savages!

[amw]

God i hate flying. I like the theory of it. Traveling to distant places, stuck inside an odd metal tube with strangers, occasionally - if you are lucky - getting a bird's eye view of the world passing by. I even like airports too, in theory. I always thought it would be cool to work at one. Just seeing people go by, in every state, frazzled and

Comments

[amw]

I have to admit, I am still a bit skeptical of the people who say they can "never" be comfortable in masks. To me it sounds like saying you can never be comfortable in shoes, or a hat, or a shirt.

I do get feeling uncomfortable in certain items of clothing in the abstract. I only own one piece of clothing with sleeves because i hate having anything on my arms, including upper arms (i.e. T-shirts are just as uncomfortable for me as long-sleeved shirts). But when i go into a church, or a monastery, or when it's very cold... i wrap up anyway. And, if i'm honest, when i'm wearing sleeves all day, eventually i forget how much it bothers me, because there are so many more important things going on in my life than whether there is fabric covering my shoulders. End of the day i'm glad to take it off, but it's not something that feels even remotely worth complaining about, much less protesting or writing long thinkpieces to try cobble together a narrative that having people wear long sleeves for public health is practically fascism.

I mean, women have this situation literally every day of their adult lives, being forced to wear bras even though not a single woman in the world will ever say that wearing a bra is comfortable (although for some it might be useful for avoiding nipple chafing or getting slugged in the face by a bouncing boob). I was talking to a friend about wearing uncomfortable clothes recently, and she said she thinks a big difference between women and men is not that women's bodies are somehow better suited to wearing clothing that appears uncomfortable, or that women have a greater tolerance for pain, it's simply that sociologically women have been raised to quietly accept small amounts of discomfort for the purpose of presenting themselves to the world (or - more specifically - men) in a more attractive way. It's a learned behavior.

So... while i am theoretically sympathetic to people who find masks uncomfortable, i am really not sympathetic to the argument that they are so insufferably uncomfortable that there should never be a mandate. It just seems like yet another weak interpretation of liberty as meaning "i, the rich/white/male/etc person, get to do whatever i like and everybody else just has to work around it".

Yeah, i dunno, like you say coming back to East Asia after being exposed to how people from other parts of the world behave, the difference is so stark, it puts stuff into perspective.

[king_of_apathy]

I guess it varies a lot from person to person. Some friends were talking about visiting me in Korea but asked with concern if they'd have to wear masks, even the kids. I told them that on public transport they'd all have to, and they were worried if their smallest one would put a mask on at all. Which for someone whose had to do that for the past two and half years, I thought, 'come on, it won't kill you to wear a mask for half an hour on the metro!. And then there are little kids in Korea now who can't imagine leaving the house without masking up first!

Mask wearing isn't exactly unbearable to me, so if I think there's a real public health need for them (pre-vaccine or planes or doctors waiting rooms) I'm certainly not against mandates. But I think after spending a couple of months in the UK where absolutely everyone (with the occasional exception of a Chinese student) goes unmasked, I've much more come round to the British way of doing things. Largely because, at least while I was there, the country wasn't being overrun by covid.

You did get me trawling through the Covid numbers for different countries, and Korea and UK seem to have pretty similar infection rates right now, despite the very different approaches to masking. Though oddly the UK seems to have a higher death rate from it which I'm trying to work out why. Differences in health care? Less people vaccinated? The two big death spikes come in April 2020 and January 2021, so that would match up.

My view is the vaccines worked. Not perfectly. Originally they were advertised as 'this will stop you getting covid', which obviously hasn't been the case! But what they have done is reduced Covid 19 from a disease that could, on occasion, kill even young healthy people, to an infection that in the great majority of people is the equivalent of a mild case of the flu.

I'm wondering now if the demographic that complains most about masks is largely male. Good point on women accepting more discomfort. I mean high heels, WTF!