No offense, but you've got some idiot in-laws. Be grateful that 1.) your daughter is feeling better and 2.) your husband didn't inherit the "stupid" genes.

You lost me when you wrote that you agree , “that masks make things worse”.

As for meeting inside restaurants, it's been shown that ventilation systems in small indoor spaces make them some of the worst places for transmitting the virus.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/air-flow-covid-19-restaurant-outbreak-5090663

And yes, you've got some very stupid people in your life. Sorry about that.

Too much to tackle there.

I'm sorry, but I think you all may be in denial. You said your sister would not do anything to possibly bring this virus home. You also said that she thinks it's just the flu. And you feel that you should be able to sit at a table in a restauraunt with others. That puts you closer together than the recommended 6' and you have to take off your masks to eat or drink.

Whether masks work or not can be debated, but how can they make things worse? I am pretty sure that wearing masks did NOT make the number of cases rise.

Just your little group standing in the mall talking, with some of you not wearing masks put all of you at risk.

The NFL did a very careful tracking and tracing including down to dna so they could tell exactly who got what from whom and have changed their rules based on what they found. Outdoor contact seems to be less problematic, including when players are tackling each other. Rather, one of the biggest risks which they've now banned is eating together. The unmasking, sitting near each other for periods of time especially in enclosed and poorly ventilated spaces where the air is recirculated is one of the highest risk activities.

So eating across the table from each other in a small space with people coming and going such as in a cafe is not a good idea.

DH and I won't be eating at any restaurants...unless it's outdoors...until we are both fully vaccinated.

Masks AND distance.

Masks AND distance.

MASKS AND DISTANCE!

And washing.

One of my most favorite things to do in life is eat good food, surrounded by good people, inside a good restaurant.

I have not done that since last March and will not do so again for the foreseeable future. The science on this is pretty clear.

We get take out and eat at home. It's not the same but I'm hoping that we can keep our favorite restaurants afloat until things return to some semblance of normal. Whatever that looks like now.

We do agree that masks make things worse. When we weren't wearing masks our province was getting 100-200 cases a day, *if* that many. Once they became mandatory in August the #s went up as we were seeing about 2000 a day. If masks worked, why did the numbers go up?

I think this is a post hoc ergo propter hoc logic error. Simply because cases rose after mandatory masking did not make masking the cause. Far more likely is that local government detected a rapid rise and instituted the masking, and while masking works it does nothing for the unmasked wearers in prior weeks who go on to develop Covid after being exposed.

You lost me when you wrote that you agree , “that masks make things worse”.

Me too. What a ridiculous statement.

Perhaps it was a typo?

I can't imagine eating inside of a restaurant! I miss it like crazy but won't even eat outside of a restaurant. Having masks off = exposure, period. I'm sorry you have to deal with such ignorant relatives, and more sorry that your daughter was that ill. I wish she would write them an email, detailing her symptoms while sick.

Thank goodness for your sensible daughter and I'm glad you are wearing masks despite the way you see the facts. We all have the burden of relatives that don't get it we just have to maintain our sensible approaches to the situation.

I do think you are misunderstanding and maybe conflating masks and the covid virus spreading. At least from what I have read the facts are that the covid virus spread because people didn't use masks plus maintain distance and hand, face, body and any surfaces sanitizing. Also people didn't stay home when sick.

trust me, masks works. I live in Aus, and my state developed a nasty spike in cases back in June - up to 700 cases a day. We went into 4 months of hard lockdown, with mandatory face masks inside and out. We haven't had a single case in months.

Or a death.

The two above me is what I don't understand about the argument--how can there be ANY argument?? How can there be sooooo many people who don't make the connection to mask use and lack of death?? Do they truly not give a hoot about their bothers and their sisters in this world?

No deaths in months, true. As for no life in months, everything has been open since well before Christmas (with social distancing) - and that includes restaurants and bars. The town has let them spread into the streets, and they're bustling. Amazing how much normality you can enjoy when a disease isn't circulating and killing people.

"As a species we've been roaming the Earth for millennia, living life, and accepting death as a normal part of the life cycle."

Death isn't part of the normal life cycle?

Sleeping children aren't snatched by bears or wolves anymore. There are no mass health crises on the the scale of the Black Death anymore. An infected cut doesn't lead to death anymore. Women don't die in childbirth and children don't fail to grow to become adults in the same numbers as were previously common..

Knowledge and civilization advance and along the way, the dramatic effect of lengthening and improving quality of life and treating previously fatal or incapacitating diseasers. That will continue.

There is no Mother Nature, she left town with the Tooth Fairy. .Humans need to be more considerate to and aware of how behaviors can adversely affect the environment but the environment is relatively resilient. We learn as we go and hopefully don't continue our mistakes. Because of the large, ignorant portion of our society that continues to dispute truth and facts of all kinds, that obstacle will remain a much bigger challenge.

"This idea that we're somehow above Mother Nature and we should be somehow immune from everything that is natural, it's a joke"

This idea that we somehow haven't advanced our knowledge and changed and improved our lives in all those millennia is an even bigger joke. Average life expectancy is 75, not 35; we live in houses with heating and running water; and we're communicating via computer and the internet, instead of by morse code and the telegraph. We are living lives our great grandfathers couldn't have dreamt of, never mind our ancestors of 250,000 years ago. Perhaps you need to catch up.

our ancestors lived life, faced death,

But they did not ignore danger or have an apathetic acceptance of misfortune.

That's the true human condition.

Who are you to specify what the 'human condition' consists of?

btw, just curious, are you the banned Mega Bauti?

Yahoo, if you want to be morose about the lives led by Neanderthals and their predecessors and others who preceded modern homo sapiens, have at it. The world today is what we have to assess and deal with. Things change and as with Covid and future misfortunes, science will do its best to understand and identify appropriate responses.. I'm not going to worry about it, you can if you want. It's not cocky, it's informed.

As one of many examples, ask scientists who study and track asteroids if they're worried about a forthcoming Earth collision causing a mass extinction event as happened before. Actually worried, not just vigilant. I know a couple of astronomers and they're not worried at all.

Bill Gates says another pandemic is coming after this one. If humanity is facing a population adjustment nobody alive today is going to see it as same old same old when it actually starts hitting them personally. Because overwhelming pain and suffering tend to have that effect.

But they did not ignore danger or have an apathetic acceptance of misfortune.

Exactly! Humans have always done what they had to do to protect themselves.

Yahoo has to be a troll. No one who has that lack of intelligence in real life could possibly operate a computer.

Our restaurants (Ontario) are all closed to indoor dining. Take-out only. No one is supposed to socialize with anyone outside of their household.

People living alone can have 1 person as their bubble.

Me and my good friend and neighbour consider each other our bubbles. We don't have anyone else in, and we don't spend time in each other's home. We go for walks regularly.

Elmer, just a note, women still die in childbirth.

Like you, I am Canadian, and the rise in cases at the end of August can much more easily be explained by the increase in time people spend indoors. We have pretty cold weather in Canada, and September marks the return to school and the return to a mostly indoor life. B.C. has had the same rise in cases over the fall and winter period, but no one here is attributing it to the increase in mask use. Masks work to reduce the spread, although I do agree with you that they do seem to make people less mindful of social distancing. I think people have become complacent around the danger. Hopefully your in-laws will change their minds and behavior, especially if there is an at-risk child in their bubble.

Cyn - The sentence ended with ”in the same numbers as were previously common..”

Yes, thank you food for sharing the sense of the sentence that required reading through to the end. Sorry, I can be wordy and write sentences that are too long and so hard to follow.

.

And thank you to the others for identifying that moron who was simply a contrarian. I wasn't alert enough to recognize it.

I have a coworker who will call me to complain that he went somewhere and there were some people in there with no mask on. I ask him "Were you wearing one?" And after a pause he will say, "Well, NO but I forgot it in my car, and I was not going to walk all the way back to get it, and I am the one at risk, I am 71 and diabetic, and if anyone says anything to me about not wearing one I'll tell them off." So he thinks its important for everyone else to wear a mask, just not himself. It's a conversation that we have over and over. He will spout the importance of everyone wearing masks, but really doesn't think it matters if he wears one or not. What do you do with that? I just roll my eyes and change the subject.

ARGHHHHH! My head is exploding.

Amy, you continue doing what you're doing, changing the subject. Or just stop him when he starts and let him know you're done with talking about that subject with him. Otherwise you'll keep having that conversation over and over. I'd put a stop to it ever coming up again.

There are so many things wrong with the OP's post, not the least of which is the masks not working statement, relating it to an increase in infections. SMH

On my birthday last March 4th, my daughter took me for a day in Bucks County where we had lunch by the canal. That was the last meal I have eaten in a restaurant which I previously did weekly. Super Bowl Sunday is always at my son's house. Not this year. Daughter's birthday would be at my house next Sunday. Not this year. Grandson's is two weeks later. Not this year, and finally mine March 4th. Not this year. No malls, no restaurants, no social gatherings at all. We even hike with a mask on.

Recent reduction in cases here is expected to soon be more than canceled out by the spread of much more infectious version.