Imagine if you will...

I think it helps to view all defenses against covid-19 as being leaky (none of them are 100% effective), so it makes sense to have more layers of defense.

Thank gawd we have Dementia Joe calling the shots and putting this virus down! (as he promised he would do, during his 'one issue' campaign...)

kudos to you, sir, for recognizing his work and so calling out the forces of ignorance. they have done their level best to prolong the suffering and death, but we will beat this thing, despite the anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers, the congregators and the fornicators. amen.

so youre proving his point

ah good! maybe you can straighten out these other guys. i haven't been on this stream for months, so i had no idea the level of cluelessness could get even lower than it already was. be a good big brother to them, can you?

You provided a graph saying numbers are rising
he said it can beat three vaccines

you proved his point in that you think masks work even though the numbers are rising past vaccines

I'm sure you're a busy citizen with a lot of responsibilities and not a lot of time. also, these days especially, how do you know who to trust when so many people post their opinions online anonymously and/or without giving their sources? so i recommend relying instead on the most fabulous computer on the planet: your human brain. first let's get out the instruction manual...

apparent question number one: do masks work? your brain says to itself 'well, they either do or they don't [i hear your voice as Mr. Ed, which may or may not be the case] and it serves me best to believe that they don't'. but the question your brain *should* be asking first is 'how are masks supposed to work?' this is something you can google and get logical, detailed answers. once you've done that, the question of 'do masks work?' can be answered much more independently and profitably.

question number three (or apparent question number two): is it possible for the death count to rise even if masks work? a simple soul would jump to the conclusion that 'that's not possible', but it doesn't take much deep thought to realize that it's easily possible when half the country's not masking and well over a third of the country is still not vaxxed.

and as for those pesky vaccines: did you know that they change the flu vaccine every year? and why? because new variants of the flu emerge by mutation every year and the vaccines have to address those new mutants. it's the same with covid. too many boneheads around the world didn't mask and didn't vax, giving the original strain enough time to mutate in ways that the current vaccines can handle.

you've got to stop blaming the people who are actively trying to solve the problem. or you should, anyway. put your efforts into addressing the actions of those boneheads whose boneheadedness has gotten us into this effing mess.

listen man/woman/crunch wrap supreme/whatever, all i'm saying here is your graph said there was a spike
vaccines are in place
masks are being used
and there was a spike
I'm not saying "oH THAT MEANS NONE OF THEM WORK"
I actually think they do work to an extent, I'm just concerned that inobservable side effects (effects that we can't possibly know about) may hurt in the long term more than just dealing with it, since I've already had it and been through it
but what OP said is correct- many of us do think a mask can stop it, and it has in fact found its way past three vaccines.

crunchwrapsupreme is both metaphorically accurate and inaccurate.

proper masks can stop it, common masks aren't meant to.

aren't you concerned that vaccines you got as a kid might have inobservable side effects that may hurt in the long term?

where did OP weigh in? i don't see any comments by him/her.

The vaccines I took as a kid are tried and true. The flu vaccines follow a formula that has been followed for god knows how long at this point- possibly since Louis Pasteur had the idea of viral vaccines. Any side effect from a flu vaccine would have been observed within a human lifetime. I believe a COVID vaccine might work because of its being a SARS. However, when we can't know everything about a 3-year-old virus, we can't know about a younger vaccine.

well i share your skepticism about any new science, but by your argument, we should not take a new vaccine until it's been tried by a lot of other less cautious people for a human lifetime. we can see from the data that if 40% of us do that, there's a lot of suffering and death, perpetually, and eventually the problem worsens, possibly quite dramatically, when particularly awful mutants arise. won't you join the courageous, logical people?

I don't like crowds as it is. I don't go around pulling a Blue Bell Licker or anything, and I don't intend on breathing down peoples' necks.

I can tell you I'll take the vaccine once I know the infectivity, severity and lethality of COVID statistically make the vaccine worth taking for someone of my age and health

and meanwhile you don't mind spreading the virus.