I think people are just burning out and giving up, honestly, and having it brought to their attention just triggers a defensive response, whichever comes to mind that seems the most reasonable and least hurtful at the time. Since there isn't any end point on the horizon or any expectation that it will ever end it's demoralizing; people are, without consciously realizing it, deciding it's just not worth it if it has to go forever.

Then you have to comment on it if you're in leadership in DSA, since ostensibly you want electoral success which is obviously not going to be something you get by promoting masking and isolation. Especially if you aren't gonna break with the democratic party, which it's obvious they aren't going to do. I think they've calculated it's a bad play for getting "results."

Masking is annoying and an extra expense. People generally don't want to do it, nor do they want to have to take other safety measures that restrict their activities. They were willing to go along with these measures for a time, but this was always on the assumption that they'd go back to normal sooner or later, preferably sooner. The balancing of the desire for personal safety and the desire to go back to normal eventually tipped towards the latter largely because of peer pressure, what experts and authority figures said, and the media environment all shaping the risk assessment of COVID.

Vaccines become available, and they're pitched as a silver bullet solution, the path to go "back to normal". Joe Brandon comes out saying "pandemic's over, stop masking, get the fuck back to work", his admin pressures the CDC to come out saying "stop masking", the media all say "stop masking", and liberals, between a combination of deference to experts/authority figures and a desire for COVID to actually be over, all went back to normal. The number of people who are skeptical of the CDC in left-wing ways is probably under 5% of the population. If 19 out of 20 are no longer masking (being generous), most of that left over 5% will just go along with it without questioning things.

Those who do question things have their risk assessment distorted because every source you'd expect to tell you about a deadly virus that can permanently disable people is treating it like it's magically no longer a big deal, and every person in their life is pressuring them to stop. This is coupled with the active removal of eg tests and wastewater data which makes it even harder to tell what's actually going on.

Then we got to the point where just about everyone's back to normal (probably around 2023?), and instead of media deliberately saying not to take any precautions, it just stops being covered entirely. The most COVID "coverage" I see now is stuff like a youtuber/twitch streamer/podcaster having to take a few weeks off due to COVID (or my favorite, a non-specific cold when you know they didn't test) and then having a perpetual cough. The average person no longer thinks of COVID at all until they see me wearing an N95 and ask "hey what's the deal".

They are not left. The vast majority of "leftists", in the US at least, are to liberals what liberals are to conservatives. They see what the outgroup is doing, take a step to the left and then say, "well at least I'm not them." Their politics are just as much virtue signalling and aesthetics as any other

Along with a bunch of other leftist books, I read Newton's Revolutionary Suicide in the midst of when libs were rolling back precautions. And the stark difference in mindset between what it takes do the things the Black Panthers were doing and the Back to Normal arguments really highlighted this. The absolute surrender in their "endemic" rhetoric contrasted to reading about the struggles of actual revolutionaries was just

And yes, manufacturing consent and all that, but they're still a bunch of libs and should be reminded of it regularly.

If y'all are looking for actual Leftists I very much recommend getting involved with Disability Justice related groups and Mask Blocs. Even if not explicitly leftist, I've found a lot of their work and rhetoric blend into mutual aid and direct action.

I've seen people try to spin masking as a mark of white privilege and a restriction of the freedoms of non-white people.

absolute bullshit. i don't ever see any white people wearing masks. rather, all the times i see anyone masking at this point it's Black and Asian people that are overrepresented.

i will never stop wearing a mask until my health, and the health of our communites are no longer at risk. all the attitudes listed here are a fucking joke, especially coming from those who are supposed to be our comrades. and we see a lot of similar rhetoric here as well, i'm tired of it.

I still mask. Two of my elderly relatives have bad lung and heart issues and another has just successfully battled cancer.

Does the mask make my face sweat in warmer months? Yes.

Does the mask make me out of breath easier when I’m doing things? Yes.

Do I get strange looks for still masking? Yes.

But it’s worth it to avoid potentially killing my family members, or someone else’s family members.

To be clear, the left is better than other political strains on this. Throughout the pandemic the left has taken covid more seriously than anyone else.

With that said, it is notable how easily and early nominally left groups, particularly in the imperial core, embraced normalization of the pandemic. They are the people one might've hoped to be resistant to this. The fact that they aren't tells you how principled they are, how well they can resist propaganda, how treat-addicted they are, how little discipline they have, and of course, how unstrategic they are in not choosing this battle. I think those on the left like to pat ourselves on the back for being more correct than everyone else but so not have sufficient practice in self-crit to organize anywhere near as well as we could be doing. We should accept and struggle against our internalized liberalism and that includes looking for excuses to not wear masks during an aerosol viral pandemic.

Before I comment, I want to emphasise that this has nothing to do with my mod status. This isn't authoritative nor the opinion of the site. It's all just vibes from me now. I can't stress enough, just vibes.

Somehow I get mildly frustrated with the "why aren't more leftists doing X" posts. Ya, I wish more leftists were masking. I wish more leftists were vegan. I wish more leftists weren't using ableist language. I wish more vegans were anti-imperialists and anti-racists.

I do feel that leftists are much better on masking than other groups, even if nearly all of us don't mask. Am I disappointment that left friends aren't masking? Fuck yes. I guess I compare the annoyance I feel at non masking leftists vs quite openly anti-masking advocacy done by libs. This is all just my feeling, but left friends (so far) aren't pushing me to unmask.

Covid minimization was clearly driven by the needs of capital, and the left should reflexively reject it.

You're absolutely right. People have been brainwashed by all the fucking propaganda. Others just fall by the wayside. NGL it's been very hard for me, and I'm a middle aged white guy with an OK job and no kids. I don't know what my point is with this paragraph, but damn do I feel the social pressure.

Don't take this comment seriously as I don't know what I am saying.

how this became leftist dogma

It isn't.

Also

Yet we see largely the same attitudes from leftist politicians and organizations

...

"If you guys want to get really sad, check out r/ZeroCovidCommunity. It’s filled with people who are shut ins who lost their family, friends, and jobs because of their fear of catching COVID."

They say "politicians and organizations" and then include a reply they obviously got on reddit somewhere, which has no bearing on anything.

Seattle DSA has had a few votes on masking at DSA meetings. It's basically about 50/50 split on continuing to mask vs not requiring them. The last two votes I was present for came down on the side of continuing to require masks at meetings.

So anecdotally it isn't one way or the other I guess.

I recently went to Taiwan this summer and the gift bag with accessories they gave me contained covid masks. So this is purely anecdotal on my part, but masking and non-masking might be more based in national differences than political ones. East Asian countries as I saw took covid more seriously than the west, and in general had a masking culture anyway (due to fashion + desire for annoynymity + air pollution) before covid.

In the west however masking was seen as a "emergency measure we need to do during this ABNORMAL time for a temporary while". Once the panic over covid subsided people relaxed and decided they weren't going to mask anymore. Plus, businesses did push covid minimisation ideology, and the western left (the left of few places really) is not immune to picking up harmful ideas/vibes by osmosis.

In general, we in the west should be masking more seriously even if you discount covid. It prevents the spread of diseases in general (ex -flu season sucks major ass for me), reduces the air pollutants you breath in and probably also degrades the data being collected by cameras. If not the CCTVs, at least it can reduce how much you show up in other people's photos lol. Not to mention, a masking culture can be useful for making people with allergies feel more open to protecting themselves as well.

I don't know but I'm getting fed up with it, especially the insinuation that it's some kind of trauma or anxiety response. No, if someone tries to paint you with that brush just because you put on a mask to go to the supermarket, that's a reflection of them and their unprocessed anxiety and trauma over COVID, which I'm not judging except when they try to make that my problem. I don't even think twice about masking at this point, it's just PPE, like putting a seatbelt when you get in a car, I just put the mask on when I go to the store, class, or work. There's no debate, I just do it. It's not a big deal until someone makes it a big deal, and for some reason I've caught more of than in the past couple months than in the entire preceding five years.

Masking was a lot easier when there was hope that some day we wouldn't have to do it anymore. Now the ask has become "wear a mask in public situations forever" and that's a much harder sell.

liberalism

CIA controls all media. They want profits to go up, thus people have to not care about covid and go back to work.

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