Fighting the coronavirus pandemic has included fighting disinformation from people who deny that the virus is serious or even exists.
Governor Holcomb says one reason the state has published regular updates on the virus’s spread is to make sure people understand how serious it is. One handicap in controlling the virus has been persuading people to wear masks and take other precautions. The state has had a mask mandate since July, but without enforcement provisions. Holcomb says the three-month surge in cases and hospitalizations has broken He suggests some people weren’t virus deniers, but were “shy” about asking those around them to wear masks or take other precautions. At this point, he says, a growing number of Hoosiers have seen the virus strike people close to them.
Holcomb notes the virus burned through the U-S at an unprecedented pace in December, with one death every 35 seconds. Indiana had one death every 17 minutes last month, with the total death toll since the start of the pandemic approaching nine-thousand.
Holcomb has never ruled out increasing restrictions if things get worse, but says there’s no need to do that right now. He similarly says he can’t rule out the possibility of a surge severe enough to cancel the NCAA’s plan to hold its entire men’s basketball tournament in Indiana. But he says he’s confident that won’t happen. He says assessing whether the tourney could be conducted safely was a key focus of discussions with the NCAA, and says Indiana will have the benefit of watching how other sports leagues have handled their return to the field.
And while Holcomb acknowledges vaccinations got off to a slow start, he predicts a snowball effect as more people see that it’s safe. A Family and Social Services Administration survey of nursing home staffers found a quarter of them planned to get vaccinated eventually, but not as soon as they became eligible. Holcomb says many others take a similar position of watching to see what happens with the first wave.
Holcomb concedes some people will never accept the seriousness of the virus or the value of masks, saying, “The folks who just do not believe the virus is airborne-transmitted….I mean, I’ve got beachfront property in Clermont that I’d like to talk to you about.”
5 comments
If masks are so effective why the massive outbreak in December? Because they are not able to stop any airborne virus that is why! People are so gullible. If you can breathe air through a mask…you can breathe a virus through the mask. I guess because a politician says masks are the answer we are to automatically believe it. I am sure that there is a pile of data that somehow proves the massive upwards spike in December was caused by people not wearing masks. I got the virus and I wear mask everywhere…I must be an anomaly.
Prove to me that masks make a significant difference. I’ve got ACTUAL data from a study in Denmark that shows that I have a 1.8% chance of catching the virus if I wear a mask and a 2.4% chance of catching it if I don’t.
If masks work, then why are Canada’s, California’s, and New York city’s cases still way up?
Prove to me that the virus is as deadly as we were told in the beginning. per the CDC the IFR(Infection fatality ratio) for most people(ages 0 – 70) is .5%
Where is Eric’s evidence?
Good luck getting that data out of Holcomb, Whitmer or anyone else who claims that masks are so important. Not that I am arguing against masks, but I agree that the effectiveness is negligible and what drives me crazy is the fact that everyone tries to make wearing a mask the most important thing we can do, which is not the case. According to Whitmer, ‘We’ve known for a long time that masks work’ or ‘studies show that masks work’ and ‘the single most important thing we can do is simply wear a mask’. If that were the case, then this would have been over a long time ago since we have had mask mandates in place since the summer with generally high compliance in public. Every state and every country that has had mask mandates in place for a long time are seeing the same spikes. I can’t be that people just stopped being outside for the most part in late Oct and Nov, it must be that everyone all just stopped wearing their masks…
Technically the mask reduces your chance of transmission by 25% using those numbers, but those numbers are so minuscule that it is irrelevant.
If it hasn’t worked in the last 10 months why do we think it’s going to work in the next year? Stupid is as stupid does!!! and our Government is as useless as wiping before you go.
But then again they don’t use common sense.