You can't compare these two situations. In the OR, a surgical mask designed for the purpose is being worn by a trained person who is also wearing hair and shoe coverings, gloves, and gown while keeping hands above waist etc. And, your face is inches away from the inside of the patient. It's bacterial contamination of the surgical wound from your breath that the mask is protecting against. With COVID, you have random cloth items worn in all kinds of ways by untrained people, ostensibly for the purpose of preventing a viral exposure. Totally different.Mountaineer wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 5:29 amIf masks are largely worthless, why do the operating room staff wear them? Serious question.WiseOne wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 4:10 pmI'll chime in here....I also have suspected that masks are largely worthless, and there is certainly zero evidence in support of them.
We had to take an online course in how to don and doff PPE at the beginning of the pandemic. It is not at all easy to get it right and there is a good reason why training is necessary. I regard the mask as mainly a fashion statement.
This is relevant to this thread: if you don't toe the line in the US you can now officially be persecuted in many ways: you can be fired, victimized by violent thugs, singled out for ostracism, etc etc. We used to be able to say we live in a free society, but not anymore!!!
BTW yes this is a pretty civil discussion but that's because everyone is essentially of the same mindset. The distance between the individual positions you see here is much smaller than that between, say, AOC and Ted Cruz. Here's how I see it: Trump pushed the conservative party to shift attention from the traditional talking-point issues of abortion and religion to economic and social issues. Everyone knew that nothing of any relevance would ever happen on the abortion and religion front, so the Republicans were always political wallflowers with little in the way of accomplishments since the Reagan tax cuts. The new focus on dealing with long-neglected issues such as immigration, offshoring, and global trade deals was a direct challenge to policy areas that the Democrats thought they had locked down for decades with virtually no opposition. At the same time, the Democrats have veered to an extreme left position bordering on fascism that frankly scares many people, and has certainly served to increase the fervor on the right.
So you could say Trump is polarizing, but not for personal reasons. It's because he has made the Republican party a political force to be reckoned with, and no one saw it coming.