Masks help but minimally because the virus is so small. Masks no masks it spreads and different variants affect people differently. Also people who are compromised through age or other respiratory deficiencies (unhealthy out of shape) are most susceptible. Large gatherings do NOT show to increase the spread. If you are susceptible to a particular variant you will likely get it. I work in our hospital analytics and there is no connection to our spikes and holidays or other large gatherings. This is the part that is most difficult for me... our CEO addresses our system pointing at our major spike that took place in July last year calling it the “4th of July spike” we peaked in our admitted census at 687 patients on July 20th after that we trended down to 200 in early October when it went up to 300 during the holidays and then back down as far as 89 patience last month… we’re now moving back up and are currently at about 170. The “4th of July spike" clearly began in early June... it has ZERO do do with the 4th in fact if you believe there is a incubation period the 4th is when things got better because 3 weeks later is when our numbers started to fall.

numbers went up during the holidays in a matching trend to the typical flu season. I'm not saying it's the flu I'm just saying the trend was similar, I understand this to be a be new variant that the population handled better because the most susceptible didn't survive from the first round. 

we now have the delta variant which is causing another increase. Based on the CDC delta variant is covered by the vaccine but to a lessor degree so it's like the mutations they try to predict in the yearly flu shot 

I spoke to someone yesterday at work who thinks this increase is due to the athletic events at full capacity which is so dumb because they have been full for months... the super bowl was here and the CFB championship all early on and during the beginning of our big down turn to 89 census. It's about the variant and this thing mutates fast 

people get this narritive in their head that we have all this In our control but that is a dream. the #1 thing we have in our control is our health... are you in shape? Because if a variant comes through you're susseptie to you're going to get it, vaccine would probably help but not as much as being healthy, this is why I believe everyone over 55 or so should get it 

I work in healthcare and I'm ashamed how cowardly people are being, people will not think for themselves, censorship is absolutely happening and so is ostracizing our own who want to question things... just simply questioning the first ever RNA vaccine quickly introduced to the population is cause for people to be rude and demeaning. it's a sad time