No one believes in living a 100% safe life. But you cannot reasonably compare an elderly person shopping with a mask in Edison and the same person going anywhere in Lakewood, with or without a mask.
Actually, it’s possible Edison is starting to see the beginnings of an outbreak after several teachers from Lakewood infected others at school.
Because of summer camps? Schools reopening before anyone else? Yom tov?
The same thing would have happened in any other community.. IMHO has nothing to do with masks.. (IOW masks wouldn't of helped in those situations)
So basically, you agree that the reason it’s prevalent is because the rules were completely ignored. You’re not really entitled to your opinion that specifically masks wouldn’t have helped, since there isn’t really a legitimate medical point of view that believes that, but no matter what the wholesale abandoning of all precautions led directly to this point and that is clear. We can argue which specific thing it was but when you factor in camps, schools, shuls, weddings, no masks, no distancing, no capacity limits, all indoors, people who were exposed/infected continuing to circulate and infect others, the sum total caused the predictable outbreak. So, to answer
@Mordyk ’s straw man argument, if you can’t keep all people who are higher risk fully locked up, you should require everyone to exercise a certain amount of caution in their lives, with higher risk people being even more cautious.
Nobody wants everyone to be locked down, but the consequences we are facing now are a direct result of being unwilling to take lesser action earlier. Our insistence on reacting instead of being proactive is what caused this. As a society, we seem to have both poor hindsight and foresight.
-It’s unfair to make everyone stay locked down forever just for older people.
-It’s unfair to make older people stay locked down forever because you can’t wear a mask and stay a couple feet away from people in Shul.