Here are three less cynical ways of thinking about this:
Firstly, other people have different preferences than you do. Most people in Berlin worry much less about the personal consequences of catching covid than most people on LessWrong do. And sure, wearing masks more carefully helps other people too. But so does recycling, or helping old ladies across the street. It's reasonable for people to make different choices about what types of altruistic behaviour they should prioritise (at least in cases where the size of the benefit is pretty unclear, like it is here).
Secondly, thinking things through for yourself is costly in time and effort. It's reasonable for most people to spend very little time reasoning from first principles about how to reduce their covid risk, and to instead just listen to what the government/everyone else says, e.g. by following "socially approved rituals against COVID-19". (Indeed, I think many rationalists would also have benefited from spending far less time thinking about covid.)
Thirdly, policymakers are dealing with many complex tradeoffs under a great deal of uncertainty. Mandating masks is a step which helps reduce the spread of covid. Ensuring that every individual step in implementing the mask mandate is carried out competently is a huge deal of effort, and so even if the highest-level decisionmakers were totally rational, you'd expect to see a bunch of local inefficiencies like security guards wearing suboptimal masks.
Secondly, policymakers are dealing with many complex tradeoffs under a great deal of uncertainty.
There are things that are uncertain and there are issues that are not.
I don't see what's so hard about saying: "Please only speak in public transport when necessary to reduce the chance of infecting other people"
by following "socially approved rituals against COVID-19". (Indeed, I think many rationalists would also have benefited from spending far less time thinking about covid.)
A few Bay Area people overdid thinking about COVID-19 (as evidenced by the on...
Basically, yes. I became cynical long ago, and I've found very little to improve my expectation of median human rationality. There are pockets of exceptions, both small subpopulations that do pretty well, and small topics where many do well. But the normal case is pretty bad.
IMO, you would make your post more generally applicable with no loss in fidelity of answer if you stopped the title at "How do you deal with people", and end with "It becomes increasingly hard for me to take people seriously".
I do become cynic, but mainly when I'm thinking about the long timescales involved between "thinking from first principles" over "risk/benefit analysis" and "scientific consensus" to "political rule-making". On the level of individuals, I'm becoming more and more ok with people "engaging in socially approved rituals against COVID-19". When institutions like the WHO and the CDC, or like the RKI and the STIKO in Germany, often fail at proper reasoning, we can't expect normal people to do better.
Concerning the security people with less masking: Accodring to the German work protection law and the "DGUV Regel 112–190", employees need to have a break of 30 minutes without ANY mask after wearing a non-ventilated FFP2 mask for 75 minutes. This is not feasible in the average workplace environment, so there is no practical way to enforce FFP2 mask use, as employers would need to grant those 30 minutes. Apart from nurses and doctors in direct contact with COVID-positive patients, even hospitals only mandate surgical masks for all staff.
In the podcast between Spencer Greenberg and Jacob Falkovich, Jacob makes the point that it seems like people don't understand that COVID-19 is caused by a virus and that they [think the] way to prevent getting it is to show one's virtue by engaging in socially approved rituals against COVID-19.
How do you deal emotionally with it?
Is there anything you can do to change the situation?
Is there anything you can do to change the situation?
I don't have the connections to push ideas to be considered in Berlin's policy making that I might have had 10 years ago.
Most of my effort went into high level discussion on LessWrong. More politically, I emailed Cummings in the beginning about speeding up vaccine development. I might have convinced one local politician that not taking up Winfried Stoecker on his offer was a bad idea (but that's not a decision that's made on the city level).
It might have been a strategic earlier to not engage with local politics earlier.
At the moment it seems like the most important switch is updating the vaccines and it's unclear whether there's anyone that I could talk to, to speed that up.
At the moment there's also general reopening, so I think there would be little interest in adding additional measures such as encouraging people to talk less on public transport or providing people with easy access to fit testing.
If everyone wears ventless FFP2s, I doubt that enough aerosols could escape regardless of factors such as fit, mask degradation, or talking. However, I'd like to see this assumption tested in a controlled environment.
I am curious ,what does the data say? Is wearing even a poorly fitting mask better at preventing you from spreading covid compared to not wearing amask at all?
I am curious ,what does the data say?
Generally, there are a lot of questions where we don't have good data.
The question of whether to require FFP-2 masks is not one of compare a FFP-2 mask to no mask. The point of FFP-2 masks is that they can seal so that all the air gets filtered which a surgery mask can't. Requiring people to wear FFP-2 masks (not allowing any passenger who wears just a surgery mask on public transportation) but not do anything to help them to wear them in a way that seals is what's strange.
In Berlin there are rules for public transportation where all passengers have to wear FFP-2 masks. Nobody, seems to care whether people wear the masks in a way that seals. The security personal in public transportation only wears surgical masks. Whenever, I see security personal in public transportation they do nothing besides standing around. Security personal that stands around doing nothing might make people feel safer, but the idea of having security personal with less masking makes them unable to credible enforce mask wearing and endangers passengers. People on public transportation talk the same amount they did pre-COVID-19, seemingly not knowing that talking widely increases spread.
In the podcast between Spencer Greenberg and Jacob Falkovich, Jacob makes the point that it seems like people don't understand that COVID-19 is caused by a virus and that they way to prevent getting it is to show one's virtue by engaging in socially approved rituals against COVID-19.
It becomes increasingly hard for me to take people seriously and the security people with less masking then the passenger were a huge strike. How do you deal emotionally with it? Do you become cynic?