And wearing a mask actually improves one’s breathing, through increasing CO2 resilience. Improved CO2 resilience is linked to all kinds of things such as better stress response, lower anxiety, improved fitness, and recovery from long covid.
But if the professor is vaccinated - hasn’t he protected himself? He can choose to wear a mask. If he does not feel safe teaching at a University that allows students to not be masked, isn’t that his choice? If he does not feel safe, then maybe he should not have taken the job. Why is everything on the student - as though her rights are less than the professors? Maybe she has asthma or anxiety and her own reasons to not feel healthy wearing the mask. She chose to go to a university where masking is not mandatory. Why does everyone only respect the rights of the Professor? If he is 88, he is surely aware of the risks for himself.
With the attitudes of everyone on this forum,- masking will NEVER END! There will always be a reason in their minds. Constant masking carries its own risks. Bacterial growth leading to pneumonia/bronchitis is real. My own perfectly healthy 17 year old suffered a severe sinusitis after being forced to wear a mask for over 12hrs/day daily (including when playing a sport!) last school year. We have billions of used masks polluting the environment! How is this going to affect our young people’s future? It would be different if masks were 100% effective - they are not even close! At best between 20-40% for those UNvaccinated (which the professor I assume is vaccinated) is what I have read.
At this point, everyone has had ample opportunity to be vaccinated. Selfishness works both ways. The way people cling to the notion that a strip of fabric (not a N95) is somehow this universal security blanket is frightening. Masks work in surgery mainly to stop BACTERIAL transmission or spit from getting on the field, but also to protect the wearer from blood splatter. The type of masks 99.9999% of people are wearing - with gaps, not full skin contact, are not the saviors of the world. Yes I know, vaccines are not 100% effective, and “asymptomatic spread” /delta is more contagious etc, etc, - but at this point I strongly believe the student has as much of a God given right to breathe freely - as the professor had the right to take the job knowing the risks. He also had the right to quit. In my opinion - as a collective society, we have sacrificed greatly (rates of depression/anxiety have doubled in youth during the pandemic) “protecting the vulnerable/elderly” . It is not wrong in my opinion, to feel that it is time to begin to allow people to start making their own health choices without name calling/shaming.
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My fully vaccinated physician husband just spent the past week in the ICU in Georgia due to complications of COVID-19. The unvaccinated are putting everyone at risk. My husband had to spend nine hours on a stretcher in the ER waiting for an ICU bed to open up. Many of our local hospitals are diverting patients and at least one I know of has deployed the National Guard
No, an 88 year old professor is not being selfish by requiring his students to mask up.
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Hope your husband is back home and recovering!
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Thank you. He is back home and is on the mend.
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The effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the vaccines is a different topic all together. As is the choice to vaccinate oneself or not. My post is related to requiring masking and the attitude that is the thing that will change the course of the pandemic. I am truly sorry for what your husband has experienced - but masking for 18 months now has not seemed to significantly alter the course of the pandemic. It continues as you noted.
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We make individual sacrifices all the time in order to protect the collective. That behavior is ordained in the preamble of our Constitution as it lays out the code we chose to live by when this country was founded.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Notice “perfect Union” and “general Welfare” come BEFORE our own liberty.
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Masks HAVE altered the course of the pandemic.
And the other thing that has altered the course of the pandemic, is that people chose not to get vaxxed. And thus we are back to masking, sadly.
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FWIW, these aren’t equals. She could transmit something to kill him. At the Boston Tea Party and people choosing sit ins or taking knees or whatever, potentially killing someone wasn’t involved. She wasn’t really risking her life, but she was making him risk his.
And now no one gets the class, thanks to her. Or maybe they can find someone with less experience to teach it now.
If she had issues wearing a mask in the class, then she should have chosen another class. I’d have felt the same way if the prof had asked people to mask up due to his having cancer or some other issue as I would with Covid.
Sometimes people really should just do what is right and not be Special Snowflakes.
The Prof certainly wasn’t trying to be a Snowflake - he came in trying to help a school he loves and kids he likely enjoys working with to have been there so many years. So much for trying to be nice. Some jerky kid has to get her way over a mask.
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Because her rights weren’t trampled on anywhere near what she was doing to his (life).
I wish you could a week or so working on a Covid ward. I also wish you could compare sacrifice notes with many of the refugees at our school - or many of those in history who fought in WWII or similar.
It’s sad what’s considered a “sacrifice” now. The more adults lament it, the more the kids will pick up on it.
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To believe that masks do not impact the transmissibility of viruses flies in the face of the evidence in the literature (albeit scant), but more importantly common sense anecdotal evidence.
The United States is 3 times as populace as Japan, a country more densely populated, less vaccinated, and less tested than the US. The US has had 40 times more COVID deaths than Japan. There could be many reasons, but it is not unreasonable to point to the near universal masking that was baked into the Japanese culture prior to COVID.
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And most folks like to help out the older, esp if it’s just a mask. From the way you are supporting her one would think a kidney was up for grabs.
I don’t think likes are emboldening anything. I think more people simply believe in the collective good, esp in this specific situation.
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Let’s take the hyperbole and subjectivity out of it.
An 88 year old professor with pre existing health issues asks a student to wear a mask properly in his classroom. Whether justified or not this senior citizen who is there to educate a classroom full of students fears getting ill based on one students refusal to wear the mask properly.
Are you really suggesting there is a noble justification for not being polite and civil by either wearing the mask properly or the student leaving? A society based on liberty and freedom requires mutual respect and a responsibility to contribute to the greater good.
Whether wearing a mask is for the greater good is debatable for some, easing the fears of our elders and respecting our professors is the essence of what a society is based upon.
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Please delve a little deeper. It seems logical to suppose the opposite of what you say.
Although contrary to popular belief, COVID vaccines are designed not to prevent disease, but severe disease, the literature is clear on the fact that the incidence of all levels of disease is lower in the vaccinated population.
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I appreciate your point. My point is that part of the collective includes the younger generation that are suffering greatly as well. They also matter. The rates of suicide/drug and alcohol abuse /mental health issues/increased weight/ obesity are REAL. This has and will lead to many deaths directly and indirectly as well. Feelings of loss of control/helplessness related to unending and unlimited control and restrictions. Lack of hope for the future due to economic impact. Crippling government debt that will balloon to amounts we cannot even fathom due to unending new spending to combat the effects of the pandemic. This will affect all of our children for their entire tax paying lives. It will affect their children & their children’s children. For all that has already been done to combat the pandemic - it marches on.
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Same question to you as an informed person…
would you advise an elderly diabetic vaccinated male that it is safe to be indoors in close proximity with a sizable group of 18-20 year olds whose vaccine status is unknown that will not wear masks?
And/or do you have any appreciation why an individual as described might be concerned they are at risk?
We are also genetically different as a country than Japan. We contain a much larger population of ethnic groups with higher levels of ACE receptors that seem to make one more susceptible to severe covid than Japan. We also have MUCH greater rates of obesity- the greatest co-morbidity related to death with Covid infection. How do you know it is the masking that makes the difference and not these and other factors? Japan is also currently experiencing a spike just as we are -despite their higher rates of masking.
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No - but I am not the one who took the job. That was HIS choice.
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If everyone just wore masks, all the issues you mention would be kept to the minimum needed to get us through the pandemic. It’s a pandemic - everyone is going to suffer. Suggesting we stop making kids mask because it’s hurting them a bit is like deciding not to put pressure on a severely bleeding artery wound because it makes the wound hurt more. Win the battle but lose the war.
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Right. He made the choice to try to help UGA and the students out.
She made sure no one gets the class because to her, her rights are paramount.
That’s what most of us are bothered by. He tries to help - she pushes him down.
I’m glad my kids aren’t like that.
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