident as "not wearing a seat belt" ??? Covid-19 is raging across the world including the countries I have deep roots such as France, United States and Canada...countries I'm a citizen, own a home and having family / friends residing in these countries. Raging infection rates lead to raging hospitalizations and eventually lead to increasing deaths. What's scary is that we had all the warnings from the 1st wave and it still wasn't enough to get people to mask up, social distance and hand washing. I watched two college football games yesterday on TV between Tulsa / Tulane and Minnesota / Purdue. I lost count of the times I saw players leaving their bench area to walk over to the student section to high five or give actual hugs to congratulating fans...almost all the fans either had their face mask pulled down around their necks or completely took them off and then putting the face mask in their pockets. These are the same students that will soon go home for Thanksgiving Holiday and I guarantee they will be telling their parents they have been safe and wearing their face masks on campus / off campus. Also, I saw many coaching staff wearing inappropriate face masks, security at the games too on TV...looked like they grabbed a hanker-chief and tied it around their face (school colours of course) to then only often to pull it down around their necks to have a conversation with someone. These are educated people and behaving like this. Discouraging Behaviour...We Reap what We Sow. I think its discouraging because I've lived in South Korea for a few years...many years ago and wearing a face mask is part of their culture. They truly view it as saving lives, minimizing health risk from the growing pollution problems plus they have one of the best healthcare systems in the world that knows how to manage infection outbreaks and knows how to educate / encourage its residences about being safe. They have one of the lowest infection rates, lowest hospitalizations and lowest deaths in the world. The United States and South Korea had their very first infection on the same day...actually within hours of each other. wrbtrader
And in Japan, mask wearing is common, interestingly, it is because of the tree pollen for most people. Their public behavior is oriented towards civility. One could say, if you get COVID-19, it is your fault since one can do things to avoid it. I know 8 people now who have contracted it, two went to the hospital but avoided respirators (40s YOs). Their partners where pretty stressed out and frankly they look a lot older now. I had a friend who worked at the trauma center and commented, if you want to curb your risk behavior, come in this spring on Saturday night. Check out the injuries, bones sticking out, impalements, blood and tissue flowing around. Likewise if you think COVID-19 is not a big deal, go to the hospital ward and check it out. Hang out with the partners of the people who are on respirators. Then you can comment on how it is not a BIG Deal to YOU, which is probably true. But to them, it is. It must be the age where people talk a lot without much first hand experience. I guess that is how they roll. Stupid thing is we could have controlled it, and kept everything running at 70% for a short while, and then ramped back up. It would have given the US a huge advantage, globally. Instead, we bicker among ourselves like tweens on too much sugar and too many hormones.