THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT PASSED A MASK LAW!
Jul. 7th, 2020 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: illness, poison, (mild) asphyxiation]
HELL YES!!
---
The original inkling for this post, before I learned about that, was "every breath in a public space is a cost-benefit analysis and it's exhausting".
I was particularly aware of it at work yesterday, of the calculus going on in my brain. Breathe shallowly in the front of house. Breathe more shallowly if someone just coughed; hold your breath (and walk quickly) when you must pass close to a customer, or moderately close to one that coughed; breathe a little deeper in the back of house and when there have been few customers lately, but still regulated, still not as deep as one would like. Take deep breaths while cleaning the outside, to steel oneself for going back in.
I've been yawning more at home lately, and while I expect *part* of it is tiredness, I think a lot of it is my body relishing the option to take deep breaths, and to open its jaw wide without fear of messing up the mask.
---
Mom grumbles about "stupid people" being careless, but the thing is that it's mostly not stupidity. Most of them seem to be reacting quite rationally to the situation *given their values*. They're running the same analyses I am but with different good/bad weightings placed on the potential actions and outcomes, and that's why they get different results. They care less about getting sick and therefore take fewer actions to avoid it: their reasoning is fine but their *values* are wrong. Which seems harder to fix: bad reasoning can be worked around simply by finding someone they trust to tell them to act differently, and sometimes outright fixed with a good explanation, while values are more fundamental.
...except, of course, there's always brute-force changing of the incentives. With a mask law, my former equilibrium course of action has fewer costs and their former equilibrium has more. I'll be breathing a little deeper, and they'll be grumbling about overabundance of caution. But the fact is, we will all be safer.
(And perhaps some of them--*especially* the sniffling ones--will learn firsthand about the *other* benefits of masks. My throat's the best it's been in years! I wish it were under better circumstances, and of course the overall situation is still worse on net, but I *love* being allowed (also required, but whatever) to wear a mask to work. I hadn't realised just how much of my pollen exposure was at work, from people constantly opening the front door and letting in the outside air. In previous years I'd just assumed--upon observing that my sore throats were less frequent and milder, but not gone altogether--that masks were helpful but not always enough, while actually masks are great *if you can wear them consistently*. I've had *maybe* one pollen attack all year, and a marginal one at that.)
---
P.S., re: cost-benefit analysis: I think it says a lot that the few masked customers at work are mostly old: illness has greater costs for them, which helps to cancel out their lower baseline level of caring. (For that matter, it says a lot that our percentage of masked customers is *vastly* lower than at the grocery store: people who *do* care a lot about not getting sick cost-benefit-analyse buying groceries and conclude "yes, but wear a mask", and analyse buying takeout and conclude "*don't go at all*". *Legally* we are an essential service, but the will of the collective has spoken and it has said that we are not: people who only go out for essentials don't go here. The only people a fast-food worker sees are the people who don't care much, with a few exceptions from higher-caring people allowing themselves the *occasional* treat†.)
---
†Personally, I've started buying my occasional treats at the grocery store, which I have to go to anyway. Having been a fast-food worker in the midst of plague, having both breathed the costly air and served the rotting food, I won't do that to other workers *or* to myself. The pouch of organic baby food I bought because I've always been curious about it is sealed and has a clear expiration date; I avoided the fancy juice blend with a clear expiration date of the previous day, in a way I wouldn't be able to do with takeout.
HELL YES!!
---
The original inkling for this post, before I learned about that, was "every breath in a public space is a cost-benefit analysis and it's exhausting".
I was particularly aware of it at work yesterday, of the calculus going on in my brain. Breathe shallowly in the front of house. Breathe more shallowly if someone just coughed; hold your breath (and walk quickly) when you must pass close to a customer, or moderately close to one that coughed; breathe a little deeper in the back of house and when there have been few customers lately, but still regulated, still not as deep as one would like. Take deep breaths while cleaning the outside, to steel oneself for going back in.
I've been yawning more at home lately, and while I expect *part* of it is tiredness, I think a lot of it is my body relishing the option to take deep breaths, and to open its jaw wide without fear of messing up the mask.
---
Mom grumbles about "stupid people" being careless, but the thing is that it's mostly not stupidity. Most of them seem to be reacting quite rationally to the situation *given their values*. They're running the same analyses I am but with different good/bad weightings placed on the potential actions and outcomes, and that's why they get different results. They care less about getting sick and therefore take fewer actions to avoid it: their reasoning is fine but their *values* are wrong. Which seems harder to fix: bad reasoning can be worked around simply by finding someone they trust to tell them to act differently, and sometimes outright fixed with a good explanation, while values are more fundamental.
...except, of course, there's always brute-force changing of the incentives. With a mask law, my former equilibrium course of action has fewer costs and their former equilibrium has more. I'll be breathing a little deeper, and they'll be grumbling about overabundance of caution. But the fact is, we will all be safer.
(And perhaps some of them--*especially* the sniffling ones--will learn firsthand about the *other* benefits of masks. My throat's the best it's been in years! I wish it were under better circumstances, and of course the overall situation is still worse on net, but I *love* being allowed (also required, but whatever) to wear a mask to work. I hadn't realised just how much of my pollen exposure was at work, from people constantly opening the front door and letting in the outside air. In previous years I'd just assumed--upon observing that my sore throats were less frequent and milder, but not gone altogether--that masks were helpful but not always enough, while actually masks are great *if you can wear them consistently*. I've had *maybe* one pollen attack all year, and a marginal one at that.)
---
P.S., re: cost-benefit analysis: I think it says a lot that the few masked customers at work are mostly old: illness has greater costs for them, which helps to cancel out their lower baseline level of caring. (For that matter, it says a lot that our percentage of masked customers is *vastly* lower than at the grocery store: people who *do* care a lot about not getting sick cost-benefit-analyse buying groceries and conclude "yes, but wear a mask", and analyse buying takeout and conclude "*don't go at all*". *Legally* we are an essential service, but the will of the collective has spoken and it has said that we are not: people who only go out for essentials don't go here. The only people a fast-food worker sees are the people who don't care much, with a few exceptions from higher-caring people allowing themselves the *occasional* treat†.)
---
†Personally, I've started buying my occasional treats at the grocery store, which I have to go to anyway. Having been a fast-food worker in the midst of plague, having both breathed the costly air and served the rotting food, I won't do that to other workers *or* to myself. The pouch of organic baby food I bought because I've always been curious about it is sealed and has a clear expiration date; I avoided the fancy juice blend with a clear expiration date of the previous day, in a way I wouldn't be able to do with takeout.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 02:41 pm (UTC)