We do live in different worlds

[oakfarm]

Being Swedish I’m used to having doctors and science journalists saying that “face masks” are hard to use and telling anecdotes about misuse, as indications that mask laws aren't that great idea. (Better to stick to the sustainable metodes as long as possible, that also happens to be more proven. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint”.) Here’s a screendump from Rebecca Watsons, with her anecdotes of incorrect mask use.



So dispite being a hardcore cheerleader for masks, Watson sounds like the “anti-mask” experts I’m used to hearing.

***

Another screenshot:

So things that were in my dad's textbooks in the 1970s are politicized in the US? Crazy world! Since this started I have on social media stopt following one Brit and several Americans, because of their politicization of the pandemic. Btw, you understand that I’m talking about left wing Americans right? See one thing I have been right about then when it comes to covid is that the American left seems to think it’s more deadly than it really is. Here’s an article about a study that gives me right, Democrats in the US are more likely than republicans to exaggerate the threat.

No one says this isn't a serious situation. But if anyone use the pandemic for political gain and alarm people with too high number, exaggerate the deadliness, that person is an asshole. On the other had, it could be something like this, in Sweden we have an passioneted group who don’t want to give the ex-neo-nazi right, and therefore they deny problems with high imigration from conservative and religious cultures. Of course you don’t want to give some rapey, racist, illiberal radio guy* right, when he says most dead are old and multi-sick. The problem is just that he’s that, right. Most dead are old and multi-sick. A lot of people are dying with covid, not of covid. A virus is not gonna start killing 30% young people, just to show a literary facist radio guy, wrong. The reason Sweden (and I think all of Europe, but I don't have a good source on that) now have lower mortality than normal, might very well be that the one who - for lack of better words - "should" have died this summer, died in covid. (It works both way, if we had had a bad flu in january, many who died in covid, shoud had died in the flu instead.)

Want a third example we live in different worlds. One of the noteworthy things if I compair what I read in the media from the anglosphere today with Swedish articles from the beginning of the pandemic is the following. We have a celebrity doctor Agnes Wold (professor of clinical bacteriology, and apparently daughter-daughter of Svante Arrhenius**) who describe lockdown policy as “patriarchal”. To her it’s useless and macho to show that kind of power. (Note, to her it’s “useless” and “patriarchal”, her critic is not just that it’s “patriarchal”.) And because of domestic violence many of the victims of the lockdown will be women and children. And here’s an article about a study that gives dr Wold right. According to that study lockdowns didn’t helped. Because in the filter-bubble someone like me is in, you will find articles like this.

In American media today one can see the opposite claim, that countries that have female leaders handle the pandemic better than countries with male leaders. Because they went into lockdown earlier. Really? I’m not sure it’s a good thing. You might be 100 % sure the sacrifice - not limit to domestic violence - of a Chinese lockdown is worth it. But I do think you have to admit Chinese lockdown is the figurativ nuclear option, not even thinking about a voluntarily options. Are you saying that it is matriarchal to go to the nuclear option the first thing to do in a crise … Well it was Margaret Thatcher who insisted on thermonuclear warhead armed Trident missiles for British submarines. And it was Nicola Sturgeon who insisted on a quarter million people in lockdown because of eighteen positive cases of SARS-CoV2 in Aberdeen.

* Who I think in one episode of Simpsons got Sideshow Bob elected.

** Famous for being the first to describe the principe of anthropogenic climate change and for being the first Swede to get the nobel prize. Apparently he also wrote a sexist letter to Marie Skłodowska Curie. For the Simpson theme, imagine him as grandpa Simpsons saying: “I wrote a sexist letter to Marie Curie - that was the style of the time".

Comments

[tarasacon]

I don’t parse Watson’s post as anti-mask at all. How are you getting there?n

[oakfarm]

It’s easy to be misunderstood. I’m not saying she’s anti-mask. Just that she in this perticialy case was similar like the anti-mask I have heared.

[tarasacon]

I understood that. I was trying to figure out the pathway by which that is happening.

[oakfarm]

Not sure how you mean. But okay again, a lot of the serious criticism I have heard against masks laws is that it is difficult for the public to use masks properly for a long time. Here, Watson published an example of how a member of the public failed to use a mask correctly, exactly one example that critics have targeted. I thought it was ironic that she, who is so pro-masks, still posted a story that could be interpreted as if the public could not use masks correctly.