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I have so many questions. People are still wearing masks year-round? From the article pictures, it seems like the bar serves drinks, as bars sometimes do. How do you drink with your mask in place? If you were so immunocompromised that your life was in danger if other patrons were not wearing their mask, would you actually gamble your life on them wearing their mask correctly? What about lesbian Muslims wearing a burka, can you trust them to wear their KN-95 correctly, and would it be racist to not trust them?
Personally, I was very much on the pro mask side during COVID, I still remember Scott's article on how nCoV-19 was likely airborne and how there were clear mechanistic reasons to believe that mask would protect both the wearer and others even in the absence of hard clinical evidence. I still see the CDC's anti-mask statements as a clear betrayal.
But when the vaccine got approved, I got vaccinated and then got on with my life. Today I might consider wearing a mask if I am in the room with someone with a respiratory illness, or am myself infected.
Still, I suppose that masks were politicized enough that they formed a stable equilibrium for some. And I guess they are really targeting an audience big on performative virtue signaling.
The way they should have sold this would have been as a measure meant to include people who for reasons of mental disability can not wear masks. I mean, what kind of monster would be against the inclusion of people with mental problems? And only exempting them specifically would call attention to their status, so the compassionate thing is clearly to allow people not to wear masks more generally.
Sometimes I wonder if there's something appealing to them about the mask in and of itself and the COVID stuff is motivated reasoning by this point. The mask now soothes their social anxiety somehow and they're stuck with it. Trannies like masks; it covers up their off/masculine facial features. (The last time I went to a North Chicago game store, the entire staff was trans, and masked). A lot of queer leftists have low self-esteem or are just ugly; maybe the mask is a Harrison Bergeron leveler.
I remember these people expressing a sense of betrayal and anger when the CDC officially ended the pandemic. COVID era messaging asked people to suddenly care way more about something they only kinda cared about before: not getting someone else sick. If you take that to heart, it's hard to dial that back down even after the all-clear signal was given (years later then it should have been). Caring about COVID also made way more sense if you live in a dense urban area, as the archetypical queer leftist does. But the people in the article live in a small town, yet somehow are more mask-nazi than the ones I run into. (Proof of the Hicklib concept, I guess)
That Socialist convention the other week (the Fitness=Fascism one) was also masks-mandatory.
One thing I find heartening is that outside this specific subculture, everyone else, even progressives, seems to find the continued mask-wearing strange and cringe when they encounter it or are informed of it. When I mention still seeing maskies to my (literal socialist) friends in non-megacities, they're taken aback. The more exposure all this gets, the crazier they look to normies.
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Guess you've never seen one of these: https://sipmask.com/products/sip-airtight-drinking-valve-safely-drink-through-mask-with-straw
Also, obviously, alcohol sterilizes your mouth so you don't have to worry about Covid while you're drinking. /s
It’s not a straw, it’s an emergency induction port.
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