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Baker happy to leave mask mandates up to cities and towns; says Massachusetts is in a far better place than certain states he could name
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Go ahead and name them,
Go ahead and name them, Chuckles.
It will never work that way...
...I've heard there are people who actually travel outside of their cities and towns (and states, for that matter)
Those MA residents traveling
Well most are vaccinated and vaccines work.
translation
I took this job to cut ribbons and steer public money to the private sector, not to make decisions that could affect my runaway popularity
Or hurt the feelings of other
Or hurt the feelings of other Republican governors.
Mask Mandates
Politicians pass mask mandates but decline to have enforcement policies. Not one citation was issued to passengers who refused to wear masks on the MBTA.
We can always reconsider when
Sarcastically: We can always reconsider when we reach those levels.
agreed, public health policy is at its best
when it’s reactionary
We can always wait to shut that barn door
After all, who knows if the horse will even bolt to begin with?
The masks 99 percent of us are wearing
Are not effective at stopping virus transmission, getting vaccinated and keeping your distance from one another is.
Citation please.
Citation please.
Yah, @StillfromDorchester
Say what now?
Why do you think masks don't work?
Center For infectious Disease Research and policy
They basically say it's better than nothing, and for the record Me and my family wear masks and are vaccinated, but unless you wear an n95 mask the masks we use are just an extra precaution.
Even how we treat masks sometimes make little sense, you wear one to a restaurant and take it off at the table, you go to school and leave it on at your desk..
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all...
Really?
All that that says (and it's over a year old, from April 2020) is "we don't have data on that".
You're really not fooling anyone, but could you at least make a good show of trying?
Nice try
Stop copying and pasting from well curated antimasker bullshit articles that predate more recent research
Remember, dear: some of us do this shit for a living and worked with airborne indoor spread of coronaviruses going decades back. Others here are far more scientifically literate than you and can smell your cdiff approach to posting a mile away.
Perhaps you should read these articles instead. COVID is sufficiently prevalent that randomized controlled trials are now possible: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2021&q=mask+effectiveness+&hl=...
I'm sure you already know about PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pretty weak, Charlie
He doesn't want to take the heat, so he'll let local officials who get paid little or nothing have to deal with the rabid anti-maskers instead.
Great leadership.
Bracing for what happens when school starts.
Baker
The most productive thing he can be doing is making vaccine mandates in as many places as possible. Massachusetts is sorely lacking in a statewide system for vaccination verification. That's embarrassing seeing as how the most widely used system was developed in Boston.
There's ample evidence that people will get vaccinated when the places they want to go (restaurants, stadiums, gyms, etc) require it.
Does anyone really think a
Does anyone really think a mask is more necessary in Belmont than in Cambridge?
Though, given what things are like these days, it could be worse--Baker at least isn't trying to stop cities and towns from mandating masks.
Masks
Masks are necessary everywhere until the pandemic is over.
OT: They're pretty good for allergies too. :)
Agreed
I was masking indoors before the town told us to do so again. I'm just amused that the Belmont Select Board is ahead of Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, which are at "strongly recommend."
What does it matter?
One of the stupidest reasons for not doing a sensible thing is that others aren't doing it.
MA has very high vaccination rates
All the same, I don't need a "breakthrough" case of coronavirus effing up my life, and I also don't need a cold, flu, parainfluenza, etc. in my life either.
Seems that many in the area agree given the amount of mask wearing going on indoors in public.
Many businesses are now requesting mask wearing in their workplaces, if not requiring it.
It really isn't a big deal.
additionally...
... Massachusetts has a 0% vaccination rate for everyone under 12. My biggest worry is for elementary schools that do not mandate masks.
Plus with an R-naught value of 8 estimated for Delta, even MA vaccination rates fall well below the near-90% needed to hit herd immunity.
I had seen mask wearing at my local grocery store dip below 50% back at the beginning of summer. It's gone back up since the Delta reality hit home. Now we have a town mandate as of Wednesday. Personally, I never stopped wearing one indoors.
FYI, here's a really good explanation of Delta and what we can do to avoid it.
I hear ya, but ...
R-naught is garbage in a diverse population with heterogeneous risk profiles.
Which MA has at baseline, let alone with under 12 not vaccinated. R-naught is predicated on heterogenous risk - meaning, in actual populations it is pretty much garbage. This has been understood since the earliest days of the HIV pandemic.
Teflon Charlie!
I, for one, will never forget that piece of crap website he released last winter or the hours I spent on it trying to find a vaccine for my nonagenarian mother.