There does seem to be a full-court press on the mask & vaccination front, with lots of folks touting their virtue and denigrating the choices of others. I just wish everything weren’t so polarized.
Possibly one of the better things I did in my life was read “The Mote in God’s Eye” by Niven and Pournelle, which highlighted an alien culture whose biology included a third arm coming out of the chest used to hold objects being manipulated by the other two arms, called the Gripping Hand. So in considering things, they would consider on the one hand, on the other hand, and on the gripping hand. In problem solving, I’ve found this helps in dancing around otherwise seemingly intractable problems by finding a third way through a deadlocked, stalemated, polarized dichotomy.
In the context of masks, it would seem that in the context of coughs, sniffles, stuffy, achy head, fever, then yeah, put on a mask. I think the Japanese were always right in that regard, though when I adopted the practice back in the 90s in NYC for the occasional flu I did get weird looks (since I wasn’t Japanese and masks were associated with criminals). But it’s not a bad idea. By the same token, I do believe in exercising my immune system, so am not afraid of getting in the dirt, so to speak, to give it a workout. I’ve also travelled a fair bit globally, and been exposed to a fair share of different bugs. I’ve had, and beaten, the Covid.
From what my immune response is telling me, the current variant is doing a full-on run-through here in East Texas since about last weekend (versus my first exposure to it a couple of weeks ago). There was a marked increase in folks masking up, but overall folks are recognizing that they want things to get back to semi-normal and that they don’t have to upend their worlds to deal with this. They can adapt and move on. The gripping hand solution.
There does seem to be a full-court press on the mask & vaccination front, with lots of folks touting their virtue and denigrating the choices of others. I just wish everything weren’t so polarized.
Possibly one of the better things I did in my life was read “The Mote in God’s Eye” by Niven and Pournelle, which highlighted an alien culture whose biology included a third arm coming out of the chest used to hold objects being manipulated by the other two arms, called the Gripping Hand. So in considering things, they would consider on the one hand, on the other hand, and on the gripping hand. In problem solving, I’ve found this helps in dancing around otherwise seemingly intractable problems by finding a third way through a deadlocked, stalemated, polarized dichotomy.
In the context of masks, it would seem that in the context of coughs, sniffles, stuffy, achy head, fever, then yeah, put on a mask. I think the Japanese were always right in that regard, though when I adopted the practice back in the 90s in NYC for the occasional flu I did get weird looks (since I wasn’t Japanese and masks were associated with criminals). But it’s not a bad idea. By the same token, I do believe in exercising my immune system, so am not afraid of getting in the dirt, so to speak, to give it a workout. I’ve also travelled a fair bit globally, and been exposed to a fair share of different bugs. I’ve had, and beaten, the Covid.
From what my immune response is telling me, the current variant is doing a full-on run-through here in East Texas since about last weekend (versus my first exposure to it a couple of weeks ago). There was a marked increase in folks masking up, but overall folks are recognizing that they want things to get back to semi-normal and that they don’t have to upend their worlds to deal with this. They can adapt and move on. The gripping hand solution.