Remember to "follow the science"!
Yes, this is a real thing that is happening, and the independent Stanford Review newspaper couldn't believe it.
On Wednesday, September 22nd, in the 1:00 pm hour, I observed 400 Stanford cyclists on Lasuen Mall, a popular campus street for bicycles. I simply noted whether each cyclist wore a mask, a helmet, neither, or both. Here are the final tallies:
Total cyclists: 400 - (100%)
No mask, no helmet: 195 - (49%)
Mask, no helmet: 134 - (34%)
Helmet, no mask: 42 - (10%)
Mask and helmet: 29 - (7%)
That works out to a masking rate of 41% and helmet-wearing rate of 17%. So, Stanford students are about twice as likely to wear a mask on a bicycle as a helmet. To be certain, there's a margin of error here -- I can only count so many cyclists at a time, and I'm sure I missed some. But the point stands that at one of America's leading research universities, students wear masks on bicycles at a higher rate than they wear helmets.
The chances of serious injury or death from Covid are exceedingly small to healthy college students, and when vaccinated, almost infinitesimal. There are, frankly, 101 different ways to die that a Stanford student could be worried about, and Covid shouldn't be one of them (vaxxed or not).
(Oh, and the chance of you getting Covid on a bike outside is actually less than you getting hit by lighting ten times in a row, then eaten by flying sharks.)
Not riding a bike on a helmet, however, is risky, since mass times acceleration where brain matter and pavement are involved results quite predictably in really bad outcomes.
Is it a delusion? Do students actually think that wearing a mask on a bicycle to prevent transmission of a respiratory virus they've been vaccinated against is a good idea? Maybe it's just laziness -- easier to keep the mask on for five minutes then take five seconds to take it off. I think a combination of laziness and signaling is probably the right answer.
"A combination of laziness and signaling..."
Has any phrase more aptly described the average college student of today??
I'll leave you with the beautiful ending to the Stanford Review's article:
Stanford is somewhat unique among top universities in that we have actual scientists in leadership positions, including a neuroscientist as our President. So, what does it say about our brain-scientist-in-chief that he has failed to convince Stanford students to wear bicycle helmets (including when the university gave out free helmets!) but has successfully created an environment where bicycle-masking is routine? In my judgement, it's a pretty big embarrassment for a public scientist and leader like MTL.
But it won't be viewed as a scientific failure, because science is dead; idiocy and innumeracy have won a total victory. And though I will continue to be deeply confused when I see masked bicyclists on campus, I have realized that there is an ironic logic to their decision: after all, there's no point in protecting your brain if you don't plan on using it. At Stanford, nobody expects you to do either.
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