And yet now, no-one cares. I'm amazed at how casual so many are. I've never been paranoid about Covid but I still don't wish to share other people's viral load; even if it is just a common cold.
Classic failure in public education. If you heavily regulate something, all people focus on are the regulations.
There are current public education campaigns underway, but they don’t necessarily focus on the right message.
The campaigns focus on protecting yourself… wear a mask in high density settings, social distance where relevant.
But the actual message should be that there is a period of one to two days where you are infectious but don’t know it, and during that time ‘you’ wearing a mask and social distancing can help protect others.
Those are the messages that aren’t coming across.
No one would argue against mask wearing in appropriate settings if they understood it was a simple measure to stop *them* spreading it to others. And that limiting the spread will help our casuals maintain income, students to have teachers, and medical staff to continue their work as well as diagnose new cases.
The education campaigns are being undermined by vocal but entirely wrong messaging such as ‘masks are not effective’, ‘wearing masks has grave economic and health impacts’, ‘covid is nothing more than a mild cold’ and ‘covid only affects those who were at the end of their life anyway’.
Lockdowns worked, and were probably necessary in some form until we had the vaccine. But the vaccine is not the complete answer. They are one tool together with other measures such as distancing and drugs.
