Re: COVID [was: Re: DebConf 25 Daily announcements - 2025.07.15 - Daytrip information && DebConf Day 2]
Le 2025-07-18 08:29, Alex Lieflander a écrit :
You might disagree with the necessity of that mask
I don't and won't. This is your call. If you think it's better for you
or for others, whatever the reasons (that could even be defeating
automated facial recognition for example) I've absolutely no problem
with that.
Despite posing less of a risk to others than unmasked people
I'm glad that you recognize that masks reduce contamination risk (well,
as long as they are used correctly, but that's another story).
a lot of people stay away from me and glare. I can't blame them
I would: there is nothing wrong with wearing a mask. Many people wear
them preventively, not having any communicable disease. It's not
possible to know just by looking at the person why they are wearing a
mask. Or maybe infected persons should walk around with a ratchet, just
as what was the usage in medieval times?
since at least one person with COVID is walking around in a mask,
I would like to remind here (and this is not make it whataboutist
fallacy) that statistically it is almost certain that several persons
infected with COVID are currently walking around in the venue and
spreading the disease:
- people that are infected and won't have any symptom (according to
doctors, with the current variants this happens fairly often)
- people that are infected and don't yet have symptoms
- people that have symptoms and ignore them, because they are very mild
and look just like a common cold (as with my own case) or something else
(as with the local strain that is heavier on GI symptoms)
- people that unquestionably have some COVID symptoms and choose to
ignore them, because they want to avoid the consequences (from
additional distancing to self-isolation)
There is nothing that can be done about this, short of testing every
person every single day, and even then some cases would still escape the
screening (the rate of false negatives with these antigenic self-tests
is low but still significant).
If you think that having masked and careful COVID-infected persons
around makes a significant difference in terms of risks, I suspect that
you actually severely underestimate your current exposure to
contamination with the rest of the crowd around.
but my experience is awful and unfair.
And it is indeed, but not for the reasons you stated.
There's an immense social pressure to not wear a mask because of that,
and I suspect a lot of people (who would otherwise wear a mask) don't.
I think that this social pressure is exaggerated: since the beginning of
DebCamp I've seen people in the venue with masks, and they don't seem
bothered. And in this country I haven't heard of any recent report of
people being harassed because they were wearing a mask in a public
space. The overwhelming majority of people don't care.
On the other hand, I believe that the current COVID policy is
counter-productive, as it strongly disincentivizes people from testing
themselves.
Self-isolation is also proven to be harmful to the people that have to
endure it. There is a reason why solitary confinment is used as a
punishment in prisons, and considered by some to be a form of torture.
Concretely, in this DebConf, I can tell that some of the “covidés” have
shown some signs of psychological distress caused by these
circumstances, beyond what is caused by the disease itself.
That's a harmful culture that every COVID-positive person (who refuses
to self-isolate) contributes to. It also drives immune-compromised
people (and their family members, and mask-wearing people in general)
out of this community. Regardless of the exact statistics, that's a
very negative thing.
Again, if you think that excluding from the event people that test
voluntarily, find that they are positive to COVID and would have
followed some additional precautions make it significantly safer for
you, you are probably believing that you are in a safer bubble than you
actually are.
--
Julien Plissonneau Duquène
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