DisneyFan32
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
is the pandemic in USA will getting worse with new variants soon by months?
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Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion
- Thread starter Parker in NYC
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- coronavirus covid covid-19
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mickeymiss
Well-Known Member
I know I won't be popular for saying this but it's hard to see ordinary human behavior become so controversial now. Yes, they should read signs but I also see they were all wearing masks and holding the door for each other and enjoying themselves. Describing it as "pushing their way in" is so over the top to me. It's a Disney souvenir store and these are mostly families with kids.
I'll see my way out.
Patcheslee
Well-Known Member
If someone has an illness that puts them at high risk maybe?
ParentsOf4
Well-Known Member
'Projecting hope': Experts suggest Biden stop wearing a mask outdoors
Alexander Nazaryan·National Correspondent
Fri, April 30, 2021, 4:32 PM
WASHINGTON — On Friday morning, first lady Jill Biden participated in an Arbor Day event on the North Lawn of the White House, shoveling some soil on a newly planted linden tree. Such events are routine for a presidential spouse and go largely unnoticed. Indeed, there was nothing readily remarkable about Friday’s event, save for one detail: The first lady, who was vaccinated against the coronavirus months ago, wore a face mask.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccinated people no longer have to wear face masks outdoors, except when in large-scale settings like concerts and political rallies. And yet both she and the president have continued to diligently mask up when outdoors, as have Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff. In fact, President Biden wore a face mask on Tuesday as he walked alone to the outdoor podium where he announced the new outdoor masking rules.
Biden gave a circuitous answer when he was asked by a “Today” show interviewer this week about whether he would continue to wear a mask both indoors and out. He suggested he would eventually take off his mask outside but called keeping it on a “small precaution to take,” given that people frequently approach him. Masks keep the virus from spreading. So, of course, do vaccines.
The president eventually settled on what appeared to be a defense of keeping the mask on as much as possible. “It’s a patriotic responsibility, for God’s sake,” Biden told his interviewer.
An exceedingly mundane reality could be in the works. Frequently moving between indoor and outdoor environments, as the president does throughout the day, sometimes makes it easier to keep a mask on, as opposed to having to fish it out of a pocket or handbag every few minutes. The new mask rules issued this week suggest that vaccinated people continue wearing masks indoors. Unvaccinated and half-vaccinated people are urged to continue wearing masks in most outdoor situations.
“The likelihood of my being able to be outside and people not come up to me is not very high,” Biden explained during his “Today” interview.
Still, his continuing to wear a face mask outside could lead to confusion about how to interpret the new CDC advice, which some have criticized as needlessly complex.
Conservatives have seized on the discrepancy, arguing that the White House is doing little more than putting its own pieties on display. Some public health officials have joined the criticism too, describing what they say is a missed opportunity by the Biden administration to tout the post-vaccine normal as closely resembling the pre-pandemic one.
“I understand the desire to project caution,” says Dr. Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore, who now teaches public health policy at George Washington University. “But projecting hope is really important too, as is showing the nation the president’s confidence in the power of the vaccines.”
In an email to Yahoo News, Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, wrote that “the new CDC guidance on what situations it deems safe to wear masks for the vaccinated and non-vaccinated is really confusing. So President Biden is defaulting to the position he deems most responsible and safe, which is to wear masks more or less everywhere.”
All the versions of the coronavirus vaccine are highly effective, in particular when it comes to preventing serious and critical illness. The speed with which they were developed, tested and manufactured has been praised as a wonder of modern science.
Biden and his top staffers routinely tout the coronavirus vaccine. They often do so with mask in pocket or in hand. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki fielded a question about why the president had worn a mask to his announcement, when it could have arguably made more sense to model the new rules by going mask-free.
“It will take some time to adjust and adapt for all of us,” Psaki answered.
If the first lady’s tree-planting ceremony was any indication, that adjustment is still in the works. To be sure, she wasn’t alone, with several other officials watching from several feet away. Even in the highly unlikely event that those other officials were not vaccinated (most White House staffers were, like the president and first lady, vaccinated over the winter), the CDC guidance says that vaccinated people do not have to don a facial covering when gathering in small or medium-size groups of people, even if some of those people are themselves unvaccinated. That is because a vaccinated person is thought to have an extremely low risk of spreading the coronavirus.
Harris wore a mask outdoors when greeting Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker on an airport tarmac earlier this week. All three officials are vaccinated. Speaking later, Harris urged vaccinated people to act as role models to friends and family who have yet to be inoculated. But in continuing to wear a mask outdoors, she and Biden have arguably missed a chance to advertise the attractions of the vaccinated life.
“Wearing a mask was our only means of protection before we had a vaccine,” tweeted Dr. Nicole Saphier, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and a Fox News medical contributor, arguing that continuing to wear masks outdoors is “undermining vaccine effectiveness.”
The debate over outdoor masking comes as demand for the coronavirus vaccine appears to be dropping. Some elected leaders have offered savings bonds and other enticements to get vaccinated, but perhaps nothing is as inviting as simply being allowed to live as one did before the coronavirus ground human civilization to a halt. That is the promise of vaccines.
“We need to send the right message, and right now that message is ‘Get your vaccine, and the future is bright,’” says Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins oncologist. In an email to Yahoo News, Makary expressed concern that “the CDC guidance is feeding into a distorted public perception of risk and causing people to question our message on vaccine protection.”
Studies have shown that it is extremely difficult for the coronavirus to spread outdoors, even in situations where no one is vaccinated. The CDC could have conceivably said that there was no need for anyone to mask outdoors, except in crowded situations.
The White House, the Office of the Vice President and the CDC all did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News. During a Friday briefing of the White House pandemic response team, a reporter asked that team’s coordinator, Jeff Zients, when Biden would stop wearing a mask outdoors. Zients ignored the question.
“The risk of COVID transmission, outdoors, to someone who is fully vaccinated and is keeping distance, is zero,” said Wen. “I think it would help if the president demonstrates which activities he is able to resume, and make the point every time that he is able to do them because of vaccination.”
Doing so would be in keeping with the incentive structure that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky described on Tuesday. “If you are fully vaccinated, things are much safer for you than those who are not yet fully vaccinated,” she said in announcing that the fully vaccinated did not need masks outdoors in most situations.
The Bidens’ continued caution (as well as that of the vice president and second gentleman) is a stark contrast to how the White House operated under Donald Trump. He saw masks as a sign of weakness, mocking Biden for wearing one during the campaign. Administration officials were implicitly discouraged from following advice that was frequently issued from within the White House Briefing Room by Trump’s own public health officials. Even a coronavirus outbreak within the cramped confines of the West Wing failed to change the anti-mask attitude.
Conservatives were already angry about outdoor mask mandates before Tuesday’s revision, with Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson delivering an angry diatribe against outdoor masking on Monday night. The disconnect between the new CDC guidance and the president’s continued insistence on wearing masks in most situations seemed to give his critics a new opening.
The Republican Party seized on footage of the masked Bidens walking across the South Lawn to Marine One, the presidential helicopter. “Joe and Jill Biden are FULLY vaccinated,” a tweet from a GOP-affiliated account said. “Why are they ignoring CDC guidance on wearing masks outside?”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who famously punctuated his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in late February with a “Braveheart”-like scream of “freedom,” charged that the South Lawn video was evidence that Biden was “virtue signaling to his base” and trying to “control the American people.”
Conservatives have maintained that mask mandates are a form of social control, though such mandates have been instituted at various points throughout the pandemic by Republican elected officials, including President Trump.
More measured and evidence-based criticism like Wen’s holds that just as it was necessary for the White House to model mask wearing, it is now critical to show Americans the benefits of vaccination. She envisioned Biden “perhaps even having indoor meetings, without masks, with his fully vaccinated aides.”
That doesn’t appear likely, at least for now. Earlier this week, Psaki told NPR that top staffers in the West Wing don’t meet face to face, even though all are vaccinated.
“We all sit in our offices and do our morning and evening senior staff meetings on video,” she said. “We have to be models, too.”
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SirLink
Well-Known Member
The sign says 'exit only' - there is a reason why Disney put a sign on there its most likely to monitor the number of people entering so that guests can stay socially distanced inside the store.
If there is an 'exit only' door and someone decides to enter said door I would describe it as 'pushing their way in[to the store]'.
mergatroid
Well-Known Member
What are the chances that America will be letting us Brits in by October this year ?
danlb_2000
Premium Member
That might be one good approach to it.
I'm good if incoming tourists coming to America have been vaccinated.
mergatroid
Well-Known Member
I'm good with that too. Rest assured the 5 of us booked to come have all had both our vaccinations.
Something to keep in mind hurricane season is Jun1 until Nov 1. Aug, Sept and early Oct are generally when hurricanes come close or hit FL.
Chi84
Premium Member
That seems a little out of the box to start enacting laws against it. We can't make laws against every damn fool thing people can think of to do. I know there's an attorney on this site who specializes in federal discrimination law, but I've never seen her post in one of the corona threads.
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mergatroid
Well-Known Member
Thanks, we come every year in September/October so I've experienced a few personally
GoofGoof
Premium Member
True, but as the restrictions have started to ease in the UK and especially in Israel there has been no sign of a resurgence in cases. The trend is steadily down in both cases. Also, Israel had almost double our cases per 100,000 at the same point in their timeline so we are starting from a much lower equivalent cases per 100,000. In the chart posted showing the countries in Europe, many of the other countries are back in lockdowns but are still seeing much higher cases than the UK. The vaccines are having a bigger impact than lockdowns for sure. These are benchmarks of 2 of the countries that have done the most vaccinations and my intent was not to say that the US would follow the exact same timeline but to give a ballpark idea of what the impact of vaccines can be. I don’t apologize for being optimistic that we can get there. I understand that others don’t share my optimism, we are all entitled to an opinion.
GoofGoof
Premium Member
Seriously? So if there is a 20 minute wait for test track and someone figures out they can go in through the exit and skip the standby line you would be OK with that as long as the people wore a mask and held the door for each other? There was a line of people following the rules and waiting to be let into the store at the entrance and these people didn’t feel like waiting so they went in through the exit.
DisneyFan32
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
True but what about fall / winter. Don't ya think surges will get worse or not? @GoofGoof because if does no one we will reach herd immunity by fall / winter. As we don't wear masks and social distancing anymore by fall/winter. Is chance there will be not going to be a fall or winter surge by this fall or winter?
ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
Every major model projects deaths will fall through at least 8/1/21 (furthest out anyone will predict), so you aren’t alone.
Note that Imperial College one is always the most pessimistic and even it sees a decrease below the current level. American-made models of the trajectory in America are unsurprisingly (typically) more accurate than European.
Except for hurricanes.
GoofGoof
Premium Member
The proposal was an amendment to a bill that was already being considered that bans vaccine passports. It was proposed as a direct reaction to the private school which sent an e-mail to teachers telling them not to get the vaccine because it’s dangerous to the people around you. I believe they said teachers would not be allowed back in the building if they got the vaccine. I think the lawmaker who proposed it was concerned there would be retaliation in other areas by people opposed to the vaccinations against workers who are vaccinated. He felt it was hypocritical of lawmakers to tell their constituents to get the vaccine and then not protect them from being fired for it. I guess they disagreed.
DisneyDebRob
Well-Known Member
No need to apologize as you said for being optimistic. I think 99.9 % of the people here wherever they stand on things know we will get there and are optimistic. The differences are when people think that will happen. I’ve heard everything from June 1 to December and everything in between. That is the question right there. We know that about 35% of all Americans have had 2 shots, or the one J&J and are fully vaccinated. We know about how many have had one shot and waiting on the second. How many will get it is the big question and can put dates of normalcy all over the place if we are guessing. So let’s all stay optimistic.. keep convincing the people who don’t want to get vaccinated to do it and we will get there.
mergatroid
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure why the highlighted bit is relevant? The reason the term 'pushing their way in' was used was because there was a queue of decent people waiting to be allowed in that these people bypassed. As for them being families and it being Disney, why does that make it different? If it were a gang of male teens shouting whilst doing that at a cinema, would you view it differently? If anything it being families kind of makes it worse because it means mum and dad are teaching their kids that rules don't apply to them, just ignore a queue and bypass the line.
I agree that on that clip we didn't see anyone getting hurt or being aggressive, but if we choose which rules we obey using those parameters then the world will be a far worse place. It also only takes one person in the shop objecting to this bypassing the line and before you know it a full blown argument kicks off, possibly being followed by a fight breaking out.
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GoofGoof
Premium Member
I would prefer that as a country we would have kept more restrictions around a little while longer and drove cases down even further before we hit the key inflection points where vaccinations take over and push cases down permanently but we didn’t go that way. I am still optimistic we can and will be successful anyway. I know others disagree and that’s fine too.
Staying optimistic is the only way we convince enough people to get vaccinated. The narrative that we need more restrictions or a lockdown combined with the vaccinations to achieve success only increases vaccine hesitancy and resistance. Remember that the people who favor more restrictions and lockdowns are mostly all vaccinated already. The people left unvaccinated, from listening to what a lot of them have to say, are more likely to get vaccinated if there’s a carrot of less restrictions afterward. So while I would have preferred an approach that included a slower pull back on restrictions nationally until more were vaccinated that ship has sailed and we are stuck with plan B. In this plan B, talk of more restrictions or lockdowns only hurts the vaccination effort. We need to keep people focused on the return to normal and the lifting of restrictions after enough people are vaccinated. That’s all we have. It’s vaccine or bust.
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