Fully vaccinated President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala walk up the stairs in the West Wing of the White House Monday, March 29, 2021. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)
Masking while fully vaccinated is a baffling contradiction. As Lionel Shriver in Spectator.US, points out, Americans are simultaneously to believe:
- Everyone must get vaccinated
- Vaccines don’t work
Wrap your head round that, insists Mr. Shriver.
Because if your vaccination overwhelmingly prevents both transmission and disease (meaning it works), even unvaccinated people present no danger to you.
So you don’t socially distance. You go to restaurants. You see your friends. And you don’t wear a mask.
Yet, bizarrely, in surveys vaccinated Americans express far less willingness than the unvaccinated to resume once-normal activities like hopping on a bus, often by a factor of two.
Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, and typically experience psychological stress when they participate in an action that goes against one or more of them.
Calling mask-wearing “cognitive dissonance” perhaps is being too generous, continues Mr. Shriver. He instead would call it “state-induced mass hysteria.”
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