[HN Gopher] The case against masks at school
___________________________________________________________________
The case against masks at school
Author : hrl
Score : 157 points
Date : 2022-01-26 16:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| There have been numerous studies showing that mechanically N95
| and equivalent masks can greatly reduce the emission of
| coronavirus and influenza, and can also greatly reduce the intake
| of coronavirus-sized particles.
|
| That's why these types of articles always focus on mask mandate
| effectiveness instead of mask effectiveness. How many schools
| with mask mandates also have their lunch indoors with poor
| ventilation? Can you wear a mask while eating? How many have
| their noses sticking out all day? How many are wearing cloth
| masks?
|
| It's like having a kid constantly getting pinkeye from not wiping
| their ass properly, and then saying toilet paper is pointless,
| instead of teaching the kid how to wipe and wash properly.
| Zanneth wrote:
| It is the responsibility of public health to take all of these
| variables into account before mandating countermeasures. The
| fact that people are constantly placed in situations where mask
| effectiveness is reduced or in some cases completely eliminated
| should be evidence that mask mandates are pointless when
| applied at scale.
| uoaei wrote:
| Very confusing how people seem to keep making the illogical
| jump from "individuals follow a mask mandate improperly /
| mask mandates are insufficiently specific to cover the actual
| means of transmission" to "mask mandates are pointless".
|
| Mask mandates _done poorly_ are pointless. Obviously. But it
| is completely absurd to conclude that mask mandates _writ
| large_ are pointless.
| Zanneth wrote:
| That was a poor choice of words on my part. Instead of
| "pointless" I should have said "impractical." I think most
| of us agree that we wouldn't want to live in a world where
| kids are forced to wear N95 masks all day, with tape
| binding them to their skin, with adults constantly
| supervising their proper fit, and with absolutely no lunch
| breaks or ability to drink fluids. If mask wearing done
| poorly is the only realistic option, then we would be
| better off without them altogether.
| pcmoney wrote:
| The kids are not allowed to interact at school. Their schools
| are closed arbitrarily. They are taught that they are a vector
| of disease. We make them eat outside on cold sidewalks in
| freezing temperatures. The risk to children is very low.
|
| Meanwhile, adults are going to crowded restaurants, bars,
| concerts without masks in the same cities.
|
| It is all a joke at the expense of our children.
|
| When these kids are running our government and we are the
| retirees dependent upon them etc. then the bill will come due
| and we will deserve it.
| naasking wrote:
| > It's like having a kid constantly getting pinkeye from not
| wiping their ass properly, and then saying toilet paper is
| pointless, instead of teaching the kid how to wipe and wash
| properly.
|
| Poor adherence in young populations is exactly the point.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| There is a deep irony in that this conversation concerns
| schools and yet we're here implying that it's pointless to
| teach children anything.
| naasking wrote:
| Not sure how you go from "poor adherence on masks" to "it's
| pointless to teach kids anything".
| xdennis wrote:
| If they keep failing at teaching something, then maybe
| what's being taught is wrong, not who's taught.
|
| It's like how left-handed kids have been taught to write
| with their right hand: how many lefties must fail until
| they realize writing with your left should be acceptable?
| chaostheory wrote:
| The article points out that children have been relatively safe
| from COVID, which is true. The article doesn't really cite much
| data to support its case. The studies it cites show a positive
| benefit to masking that it fails to counter. What it also
| completely ignores is that the masks are mainly to protect
| teachers and the children's older guardians and care takers.
| I'm tired of anti-maskers.
| uoaei wrote:
| Children are safe from _having debilitating symptoms due to
| COVID_. I think it 's worth being precise with language
| because the shorthand has been confusing for many people and
| used as a bludgeon in the reopening-schools-debate. But of
| course the real issue is children getting COVID from family,
| bringing it to school, spreading it to other kids who then
| give it to other parents. I have not seen analyses which
| attempt to quantify the effect of closing schools while
| taking this into account, but I'm sure they're out there.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Also spreading it to their teachers, who are usually adults
| and who usually don't want to get deadly diseases and may
| not be willing to work without some precautions going
| towards their safety.
| pcmoney wrote:
| The virus is endemic, we are all going to get it sooner
| or later.
| uoaei wrote:
| No it is not and no we are not. You are advocating the
| sacrifice of lives which are not your own, which is
| unequivocally reprehensible.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| I mean most experts agree that it is (or will be), soooo
| yeah you should probably accept that and figure out how
| to live your life accordingly, maybe just don't go into
| public policy making though.
| pcmoney wrote:
| It is endemic. Its everywhere. Its mutating.
|
| Humanity has never stopped the spread of similar
| coronaviruses and even if we could the death rate/risk is
| not bad enough to justify the cost (this isnt
| smallpox/polio)
|
| We have vaccines. They don't stop you from getting it or
| transmitting it. They do lower probability of the
| vaccinated person getting severe/fatal covid. Clearly a
| personal health decision that should not be mandated
| (although I would encourage it)
|
| Mask are of marginal help. Mandates dont change actual
| behavior.
|
| Life goes on. (Me: triple vaxxed and have had Covid 2x)
| pcmoney wrote:
| If you don't want to contract it feel free to make
| whatever personal decisions you think will prevent it.
|
| Don't use your fear to control others and prevent them
| from making their own decisions.
| criddell wrote:
| My kids attend a university in Canada and live in residence on
| campus. They have had incredibly strict rules around masking and
| gatherings. It's clear that they are only considering one
| variable - number of infections - and it seems like they aren't
| considering any other factors.
|
| For example, in the dorm there is a common area with a piano.
| Because of COVID, playing that piano is banned. Even if there was
| a reasonable danger of contracting COVID from a piano, there are
| also mental health benefits to playing music. It doesn't feel
| like the piano ban is in the best interests of the people who
| live there and I don't think the people who set the rules care
| because they can't measure that. They can only measure
| infections.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Reminds me of (now takeout only) restaurants which have their
| bathrooms closed "for covid," or public drinking fountains
| which are still closed "for covid." Not really much to due with
| covid at this point I suspect. So it may not really be about
| measuring infections at all, but that played piano makes noise
| and requires tuning, and so administration would rather just
| not, and now there is an excuse.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| On the west coast I've seen parking at municipal parks
| completely closed "for covid". Yet the parks remain open.
|
| This means people just park in the streets around the parks.
| What's that supposed to achieve?
| moritonal wrote:
| Many places have used Covid as an excuse to regress and
| implement desired polices. Take for example the Tate Modern,
| a museum in London. Under the argument of COVID you must have
| a ticket to enter (previously free). You can get a ticket by
| scanning a QR at the door, you simply have to give an name
| and email.
|
| You can see how they got to that place, so they can control
| the density of visitors which is important because of COVID,
| but it's also something they've wanted for years.
| umvi wrote:
| "never let a good crisis go to waste"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'd imagine that's also for contact tracing.
| nradov wrote:
| No one is actually doing meaningful contact tracing
| anymore. It was a compete failure and waste of resources.
| afavour wrote:
| But is there still a requirement to get that data? It
| might not be the Tate's choice.
| autokad wrote:
| contact tracing only works when a pandemic is in the
| hundreds, maybe a few thousand tops. After that it
| becomes too intractable to trace and also yields little
| benefit.
| rhino369 wrote:
| And if its anything like American colleges, the draconian
| restrictions don't actually stop the students from crowding
| into over-packed apartment and house parties over the weekends.
| dboreham wrote:
| This has been my son's experience : masks required in the
| classroom but the students spread disease (not just COVID --
| Flu and colds as well) rampantly in the dorms.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| its the public health equivalent of the broken window fallacy.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| I would've said it was more a case of Goodhart's law:
|
| > When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good
| metric
|
| The public health equivalent of the broken window fallacy
| would be maximising the spread of disease in order to boost
| the medical industry.
| [deleted]
| huetius wrote:
| This one-dimensional approach is especially bad since the
| emergence of omicron, where number of infections doesn't even
| capture the level of COVID danger.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| This is the fundamental issue with coronavirus mitigation
| measures. There are circumstances in which "drop everything"
| makes sense - if coronavirus were ten times more fatal, we'd do
| it naturally.
|
| But in general, looking at life from a perspective of "what is
| the minimum possible quality of life we can have" is depressing
| and fundamentally incompatible with the human spirit.
|
| I tend to think that people who operate in this way are
| subhuman, in the genuine sense of the word - they seem more
| like bureaucratic automatons than living beings with spirits
| and hopes and dreams.
|
| Like, yeah, I will take the risk of contracting coronavirus to
| play the piano, because I want the piano in my life. The piano
| is what life is, life is not simply breathing and eating.
| jancsika wrote:
| > I tend to think that people who operate in this way are
| subhuman, in the genuine sense of the word - they seem more
| like bureaucratic automatons than living beings with spirits
| and hopes and dreams.
|
| Quick capsule hypothesis-- you tend toward thinking in a way
| that results in you having written the word "subhuman" on HN
| because an active pandemic tends to increase feelings of
| disgust in the affected population.
|
| Did you consider that possibility?
|
| Edit: wording
| spookthesunset wrote:
| For two years we've been asked to park our problems and to
| act like literally all that matters is the spread of Covid.
| Nothing else matters. Just a myopic fixation on the spread of
| one highly infectious respiratory virus.
|
| Even a year after vaccines we are still being asked to treat
| Covid like it is the #1 priority in our lives. More important
| than our well being, our mental health, our communities, our
| children, or anything else.
|
| Heaven help you if your value system is incompatible with
| such an idea. Be prepared to be yelled at, called names, lose
| your career, and become marginalized.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Even a year after vaccines we are still being asked to
| treat Covid like it is the #1 priority in our lives. More
| important than our well being, our mental health, our
| communities, our children, or anything else."
|
| Depends on where you live. There are many rural/red areas
| that are basically back to normal.
| subsubzero wrote:
| The north star for most countries and cities has always
| been cases over hospitalizations or deaths. With vaccine
| intake high in most developed countries a covid infection
| is like a cold or a bad flu for some. I think the time has
| come to rethink this goal of cases being a metric to shut
| down everything and let society return to some sense of
| normalcy while still maintaining a safety mandate for those
| with special conditions(who could potentially die from
| covid).
|
| Another thing to note, the CDC has mentioned that cloth
| masks are not effective against omnicron, I know this
| firsthand as my whole family wore them and we all spread it
| to each other as the masks did not stop the spread despite
| hospital levels of disinfection and extreme precaution.
| With that being said most kids masks are cloth and surgical
| masks or n95/kn95 masks(cdc says these are effective) are
| not made for little kids. So whats going on is kids are
| forced to wear masks that will not protect them against
| omicron.
|
| Lastly, although the sample size is low my daughter and
| other kids in her class got covid and had zero symptoms or
| very minor ones at worst(they were all fully vaccinated) so
| I wonder what is the benefit of these extreme precautions
| that don't really seem relevant based on government health
| declarations(cloth masks don't work, kids[who don't have
| serious medical issues] have good protection against covid
| due to age).
| hammock wrote:
| Sounds like you are on a path to awakening so I don't
| want to discourage you, but it might be worth sharing
| additional data and context to parts of your comment.
|
| >With vaccine intake high in most developed countries a
| covid infection is like a cold or a bad flu for some.
|
| That may be more driven by the mildness of Omicron than
| it is by the protective effect of the vaccine. For
| example, the latest data show that vaccinated (but not
| boosted) are getting sick and dying at higher rates than
| unvaccinated. One source (14 per 100k vs 10 per 100k): ht
| tps://publichealthscotland.scot/media/11318/22-01-26-covi
| d...
|
| >Another thing to note, the CDC has mentioned that cloth
| masks are not effective against omnicron
|
| This is something that is in all likelihood not variant-
| specific. In other words, cloth masks were always
| ineffective, however with the increased transmissibility
| of Omicron, this fact of ineffectiveness has become
| readily apparent.
| robocat wrote:
| > One source (14 per 100k vs 10 per 100k):
|
| Please do not cherry-pick data that has hidden
| confounding variables. The data DOES NOT SHOW that
| vaccinated (but not boosted) are getting sick and dying
| at higher rates than unvaccinated. You are being severely
| misleading with your statements as "facts".
|
| Most importantly "In the last week from 08 January 2022
| to 14 January 2022, in an age-standardised population,
| the COVID-19 related death rate in individuals that
| received a booster or third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine
| was between 3.2 to 9.4 times lower than individuals who
| are unvaccinated or have only received one or two doses
| of a COVID-19 vaccine.". That directly contradicts your
| "fact", and the reason is the simple one that your
| numbers are not standardised for age i.e. more older
| people are vaccinated so more vaccinated people die.
| _This should not need to be repeated ad nausium_. Pay
| attention to the facts and please stop misrepresenting
| the truth.
|
| From page 34 of that report:
|
| "PLEASE READ BEFORE REVIEWING THE FOLLOWING TABLES AND
| FIGURES There is a large risk of misinterpretation of the
| data presented in this section due to the complexities of
| vaccination data. A blog post by the UK Health Security
| Agency (UKHSA), formerly Public Health England (PHE),
| provides a comprehensive explanation of the biases and
| potential areas for misinterpretation of such data. They
| state that a simple comparison of COVID-19 case rates in
| those who are vaccinated and unvaccinated should not be
| used to assess how effective a vaccine is in preventing
| serious health outcomes, because there are a number of
| differences between the groups, other than the vaccine
| itself, and these biases mean that you cannot use the
| rates to determine how well the vaccines work. Below are
| examples of some of the complexities and biases that need
| to be taken into consideration when interpreting these
| data. This is explained in more detail in our blog on the
| PHS website." And from page 35: "There are likely to be
| systematic differences and biases between the vaccinated
| and unvaccinated groups, such as behaviour, vulnerability
| and previous infection, that are unaccounted for when
| comparing rates. As most of the population is vaccinated,
| these differences become more evident and could create
| bias in case/hospitalisation/death rates between
| vaccinated and unvaccinated population."
| hammock wrote:
| >Most importantly "In the last week from 08 January 2022
| to 14 January 2022, in an age-standardised population,
| the COVID-19 related death rate in individuals that
| received a booster or third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine
| was between 3.2 to 9.4 times lower than individuals who
| are unvaccinated or have only received one or two doses
| of a COVID-19 vaccine.". That directly contradicts your
| "fact",
|
| It does? You pulled a quote that compares boosted vs
| unvaccinated/one/two doses, and that is not the
| comparison I was making. It's possible that I'm
| misinterpreting the data, but you didn't show it right
| there.
| subsubzero wrote:
| > That may be more driven by the mildness of Omicron than
| it is by the protective effect of the vaccine
|
| So with this one I wonder if the mildness of omicron is
| due to previous infection/vaccination than the virus
| itself being mild. Like if omicron came into the scene in
| 2020 it would have been just as deadly but more
| infectious. I don't know for certain if this is true but
| was something I was thinking.
|
| As for this I 100% agree:
|
| > This is something that is in all likelihood not
| variant-specific. In other words, cloth masks were always
| ineffective, however with the increased transmissibility
| of Omicron, this fact of ineffectiveness has become
| readily apparent.
| ciceryadam wrote:
| From December 11 to January 7, 2022, 107 patients died in
| Scotland who were vaccinated twice.
|
| Most of them (more than 95 percent) received the second
| dose more than six months before their deaths. As many as
| 96 percent of them "had other health complications that
| contributed to their deaths," the PHS report said. Their
| average age was 78.1 years.
| hammock wrote:
| Yes, the vaccine effectiveness wanes quite significantly
| at 6 months.
|
| Most covid deaths, regardless of vaccination status, had
| other health complications that contributed.
|
| And the average age of covid deaths, regardless of
| vaccination status, is over 70.
|
| Was there a particular takeaway you were looking to
| impart?
| rovolo wrote:
| The scots over 70 are 100% 2+ doses. There is no
| unvaccinated comparison group in Scotland for people over
| 70.
|
| https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/phs.covid.19/viz/C
| OVI...
| rovolo wrote:
| You're taking 14 vs 10 from table 15 on page 50 on the
| report. Page 51 says:
|
| > The rates in Table 15 should not be used as a measures
| of vaccine effectiveness due to unaccounted for biases
| and risk factors.
|
| The age-standardized morality rates you mentioned are for
| just the week of Jan 8-14 (though the same pattern is
| visible for earlier weeks). But, you didn't mention
| 3-dose stats with show the opposite pattern:
|
| - Unvaccinated: 16/1.5m raw; 10/100k age adj
|
| - 2-dose: 33/1m raw; 14/100k age adj
|
| - 3-dose: 71/3m raw; 1.5/100k age adj
|
| You can't infer the protectiveness of vaccination in
| elders directly from this age-adjusted mortality data
| because _Scotland has 100% 2+ dose coverage in those age
| 60+_. The unvaccinated group only includes people under
| 60 while the vaccinated group includes both. You _have_
| to use other observations to judge the protective effect.
|
| https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/phs.covid.19/viz/C
| OVI...
|
| (In reality the number is a bit under 100% because the
| denominator and the numerator are not linked together.
| They're tracking sum totals, not individual people.)
| hammock wrote:
| >you didn't mention 3-dose stats with show the opposite
| pattern:
|
| I didn't. Boosted do show more protection than
| unvaccinated, at least for a period of time. I don't
| dispute that.
| Guidii wrote:
| To put it more directly, the same document states (on
| page 36):
|
| In the last week from 08 January 2022 to 14 January 2022,
| in an age-standardised population, the COVID-19 related
| death rate in individuals that received a booster or
| third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was between 3.2 to 9.4
| times lower than individuals who are unvaccinated or have
| only received one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine
| hammock wrote:
| You pulled a quote that compares boosted vs
| unvaccinated/one/two doses, and that is not the
| comparison I was making. It's possible that I'm
| misinterpreting the data, but you didn't show it right
| there.
| [deleted]
| hydrok9 wrote:
| How about if you have anxiety issues and the reduced inflow
| of air from masks gives you panic attacks? This has been my
| life for this pandemic. I take medication but it does not
| stop them 100% from happening, and I have to use anti-
| anxiety techniques most times I put one on to stop from
| being overwhelmed by anticipation. Does anyone care about
| people like me? It sure feels like they don't. And I have
| seen my physical and mental condition degrade largely due
| to this (I was never personally panicked by the virus
| itself). There are others like me and it is deeply
| upsetting that we have to suffer like this.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| [ EDIT: other commenters response to this comment made me
| go look up some original research on the topic. As a
| result, I fully retract what I've said below. I found
| several papers that report substantial restrictions of
| airflow from wearing a correctly fitted N95 mask.
|
| I was wrong, and I apologize for the misinformation. I
| did try to explicitly say that I was not doubting
| someone's experiences, but I apologize for appearing to
| do that too. I've left the text up because that seems
| more honest. ]
|
| I do not want to seek to diminish your very real anxiety
| and panic issues.
|
| But you should be aware that there is no actual reduced
| inflow of air due to mask wearing, certainly not one that
| you would detect physiologically. In 2020, there were
| numerous demonstrations of this, both with actual
| measurements (lung volume, blood oxygen etc.) and with
| more anecdotal illustrations such as vigorous exercise
| even while wearing multiple masks.
|
| Your mental conditions matter, and I hope you are able
| find ways to live reasonably happily without too much
| anxiety.
| adamrezich wrote:
| the retraction is appreciated but, if you'll excuse me
| for saying so, the fact that you thought this at all
| shows that we're well into "brainwashing" territory with
| this mask nonsense.
|
| it should be beyond obvious to any neutral observer that
| putting a covering over one's nose and mouth will affect
| their breathing airflow, _especially_ so when exercising.
| you don 't even have to try it yourself to intuit this,
| it's just common sense. but once you _have_ tried it,
| there should be _zero_ doubt in your mind that your
| breathing airflow is affected, especially if you 're
| actually going out of your way to ensure that you've
| sealed the mask on your face properly.
|
| I don't say this to shame or disparage you specifically,
| but instead to point out how people, broadly, are having
| their thoughts programmed, on a massive scale, to truly
| believe things that are _obviously_ contradictory to
| reality.
|
| _this should be very concerning to everyone._
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > the fact that you thought this at all shows that we're
| well into "brainwashing" territory with this mask
| nonsense.
|
| I don't agree with that. As noted, blood oxygen levels
| for most people are not changed by mask wearing
| (presumably, most of us just add the extra 20-30% effort
| to keep the airflow up and/or were nowhere near close to
| requiring the full breath).
|
| > once you have tried it, there should be zero doubt in
| your mind that your breathing airflow is affected
|
| As some comments in the main thread here have noted,
| masks like the 3M Aura+ (which I've been wearing for a
| few months now) really do not have much impact on
| breathing airflow. My actual experience of wearing KN95's
| and N95's even while running is that I do not _feel_ that
| my airflow is impacted at all. My mistake was to combine
| that actual personal experience together with data on
| physiological state while wearing masks (not changed much
| in most people) and make the false claim that there was
| no impact on airflow.
|
| Some of those comments noted that the construction and
| fit of the mask can make a huge difference - damp cloth
| masks, for example, do seem to have an outsize impact. I
| have never used cloth masks during the pandemic, and I
| live in an exceedingly dry climate, so people I know who
| have worn them have not commented much on the effects of
| them being damp.
|
| So, no, I do not agree that what I said (even while
| actually false) was "obviously contradictory to reality".
| adamrezich wrote:
| when you put a thing over your nose and mouth, it
| negatively affects how well you can breathe. depending on
| the material and how much you're currently breathing
| (exerting yourself or not, healthy or not), it may be a
| little, it may be a lot. this is basic common sense
| intuition, and propaganda about the effectiveness and/or
| necessity of masks of any description should not preclude
| you from continuing to hold these basic observable truths
| in your mind.
|
| > presumably, most of us just add the extra 20-30% effort
| to keep the airflow up and/or were nowhere near close to
| requiring the full breath
|
| how can this be considered negligible under any
| circumstances? even if the observed difference in effort
| required seems negligible for you personally, why would
| it be the same for everyone? I can think of many, many
| reasons why 20-30% additional effort _to breathe_ can be
| extremely impactful for many different people with
| different personal circumstances.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Let's try an (thought) experiment:
|
| Put a tennis racket in front of your face. Does it impede
| airflow? I think the answer is clearly no.
|
| Put a plastic bag over the your nose and mouth? Does it
| impede airflow? I think the answer is clear yes.
|
| Put a food sieve over your mouth and nose. Does it impede
| airflow? I think the answer is probably no, but there's
| room for doubt.
|
| Clearly, something placed over your mouth and nose does
| not necessarily impede airflow - it depends on the
| properties of the material it is made of. Some materials
| obviously have no impact, some have a lot, others are
| inbetween.
|
| So the question is: why you conclude without careful
| measurement that a given mask would impede airflow?
| Presumably you have some intuition about the material and
| what you know about its properties ("It stops X percent
| of all particles above a certain size!") that lead you to
| conclude that it's somewhere between a food sieve and
| plastic bag, rather than a tennis racket and a food
| sieve. But there's no "common sense" here. How can
| Goretex fabric allow water vapor to pass freely, but not
| allow water in liquid phase to pass at all? You cannot
| explain that using common sense, but again, you have some
| intuition that you can use common sense to reason about
| the properties of masks.
|
| I should also stress that the 20-30% number comes from a
| 2009 paper on the reduction in airflow. The increase in
| breathing effort could be less than that, unchanged or
| more than that, depending on a large number of factors.
| Example: sitting on a sofa in a comfortable temperature
| and being very relaxed ... you are already breathing
| fairly shallowly, and the increase required to overcome
| whatever effect the mask has will move you only to a
| condition you are in very regularly anyway, and so will
| likely be unnoticeable (there's also the "X percent of a
| small number is a small number" aspect). By contrast, if
| you are exercising near V02max levels and in excellent
| cardiovascular condition, you are likely already
| breathing almost as hard as you can, and so breathing
| harder due to reduced airflow is likely to challenging to
| impossible.
| subsubzero wrote:
| What are you talking about with masks not restricting
| airflow, totally not correct and absolute misinformation.
| Here is what happens when you wear a mask while
| exercising hard:
|
| https://ktvz.com/news/coronavirus/2021/04/26/summit-hs-
| runne...
| hydrok9 wrote:
| I do not want to seek to diminish your very real belief
| that my issues are not real. But they are. My panic
| attacks in public started when I had to wear masks. When
| I am anxious or stressed, my breathing shallows. When
| this happens and I am wearing a mask, i have even less
| airflow coming in. I have tested this by simply lowering
| my mask, and examining how much air enters my nasal
| cavity. It is a huge difference. Or, I should say, it
| makes a huge difference to my mental state, even if the
| change in oxygen is relatively small.
|
| My psychiatrist, therapist and gp all confirmed this.
| Frankly, you should trust people with these actual
| conditions. We are living it, you aren't.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I tried to explicitly state that I believe that your
| mental experiences are real and worthy of attention and
| care.
|
| > I should say, it makes a huge difference to my mental
| state, even if the change in oxygen is relatively small.
|
| This is the key point. The change in airflow and oxygen
| is extremely small. None of that means your mental state
| does not change when wearing a mask, but it is probably
| useful to understand that this is not due to a
| physiological process involving less oxygen/air.
|
| [ EDIT: one possible answer is change in the CO2
| conditions and/or thermal conditions: e.g.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8450908/ ]
|
| [ EDIT 2: I was wrong. Please see original comment + edit
| at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30104420 ]
| hydrok9 wrote:
| The key point is that you are wrong. It is absolutely due
| to a physiological process. You are telling me that it is
| "all in my head," and that it is impossible that a cloth
| mask over my face restricts my airflow. I am telling you
| it isn't.
|
| >I tried to explicitly state that I believe that your
| mental experiences are real and worthy of attention and
| care.
|
| I appreciate that. But you should be aware that people
| with anxiety hear this all the time. "What you believe is
| true matters. And is important. Now, having said that..."
| it isn't helpful and not really all that respectful,
| really. I can tell you with 100% certainty that
| restricting my breathing gives me anxiety. Not the idea
| of it, but the actual act itself. And that I feel less
| air entering my body, and more anxiety, when I wear
| masks. Other people have said the exact same thing
| happens to them in this thread. It's your choice who to
| believe.
|
| Edit: saw your edit. Maybe it's not "oxygen," per se, and
| another chemical is to blame. That would be helpful, if I
| knew the exact mechanism! But unfortunately, not very
| useful in solving the mask/anxiety issue. I've opted just
| to get a shitty mask (in medical terms) that will suit
| me, for my health needs.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Please see my larger edit in my original comment at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30104420
|
| I was wrong.
| mh- wrote:
| Thank you for owning that and the edit.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| Thank you.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Have you tried using a plastic mask insert/bracket? I
| find them very helpful. It lifts the mask off my mouth
| and nose, so the mask doesn't feel as constricting and I
| no longer suck in cloth when I'm breathing harder.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| I'll try it! Thanks
| mh- wrote:
| I wonder if the shallowed breathing is a physiological
| response that only some of us experience while wearing
| masks. It could explain why there are two very different
| experiences for people when masked.
|
| I fortunately don't experience panic attacks from wearing
| a mask, but I will consistently get a headache from
| wearing one. And it's the same-feeling kind of headache I
| get from being in another enclosed space without air
| circulation.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| It could be. To me it doesn't feel like there is a
| difference in the cadence of my breathing, after I put
| the mask on. I simply have less oxygen coming in. I
| probably should be breathing more deeply, all the time!
| Then perhaps the mask wouldn't make a noticeable
| difference. But after a lifetime of dealing with anxiety,
| I've learned to trust my body. My mind can lie to me when
| im anxious, but my body generally doesn't.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| Not disagreeing with any of your comments about masks;
| but FWIW, as another person with a diagnosed & medicated
| anxiety disorder, your (our) body(ies) _absolutely do_
| lie to us. It 's an inappropriate physiological response
| (fight/flight/etc) to stimuli. The panic response _is the
| lie_. It was that realization/training through therapy
| that helped make my disorder manageable, knowing that
| just because my body thinks it's in danger of dying
| doesn't mean it actually is.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| >The panic response _is the lie_
|
| You're right. I think I meant that examining my body's
| responses can give me a quicker realization of "something
| is wrong (meaning my anxiety is out-of-proportion)" than
| examining my mental processes can; because I can get
| trapped in that anxious loop of thinking about thinking,
| and worrying about worrying. So it doesn't "lie" to me,
| that way.
|
| But the only way to truly get over anxiety is like you
| say, you've got to realize that all of it is exaggerated
| and false, and you've got to just "let it go." It really
| does get easier. The pandemic has made it harder again
| and I resent it.
| mh- wrote:
| Yeah, this matches my experience as well. The air simply
| feels less.. airy. Like I can't get a deep enough breath.
| I'd love to understand the science behind it.
| boilerupnc wrote:
| "Polypropylene is a commonly used material for N95 type
| respirators. In order for small particles to get through
| a filter composed of interlaced layers of polypropylene
| fibers, they have to wind through a rather tortuous path
| and as a result would likely be trapped in the material."
| [0]
|
| [0] https://qcmask.com/pages/the-science-of-masks
| cartoonfoxes wrote:
| >But you should be aware that there is no actual reduced
| inflow of air due to mask wearing
|
| Huh? From https://weintraubcenter.dentistry.ucla.edu/n95-
| respirators-t...
|
| >Pressure drop is a measure of the resistance that the
| air meets as it flows through the respirator filter and
| into the mask. This is important because the pressure
| drop affects the comfort and breathability of the mask-
| specifically a lower pressure drop is desirable as it
| translates to increased breathability and thus comfort.
|
| > On average, those that have high filtration efficiency
| are also the ones with the largest pressure drop, which
| make it difficult to breath.
|
| I'm aware not everyone is wearing a N95 or better
| respirator, but the metric applies to all masks.
| amluto wrote:
| There are some genuine N95 duckbill style masks that have
| much lower pressure drop.
| mh- wrote:
| Genuine question- how is that actually possible?
|
| Surely there is, at minimum, an unstated variable here
| like "effort required to inhale the same volume of air"?
| Or the composition of the air?
|
| I'm not an expert in this area, but as someone who
| "feels" like I'm getting less oxygen and is willing to
| consider that my body is tricking me, help me understand.
|
| edit: I shouldn't have to say this, but I'll mention I'm
| vaccinated+boosted and have complied with the mask
| mandates. I just don't understand these unintuitive
| claims.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| There is no way that you are not having your intake of
| air restricted by putting a piece of cloth or fabric over
| your face. For the average person it probably doesn't
| make a difference in the way their body or mind works.
| But small changes can and do make a huge difference in
| people who are not neurotypical, or have breathing issues
| due to their sinuses.
| mh- wrote:
| That is my assertion as well. The simple physics of it
| require that filtering air effectively will reduce the
| air-for-effort. If you're not experiencing this, you're
| pulling air from around the sides of your mask.
|
| (Note that not noticing it is not the same as not
| experiencing it.)
| giantg2 wrote:
| "no actual reduced inflow of air due to mask wearing,
| certainly not one that you would detect physiologically."
|
| Depends on how you measure it and what you mean by
| physiologically detect. Generally, the resistance of
| breathing through a ("good") mask is not automatically
| detectable, but does exist and one could detect it if
| they are attentive. Your body tends to increase tidal
| volume and/or respiration rate because of the rebreathing
| of the stale under the mask. There are certainly studies
| that measure the physiological effects, such that we set
| 15 minute and 8 hour limits on CO2 exposure etc.
|
| Granted it's largely not an issue, but it's not
| necessarily correct to say that it offers _no_
| restriction and _no_ physiological changes.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Pure, unadulterated BS. I was in the hospital for a few
| days last year (unrelated to Covid) and as part of the
| standard discharge process, I had to walk around (with a
| mask on) while my blood oxygen was measured. It was
| slightly low, so the nurse said "take off your mask for a
| second" and sure enough, it popped right back up to
| normal. She said she sees it with almost everyone.
|
| You're breathing in less air, and more CO2. There is no
| way it's _not_ going to have an impact.
| tintor wrote:
| You must be joking! Have you tried exercising with
| surgical mask or N95 respirator? I train regularly with
| N95 since Omicron started and they definitely negatively
| affect airflow and aerobic exercise performance. N95
| respirator even more than surgical mask. I am used to
| them and don't have anxiety, but they aren't comfortable
| at all. They also affect temperature of air that you are
| inhaling as it mixes inside the mask with the hot air
| that you exhale, increasing your rest and cooldown time.
| buzzert wrote:
| Blood-oxygen level is not relevant when it comes to
| mental well-being. I have the exact same problem as the
| parent commenter. I've tried exercising with a mask
| (cloth and surgical), and it feels like getting
| waterboarded (because the mask inevitably becomes soaked
| in sweat).
|
| It causes a great amount of anxiety for me, and literally
| feels like torture. I don't care about what lung
| volume/blood oxygen "studies" say.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| Thank you
| [deleted]
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| I am double vaxed+boosted, and I still wear a mask
| everywhere I'm required to which includes still going to
| the gym 3-4 times a week.
|
| My gym has gone back and forth between masks being
| required or not with the case count. I know I've read
| everything about airflow being fine, and there being no
| reduced oxygen intake, but having worked out with and
| without a mask depending on location in the past 2 years
| I can attest anecdotally as somebody with no health
| problems that even if only anecdotal it is way more
| taxing/difficult to recover breath when working out with
| a mask on, and can be borderline anxiety/torture
| especially after very intense sets or cardiovascular
| effort.
|
| It easily takes me at least a couple more minutes to
| recover my breath/rest in between very hard sets of heavy
| squats for instance as compared to when not wearing a
| mask.
| speg wrote:
| As an aside, have you noticed any improvements from
| training with a mask on? Is it like how runners might
| train at high altitude, so when you come back to normal
| levels you are more efficient?
| hedgehog wrote:
| A good while back I looked at restrictors for training
| and my recollection is they didn't show any benefit in
| studies. Unclear why. They're a lot tougher than any
| respirator I've tried so I wouldn't expect the respirator
| to have any benefit that direction. Altitude tents
| apparently do work but are more trouble and risk than I'm
| comfortable with.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| The only thing I could say is I have improved some at
| working out with a mask on, but it's still noticeable by
| a large margin more difficult to recover my breath/energy
| than without.
|
| I don't think I've generally seen that transfer over to
| performance without one though.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > For two years we've been asked to park our problems and
| to act like literally all that matters is the spread of
| Covid.
|
| The problem is only half the population really followed
| through. These measures are still needed more because half
| the population effectively thinks COVID is no big deal or a
| hoax.
| xigoi wrote:
| Many of the restrictions were mandatory, so all people
| had to follow through...
| ajford wrote:
| Yeah, just because it was mandatory doesn't mean people
| followed through. I live in a very progressive city and
| we still had many people refusing to follow mask mandates
| at the height of pre-vaccine pandemic.
|
| People ripping down mask signs, spitting on people,
| arguing at the doors to a store, etc.
| xigoi wrote:
| Interesting, I haven't noticed any of that. Maybe my
| country has a different mentality. I do see some people
| not having the masks cover their nose, but definitely
| nowhere near 50%, more like 5% at worst.
| ajford wrote:
| Totally get that. A friend of mine from Finland said
| compliance with mandates and safety advisories was a lot
| better back home than those in the US.
|
| There's a lot of people in the US arguing that mask
| mandates and other medical precautions are "violating
| their freedom".
| sleepybrett wrote:
| My parents live in a moderately rural area outside of
| seattle, i live in seattle. The end of very first week of
| the lockdown my parents were able to acquire or had
| already had a few items I could not find in stores in the
| city. Primarily toilet paper, but a few other items as
| well.
|
| So I drove over to their place and they leant me some
| stuff, we were all paranoid so they left the stuff in the
| garage, I drove up, waved to them on the porch and loaded
| up my car and headed home. I did need to stop and get gas
| before getting back on the freeway, at the gas station
| there was a little mini-mart. There were four people
| inside, none of them had a mask on. The gas station is
| next to a Denny's or similar, their dining room was
| closed but there were people waiting INSIDE and UNMASKED
| for takeout.
|
| That's why we can't have nice things, even if your
| town/city collectively was pretty serious about lockdown,
| the next town over might not be and their citizens are
| coming into your community to work or whatever else. The
| only enforcement is the local sherif and if they are a
| crazy gimme liberty or gimme death type they aren't going
| to enforce shit.
| Mockapapella wrote:
| Just to throw my anecdote into the ring -- I live in a mid
| sized city in the midwest. People have largely stopped
| wearing masks since about March of last year in all places
| except for hospitals (and even then it's just those crappy
| generic blue masks). My GF and I actually had a bit of
| culture shock when we took a trip to Chicago a few weeks
| ago and 95%+ people were wearing masks everywhere they
| went, along with private businesses requiring masks and
| proof of vaccination.
|
| It's not like the people around here aren't aware of
| COVID-19 and the subsequent variants, we just kind of moved
| on.
| standardUser wrote:
| I have to assume you live on the West Coast. I have spent a
| couple months in and around SF during pandemic, but I live
| in NYC and have travelled to many other places.
|
| The West Coast experience seems to be a singularly
| restrictive experience. I'd hesitate to assume the entire
| nation is experiencing things the same way as you describe
| them (they are not). Though it does seem like many students
| across the nation are getting the super-restrictive
| experience as well.
| dymk wrote:
| It also depends where on the West Coast you live, of
| course. It's more of a city/rural divide.
|
| I live south of Seattle. Seattle is restrictive,
| everybody outside is wearing masks, many restaurants are
| still take-out only, business are open for limited hours.
|
| But you go 40 minutes south to, say, Puyallup, and the
| COVID restrictions are much more relaxed (if present at
| all).
| techsupporter wrote:
| > Puyallup, and the COVID restrictions are much more
| relaxed (if present at all).
|
| Meanwhile, the medical group I work for in Seattle is
| being absolutely swamped by patients being transferred
| from overwhelmed hospital and urgent care facilities in
| Pierce and Thurston counties. We've had to stop doing
| anything but COVID-related care and the only reason we
| have the capacity to do that is because we don't operate
| an emergency room so we can't take on the worst-of-the-
| worst cases.
|
| According to our daily COVID update report, we have a
| handful of patients who gave residence addresses--we ask
| for this because the county and state departments of
| health want it for statistics, among other reasons--
| inside Seattle and just a few more inside King County.
|
| It's a very stressful time for many of us, and it isn't
| helped by the disparity in level of care, let's say, over
| COVID prevention measures even inside the region.
| dymk wrote:
| I'd imagine this is also due, at least in part, to Pierce
| County / South Sound having a lower vaccination rate than
| the Seattle metro area.
| techsupporter wrote:
| I'm sure it is. In my experience, the willingness to be
| vaccinated is directly, if loosely, correlated with the
| willingness to do other COVID prevention measures, like
| wearing any form of face covering properly (as in, over
| the nose and mouth as opposed to a chin diaper) when in
| an enclosed setting.
|
| Because we are a not-for-profit medical group that
| receives funding from the federal government, we are
| covered by the vaccinate-or-test requirement from CMMS.
| In my department, IT, we had two employees quit over it;
| both of them live in Pierce County. Meanwhile, all of us
| (so far as I know, obviously I am not privy to everyone's
| medical records so I am going off of what is claimed and
| who remains employed with us) who live inside Seattle
| were fully vaccinated months before the requirement took
| effect.
|
| I'm also sorry if I come across as unsympathetic or
| uncaring. Even though I "just work with the computers,"
| this has not been easy for me or my department, and I
| have seen nurses and doctors I have worked with for years
| and become work friends with reach and then exceed
| burnout and press on anyway out of a sense of duty and
| obligation.
|
| So it is just a bit disheartening to read yet another
| thread on Hacker News where people keep insisting we'll
| just have to live with it and this is just how things are
| now and the West Coast is obviously bad because we've
| tried to put this godforsaken virus first of mind for
| stamping out. I know we're past being able to eradicate
| it, but to just throw up our hands and say "well, even a
| disposable mask with earloops is JUST TOO MUCH" makes me
| deeply sad.
| claytongulick wrote:
| I'm sorry for the difficulty you and your coworkers are
| facing, it can't be fun. I worked for six years in direct
| patient care and I know what it's like when my ward is
| filled an how exhausting it is.
|
| Sometimes we lose a bit of the big picture in that
| situation though. It helps to take a look at the actual
| numbers.
|
| In Pierce County, WA the hospitals have only recently
| exceeded bed capacity warranting transfers [1], in the
| past week there was an 8% excess capacity, the total bed
| capacity of Pierce County is ~460, and last week there
| were 125 covid admissions. The ICU is not at capacity,
| it's at 92%, which is typically where ICU utilization
| sits, if a hospital is profitable.
|
| Pierce County has a new infection rate of about 3.5k per
| 100,000 [2]. The population of Pierce County is almost 1
| million, which gives about 35,000 total case infections
| for 14 days. Of roughly 35,000 infections, there were 125
| admissions over the past week. For excess capacity
| transfer patients, the number is somewhere around 35 to
| 40 people.
|
| That's certainly enough to feel a strain with when you're
| working there day to day, but from the average Pierce
| County resident who's chance of admission in a given week
| (not age or health adjusted) of 0.000125, I think it's
| understandable why they may not feel like participating
| in all of the restrictive measures.
|
| https://datacentral.kitsapsun.com/covid-19-hospital-
| capacity...
|
| https://www.tpchd.org/healthy-
| people/diseases/covid-19/pierc...
| techsupporter wrote:
| > but from the average Pierce County resident who's
| chance of admission in a given week (not age or health
| adjusted) of 0.000125, I think it's understandable why
| they may not feel like participating in all of the
| restrictive measures.
|
| I know (and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way, I do
| agree with you), and I get it. In our practice's case,
| we're not taking transfers of patients who would be in
| the ED/ER (we don't have those facilities), we're taking
| patients who are in for the "long COVID" type symptoms or
| who need other kinds of longer-term care. I think, though
| I don't know for sure, that some hospitals in Pierce and
| Thurston are asking outfits like ours to take patients
| prior to the ICU getting full so those hospitals can
| leave a spare bed or two for the true emergency cases.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is it feels like so many of us on
| the "invisible" end, from medical providers to service
| workers to public health officials to warehouse folks to
| all the rest, are expending so much effort to keep things
| going that to hear people complain that their wellbeing
| is impacted because they have to exercise behind a mask
| six days a week just...falls flat. And I feel guilty even
| typing that out because MENTAL HEALTH IS ABSOLUTELY
| IMPORTANT and for some people that _does_ mean physical
| exercise and yes anxiety CAN result from mask wearing.
| But it seems like there are those who genuinely
| experience those symptoms, and then there are those who
| are hiding their petulant "I don't wanna and you can't
| make me nyah" behind claiming those symptoms. And the
| overlap between the latter group and the group of people
| who flatly refuse to be vaccinated so that we can all
| dump these masks and rules is damn near a circle.
|
| Anyway, I think we largely agree, and I'm just tired, but
| not as tired as some.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Well put. I'm a 29 year old male who moved to a new city
| right before covid and my life has basically been put on
| hold for two years now with my only access to meeting
| potential partners being Tinder (or bars, I suppose.) All
| the activities I try to join (other than my BJJ classes)
| are remote. Chess club is remote (might as well just play
| chess.com) my bipolar support group is remote, etc.
| standardUser wrote:
| I am very curious, which city? I moved to NYC in early
| pandemic and have had an extremely robust dating and
| social life. Even in 2020 dating was not difficult here.
| And for the past year or so life has been 95% normal,
| with big events, shows, packed bars, etc.
| criddell wrote:
| I have a feeling that if the same people were tasked with
| setting road speed limits, they would set it to 20 mph and
| argue that 30,000 lives will be saved each year. They aren't
| wrong, but it's misjudging the risk most of us are willing to
| accept for the benefits of being able to move around quickly.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Ah, that one's actually happening.
|
| There are actual attempts to ban cars in my neighbourhood
| now because some people judge that the marginal effects of
| air pollution outweigh the enormous benefit of me being
| able to visit my friends and family in literally a quarter
| of the time.
|
| These people don't think about benefit. It's only cost.
| I've come to think of them as simply being depressed, in
| the chemical imbalance sense.
| jasonshaev wrote:
| And here you are making pseudoscientific judgements
| (chemical imbalance?!) about a huge number of people
| you've lumped into a group and referred to as "these
| people."
|
| I'm seriously surprised you haven't been downvoted off
| this thread.
| cardanome wrote:
| You are grossly misrepresenting the argument. It is about
| 30mph inside cities. Which is a great idea, not just for
| saving lives but for substantially increasing quality of
| life of everyone living there.
|
| The greatest cause of noise in cities is traffic. Setting a
| strict speed limit would substantially reduce this. (Also
| side benefits like better air quality and so on) And
| traffic would actually flow better, so you might not even
| reach your destination that much later.
|
| You can be protect your individual freedom at all cost and
| treat everything as a zero sum game or you can bee
| cooperative and help build a better world for everyone by
| compromising a bit.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >There are circumstances in which "drop everything" makes
| sense - if coronavirus were ten times more fatal, we'd do it
| naturally.
|
| It was pretty damn fatal when we had no containment measures
| or vaccines. We're in a totally different situation now, and
| need to get out of the "minimize cases" mentality.
| nradov wrote:
| When we had no containment measures or vaccines the CDC
| estimated the infection fatality rate at about 0.6%.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| I upvoted your comment for your overall sentiment about
| focusing on what life is really about, and not driving to the
| lowest-common-denominator of quality of life.
|
| But I'd also like to downvote you for the this comment: "I
| tend to think that people who operate in this way are
| subhuman, in the genuine sense of the word" >> It's not
| right, not useful, and not reflective. Much better is to
| assume others are also smart, well-educated and well-
| intentioned, and then try to genuinely understand why they
| believe or act the way they do.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Like, yeah, I will take the risk of contracting coronavirus
| to play the piano, because I want the piano in my life.
|
| The problem comes when it's "I will take the risk of
| infecting others who are vulnerable, of contributing to
| overwhelming the already struggling healthcare system, and of
| damaging the economy to play the piano, because it doesn't
| matter how many people are infected or are dying every single
| day I care more about myself getting the things I want right
| now than I care about any of those things."
|
| There's no need to frame the issue as if folks are being told
| they can't do anything they enjoy ever again and have to
| devote their whole lives to simply breathing and eating
| either. It's a false dichotomy that we have to choose between
| common sense measures for the good of our community and
| limiting ourselves to "what is the minimum possible quality
| of life we can have".
|
| We can instead make smart choices based on the degree of
| community spread which can mean putting off certain
| activities, but often times just means putting on a mask and
| washing our hands. It's not a huge ask.
| lemmsjid wrote:
| Perhaps instead I might be following Covid guidelines for the
| following reasons: so I don't pass the infection onto those
| who are indeed vulnerable; so I don't overtax an already
| overtaxed healthcare system and healthcare workers. Part of
| the ineffable human spirit, IMHO, is altruism: which in this
| case can manifest as taking on a set of mild day to day
| inconveniences in order to help others be happier and safer.
| I do believe altruism is a (not exclusively) human
| characteristic, which means that part of 'joie de vive',
| alongside wine, piano playing, etc., is knowing one is doing
| something for others.
|
| Honestly, I don't think it's as extreme as "if coronavirus
| were ten times more fatal" that would lead us to naturally
| take on mitigations. Instead, it would be if the death rate
| were evenly spread across age groups. Then, the motivation
| for avoiding some piano playing would be the immediate cost
| to self or close friends, rather than the abstract cost to
| some other group.
|
| All that said I am quite sympathetic to the motivation behind
| your argument, but I believe you and GP are ignoring some
| motivations people might have for following or being
| 'bureaucratic automatons'.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > so I don't pass the infection onto those who are indeed
| vulnerable; so I don't overtax an already overtaxed
| healthcare system and healthcare workers
|
| This seems reasonable and is a common point of view. It
| does make me curious though. Did you get a yearly flu shot
| prior to Covid? If not, has Covid changed your mind about
| this?
| Zanneth wrote:
| At this point, the most vulnerable have a sophisticated
| arsenal of tools to prevent themselves from being seriously
| affected by the virus. Vaccines, antivirals, masks like N95
| that work to protect the wearer, etc. In my opinion it is
| no longer the duty of the non-vulnerable, especially
| children, to carry the burden of the pandemic because of
| the extremely negative consequences of these
| countermeasures.
| laserlight wrote:
| > if coronavirus were ten times more fatal, we'd do it
| naturally.
|
| What if people didn't? What then? How would that be different
| from today?
| gglitch wrote:
| > Like, yeah, I will take the risk of contracting coronavirus
| to play the piano, because I want the piano in my life.
|
| I'm sympathetic to your point (and I love to play piano), but
| I can't help but ask, if we slightly reword your claim: would
| you be willing to take responsibility for spreading
| coronavirus to n other people so you can play the piano?
|
| Edit, to be clear: I'm not talking about the piano, or
| surface transmission; I'm talking about the values.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| There is more to life than a singular focus on spreading
| Covid. Life would be robbed of all that is worth living for
| if every action and encounter we take has to pass the
| "willing to spread Covid" question.
|
| There are countless more problems and risks in life than
| Covid. Many are much more important to individuals.
| criddell wrote:
| > would you be willing to take responsibility for spreading
| coronavirus to n other people so you can play the piano?
|
| Would you be willing to accept responsibility for the
| increased depression and loneliness among the young people
| who live together in this building that could result from
| banning the piano?
| gglitch wrote:
| Yes, exactly. We have conflicting values to balance. I
| hope most of us can do it most of the time from the goal,
| however quixotic, of doing the most good for the most
| people. I don't claim to know what that is, and I am not
| saying that the kid in the example shouldn't be able to
| play the piano (though, on that note, it seems to me that
| if a student's well-being depends that directly on being
| able to play the piano, the school itself is foundering).
| But I get you. It would be all too easy to settle for
| some sort of rhetorical first principle that abstracts
| away all the complexity: sharing things makes people
| sick, we shouldn't share things. Or, other people getting
| sick is their own problem, damn the torpedos, I'm jamming
| in the lounge.
| criddell wrote:
| > if a student's well-being depends that directly on
| being able to play the piano
|
| It's death by a thousand cuts. The piano policy isn't
| _that_ devastating by itself, but it 's one of 50 things
| that have been taken away.
| gglitch wrote:
| It's exhausting. And the piano policy in the example is
| totally absurd. I hope my remarks didn't come across as
| personal. I have kids in school too, and although I'm
| currently favoring masks, I'm also miserable about how my
| kids' early childhood social and academic development
| have been impacted.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Why do kids even need masks? Like, they aren't at risk...
| this is a known fact since like March of 2020. Why force
| kids to wear them? Who are they supposed to be
| protecting? Fully vaccinated teachers? Who?
| ajford wrote:
| Kids are _less_ at risk. That doesn 't mean they _aren 't
| at risk_. They can, and do, still catch Covid, even if
| they are less likely to suffer severe hospitalization.
|
| On top of that, if they end up with long-covid or some
| other long-term complication from the Covid infection,
| they're quality of life is impacted for a far longer
| time. Some known long-covid complications include things
| like (potentially) permanent loss of smell or taste,
| reduced mental faculties, and organ damage. Would you
| sentence a child to a lifetime of being unable to taste
| their food for the rest of their lives just so they don't
| have to wear a mask for a tiny portion of their lives?
|
| Also, adults seem to hate masks, but plenty of kids don't
| feel the same way. My oldest loves to accent his outfits
| with his cloth masks, and wears them over surgical or N95
| masks now.
|
| Who are they protecting? They're protecting _each other_
| and _everyone around them_. That could be a teacher who
| could catch a breakthrough case, a sibling or family
| member, and anyone they might come into close contact
| with. That also cascades. That vaccinated teacher who may
| have caught a break through case might infect their
| family causing a small outbreak in their home.
|
| By wearing a mask, they're reducing risk, even if it
| might be a small amount. Those few percentage points
| _could_ mean the difference between life and death for
| someone in their contact circle.
| jaywalk wrote:
| How is him playing the piano spreading anything aside from
| possibly joy and happiness? What a ridiculous thing to say.
| gglitch wrote:
| Yeah, sorry for not being more clear, but I wasn't
| talking about that person, or the piano, or about the
| odds of someone contracting COVID from surfaces. I was
| using the quote to illustrate what I see as a difficult
| pair of values to balance that situations like masks in
| classrooms, or other shared-space restrictions, really
| throw into painfully high relief: how do we collectively,
| as a society, balance our own personal inclinations
| (i.e., in this case, to play the piano, or in OP, to let
| our kids go unmasked) with whatever risks we impose on
| other people (i.e., in this case, which for the record I
| totally agree is excessive, that the shared piano will
| help spread disease; or in the outer case, that fewer
| masks in the classroom could lead to, e.g., more sick
| grandparents, or teachers)?
| jaywalk wrote:
| In the case of the piano, it's very simple: anyone who is
| worried about catching Covid by listening to the piano is
| free to not listen to the piano. There's really nothing
| to balance.
| gglitch wrote:
| Solid, got it. Next time I talk to criddell's kids'
| university's dorm administrators, I'll try to set them
| straight. Hopefully they'll be able to zoom out a bit
| from whatever conversation-impairing details they've
| latched onto.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| This myopic focus on exactly one specific illness to the
| literal exclusion of everything else is not healthy.
| People need to accept the risks and move on.
| hammock wrote:
| 48 million Americans get food poisoning every year, many
| dying. Are you going to stop cooking for your family and
| friends?
| gglitch wrote:
| Yeeeaaah, I realize my point was easy to make a
| caricature of, but that's a pretty specious caricature.
| I'm talking about an effort to balance safety and freedom
| from a more collective and thoughtful perspective.
| mcguire wrote:
| You would take that risk, everyone you know will take that
| risk, everyone _they_ know will take that risk....
| ajford wrote:
| To me, this ignores the fact that a death of a loved/cared
| for individual is the most "minimum quality of life" you can
| get.
|
| Sure, being able to go watch a family movie together used to
| be a big family thing, but we can't do that anymore. Our QOL
| has dropped in that regard, but it's far less impactful than
| saying to heck with it and going to the theater and having my
| kid or an in-law catch Covid and die. Long Covid even
| indicates there's a chance that surviving Covid leaves you
| with a long-term impact to QOL. Why take that risk over minor
| irritation in the near term?
|
| Sure, masks are tedious and annoying. But to my youngest, so
| are shirts and shoes. If he had his choice, he'd run around
| all damn day in underwear or shorts. But society as a whole
| benefits from a general adherence to everyone wearing shirts
| and shoes in public. He's got the same feelings towards
| seatbelts. Just like masks, seatbelts are only a half-
| measure. They don't prevent you from dying in a car crash,
| but they give some modicum of benefit overall. There's a
| higher chance of surviving a crash with a seatbelt on, even
| if it's not guaranteed.
|
| All of these "I'm done with masks/precautions" statements are
| made in a void while ignoring the ripple effect that stems
| from that.
|
| There's a turning point where life will have to resume one
| way or another, but the longer we can go as a civilization
| with a reduced QOL the better the chances of resolving the
| pandemic with fewer deaths all around.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| > To me, this ignores the fact that a death of a
| loved/cared for individual is the most "minimum quality of
| life" you can get.
|
| Counterpoint: my grandmother spent her last two years in
| perpetual loneliness because of covid measures in care
| homes preventing our family from ensuring full time
| visitors.
| jasonshaev wrote:
| Referring to other humans as "subhuman" is disrespectful, at
| best. Where do you get off saying ANYONE isn't a "living
| being[s] with spirits and hopes and dreams?"
|
| Having different priorities than you do does not make someone
| "subhuman" and I would seriously reconsider the language you
| are using.
| stewbrew wrote:
| When people play music, they sing. Singing in a crowded room
| isn't really a good idea when there is an infectious visus
| around.
| nradov wrote:
| The virus will always be around. Are you proposing a
| permanent ban on singing?
| stewbrew wrote:
| I'm not proposing anything. I was just trying to give a
| possible rational for this rule.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| This argument falls flat on its face. There is always
| infections viruses going around. Covid is not the first nor
| will it be the last.
|
| Who gets to decide what is okay and isn't anyway? Some myopic
| "experts" who barely feel the negative impacts of their
| prognostications? What about other types of experts? What
| would "music experts" say about shutting down the piano?
|
| Covid doesn't live in a vaccum.
| criddell wrote:
| It likely wouldn't be crowded. They have pretty strict rules
| about the number of people that can gather in any room. Also,
| these people all live together. They are touching the same
| surfaces, breathing the same air, sharing the same bathrooms,
| etc...
|
| But you are right - singing would increase the risk of
| infection. Still, I think the risks from the current version
| of the virus to a vaccinated group of young people (who are
| still required to wear masks!) is small enough that the piano
| should be available.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Why is it up to anybody to decide what risks people are
| able to take? We have freely available vaccines. Let people
| decide for themselves...
|
| There is more to life than Covid.
| simonw wrote:
| Presumably the piano ban was brought in last year, when people
| though that Covid spreading through surfaces was a big problem
| - and that piano ban hasn't been re-considered now that we know
| that Covid is mostly spread through inhaling shared air.
| speedgeek wrote:
| I strongly suspect that playing the piano is banned due to the
| possibility of social gatherings of people in close proximity
| to each other listening to the piano - not contracting covid
| from the piano itself.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The piano thing feels like a "we gotta do something" from a
| board with very little power over things that would limit
| transmission. Maybe they have a separate dorm board.
|
| It is like where I live, the library closed becouse that was
| the only thing the county could close.
|
| And there is like never more than 10 people there at the same
| time for a huge building. They could just have closed the
| cafeteria and remove the reading chairs. Etc.
| xdennis wrote:
| > In the panicked spring of 2020, as health officials scrambled
| to keep communities safe, they recommended various restrictions
| and interventions, sometimes in the absence of rigorous science
| supporting them. That was understandable at the time.
|
| The fact that they were enacted with such zeal in the absence of
| rigorous science _is_ why some /many people don't want them
| removed now. What was instituted without science cannot be
| removed by science.
|
| If anything, the same emotional manipulation must be used. They
| used to say "we have to lock up if only to save one life". Now it
| should be "we need to go back to normal if only to save one child
| from killing himself from isolation".
| InsomniacL wrote:
| sometimes I like to read the first paragraph of articles with the
| opposite bias they impose.
|
| > In the panicked spring of 2020, as health officials scrambled
| to keep communities safe, they recommended various restrictions
| and interventions, sometimes in the absence of rigorous science
| supporting them. That was understandable at the time.
|
| becomes:
|
| >In the spring of 2020, as more health professionals than ever
| before worked together on a single issue, they recommended
| measures and interventions, based on our most up-to-date
| understanding of medicine and science. That was remarkable at the
| time....
| ngngngng wrote:
| Funny to watch the Atlantic change directions on COVID over the
| last few months. I go back and forth on masks. In general I find
| them to be a minor inconvenience, although I believe they're more
| inconvenient for me than most because I'm blind and no matter
| what I do they always fog up my glasses.
|
| But while masks themselves are mildly inconvenient, harsh mask
| mandates and restrictions become much more of an annoyance
| quickly. Try taking a 6 hour flight with a 2 year old that's
| required to keep his mask on the entire flight, and when he takes
| it off (because he's 2, of course he's going to take it off) the
| flight attendants threaten to turn the plane around and ban you
| permanently. That gets old quick.
|
| I was in a coffee shop the other day and my mask broke. Everyone
| takes their mask off to sip their drink or eat their pastries,
| but I was immediately asked to leave when the functional mask I
| walked in with broke. They didn't have any extras, I wasn't
| carrying around more than one mask. It was embarrassing. It's
| pretty easy to grow tired of these mandates when your situation
| deviates slightly from the norm.
|
| At this point, I'm in favor of a "protect yourself" direction. If
| you're concerned, put on an N95 and a face shield and sanitize
| your hands often. It's clear that shutting down society to the
| point necessary to restrict the spread of COVID is not feasible,
| and all the halfway measures we've taken haven't achieved their
| stated goals. It's just a nuisance at this point.
| champagnois wrote:
| Never mind the fact that they are not rated to filter viruses.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| Many of the test aerosols they use to test N95s and similar
| are smaller than the coronavirus. Also they have done virus
| measurements from sick people through masks that prove there
| is filtration happening.
| champagnois wrote:
| N95s work via an electric polarity of the filter. This
| charge is what captures the viruses. Filtration fades when
| the charge is lost.
|
| I don't need to see your studies because I have helped
| build and certify N95 factories and know a lot about it.
| The masks arent usable for long and arent reusable, either.
|
| Cloth masks do nothing and are not a consideration to any
| serious adult.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| Why make the claim that n95s don't filter viruses and
| then say that they do indeed capture viruses?
|
| Also yes the filtration fades but there's data out there
| showing 40 hours of use on KF94s still showing filtration
| percentages in the low 90s.
| champagnois wrote:
| You misunderstood or I was not clear. N95s do filter
| viruses when used properly and still within their rated
| window of use.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > N95s work via an electric polarity of the filter
|
| ...as well as mechanical filtration[1].
|
| > To minimize the effect of electrostatic attraction, we
| used isopropanol (IPA) to remove nearly all dipole
| charges in the filter layer (Figure Figure77C) and
| measured the filtration efficiency. The filtration
| efficiencies of N95 respirators after IPA treatment
| decreased about 7-15% after removing all dipole charges.
| Such decreases in filtration efficiencies indicated that
| electrostatic charges contributed to the filtration
| performance.
|
| Others here have pointed to studies RE the efficacy of
| cloth masks. Which, while not great, is not 0 either. I'm
| willing to be wrong, but do you have any research showing
| that "Cloth masks do nothing"?
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC772
| 4761/
| phailhaus wrote:
| Surgical masks reduce COVID-19 spread, large-scale study
| shows
|
| https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-
| mask...
|
| Even cloth masks reduced transmission, and "reduce the
| overall likelihood of experiencing symptoms of respiratory
| illness during the study period."
| autoexec wrote:
| It doesn't matter. Putting literally anything in front of
| your virus spewing face hole is going to help to some degree.
| It's not as if the crook of our arms are rated to filter
| viruses, but that hasn't stopped health organizations all
| over the world from recommending the vampire cough for years.
|
| It's true that a mask alone isn't enough to guarantee
| anyone's safety and while community spread is high sending
| kids into schools is pretty much asking for them to get
| infected, but wearing masks is still far better than doing
| nothing, it's just that sadly "nothing" is all some people
| are willing to do to prevent the spread of the virus.
| champagnois wrote:
| Interventions work differently for different diseases.
| Influenza is significantly hampered by social distancing,
| surgical masks, and elbow coughs.
|
| Covid 19 is a different virus and the interventions of a
| flu pandemic are not going to yield the same results.
|
| Infection is a binary status. You are either infected or
| not. There is no such thing as half infected or slightly
| infected. The probability of infection goes up when the air
| is more and more saturated with airborne virus... When air
| in a poorly ventilated space is fully saturated with virus,
| it simply does not matter if you wear a surgical mask or
| not as these interventions are doing nothing of
| significance for you in that situation.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Your face hole is not virus spewing if you aren't sick.
| autoexec wrote:
| Too bad you can't know if you're sick or not until it's
| too late. It's one of the reasons this virus spreads so
| quickly. Even if you're not sick wearing masks also helps
| to protect you from getting sick. It's win/win for
| extremely minimal effort/inconvenience.
| [deleted]
| vanviegen wrote:
| Extremely minimal?
|
| Masks make it a lot harder to communicate effectively.
| People are harder to understand, emotions are harder to
| read, speaking takes more effort.
|
| If communicating is the main thing you do all day,
| because you're a teacher for instance, that is a
| _significant_ inconvenience.
| ccn0p wrote:
| not to mention facial expressions transmit an incredible
| amount of non-verbal information that transcends language
| itself (which the article touches upon). not taking this,
| and all the other variables that we now have a better
| understanding of, into account is highly negligent.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Personally I found that a good n95 mask aside from being
| more effective is far less muffling than a shitty cloth
| mask.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Extremely minimal?
|
| compared to hospitals being overrun, people getting
| seriously ill and dying (2,200+ US deaths every day)
| continuing economic harm and disruptions in education
| yeah it's pretty small thing that it's a little harder to
| communicate because your voice is muffled and you cant
| watch people's lips form words.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Too bad that condemning everyone as sick with zero
| evidence isn't how a free society works. Let's imprison
| everyone who "might" commit a crime.
|
| Masks have gigantic effort/inconvenience and mental
| health costs. I can't think of anything but counting down
| the seconds until ripping that f*cking thing off my face
| while being strangled by that shit. Yet nobody cares
| about anyone else's mental health over their own
| perceived safety.
| otikik wrote:
| > condemning everyone as sick with zero evidence isn't
| how a free society works.
|
| That is like saying that seatbelts and speed limits
| condemn you as a bad driver.
|
| A free society protects everyone's rights. What people
| tend to forget is that every right has a price, in the
| form of an obligation. For example: You have the right to
| private property, and the price is that you must respect
| other's private property.
|
| One of the things that is difficult to get about Covid is
| that you can simultaneously be infectious (able to
| transmit it to others) and asymptomatic (no headhache, no
| fever, not even sore throat). That is not something we
| are used to deal with, our other infectious illnesses
| aren't that stealthy. There are other things that are
| atypical about this virus (the kind of vaccine we used is
| new, the amount of infected is unusually high, it
| transmits via air...). Treating this illness with the
| knowledge and techniques that we have learned from other
| illnesses is simply not enough, there are too many
| differences.
|
| The free society is protecting your rights. In
| particular, your right to not be infected by another
| person might have no other chance but to get into close
| contact with. The price of that right is that both of you
| wear a mask.
|
| Even if the mask is terribly uncomfortable for you, _you
| must endure it because other people also have rights_.
| The same way that just because you are hot, you are not
| allowed to take off all your clothes in front of
| everyone.
|
| > being strangled
|
| You might just need a better mask.
|
| My head is big compared to the heads in China. Most of
| the masks I have access to locally for cheap are made
| there. They tend to be quite uncomfortable for me.
|
| I splurged ~60 bucks into buying several from different
| makers and found a model that works for me (Adidas Made
| For Sport, I wear it at the gym and do cardio with it.
| Comfortable and makes you look like Bane). When I'm going
| to use the public transport or visit a hospital I wear an
| FP2 mask with an ear protector. It is not comfortable,
| but at least my ears don't hurt a the end.
|
| You could also try inventing a better mask.
| nradov wrote:
| There is no legal _right_ to be protected from infection.
| It appears nowhere in the US Constitution.
|
| The virus will be around forever and everyone will be
| exposed. You can't seriously expect people to spend the
| rest of their lives wearing masks.
|
| https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If you experience a great deal of anxiety or feel like
| you are being strangled while wearing a mask you are
| either wearing it wrong or have a medical issue this
| isn't how most people experience wearing a mask.
|
| This is what I wear. https://m.media-
| amazon.com/images/I/511sZBCeHES._AC_.jpg I have bad
| asthma. My lungs are basically shit. I can't jog a 1/4
| mile without having breathing problems. I have no
| problems wearing this mask save for doing sustained
| physical activity.
| rmah wrote:
| Lol, if you think "Masks have gigantic
| effort/inconvenience and mental health costs", your life
| must be a continuous living hellscape.
| vikingerik wrote:
| It has been for the past two years, yes. Thank you so
| much for your concern.
| autoexec wrote:
| wait until you find out about the mental health costs of
| not being able to get healthcare when you need it because
| of staff shortages or constant interruptions in
| education, or the effects of long covid or the loss of a
| loved one. I'll take masks over more of those kinds of
| problems anytime.
| elzbardico wrote:
| humm... no.
|
| Things don't work like that. On the contrary, exhaling
| through what is essentially is a sieve is only going to
| promote aerosolization.
| autoexec wrote:
| Exhaling through a sieve still blocks the largest wettest
| particles, and limits the distance virus is forcefully
| expelled through the air. Again, it's not perfect, but
| infection is purely a numbers game. The more virus you
| can deposit on a mask, or a sleeve, or even a sieve, the
| less virus is in the air and the longer it takes for a
| virus to go from a mouth on one side of a room to a
| receptor on the other side of a room the better.
| adolph wrote:
| > not as if the crook of our arms are rated to filter
| viruses
|
| People don't shake elbows (unless they have a really
| intimate elbow bump).
| autoexec wrote:
| Masks also keep our hands cleaner and we don't usually
| lick each other's masks either. Masks aren't perfect, but
| they work.
| sgt wrote:
| I was never really a good mask wearer. Ideally I keep a
| distance but at this point of the pandemic I've just started
| taking the mask off or leaving it at home. There is a mask
| mandate where I live if you go to the store and so on, but I
| haven't had any complaints yet. I'm just drawing a line in the
| sand at this point.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > In general I find them to be a minor inconvenience, although
| I believe they're more inconvenient for me than most because
| I'm blind and no matter what I do they always fog up my
| glasses.
|
| I have this problem too with every surgical-style mask.
| However, at least _some_ N95 masks fit me well enough that air
| doesn 't escape around my nose and my glasses stay fog-free.
| dahfizz wrote:
| This is the kind of thing that just drives me crazy.
|
| If the mandates were at the very least logically consistent, I
| would not consider them a burden. "You are not allowed into the
| restaurant unless you are masked, but you may immediately take
| it off once you've walked 10 feet to your table" is nonsense.
| Forcing you to leave the coffee shop with everyone unmasking to
| drink anyway is nonsense.
|
| It is security theater. It is virtue signalling. And if you
| have the audacity to question the irrational rules, people
| unironically call you a murderer.
| sjg007 wrote:
| You walk by others while you are not at your table. What do
| you want to do? Hold your breath? Not to mention bathrooms
| and so forth. Presumably the tables are well spaced etc...
| pcmoney wrote:
| In an open air room, the difference between walking past
| and sitting in the same room as is negligible.
|
| Total theatre, does nothing besides allowing restaurants
| and patrons to feel ok/that they are "doing something" and
| stay open.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Which is why indoor dining rooms should still be closed.
| Pretending we aren't living through a pandemic that is
| respiratory in nature is fucking madness. Maybe if we had
| locked down harder for longer and treated this thing
| seriously in the beginning we wouldn't be almost two
| years into this with no end in sight.
| ericd wrote:
| People over here in France are generally living pretty
| normally. Far from madness, it's pretty nice. Sure,
| everyone masks up and whips out their phone for constant
| QR scanning, but restaurants are still pretty full, trams
| busses and trains as well, and people are getting
| together. Schools are in person. It probably helps that
| home tests are cheap ($25 for 5) and super easy to get.
|
| It's frankly pretty weird that these comment threads are
| always so ragey and judgey, let alone the ones on
| Twitter. Everyone should chill a bit and stop reading the
| news stories stoking fears - at some point the mental
| effects are riskier than the physical ones, and I'd say
| that many in this thread are well past this point.
| Closi wrote:
| > Which is why indoor dining rooms should still be
| closed. Pretending we aren't living through a pandemic
| that is respiratory in nature is fucking madness. Maybe
| if we had locked down harder for longer and treated this
| thing seriously in the beginning we wouldn't be almost
| two years into this with no end in sight.
|
| We aren't living through a pandemic anymore, we are now
| living in an endemic. Omicron isn't going away anytime
| soon - and we can't lock down businesses forever. Omicron
| can't be stopped by lockdown anyway (see challenges of
| containing it within China).
|
| Secondly, it is highly unlikely that we would have got
| rid of Covid-19 even harsher lockdown measures earlier
| (e.g. see Omicron which happened because the original
| virus jumped to mice and back to humans - just humans
| locking down wouldn't have stopped this variant, we would
| have had to lock down all the rodents too).
|
| My personal view - we have to stop viewing life as
| nothing but a vector for disease, and stop re-
| architecting our entire society and culture to avoid
| Covid infections (at huge societal costs to education,
| standards of living etc).
| sjg007 wrote:
| You need to look up the definitions of pandemic, epidemic
| and endemic.
| pcmoney wrote:
| An endemic disease is a disease that is always present in
| a particular population/region.
|
| Ex. Flu, malaria, HIV, syphilis, and... COVID
|
| Am I missing something?
| pcmoney wrote:
| No, Covid is low risk if you are vaccinated and
| elderly/at risk and extremely low risk if you are younger
| (vaccinated or not)
|
| It's endemic. Its not going away. We are all going to get
| it. (Me: triple vaxxed, had covid 2x)
|
| Getting vaccinated is a personal heath decision (which I
| encourage)
|
| Time to move on.
| a_shovel wrote:
| This plan would kill a large portion of immunocompromised
| people worldwide.
| Closi wrote:
| Why are the only deaths we seem to care about those that
| are Covid related?
|
| If we are worried about killing people worldwide, far
| more people die of hunger-related causes each day, but we
| aren't rebuilding our entire society to save those
| people. But I can't see a reason why deaths from Covid
| are more of a tragedy than those we left to starve.
|
| Or take smoking for instance - more people die each year
| from smoking than have died from Covid, but we seem more
| willing to ban human contact than to ban cigarettes?
| Seems backwards to me (especially considering c10% of
| smoking related deaths are from secondhand smoke in the
| USA!).
|
| I know these might seem like a silly point, but why are
| we so focused on one single cause of death right now? We
| lock down our entire society to 'protect unvaccinated
| people worldwide', but then have continually cut foreign
| aid?
|
| IMO - I think we have totally lost the plot and lost
| sight of what is important, but that's just my view.
| pcmoney wrote:
| How?
|
| They can take whatever measures they need to keep
| themselves safe. I assume they are not going into
| restaurants now since the mask situation is just theater.
|
| Their unfortunate circumstances don't mean they get to
| control others. If there was a concrete ask with end date
| that would be one thing but asking everyone else to live
| as if they are immunocompromised just because they are is
| not sustainable.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| No. At some point you've got to ask if these measures are
| worth living for. It's winter in the northern hemisphere.
| It'd dark and it's cold.
|
| Keeping people locked up at home for a third season is
| absurd.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I live in seattle. It's dark and cold. Hell the mask
| helps, it's great for keeping my face warm.
|
| I don't consider myself locked up. I miss in person game
| nights the most, i miss dinner with friends (in a private
| home or restaurant) somewhat.
|
| We do gamenights online using videochat and products like
| roll20 and boardgame arena. It's not super awesome but it
| works for us for now.
|
| I leave the house, go on walks go shopping etc. But I
| take very reasonable precautions. I shop during low
| traffic times, get up early and hit the grocery store
| before work, I order food for pickup and wait outside for
| it. During the more temperate months we'd set up a few
| tables in the backyard and have friends over for meals,
| each 'pod' got their own table nicely distanced, we were
| probably a little louder than most dinner parties but it
| was nice just to have them around.
|
| For a friends birthday we wanted to go see spiderman, we
| rented a theater (it was actually not especially
| expensive) invited about 20 people who we knew were
| supervaxxed and responsible enough not to come if they
| though they might be exposed and had a grand, masked and
| distanced, time.
|
| I'm just trying to be responsible, I know several people
| that are immunocompromised and they can't even do half
| that stuff. I'm trying to be responsible so that they
| can. When some asshole declares that 'covid is over' I
| just realize how fucking narcissistic they are.
| pcmoney wrote:
| You and your friends are well off and it looks like you
| dont have children and can work remote. Thats great!
|
| Unfortunately most are living under wildly different and
| much more difficult circumstances that they are being
| asked to bear month after month with no end and with
| dubious effect.
| downrightmike wrote:
| bandaid over the nose and mask should stop your fogging. You
| can also use a little saliva on the lenses like they do in
| scuba diving. I usually just move the glasses a little further
| down my nose and that does like 95% of the solution.
| otikik wrote:
| Soap (dry, no water) rubbed and spread with a paper towel
| until "apparently clean" also works - the thin layer of soap
| prevents fogging. You might have to try several brands of
| soap.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I have some old ski goggle 'defogger' that's worked well
| for me. I assume it operates on the same principal. It's
| kind of a waxy stick that you rub on and spread out with a
| cloth.
| dygd wrote:
| Something else that works really well is the anti fog dry
| cloth/wipes. They're cheap and get rid of fogging completely.
| ngngngng wrote:
| I haven't tried saliva. Usually I just end up with my mask
| way up my nose and my glasses moved down my nose. That works
| fine short term but I have to hold my head like a pompous
| asshole and that's tiring.
| jmkb wrote:
| The 3M "Aura" N95s have a generous and durable nose pad
| that's basically eliminated this problem for me. They do
| get extremely humid on the inside though; I have to carry
| two and swap them every hour.
| autoexec wrote:
| early in the pandemic I had a very limited supply of N95
| masks and when the nose wire got too deformed to keep a good
| seal I solved it with a tiny amount of spirit gum. Lots of
| solutions if you're willing to try.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _and all the halfway measures we 've taken haven't achieved
| their stated goals._
|
| You have some good points up until this one. Go to your local
| hospital and ask them how they'd like it if their case load
| went up by 2x due to a lack of "halfway measures." In some
| places, that will be OK, while in others, it will be utterly
| catastrophic.
|
| Obviously that doesn't justify ridiculous overreactions to
| unmasked toddlers, as you point out. But it's just as obvious
| that the inadequate measures being taken are nevertheless
| helpful on a population-wide basis.
| ngngngng wrote:
| > In some places, that will be OK, while in others, it will
| be utterly catastrophic.
|
| Maybe? But I already live in a place that did away with all
| COVID restrictions some time ago (not to mention they were
| never as harsh as elsewhere to begin with), and the situation
| here is barely worse than places with prohibitive
| restrictions.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> and the situation here is barely worse than places with
| prohibitive restrictions._
|
| Are you sure about this?
|
| I lived in a metro area in the middle of anti-COVID
| restriction land for a portion of the pandemic. Our
| hospitals were _slammed_ during every surge, mostly with
| COVID cases from outlying counties.
|
| Tiny rural hospitals didn't have case spikes, but really
| only because they functioned purely as funnels to the metro
| hospital systems. In one case, a county never had more than
| a single digit number of ICU admissions! Of course, the
| dashboard failed to mention that the sole hospital in that
| county only had a single digit number of ICU beds... guess
| where their overflow patients ended up?
|
| At least in our case, if you looked at statistics on
| dashboards you got one story, but if you paid attention to
| the actual source of cases -- as opposed to which ICU the
| patient was sent to -- you got a very different story.
| [deleted]
| champagnois wrote:
| There is no evidence that I am aware of which would indicate
| places with strict mandates (Boston or LA) did significantly
| better or worse than places that made such mandates illegal
| (Texas).
|
| The outbreak curves and percentages are basically the same,
| especially when you account for the population differences in
| age, obeasity, diabetes, etc.
|
| A red state might do worse at times, but is also more easily
| explained as a result of a more vulnerable population.
|
| Be scientific about it rather than political. There are a lot
| of ways to analyze the data.
| kareemm wrote:
| > The outbreak curves and percentages are basically the
| same, especially when you account for the population
| differences in age, obeasity, diabetes, etc.
|
| Can you cite a source for this claim?
| nradov wrote:
| You can start here for age adjusted death rates by US
| state.
|
| https://www.bioinformaticscro.com/blog/states-ranked-by-
| age-...
| another_story wrote:
| Try looking at places in the world where people actually
| followed the mandates versus places that didn't. How come
| Taiwan, which has cases of Omicrom right now, is not seeing
| exponential spread?
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Go to your local hospital and ask them how they'd like it
| if their case load went up by 2x due to a lack of "halfway
| measures."
|
| I love this argument.
|
| "Just _imagine_ how much worse things could have been! The
| observed outcome is better than a worst case scenario I made
| up! "
|
| "Just imagine if I didn't wear my lucky socks to the game. We
| would have lost even worse!"
|
| The data does not bear out your position. Places with less /
| no mandates did not have measurably worse outcomes.
| claytongulick wrote:
| According to the article, in the only large randomized
| studies that have been performed, masking showed little, if
| any benefit.
|
| As far as I'm aware, most studies, including WHO, show that
| lockdowns were counter productive, and could result in
| increased transmission.
|
| I haven't seen a single study that showed school closures
| resulted in any decrease in transmission, or provided any
| benefit. I have seen many that showed the harms it imposed,
| though.
|
| These measures were ineffective. So, how do you justify
| saying that a hospital's case load would increase by 2X if we
| got rid of them, or had never done them?
| DavidSJ wrote:
| > According to the article, in the only large randomized
| studies that have been performed, masking showed little, if
| any benefit.
|
| From the first one [1] they linked:
|
| > odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23] ... Although the
| difference observed was not statistically significant, the
| 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23%
| increase in infection. ...
|
| Sounds like the issue is lack of statistical power. We
| basically can't conclude much at all from that study, but
| taken "at face value", that was an ~18% reduction in
| transmission. Presumably this would compound if done for
| longer or among more people due to exponential spread.
|
| Compound an 18% reduction for three generations (about ~15
| days) of viral spread and that's about a 45% reduction in
| case load. Of course it's more complicated than that
| because a faster-spreading virus will also reach saturation
| of the susceptible population more quickly, but it does
| mean lowering peak hospital load, as well as lowering R_0
| which means the point of saturation is smaller, etc.
|
| From the second one [2] they linked:
|
| > Proper mask-wearing increased from 13.3% in the control
| group to 42.3% in the intervention arm (adjusted percentage
| point difference = 0.29 [0.26, 0.31]). The intervention
| reduced symptomatic seroprevalence (adjusted prevalence
| ratio (aPR) = 0.91 [0.82, 1.00])
|
| So that's a 9% reduction (again, with a wide confidence
| interval), as a result of increasing mask usage by only 29
| percentage points. So if the signal's real, then presumably
| increasing mask usage further, say up to 85%, would add a
| very meaningful further reduction.
|
| Again, we can assume that would compound if done for longer
| or among a larger population.
|
| **
|
| Furthermore, there have been plenty of lab experiments on
| masks which show them to be effective at filtering water
| droplet-bound Covid particles. And Covid is not the first
| virus we've ever encountered. In the absence of lots of
| data specific to Covid, we can apply background scientific
| knowledge about the effectiveness of masks in slowing the
| spread of respiratory disease.
|
| There are also costs to wearing masks, as well as to mask
| mandates, which I'm not taking into account in this post.
| But I wouldn't characterize the evidence as you have.
|
| **
|
| [1] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M20-6817
|
| [2] https://www.poverty-action.org/publication/impact-
| community-...
| claytongulick wrote:
| I agree that we interpret the results of those studies
| very differently.
|
| I'd also suggest that we only regard lab studies with a
| bit of intellectual curiosity, rather than a meaningful
| focus. Lab studies are very different than the real world
| where my son trades his batman mask for a friend's
| spiderman mask because it's cooler :D
| kareemm wrote:
| > According to the article, in the only large randomized
| studies that have been performed, masking showed little, if
| any benefit.
|
| I have this open in another tab. It links to three studies
| that show masks in school do work:
|
| https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/mask-
| requirem...
|
| > most studies, including WHO, show that lockdowns were
| counter productive, and could result in increased
| transmission.
|
| Do you have a source for this?
| benbenolson wrote:
| The author of that blog post sees that states like
| Tennessee and Texas had a high number of school closures,
| but that plot is simply plotting raw numbers of school
| closures. Not only are those numbers affected by a
| plethora of variables (for example, population density,
| population number, vaccination rates, number of schools,
| closure policies...), but how could you possibly compare
| raw numbers of school closures in individual states?
| Then, they use this incredibly skewed plot to draw the
| conclusion that "Public health mitigation measures in
| schools, like mask requirements, work." Talk about
| jumping to conclusions.
|
| For the first two studies, these kinds of probabilities
| are extremely dangerous and prone to "playing with the
| data." Given the exact same dataset, one could draw
| nearly any conclusion with such disparate and varied
| data, especially when attempting to control for other
| factors. Could these increased "change in daily number of
| cases per 100,000 children" be due to other factors; for
| example, a correlation between a mask policy and other
| policies, such as closure and a decrease in class size?
| I'm not saying that I know the answer, either, but plots
| like this should be taken with a pinch of salt.
| phailhaus wrote:
| > Try taking a 6 hour flight with a 2 year old that's required
| to keep his mask on the entire flight, and when he takes it off
| (because he's 2, of course he's going to take it off) the
| flight attendants threaten to turn the plane around and ban you
| permanently.
|
| Never heard about this, source? Toddlers tend to be somewhat
| exempt from mask mandates because they're toddlers and everyone
| understands when they don't comply.
| ngngngng wrote:
| https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2021/08/20/tsa-
| exten...
|
| The TSA mandate itself. Only those under age 2 are exempt
| from it. This is just for the US obviously, not sure about
| other places. But in my experience the less you paid for your
| ticket the more strict the airline is. I typically don't fly
| budget airlines but did once during the pandemic and that's
| when a flight attendant shouted at me and my wife when our
| toddler had taken his mask off and we didn't notice.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| They would probably be more patient and tolerant of
| children if they hadn't spent 2 years dealing with
| manchidren who scream at flight attendants and punch them
| in the face. I've actually never seen anyone on an airplane
| shout at all. Did they actually scream at you or merely
| speak tersely?
| [deleted]
| swamp40 wrote:
| In Illinois, wife teaches 2-3 yr olds. Masks are mandatory,
| all day long. Any pulldown gets pulled up. Nothing much goes
| on in the classroom anymore besides mask compliance and
| handwashing. It is INSANE.
|
| We have two children. Both masked for 7 hours a day. Every
| day. Both schools are VERY STRICT. Everybody is vaxxed and
| boosted. Doesn't matter.
| psyc wrote:
| Wearing masks whenever possible doesn't bother me in the
| slightest. I've been loving it that COVID has normalized
| wearing a mask in public because I'd like to do it all the time
| for the rest of my life without being judged for it.
|
| But I don't want anybody mandating it. I've been trying to work
| out in my own mind why I switched to being more, uh,
| 'deontologist' if you will, several years ago. I'm just
| starting to almost be able to articulate it. If you take a
| consequentialist stance, then any catastrophe sufficient to put
| your chosen 'utility' at risk _instantly_ justifies literally
| any measure that mitigates that risk. As long as the measure is
| outside the realm of the thing you regard as 'utility'. Is
| free speech for its own sake not part of 'utility' but only a
| means to increase it? Then out the window it goes when it
| causes problems. Same for privacy, leaving your home without
| permission from an authority, pretty much anything we think of
| as freedom.
|
| It greatly disturbs me to find the Overton Window in a place
| where I see smart Americans debating every day whether strongly
| authoritarian and invasive measures are OK, if they save lives.
| ceras wrote:
| If you haven't stumbled upon it already, you may enjoy
| reading about rule utilitarianism:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_utilitarianism
|
| > Rule utilitarians argue that following rules that tend to
| lead to the greatest good will have better consequences
| overall than allowing exceptions to be made in individual
| instances, even if better consequences can be demonstrated in
| those instances.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > Americans debating every day whether strongly authoritarian
| and invasive measures are OK, if they save lives.
|
| In Europe seatbelts are mandatory, and it is forbidden to
| smoke in most places. I think that these are reasonable
| measures. I think, for the exact same reasons, that mask
| mandates are reasonable.
|
| In public transport is mandatory to wear at least a t-shirt,
| as skin to skin contact gets unhealthy fast. And restaurants
| require to clean your hands after going to the toilet.
|
| What does not fit with my idea about the USA is that you can
| go naked in the street, as it seems quite a Puritan country.
| And books being censured in schools for mildly nudeness also
| seem to be the norm. Is not that worse that mask mandates?
|
| Edit: seatbelt
| nradov wrote:
| In most of Europe masks for schoolchildren aren't
| mandatory.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/cdc-school-mask-guidelines-fuel-
| cul...
| Georgelemental wrote:
| The US is not as different as you think. Seat belts are
| mandatory in 49/50 states, restrictions on smoking are
| common, restaurant employees generally need to wash their
| hands after going to the bathroom, "no shirt no shoes no
| service" is the general rule, nudity in public places is
| generally against the law. I don't know where you are
| getting your impression of US laws from, but it's just
| wrong.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| My take was not that the US does not have same/similar
| rules, but that the US does have same/similar rules while
| thinking mask mandates as somehow different from those.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > restaurant employees generally need to wash their hands
| after going to the bathroom
|
| I struggle to grasp a society where that has to be
| mandated
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| >I struggle to grasp a society where that has to be
| mandated
|
| You're probably unaware of the high prevalence of fecal
| bacteria on public surfaces, then.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16134485/
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/29/mcdonalds-touchscreen-
| kiosks...
|
| "A study by U.K. newspaper Metro found gut and fecal
| bacteria on touchscreens in all of the chain's
| restaurants it surveyed. It took samples from the screens
| in eight branches and found that they contained coliform
| bacteria, a group of microorganisms found in people's
| intestines as well as in soil and on plants."
| smhenderson wrote:
| _In Europe belts are mandatory_
|
| I'm having a hard time understanding this one... Are you
| literally saying that belts that hold people's pants up are
| mandatory?
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Yes. Down with with the Big Apparel
| michaelmcdonald wrote:
| Seat belts.
| jrockway wrote:
| I've been to Europe and never wore a belt, so they must
| mean something else.
| FourHand451 wrote:
| Count your blessings, my friend.
| maxsilver wrote:
| It's probably a reference to seatbelts
| smhenderson wrote:
| Duh, thank you, that is completely obvious and why I
| didn't get that reading it is beyond me!
| nso95 wrote:
| seatbelt?
| xdennis wrote:
| > although I believe they're more inconvenient for me than most
| because I'm blind and no matter what I do they always fog up my
| glasses
|
| Sorry if this is an insensitive, stupid question, but why do
| foggy glasses bother you if you're blind?
| nradov wrote:
| The majority of visually impaired people who are legally
| classified as "blind" still have some visual perception and
| glasses can help maximize that.
| ngngngng wrote:
| Sorry, left it vague for brevity. I'm unable to do all sorts
| of things without glasses, such as reading or driving. I'm
| not legally blind, I just have terrible vision. So if I'm in
| a restaurant trying to see the menu and my mask causes my
| glasses to fog up there's nothing I can do. I can't see
| through the fog, and I can't read without glasses.
| speedgeek wrote:
| https://www.tabsynth.com/product/badger-seal-mask-fitter/ I
| broke my nose playing baseball in high school and have an odd
| shaped ridge that prevents the metal in the mask from forming a
| tight seal. I use these to prevent fogging, works great for me.
| not2b wrote:
| The Atlantic has lots of writers (on staff as well as guest
| writers) who have different positions. They do seem to be
| running a lot more "I'm done with this" articles lately.
| tootie wrote:
| Katherine Wu has been a font of great information on Covid
| issues, especially vaccines. I noticed she's not party to this
| particular article. I'm wondering if she's gnashing her teeth
| right now or about to launch a Twitter tirade. This could just
| be The Atlantic giving space to a breadth of ideas rather than
| an actual endorsement of their thesis.
|
| And as a parent with two kids in school they have absolutely
| zero complaints about their masks and wear them all day even
| outside. They think they're cool and comfortable. Anecdote but
| it definitely colors my opinion.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| My wife made my mask out of an old tee shirt using a pattern she
| gleaned from the internet. I'm sure that it works. But I can
| still smell the guy next to me at Wal Mart.
| mattmiller wrote:
| Why haven't states setup Covid only treatment centers to relieve
| the pressure on hospitals? Sure there are only so many nurses and
| doctors but reducing regulation on who could work in these
| centers would fix that.
| taylodl wrote:
| General observation from reading the comments - the folks on HN
| must not have many friends working in medicine for if they had
| they'd realize those friends are swamped and burned-out. They'd
| also know that pretty much the only condition we're treating
| nowadays is Covid. Surgeries are continuing to be postponed -
| including surgeries that can lead to worse problems down the road
| such as removing cancerous tumors.
|
| And it gets worse. My daughter is in pre-med. Apparently people
| are dropping out like flies and not just because of the course
| load. They're watching how medical professionals are being
| treated and saying screw it! This should concern us all because
| we've had a marked uptick of medical professionals
| retiring/resigning since the pandemic started and now the
| pipeline is thinning out.
|
| We're walking headlong into a disaster and nobody seems to care.
| And that's not even dealing with the problem of Global Climate
| Change which, guess what? Still hasn't gone away and there
| doesn't seem to be much interest in caring about that either, not
| that there ever was.
|
| You can see what our child-bearing aged children think of all
| this - they're not having kids. I don't think this is a short-
| term aberration. We're a population literally in decline.
| stvswn wrote:
| I find it kind of amazing that the justification for school
| mask mandates (which was once "keep kids from getting covid")
| has morphed into "we'll lower the load on hospitals if the kids
| keep their faces covered."
|
| Can anyone imagine if we went back to 2020 and pitched this to
| parents? "Look, if your kid gets it, it will be similar in
| nature to a chest cold. It's somewhat more dangerous for the
| elderly. In order to keep doctors and nurses from getting
| burned out, the kids are all going to wear masks all day. Other
| than that, outside of school, we're all going to be pretty much
| getting back to normal."
|
| I have lost track of what the goalposts are. I am starting to
| think that people just like the idea that children are
| suffering, it must mean that we're taking the whole thing
| seriously. As long as none of us are inconvenienced, right?
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| Isn't the whole point of the article that school mask mandates
| probably don't reduce spread? If it doesn't reduce spread than
| it won't help your overwhelmed friends working in medicine.
| Sorry I guess I just don't understand what point you are trying
| to make.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The thesis of the article is that even though studies show
| masks work studies in schools had obvious flaws and are
| measuring multiple confounding factors ergo masks might not
| work so we have no justification for mask mandates. This is
| materially different from knowing they don't work.
|
| I cannot countenance the idea that keeping most of your spit
| with you rather than floating around the room doesn't reduce
| spread of a respiratory virus. At best I would suggest
| instead that schools ought to have had a mandate to use and
| reuse sterilized n95 masks instead of a loosely fitting cloth
| mask oft worn with the nose exposed.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| Yeah I don't think they are really saying that they
| absolutely don't work but that the evidence that they do is
| weak enough to justify removing the mandates. They address
| N95 mask in the article (did you read it) pointing out that
| they are more difficult to breath in and hinder
| communication more (I'll add my own point in that they are
| harder to keep a seal with which seems to be quite
| important according to the studies I have seen). Personally
| I have used N95 mask quite a bit for sanding projects and
| can to attest to the difficulty of wearing them for long
| period in a properly fitting way.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| There are a couple of things happening.
|
| This 'they don't 100% work so we shouldn't even bother'
| bullshit .. is just that. Bullshit.
|
| What is the cost of masked students, it's the cost of the
| masks. Now granted our schools are, frankly, criminally
| underfunded. However that PPE could be supplied from
| outside the school's budget for those students that don't
| take care of the costs themselves.
|
| The other problem that i've been hearing from my public
| school teacher friends is that there are so many staff
| absences due to covid that more and more students are
| stuffed into the classrooms of those teachers that are
| there. So if you, as a teacher, have a class that is down
| 50% of students due to an outbreak but somehow you
| managed to avoid it. Well your 50% empty class that
| allows for better distancing will not last, you will be
| at 100% or grater capacity simply because another teacher
| is out, there are no available substitutes and you can't
| leave kids unsupervised.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > Now granted our schools are, frankly, criminally
| underfunded.
|
| They're not, they're one of the best funded schools in
| the world.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spendi
| ng_...
|
| the US is 66th by % of gdp
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| ah, so you didn't read the article I guess, because it
| never says that they don't work 100% just says the
| evidence that they do isn't great, it also covers what
| the writer sees at downsides (cost) to masking children.
| Its fine to have differing views but you should probably
| focus your arguments on the substance of article. The
| author laid out several very compelling paragraphs to
| back up her point along with sources cited, so I'm sorry,
| but if the only counter argument you can come up with is
| "its bullshit" you should probably quit the debate club.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| 1% effective is better than 0% effective. The best
| defense is defense in depth.
| orangecat wrote:
| _What is the cost of masked students, it 's the cost of
| the masks._
|
| It's much more than that.
|
| _The other problem that i 've been hearing from my
| public school teacher friends is that there are so many
| staff absences due to covid_
|
| Sure, and that's happening in schools with and without
| mask mandates. Unless you go into full hermit mode, you
| are going to be exposed to Omicron. And if you're young
| or vaccinated, that's very unlikely to be a big deal.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The cost of masked students is not just the purchase
| price of the masks. It's that plus the reduction in
| learning (academic, linguistic, and social) from wearing
| the masks (and the masks being fussed over).
|
| That total cost may (or may not) still support the
| decision to have a mask mandate for kids, but let's not
| get confused and think the only cost is measured in
| dollars.
| stvswn wrote:
| His point is that the job satisfaction of adults is important
| and saving it requires our collective agreement that 1+1=3.
|
| The point of masking in schools was maybe, once, based on the
| theory that it would keep the children and teachers safe.
| Now, the point is that we must exert every lever of control
| at our disposal. It just so happens that the only group of
| people who we can reliably control are children, as they
| cannot vote, do not have fully-formed civil rights, and (in
| the main) are legally required to attend government run
| schools each day.
|
| So, while they'd love to make everyone else mask, they
| realize they practically cannot -- so they focus on children.
| It's grotesque.
| orangecat wrote:
| So many Covid (and other) policies are the result of "We must
| do something. This is something."
| rkk3 wrote:
| What does this have to do with masking young children, many who
| are vaccinated, in schools? Are you implying that they are a
| source of the spread and causing medical professionals to be
| burnt out? and that therefore we should ignore that both the
| teacher and student wearing a mask might be detrimental for ESL
| & Language development ?
| kodah wrote:
| > You can see what our child-bearing aged children think of all
| this - they're not having kids. I don't think this is a short-
| term aberration. We're a population literally in decline.
|
| I'm one of these folks. I think it's wrong to blame this solely
| on COVID. I won't have kids because my position in the United
| States is nowhere near guaranteed. I have survived three
| economic recessions, one of which I lost everything in and the
| course of my life was permanently altered. I watched as society
| adopted "the internet" and used it in terrifying detail. I've
| watched as social problems turned into vitriol, anger, and at
| times violence. I've watched as climate change was viewed as
| either "conserve", "don't believe", or "innovate" with the
| latter being the latest focus - none of which have worked and
| each took myopic approaches to a very broad problem. I've
| watched as society became polarized on such arbitrary lines as
| politics, missing any nuance that may occur across the
| spectrum; almost turned into a caricature of Star Wars. Home
| prices are higher than they've ever been, inaccessible to even
| moderately wealthy citizens.
|
| I may not be on the money with each of my perspectives, though
| I also don't think I'm really that far off. So riddle me this:
| Why in the hell would I want to add one more responsibility
| while dodging and dealing with the bullets of life as-we-know-
| it today?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > My daughter is in pre-med. Apparently people are dropping out
| like flies and not just because of the course load. They're
| watching how medical professionals are being treated and saying
| screw it!
|
| And who can blame them at this point? If anything we need more
| doctors/nurses/healthcare workers, but now we're going to be
| moving in the wrong direction for many years.
| baron816 wrote:
| > My daughter is in pre-med. Apparently people are dropping out
| like flies
|
| This may not be a bad thing in the long run. There's a shortage
| of medical professionals because the medical industry wants it
| that way. If the crisis becomes acute enough, the government
| will be forced to loosen regulations, and that would allow for
| more people to enter the field faster and more easily.
| convolvatron wrote:
| _thats_ your takeaway? that if the damn government stopped
| bothering to try to oversee outcomes in an area with extreme
| information asymmetry, a desire to get treated regardless of
| the cost, a bunch of agents between the doctor and the
| patient taking their cut, and a massive problem with cost
| control....everything would just be fine and we'd have plenty
| of doctors.
| baron816 wrote:
| No. You're putting a bunch of words in my mouth.
| nradov wrote:
| The shortage of physicians is primarily caused not by
| regulations but by lack of government funding for residency
| programs.
|
| https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-
| fun...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| So we didn't have physicians before government started
| funding residencies? I think not, I think we used to have
| physicians just fine 100 years ago. So what changed?
| nradov wrote:
| Medical education with residencies only really started in
| about 1930. Before that there was no real consistency,
| and the results were terrible in terms of iatrogenic
| harm.
|
| https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001936.htm
|
| The other thing that changed in the past 100 years is
| that Americans on average are older, sicker, and have
| higher demand for healthcare.
| clutchdude wrote:
| As with many things, nuance is a subject that many on HN fail
| to grasp.
|
| They believe that masking is a binary decision and that once
| made, the die is cast.
|
| Rather, if we tied masking mandates to thresholds of community
| spread and encouraged/provided high quality masks, the public
| would at least show medical professionals we're interested in
| keeping another body out of the morgue, aside from the obvious
| vaccination need.
|
| But I digress - there are many slow moving disasters that were
| every so slightly accelerated by COVID that are only going to
| surface in the years to come.
| adolph wrote:
| > They'd also know that pretty much the only condition we're
| treating nowadays is Covid.
|
| That claim is misinformation, please edit and delete. Medicine
| as a field is very broad and plenty of other conditions are
| being treated.
| dsl wrote:
| At your dentist or plastic surgery clinic, sure. Hospitals
| everywhere are short on nurses and anything that can be
| delayed still is. A friend was recently transfered to another
| hospital to give birth because the maternity ward was
| unstaffed.
| tlear wrote:
| People stopped having kids once they could(easily available
| birth control). Trying to connect it to COVID or Climate change
| is not supported by any data whatsoever.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Call it a vibe. I only see a steady decline in living
| standards in our future and it makes me pause when I think
| about whether to subject another human being (i.e. my kids)
| to that.
| tlear wrote:
| We are living in the most safe, prosperous, easy, carefree
| time in the history of human species. Can we fuck it up?
| yes we probably can, it won't be easy and would need to
| involve nukes probably.
|
| Realize that doom and fear porn that you are reading
| addresses certain type of need we have. If you overdo it
| well you get depression. Then again some people I know use
| this crap to give themselves excuse to behave like
| teenagers in their 30s, stuck in childhood(because they
| can).
| sometimeshuman wrote:
| There is no stigma these days for not starting a family
| kids and men can privately retreat into video games and
| pornography. When confronted about their selfish* lifestyle
| the above comment is convenient cover but it is not backed
| by solid data. I'd take birth in this past decade over
| birth in my decade any day.
|
| *I'd argue that not having at least one child and possibly
| adopting others is selfish assuming one has financial
| means. For example, while I thought I wanted kids, upon
| reflection what I really wanted are mini-me's. If I could
| buy a clone I'd do it immediately, but child roulette?, no
| thanks. My selfish lifestyle had made me very happy so far
| and that feels like a character flaw.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| May I ask how old you are?
|
| From where I am, a "selfish" lifestyle of video games and
| porn replacing responsibility does not seem to be healthy
| long-term.
|
| I'm in my late 20s now, and the guys I know who are not
| working towards getting married and starting a family are
| pretty much all starting to experience some sort of
| constant existential anxiety.
| danbolt wrote:
| Part of me thinks its the "working towards" part,
| independent of the family/marriage bit. I can't prove it
| though.
|
| I think if you drop off the rails of a traditional
| lifestyle, you need to be ready to stand on your own two
| feet a little more when it comes to intrinsic motivation.
| smolder wrote:
| Birth control is not the only factor that has affected birth
| rates, even if it's the biggest. There are many factors. Any
| connection to COVID or climate change may not supported by
| any data you've seen, but does that entitle you to
| categorically rule it out as a factor? Where's this data that
| shows no relationship? I've seen a number of indications
| young people are increasingly hopeless about the future. It
| stands to reason that this could effect birth rates so I feel
| there's at least a small burden on you to show why the idea
| is wrong.
| tlear wrote:
| I mean it is possible somewhere in the rounding error or
| the rounding error of the effect contraceptives had there
| is climate change and covid effect. Massaging that out of
| the data will will be tricky to say the least, but given
| enough grant money I am sure people will rise to the
| occasion.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Yes, having plunged dramatically in the 60s with the
| widespread adoption of the pill, birth rate in the US has
| been falling in a fairly steady rate since about 1970
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
| states/birt...
| concinds wrote:
| Genuinely asking -
|
| What's stopping a country, or hospital, from saying: "we'll
| prioritize cancer patients, scheduled surgeries, normal
| operation; you come in with Covid respiratory distress, and
| we're full? Go away." From the government data I've found,
| Covid patients are about 5-20% of emergency department patients
| in the US[0]; in Switzerland that leaves a healthy amount of
| free beds[1] (though I'm sure staffing is another issue). Why
| are they causing such disruption? And if they are, why are we
| not having a debate about whether all the additional cancer
| deaths, heart attack deaths (from deprogrammed surgeries and
| screenings) are worth it? In what way is this "healthcare
| catastrophe" not partly avoidable?
|
| > You can see what our child-bearing aged children think of all
| this - they're not having kids. I don't think this is a short-
| term aberration. We're a population literally in decline.
|
| That's been happening long before Corona, and I doubt it has
| much do do with politics or "optimism about climate change"
| compared with wages, housing, etc.
|
| [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/nhcs/hospital-encounters-
| by...
|
| [1]: https://www.covid19.admin.ch/en/hosp-
| capacity/icu?time=phase...
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I believe the EMTALA means a hospital can't deny you
| emergency treatment. Though what defines an emergency can be
| kind of murky. They could certainly evaluate most covid
| patients and send them home with Tylenol, or make them sit in
| their car while they let gunshot wounds in. I also think
| there is government money available for hospitals treating
| covid patients, so it is in the hospital's interest to not
| turn them away.
|
| Some anecdotal evidence, I went through cancer treatment
| starting Feb 2020, ending Feb 2021, with a few scans since.
| Including one in a few days. I have never had any of my
| numerous appointments postponed for covid. But I think it is
| because I am lucky enough to afford to be treated by a
| hospital with a large cancer department.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| At least in my area, I have heard of people being turned away
| from hospitals (where they are going due to covid symptoms)
| because of their vaccination status.
| taylodl wrote:
| I've asked my friends working in medicine the same thing.
| What if hospitals were to start turning away those who are
| willingly unvaccinated? I haven't been able to get a clear
| answer but the basic theme I hear is you can't, state law
| prohibits that. Of course the law can be changed, but what
| legislature is going to do that? This is where politics
| enters the fray. They'd rather kick the can down the road and
| bring in the National Guard to help run the hospitals than
| turn away patients and potentially face voter wrath.
| nradov wrote:
| For hospitals it's the federal EMTALA law which makes it
| illegal for hospitals to deny emergency care on the basis
| of vaccination status. If a patient shows up with unstable
| vital signs then the hospital is required to at least
| stabilize them. For COVID-19 patients that's usually based
| on respiratory distress or low blood oxygen saturation.
|
| https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-
| Guidance/Legislation/EMT...
| boilerupnc wrote:
| So, we essentially have mandates to "treat" with no
| corresponding agreement on defining any mandates to
| "prevent". Prevention mandates could be a tapestry of
| options and defined within specific contextual and
| cultural boundaries. But having nothing on the "prevent"
| tilts the scale entirely to obligatory treatment and
| clearly feels imbalanced.
| lancesells wrote:
| I'm vaccinated and think everyone capable of receiving the
| vaccine should get it but turning people away is cruel.
| That's science-fiction dystopia cruelty in my opinion. Now
| if a hospital is full and at capacity maybe there are some
| calculations but just turning people away is wrong.
| psychlops wrote:
| Most people don't die from covid, they die with covid and
| their multiple comorbidities. I think it would bring up
| multiple issues. I have many questions about the approach.
| Would you turn away someone who is asymptomatic but covid
| positive? What if they were turned away due to false positive
| covid test? What if they contracted covid from the hospital?
| What if they are vaccinated and still get covid?
|
| I suspect it could easily lead to broader exemptions and
| eventually bring up the issue of other infectious diseases
| not being treated.
| youniverse wrote:
| I'll throw into this that my friend at a big hospital in
| Topeka, Kansas says all overnight surgeries are canceled so to
| staff shortage. Including heart surgery. Crazy.
| tjr225 wrote:
| > And it gets worse. My daughter is in pre-med. Apparently
| people are dropping out like flies and not just because of the
| course load. They're watching how medical professionals are
| being treated and saying screw it! This should concern us all
| because we've had a marked uptick of medical professionals
| retiring/resigning since the pandemic started and now the
| pipeline is thinning out.
|
| You should be angry at corporate healthcare that has
| prioritized financial efficiency and monetary gain over doing
| its job and treating healthcare workers fairly, not strangers
| on hackernews.
|
| > We're a population literally in decline.
|
| No, no we're _literally_ not. Not as of right now at least; the
| US population grew over the last year. But- even if we were,
| wouldn't that directly address the unrelated issue of climate
| change that you brought up?
| onedognight wrote:
| It's only increasing due to immigration, if I'm reading this
| correctly.
|
| https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio.
| ..
| adamrezich wrote:
| ah, so everything is going according to plan then.
|
| downvoters: is this outcome undesirable? if so, why, and
| what can we do to fix it? because I'm pretty sure you're
| not supposed to say that having more kids is a good thing,
| and using immigration/migration as a means of replacing
| those kids we're not having is a bad thing.
|
| thus, is this outcome (declining citizen birth rates,
| increased immigration/migration compensating for it) not
| the intended, desired one?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| (I think you may have been downvoted because your initial
| comment appeared to be referencing the "White Genocide"
| conspiracy theory - essentially the idea that the Jews
| are planning to slowly eliminate the white race in the
| West and replace them with blacks and Muslims.)
| pge wrote:
| Not yet - if you look on pages 5 and 6 of that report, you
| see that births still exceed deaths in the US. Without
| immigration, though, population will stop growing in the
| next two decades (but it hasnt stopped yet).
| lr1970 wrote:
| > They'd also know that pretty much the only condition we're
| treating nowadays is Covid.
|
| This statement might be true for your location but is not true
| in general. Here in New York City hospitalizations due to covid
| are not very high and going down quickly. Elective surgeries
| and procedures go on as scheduled. ICUs are not overrun with
| covid specific cases. Majority of the patients with positive
| PCR test are hospitalized for medical reasons other than covid.
| Recorded deaths do not differentiate between "died from covid"
| and "died while covid positive" making death statistics hard to
| interpret. In general, compared to the situation on the ground
| in March-April 2020 this time the covid load on NYC hospital
| system is lighter.
|
| The biggest challenge is staffing shortages in the hospitals
| due to general burn-out, people being on sick leave due to
| spreading omicron. Noticeable percentage of nurses were laid
| off because of the vaccine mandate (i am not judging the
| mandate, just stating the consequence).
|
| SOURCE: several physician relatives and friends working in NYC
| hospitals (Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn).
| perardi wrote:
| NYTimes has a pretty good source on this.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-
| hospitals-...
|
| I'll tell you that here in Chicago, based off data, and
| anecdotes: really depends on the neighborhood. Vaccinated
| areas? Doing fine. Undervaccinated areas? Not doing so well.
|
| Gosh, it's like vaccines work and that's the way out of this.
| [deleted]
| colpabar wrote:
| > Gosh, it's like vaccines work and that's the way out of
| this.
|
| You know, I see snarky little comments like this becoming
| more and more common on this site, and I'd just like to
| point out that they are not helpful in any way. Who is it
| directed towards? Do you think you are convincing _anyone_
| , or encouraging a productive discussion? I'd be willing to
| bet that the overwhelming majority of people on this
| website are vaccinated. I know I am.
|
| In my opinion, that line is the equivalent of saying "gosh,
| maybe black people should just stop committing crimes if
| they don't want to go to jail" or "gosh, maybe gay people
| should just stop having unprotected sex if they don't want
| HIV."
|
| I am begging you, and everyone else, PLEASE, if you want to
| make a point, please do it in a respectful way that doesn't
| assume anyone who disagrees is stupid. If you need to be
| snarky, go do it on the-site-that-must-not-be-named.
| watersb wrote:
| I actually want to hear good reasons for avoiding
| vaccinations, because many people care a lot about that.
|
| I can understand immuno-compromised people, an underlying
| medical condition, for whom a vaccine may not work or may
| be dangerous. Undergoing chemotherapy treatment for
| cancer? Got it: vaccines won't help you (or anyone else)
| until you can get past the cancer.
|
| I don't agree with an argument from stand-my-ground, my-
| body-my-choice principles. I could agree with such a line
| of reasoning, _if_ a personal choice did not present an
| immediate danger to anyone else.
|
| This is a very infectious disease with severe health
| consequences. No one has control over the outcome, if
| they choose to infect another person. Maybe it's no big
| deal for them. Or maybe it wrecks their life, long after
| the vaccine objector has left the scene.
|
| What are some other reasons for avoiding vaccination?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Nobody here is advocating for avoiding vaccinations so
| your entire point is moot.
| reanimus wrote:
| I think if we're supposed to treat the position against
| vaccination being effective as "not stupid", we ought to
| hear reasons why that is.
| colpabar wrote:
| My point is that if you insinuate that anyone who holds
| that position is stupid through sarcasm and snarky
| comments, you are never going to hear those reasons,
| because no one will want to engage with you.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Even if it's stupid, what exactly is saying that going to
| accomplish other than feigning some superiority over the
| unvaccinated?
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| Having already had an infection before you were able to
| get vaccinated.
|
| A recent CDC study [0] joins plenty of others from last
| year in showing that these people were at least as
| protected from infections and severe outcomes during
| delta as those who were vaccinated without a prior
| infection.
|
| Avoiding getting something that offers little benefit and
| offers even small risks makes sense to me.
|
| You've probably spent the last year being told these
| people are trying to murder your family though, so it
| also makes sense to me if you don't agree with this.
|
| [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?
| s_cid=mm...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > You know, I see snarky little comments like this
| becoming more and more common on this site, and I'd just
| like to point out that they are not helpful in any way.
|
| It just represents a general fatigue that a lot of people
| have with the anti vaxxers. That we have hard numbers
| that vaccines actually work seems to be irrelevant to
| them, so maybe they would be convinced by snark and
| sarcasm instead?
|
| > In my opinion, that line is the equivalent of saying
| "gosh, maybe black people should just stop committing
| crimes if they don't want to go to jail" or "gosh, maybe
| gay people should just stop having unprotected sex if
| they don't want HIV."
|
| You are comparing getting a couple of free shots at the
| pharmacy to much more complicated lifestyle
| circumstances.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| > It just represents a general fatigue that a lot of
| people have with the anti vaxxers. That we have hard
| numbers that vaccines actually work seems to be
| irrelevant to them, so why maybe they would be convinced
| by snark and sarcasm instead?
|
| and you think this is an experience unique to your
| viewpoint? do you think the people reading your words who
| have vaguely opposing views might not also be fatigued
| when your group flatly denies their concerns are
| irrelevant?
|
| if you find yourself in an us-vs-them mindset and decide
| to ditch empathy, all you do is widen the divide.
| reanimus wrote:
| > Who is it directed towards?
|
| I imagine toward the people who behave as if vaccines
| aren't effective, which are nonzero.
|
| > In my opinion, that line is the equivalent of saying
| "gosh, maybe black people should just stop committing
| crimes if they don't want to go to jail" or "gosh, maybe
| gay people should just stop having unprotected sex if
| they don't want HIV."
|
| I mean. The latter statement is a thing gay people
| actually DID say, long before the government told them
| to. Gay people noticed that it was spread through sex and
| that condoms work. Not even going to touch the former
| statement since I don't feel like wading into the
| criminalization of black people. Suffice to say, not
| convinced by either of these comparisons.
|
| > I am begging you, and everyone else, PLEASE, if you
| want to make a point, please do it in a respectful way
| that doesn't assume anyone who disagrees is stupid. If
| you need to be snarky, go do it on the-site-that-must-
| not-be-named.
|
| I'd label your preceding statement to be snarky, fwiw.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I don't think comments like that are meant to convince
| anyone.
|
| There are vanishingly few circumstances other than
| legitimate medical conflicts that warrant being
| unvaccinated. Namely, crippling anxiety of
| planning/scheduling the appointment, or being misled by
| trusted advisors (Fox Entertainment or doctors who should
| have their medical license revoked).
|
| Other than that, I have very little patience or sympathy.
| rnk wrote:
| I think repeating accurate facts is an important thing.
| Because the random complaints in incorrect and bizarre
| negative anti-vax claims pass by without someone
| addressing them often.
|
| What is real and true matters. There's lots of things
| that are hard to decide, but we know that they're not
| millions of hidden deaths from getting vaccinated, and we
| know that there are millions of people protected from
| dying because they got vaccinated.
| abduhl wrote:
| What are the demographics of each of your identified
| cohorts? For example, if the south side is under vaccinated
| (whatever that means) and doing poorly then it seems a
| little disingenuous to act like their medical care wasn't
| subpar prior to Covid.
| perardi wrote:
| Yes, and?
|
| The hospital case load is overwhelmingly, screamingly,
| massively dominated by the elderly unvaccinated.
|
| https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/...
|
| Given the extremely contagious nature of Omicron, what
| plausible way do we have to prevent these individuals from
| getting COVID and using hospital space? And don't say masking
| up kids--because if they haven't gotten vaccinated, _then why
| do you think they themselves would wear masks and social
| distance to prevent themselves from getting COVID?_
|
| I have seen no plausible modeling that shows even high level of
| masking would significantly blunt the spread of this.
|
| https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view...
|
| So why make the kids put on hair shirts I mean masks?
|
| Oh, and by the way: I have plenty of sympathy towards health
| care workers. I am dating a nurse. I have doctors, nurses, and
| paramedics as friends. I have extreme empathy towards them, and
| full seething burning anger towards the unvaccinated
| septuagenarians ruining our health care system. And the rest of
| our economy while they're at it.
| dsl wrote:
| I know multiple households where the initial infection vector
| was the kids. Grandpa might be stupid and refuse the vaccine,
| but keeping little Billy from becoming a carrier lessens the
| hospital load. If screaming Karens are going to insist on in
| person learning, we need to mask test and vaccinate in the
| schools.
| tqi wrote:
| 1. If your Grandpa chose to not get vaccinated and gets
| COVID, thats his problem.
|
| 2. The idea that anyone who wants in person learning is a
| "screaming Karen" is fucking stupid. There is lots of
| evidence that remote learning has all kinds of negative
| outcomes for kids, and your (frankly sexist) dismissiveness
| is the reason this conversation never goes anywhere.
| aqme28 wrote:
| > If your Grandpa chose to not get vaccinated and gets
| COVID, thats his problem.
|
| Unfortunately though that's not true. It's putting a huge
| burden on hospitals that affects us all.
| tqi wrote:
| True, but thats a % of a % of a % (ie Masks could prevent
| some % of COVID transmission at school, of some % of
| which would have be transmitted to other individuals in
| the home, of which some % of which would have required
| hospitalization), which makes it seem likely to be a high
| cost for not much reward.
| gkbrk wrote:
| > If your Grandpa chose to not get vaccinated and gets
| COVID, thats his problem.
|
| Sure thing. Can we get the Grandpa's to sign documents
| saying they're going unvaccinated by choice and would
| like to opt-out from any hospital care related to COVID
| if their resources are needed for any other patient?
| stvswn wrote:
| You somehow manage to be condescending against all parties
| here.
|
| Calling mothers who want their children to receive an in-
| person education "screaming Karens" is terribly out of
| touch.
|
| I have young children, and my position is simple: the
| hospital load, the vaccination status of the elderly, the
| burn out of the teachers -- it's not my child's burden.
| It's the adults' burden.
|
| You are free to wear a mask for the rest of your life for
| all I care. I find it pathetic, but I really don't care.
| But you and people like you do not deserve power over my
| children, and if you don't see the reckoning coming you are
| not paying close enough attention.
| katbyte wrote:
| Maybe take your kids out of public school then? Your kids
| are not the only ones there and don't take priority over
| everyone else's (and the teaches)
| perardi wrote:
| Or...grandpa can get vaccinated.
|
| I'd be more than happy to test and vaccinate in schools. In
| particular vaccinate. But having kids wear masks...which
| they don't do well, because they're kids...not like adults
| do it well either...is a fig leaf. It's not going to work.
| And you can see that _from the massive infection rates in
| schools that have masks_.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is there a massive infection rate? My kid's elementary
| school sends an email with the count of positive test
| results in the school each week. It seems like it's
| consistently under 1% per week. (Typically 1-4 people
| testing positive in a city K-5 school, students and staff
| being tested.)
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Our school has seemed to do OK keeping it from spreading
| between kids.
|
| But they also do weekly testing. And did surveillance
| testing at the end of winter break, which kept about 15%
| of the school's students at home for the first week back
| because they had covid.
|
| This statistic was also consistent with LA Unified
| surveillance testing after winter break - about 15%.
|
| Before winter break, some parents of 2nd graders had an
| indoor, maskless, holiday party. Apparently all the kids
| got covid. Then gave it to the teachers - all 4 2nd grade
| teachers were out of school with covid the week before
| winter break. But from what our school's testing showed,
| it didn't spread beyond that.
|
| I do know of a couple families who did seem to get covid
| from their school though.
| amerkhalid wrote:
| Another thing I wonder about is what are the affects of
| wearing masks at young age and not getting usual amount
| of exposure to viruses and other germs.
|
| I remember reading here and elsewhere that early
| childhood exposure to germs builds a robust immune
| system.
|
| While my kid doesn't wear mask in his class but his
| school is following very strict cleaning procedures. So
| he hasn't gotten sick as much before pandemic. Maybe that
| is good, definitely easier on us. Maybe we will always
| have higher level of hygiene now. Or maybe in future
| there will be a lot of young adults with underdeveloped
| immune system.
| watersb wrote:
| Good question.
|
| I believe that it's common for kids to wear masks during
| flu season in some countries. They probably have some
| relevant data.
|
| I think there's a belief that strict adherence to
| vaccination and masks would get us to a place where we
| won't need masks all the time, and kids can resume their
| usual immune-system adventures. That might be less
| realistic than we might want. I don't know.
| dsl wrote:
| Of course all of our problems go away when you convince
| the remaining 40% of the population to get vaccinated.
|
| I'm actually in favor of doing away with masks and social
| distancing. Just create a nationwide policy that the
| unvaccinated will not be admitted or treated for COVID
| and we can all return to our daily lives.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| I'd argue it in a more adult way than just punishing
| those who are different from you. Just do away with the
| masking and social distancing regardless. As soon as we
| were throwing out the first doses of expired vaccine, the
| choice by every american to get vaccinated or not had
| been made. If the hospitals are overrun, it will be the
| unvaccinated, so they'll be punished anyway - no need to
| legally do it.
|
| Also you need to update your Sam Harris stats, its not
| 40% unvaccinated anymore like some outlets continue to
| harp on, check CDC numbers, its closer to only 20% of the
| population remaining.
| rthille wrote:
| https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-
| tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-... I guess it depends on what
| you mean by vaccinated: 75.1% of total us population has
| had at least on dose (79.8% of eligible (>= 5 yr) Fully
| vaccinated drops to 63.6/67.6% And Boosted is at only 41%
| of the fully vaccinated, 86.5M.
| [deleted]
| RubberMullet wrote:
| All of our problems go away?! Which demographic do you
| think this policy will affect the most, for example, in
| California[0]?
|
| [0]: https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#ethnicity-
| gender-age
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Convincing that 40% to get vaccinated while members of
| our elected government preach to that particular choir
| about how things that are partially or mostly effective
| (masking, vaccines, etc) are NOT effective simply because
| they are not 100% effective is a losing battle.
|
| Watch the widely circulated video of the Florida's
| nomination hearing for their new Surgeon General, where a
| democrat asks the nominee if he, yes or no, believes the
| vaccines to be effective. It was asked five times, his
| answers were nothing but stuttering, rambling,
| dissembling, meandering madness ('i mean what does
| effective actually mean' level bullshit). The republicans
| passed him out of committee once the democrats walked out
| in frustration.
|
| We have a party that is in full denial mode because
| that's what their anti-vax constituents want to hear. The
| only upside might be that their vote share goes down
| because their constituents die in higher numbers.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I live somewhere with mild winters so the schools don't have any
| hallways (the classrooms just open to the outside). This meant
| that kids could at least get a break from masking between
| classes. However, after coming back from winter break, the
| schools started mandating masks _outside_ as well as in, and
| including during PE class. As you can imagine, my asthmatic
| daughter was not pleased.
| fifteenforty wrote:
| What type of mask is she wearing?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| She switched from cloth to paper and it did improve things
| somewhat; I think a lot of the effect is that it seals less
| on the side though, so the results of them requiring masks
| outside is that my daughter is wearing a less effective mask
| inside.
| fifteenforty wrote:
| Have you tried her in an N95?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I've worn those during fire season; I feel like any
| benefit from breathing would be erased by how
| uncomfortable they are on the face.
| andreareina wrote:
| I'm a former asthmatic. Even cloth masks are restrictive
| enough that they'd have been an issue for me.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Yeah me as well + I wear glasses so I can't see unless the
| weather is absolutely perfect (little humidity etc.)
| IX-103 wrote:
| It turns out a good fitting mask is essential for
| comfort. I had a problem with masks being hard to breathe
| in and fogging up my glasses. Then I found a good set of
| N95 masks that have a real solid fit. It's loose and
| flexible enough to be breathable, and has a solid seal
| across the nose so moisture doesn't get near my glasses.
| You can tell it's a good fit because it deflates/inflates
| likes a balloon when you breathe.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Me too :( it feels like people like us are forgotten.
|
| But I saw Denmark has just dropped all covid measures
| including masks so hopefully we're all getting there
| margalabargala wrote:
| I actually have the opposite experience with my exercise-
| induced asthma.
|
| It's quite dry and cold where I am currently, due to
| winter. Wearing a cloth mask increases the temperature and
| humidity of the air I breathe when working hard, and makes
| it less likely that asthma will be triggered.
|
| It's a significant enough effect that I will sometimes wear
| a cloth mask specifically for this effect when doing
| something strenuous outdoors.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That would probably be true if we lived somewhere with
| actual winters. My daughter's PE class is in the
| afternoon, and the lowest high-temperature we've had all
| winter is 63.
| sul_tasto wrote:
| perhaps an unmask would be helpful: https://www.getunmask.com/
| hydrok9 wrote:
| just bought one too! thank you
| tsycho wrote:
| From their website (About/Disclaimer):
|
| _The Unmask is not designed or intended to prevent, mitigate,
| treat, diagnose or cure any disease or health condition,
| including COVID-19/Coronavirus. Unmasks are intended for
| general public use only. They are non-sterile and are not
| intended for use in any clinical or surgical setting or where
| exposure to bodily or hazardous fluids may be expected, where
| the risk of exposure through inhalation is high, or near
| intense heat or flammable gas. Unmasks are not surgical
| masks, personal protective equipment, or filtering
| respirators (such as N95 masks)._
|
| Basically, it seems like a soft, breathable mask.....but they
| make no claims that they will significantly reduce your
| chances of catching Covid from someone nearby. That said, if
| the only goal is to meet masking requirements in public
| places, then it "works".
| rhino369 wrote:
| Read between the lines. They are marketing for people who
| don't want to wear a mask but have to. These "masks" are
| designed to do the bare minimum to get you onto an
| airplane. It's not supposed to protect you.
| copperx wrote:
| Surgical masks do the same. They're easy to breathe in,
| they offer little protection, and you can board an
| airplane with them. I don't see the point.
| rhino369 wrote:
| These are supposed to easier to breath in. Surgical masks
| still fog my glasses. Whether the product delivers on
| those claims, I have no idea.
| twic wrote:
| People buying this mask disappoint me. They should at
| least go full hose:
|
| https://fakemaskworldwide.com/the-offensively-fake-fake-
| mask...
| jdminhbg wrote:
| All of this, down to the disclaimer, also applies to the
| ubiquitous normal cloth masks, so it's hardly a strike
| against them.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It's absolutely a strike against them, considering all of
| that does _not_ apply to normal cloth masks
| intentionally.
|
| The makers of this mask deliberately choose to make a
| product that does not improve collective safety, and that
| malicious attitude deserves to be jailed, not rewarded.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| No, it absolutely applies to normal cloth masks. In fact,
| as far as I can tell, that disclaimer is simply copied
| and pasted from other sites selling cloth masks, for
| example: https://teepublic.zendesk.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360047284753...
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It does not apply to "normal" cloth masks, and it's
| deliberately misleading to say otherwise, because if it
| _were_ true about "normal" cloth masks, then these masks
| would not be more breathable.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| I don't know how to be more clear that the disclaimer is
| the same than to link you to a site selling normal cloth
| masks with the exact same disclaimer.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| And I don't know how to be more clear that the disclaimer
| is not the only set of facts in this situation.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Maybe you should have read up thread to see what I was
| responding to then? This is a thread about the
| disclaimer.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Nope, it's a thread about how dishonest these mask makers
| are, considering you're now in _my_ thread.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| So it's a cloth mask, which have been shown to barely
| protect you at all.
|
| > The Unmask is not designed or intended to prevent,
| mitigate, treat, diagnose or cure any disease or health
| condition, including COVID-19/Coronavirus.
|
| That goes beyond the "this isn't an n95 mask" - this is
| actually saying this mask is purely performative. Which is
| the accusation anti-maskers make. So they become what they
| accuse others of doing.
|
| Great business.
| occamrazor wrote:
| On their website I couldn't find any statement about their
| effectiveness, nor any certification.
| [deleted]
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| You're being sarcastic, right? If not, that's the entire
| point. These are designed to fail any tests but cursory
| visual inspection.
| occamrazor wrote:
| At first I thought that the website was sarcastic. But
| they are unironically selling those "unmasks" without
| making it clear that they are as useful as a fishnet
| mask.
| speeder wrote:
| I went to check the site after your comment, and found
| this, and the letters weren't even small:
|
| Disclaimer
|
| The Unmask is not designed or intended to prevent,
| mitigate, treat, diagnose or cure any disease or health
| condition, including COVID-19/Coronavirus. Unmasks are
| intended for general public use only. They are non-
| sterile and are not intended for use in any clinical or
| surgical setting or where exposure to bodily or hazardous
| fluids may be expected, where the risk of exposure
| through inhalation is high, or near intense heat or
| flammable gas. Unmasks are not surgical masks, personal
| protective equipment, or filtering respirators (such as
| N95 masks).
| talideon wrote:
| In other words, they exist to put others at potential
| risk.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| For people like me, it's either this option or an
| exemption. No longer will I put other people's health
| above my own. Triple vaxxed and willing to get as many as
| I need. But feeling like I'm suffocating is no longer an
| option. If you don't have breathing/anxiety issues (or
| both), you don't know what it's like and I;d encourage
| you to avoid the snideness.
| talideon wrote:
| I have chronic lung issues. It's not snideness. People
| who use fake masks put my life at risk. I've literally
| spent the past two years being terrified.
|
| So yes, I do have breathing and anxiety issues, but my
| breathing issues are because I've crappy lungs, and I'd
| prefer to _not_ be around those who consider my life less
| worthy than their own.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| Sorry. I just feel like I've reached a breaking point
| myself. Honestly, the only reason i don't have an
| exemption now is because I didn't want to freak other
| people out, or feel selfish because I don't have a life-
| threatening condition. I think people like me just can't
| imagine living this way much longer, my quality of life
| has truly sucked this year, in particular.
|
| But it's not the same as what you have to deal with,
| genuinely fearing for your life.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| You are vaccinated and boosted. That is what protects
| you. Not somebody else wearing a mask.
|
| It isn't societies job to cater to fully vaccinated
| individuals who remain terrified of Covid. Such an
| expectation is what is truly selfish.
| draw_down wrote:
| jonpurdy wrote:
| Bonus points for ingenuity, I guess? /s
|
| As a non-American considering going through the Green
| Card process and with an American-born daughter, stuff
| like this dampens my enthusiasm for living here long
| term. I guess the USA is just a place with an enormous
| spectrum of opinions...
| xenonite wrote:
| Ironically, they offer four different sizes, while I yet
| haven't found FFP2 masks in more than in one size.
| YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
| Buy good ones like the 3M Aurora and you get at least 3
| size options...
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Wow. The market really does solve for every possible niche.
| Minor49er wrote:
| Their mention of air travel also makes me think of how the
| government brought in TSA checkpoints, but a company called
| Clear allows people to mostly bypass it for a fee. It would
| be nice if we didn't have these restrictions plus people
| finding ways to profit off of getting around them. Just get
| rid of both.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > the government brought in TSA checkpoints,
|
| The government brought in the TSA to take over
| checkpoints and relieve the air transport industry for
| liability for failures of and abuses at the checkpoints
| as part of the post-9/11 air transport industry bailout;
| the checkpoints had existed for a long time.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Yep, pre-911 you still had to go through a metal detector
| and get your stuff x-rayed. Taking off your shoes and no
| fluids are the only new restrictions really.
| panzagl wrote:
| The TSA was a huge improvement over the understaffed and
| indifferent private contractors that used to run airport
| checkpoints when it first started. Things didn't get bad
| again until the shoe bomber.
| chrsig wrote:
| don't forget a high likelyhood of being irradiated
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Not that I like the millimeter wave scanners, but like
| the metal detectors I think they use low-energy non-
| ionizing radiation, so its not really a change in the
| kind or significance of radiation exposure.
| nradov wrote:
| Conventional metal detectors use electromagnets and don't
| emit any ionizing radiation. Backscatter scanners used in
| airport security screening do emit ionizing radiation but
| a very small amount.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radiation-and-airport-
| security-s...
| TameAntelope wrote:
| You get more radiation in the plane than from TSA.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Clear doesn't get you past the checkpoints, it just gets
| you to the front of the line. Gross on a "class warfare"
| level, but you go through the same security everyone else
| does.
|
| Now, TSA PreCheck allows you to bypass some of the stuff,
| like shoe removal and taking laptops out of your bag, but
| it's coupled with a background check.
| Tagbert wrote:
| So these are made for one priority: " Each UnMask is made of
| two layers of premium ultralight material that are chosen for
| their incredible breathability and comfort. "
| aerovistae wrote:
| Just bought one. Hoping it lives up to its marketing and I
| can enjoy a flight on an airplane without discomfort.
|
| I'm triple-vaccinated and absolutely sick of wearing a mask.
| I agreed with it for the first 18+ months of this but by now
| I'm just no longer in favor. I no longer believe covid will
| eventually "go away" and am certainly not in favor of wearing
| masks for years to come in the hopes that it does.
|
| Those that remain unvaccinated by choice I don't care about.
| Those who have vulnerable immune systems I have sympathy for
| but ultimately I don't feel all of society can wear masks
| forever on basis of their existence. Especially now that it's
| such a widespread virus that it's basically unavoidable
| without being a hermit.
| edgyquant wrote:
| This is how I feel as well, and it seems to be a growing
| sentiment among liberals who supported the masks and
| lockdowns for the first year or so.
| tombert wrote:
| Everyone in my family (including me) is vaccinated and
| boosted, but they all (except me somehow) still got COVID
| during December, with my mom getting especially sick.
| Fortunately they all recovered and are fine now (I think
| largely due to the vaccine), but I feel like there exists
| an alternate universe where my mom dies despite being
| vaccinated.
|
| Because of this, I don't think the "fuck the unvaccinated,
| I am sick of masks" mantra works; people can still get
| pretty sick even after being responsible and getting
| vaccinated, and I think as a result the mask mandates might
| need to stay. I don't like them either, but I like people
| getting sick even less.
|
| NOTE:
|
| Just to be 100% clear: I am very very very much _not_ anti-
| vax. Please get vaccinated.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The amount of time you spent trying to keep others safe is
| washed down the drain when you give up for no reason other
| than you're tired.
| sfotm wrote:
| This isn't really true, regardless of whether you like
| masks or not. There have been one or two level changes
| with respect to how much risk you're introducing to those
| around you as well as the personal accountability of
| those you'd affect. It's not surprising that different
| people have different tolerances for these risks.
|
| Even without the above factored in, this is sort of like
| saying that not using your turn signals in traffic on the
| 100th turn nullifies their utility for the previous 99
| (not a perfect analogy).
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It's not about individual risk, it's about collective
| risk, and honestly it's quite selfish to consider the
| COVID risks only with regard to yourself.
|
| And Omicron has made it so the risk profile is
| effectively the same as when this pandemic started; you
| _will_ get it, you _will_ be contagious for a time, and
| you _will_ infect others.
|
| By looking at that risk and accepting it, you're throwing
| away the work you've previously put in to avoid being a
| bad person.
| sfotm wrote:
| The risk profiles that I refer to are both collective and
| individual - they're correlated for pretty clear reasons.
| Nobody is experiencing the spread of the disease in a
| vacuum.
|
| Omicron's risk profile doesn't seem to be the same,
| looking at the numbers available on the Google chart I
| look at. We're seeing a lot fewer deaths per cases.
| That's not to say everyone should throw caution to the
| wind and do whatever they want, but it's disingenuous to
| say the math hasn't changed at all.
|
| COVID cases are acting like a marketplace. People take
| different actions when the numbers/unknowns change, and
| that's not surprising. I know I'm doing a lot more
| outside of the home than I was when COVID first started,
| and that I'm not unique in that respect _at all_.
|
| Not prescribing any course of action, just tossing out
| what I've been seeing.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Omicron may only be less deadly _because_ of the
| precautions we 're currently taking. Reducing those
| precautions could very well slingshot Omicron into being
| the deadliest variant, if it isn't already by sheer
| numbers.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > And Omicron has made it so the risk profile is
| effectively the same as when this pandemic started; you
| will get it, you will be contagious for a time, and you
| will infect others.
|
| Total nonsense. Anyone's chance of dying is massively
| diminished with the vaccine.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Dying isn't the only bad thing that can happen to you if
| you contract SARS-CoV-19, and it's not just about you.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Many respiratory viruses have "long" symptoms. Covid is
| not even close to unique in that regard. Should we shut
| down everything and force little kids to wear masks for 8
| hours a day for the annual flu?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Yes, if those other viruses are as contagious,
| widespread, and deadly as SARS-CoV-2.
|
| Luckily, nothing else has reached that level. Yet.
| naasking wrote:
| > It's not about individual risk, it's about collective
| risk, and honestly it's quite selfish to consider the
| COVID risks only with regard to yourself.
|
| Is it wrong to be selfish? That seems be an implicit
| assumption in your argument.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Yes, it's wrong to be so selfish that you can't
| experience a minor inconvenience to mitigate the risk of
| causing another person's death or severe injury.
| naasking wrote:
| More assumptions:
|
| 1. Should people have the expectation that they can
| inconvenience others, even if only in minor ways? This is
| taken as given, but it's not always the case. For
| instance, reducing speed limits everywhere would only
| slightly inconvenience everyone but save thousands of
| lives.
|
| 2. Is it a minor inconvenience? Certainly not to some
| people with breathing difficulties.
|
| 3. Does it really mitigate the risk to the degree you
| imply? The case is frankly not as solid as you suggest.
|
| There are even more, but frankly the case is flimsy
| enough as it is.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| azangru wrote:
| > after coming back from winter break, the schools started
| mandating masks outside as well as in
|
| While the effectiveness of masks at schools indoors is
| questionable, is there any evidence at all for using, let alone
| mandating masks outside? I would have thought that the sheer
| volume and circulation of fresh air should dilute viral
| particles below the infectious concentration. What are they
| protecting against: direct sneezing into someone else's face?
| jedberg wrote:
| > What are they protecting against: direct sneezing into
| someone else's face?
|
| You'd be surprised how often this happens at an elementary
| school!
| bastardoperator wrote:
| If you have children you know the answer to this question:
| What are they protecting against: direct sneezing into
| someone else's face?
|
| Yes. Coughing, sneezing, touching, hugging, biting,
| scratching, and not washing hands. If you want to get sick on
| a semi regular basis, children are the way to go.
| siquick wrote:
| I've found N95 masks to be far more breathable than the normal
| paper masks, and definitely more breathable than cloth masks.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| do you mean N95 masks with a valve? If so I agree, but the
| ones without a valve are way more difficult to breath in,
| that is kind of the point.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| Cloth masks get wet after a while which makes it hard to
| breathe, N95 masks (with or without valve) don't.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I think they are talking as compared to cloth or surgical
| masks - and I would agree that the n95 class of masks are
| relatively easier to breathe in (and also reusable).
| phil21 wrote:
| The 3M Aura+ line is by far the easiest mask (including
| cloth) I've used, and coincidentally it gives me the best
| seal.
|
| I don't use them often, just in high risk situations - but
| they pass the glasses fog test among other things, and I
| can't tell I'm wearing it after about 15 minutes. All other
| masks annoy me.
|
| YMMV but it really surprised me as I hate the "surgical
| style" 3M N95's, these "duckbill" design masks are quite
| comfortable and breathable in comparison.
| superkuh wrote:
| The article is right that generic "masks" don't work well enough
| to see the effect. But N95 respirator masks do and we should all
| be wearing them if indoors in public for long periods.
|
| Well fit N95 (or better) respirators are needed in schools. Not
| just "masks". Unfortunately this does imply that very young
| children cannot be effectively masked because they will seriously
| degrade the protection by not maintining fit and seal. That is if
| the N95 respirator masks fit their small faces well enough to
| seal at all. This isn't an all or nothing issue though. Even a
| badly or intermittently fit N95 on a young childs face will
| protect more than a strap of cloth.
|
| The CDC (and other institutions) not only failed on mask
| messaging, they actively told people the wrong things for months
| and then years. But it's pretty obvious from first principles.
| It's aerosol spread so you need to actually filter the air, not
| just block spittle.
| mshroyer wrote:
| There's no such thing as a child-sized N95 because N95 is an
| occupational standard, not a general population standard like
| KF94.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't get it - at this point vaccinations are available for
| anyone school aged.
|
| There's no more need for masks. Vaccinate if you want, or don't.
| If you get sick, or not, that's on you.
|
| It's the same deal with a lot of other illnesses- you vaccinate
| or take the risk. It's been this way for decades in schools.
|
| Disclosure: triple vaxx'd moderna
| jmull wrote:
| Hm... this does not actually make an argument against masks in
| school.
|
| It's perfectly fair to point out the limitations of the available
| studies. Of course we want better ones -- that's a good argument
| for more, better studies. But the lack of absolute proof isn't an
| argument against masks in school. That's dumb. Until we conduct
| some well-designed rigorous controlled experiments on human
| children (which we'll never do, for presumably obvious reasons)
| we are going to have to make decisions with imperfect knowledge.
|
| There is substantial evidence that a properly worn N95 or KN95
| mask reduces the transmission of covid, right?
|
| Can children be swayed/educated/convinced to wear a quality mask
| often enough to make a difference in the transmission of covid
| among their teachers or their families? IDK. Good question. We
| aren't completely sure, but probably.
|
| Maybe we should answer that before killing masks in school. I
| mean... let's not be dumb, right?
|
| Masks aren't exactly burdensome. We make kids wear shirts and
| shoes, even when it's unnecessary in summer. Given the current
| situation, if you could magically set aside politics and the
| associated mouth-breathers (which of course we can't) wouldn't we
| actually demand proof that masks are a net negative before we
| stop mandating them?
|
| To me, this is a question of how much do we allow "dumb" to run
| the way things are. Apparently, it's quite a lot. I'm curious how
| far down we'll go before the end?
| plandis wrote:
| > But the lack of absolute proof isn't an argument against
| masks in school. That's dumb.
|
| How so? It seems more ignorant to assume that masks would help
| more when the data we do have doesn't show that.
|
| > Can children be swayed/educated/convinced to wear a quality
| mask often enough to make a difference in the transmission of
| covid among their teachers or their families? IDK. Good
| question. We aren't completely sure, but probably.
|
| You call the authors ideas dumb, but then yourself make
| unfounded inferences as an argument for continuing to require
| masks in schools.
| jmull wrote:
| Come on. The problem is the studies aren't conclusive, not
| that they show nothing.
|
| Jesus.
|
| Sorry, but yes, arguing that away is dumb. Not just dumb, but
| it gets people dead. So... good for you?
|
| Look at the way the article hand-waves away the Bangladesh
| study... that only makes sense if children transmit covid in
| a substantially different way than adults. What's the
| justification for that? Our model for covid transmission is
| by droplets, particularly from the mouth, such as when
| exclaiming, shouting, etc. and that masks inhibit such
| transmission by catching the droplets. Without some evidence
| it's hard to conceive of how children would be less prone to
| this, making mask-wearing more important for them to reduce
| transmission.
|
| > unfounded inferences
|
| What's your argument? That children probably cannot be
| educated to do anything whatsoever? Hey, schools are
| pointless in their entirety, so we can cancel all that and
| the mask issue goes away naturally. Dumb.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > Masks aren't exactly burdensome. We make kids wear shirts and
| shoes, even when it's unnecessary in summer. Given the current
| situation, if you could magically set aside politics and the
| associated mouth-breathers (which of course we can't) wouldn't
| we actually demand proof that masks are a net negative before
| we stop mandating them?
|
| normally you're supposed to actually demand proof that
| something is a net positive _before_ you _start_ mandating it,
| instead of saying "it's not exactly burdensome, why not?", and
| then going ahead and doing it.
|
| shirts and shoes don't obscure faces, which are used to
| communicate nonverbally. one of the main advantages of
| public/private schooling over homeschooling (though there's
| obviously ways to mitigate this for homeschoolers) is the
| social interactions between children are valuable in teaching
| them basic social skills more or less organically.
|
| you have to stop and think about nth-order effects when making
| broad sweeping authoritarianesque mandates like this, it's
| _never_ as simple as, "well, they have to wear shirts and
| shoes to school don't they? how are masks any different?"
| jmull wrote:
| > normally you're supposed to actually demand proof that
| something is a net positive before you start mandating it
|
| Are you unaware of the massive amounts of clear-cut evidence
| that properly worn quality masks substantially reduce the
| transmission of covid? Come on.
| adamrezich wrote:
| as other comments have said, why are we so obsessed with
| minimizing transmission as much as possible, seemingly
| regardless of cost or any other incidental negative
| outcomes, _at this point in time?_ these are all things
| that made sense early on when we didn 't know much and
| everyone was kind of panicky and the death counts were
| higher and the misinformation from China was prevalent.
|
| but now in twenty twenty two, we can't just mandating
| things in order to reduce transmission of a respiratory
| virus, without considering what other nth-order effects
| said mandates will have. it's pure irresponsibility as the
| result of prescribed dogma.
| docfort wrote:
| This argument is poorly constructed. I think there could be
| better ones, but here's my problem. It goes through the three CDC
| studies and correctly observes that they fail to separate regions
| that have high vaccination rates from schools without a mask
| mandate. Indeed, the ideal experiment would involve two schools
| that are otherwise identical in the same geographical area with
| high vaccination rates: one that has no mask policy, and one that
| has mandatory masking. The article essentially complains that
| such an experiment has yet to be done, so therefore, the
| universal masking recommendation is unfounded.
|
| It is empirical fact that vaccination rates on a county by county
| is strongly predicted by the overall political alignment of a
| county (not implying anything further). It is also empirical fact
| that mask mandates are also correlated in a similar way. It is
| also fact that COVID-19 is an airborne disease.
|
| The first two facts determine that the ideal experiment cannot
| accidentally occur in the United States. The last fact precludes
| an intentional experiment ethically. But the last fact at least
| makes the masking recommendation reasonable.
|
| I think the political correlation with these two variables
| (masking and vaccination) is a confounding variable. It would be
| very preferable for it be otherwise, but complaining that it is
| so while not seriously engaging with the real situation is a poor
| argument.
| JangoSteve wrote:
| There's another problem with the article's argument. It
| contends that the many studies on mask effectiveness have
| various shortcomings such as not being specific to kids, or
| having vaccination rates as a confounding variable. And
| therefore, we should not have mask mandates (despite the
| evidence that they work, however non-specific to school
| children they may be).
|
| But its reason for concluding that children should _not_ wear
| masks is because of all of these issues that themselves aren 't
| well studied or understood by the article's own admission:
|
| > Despite how widespread all-day masking of children in school
| is, the short-term and long-term consequences of this practice
| are not well understood, in part because no one has
| successfully collected large-scale systematic data and few
| researchers have tried.
|
| Why in this case should the serious lack of evidence for the
| risks of masking children outweigh the greater-but-imperfect
| evidence for the risks of increased transmission of Covid by
| not masking children? It seems like a double-standard allowing
| the author to arrive at their desired conclusion.
| Izkata wrote:
| From what I've been hearing, there are private schools not
| implementing masks mandates in the same areas as public schools
| that are. Those might be good places to look.
| aeternum wrote:
| A randomized study was run in Bangladesh. There they handed out
| masks to randomly selected villages among a pool of 600
| villages with similar vaccination and political stances.
|
| That study showed that the effect of surgical masks was
| statistically significant when used by the elderly 50+
| population. For other age groups and for cloth masks, the
| advantage was statistically insignificant.
|
| All the headlines around this study, including from the CDC
| were basically 'Masks proven to be effective!', 'masks work!',
| but that's a very lax definition of effective.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/09/masks-rand...
| JangoSteve wrote:
| Saying the effects of masking on younger age groups and with
| cloth masks in this study were statistically insignificant is
| also a misrepresentation of what the study found. The actual
| paper itself can be downloaded here:
|
| https://www.poverty-action.org/publication/impact-
| community-...
|
| From the paper: We found clear evidence
| that surgical masks are effective in reducing symptomatic
| seropreva- lence of SARS-CoV-2. While cloth masks
| clearly reduce symptoms, we find less clear evidence of
| their impact on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, with the
| statistical significance depending on whether we
| impute missing values for non-consenting adults. The number
| of cloth mask vil- lages (100) was half that for
| surgical masks (200), meaning that our results tend to be
| less precise.
|
| They're talking about the analysis of the sub-group that
| consented to blood tests for Covid antibodies through the
| trial, and the fact that a smaller group of people (which
| could also be a confounding factor) consented to these, but
| that if they assume the non-consenting participants had
| similar rates of infection as the consenting group (instead
| of throwing them out), that the advantage becomes more
| pronounced even for cloth masks.
|
| Furthermore, they said that even without that consideration,
| the cloth masks still reduced symptoms of Covid, which is
| still a great win for masks, as it seems they reduce the
| viral load received by an individual enough to reduce the
| severity of their infection. So saying the overall advantage
| of masks was statistically insignificant isn't really true.
|
| What the trial really found was indeed that masks seem to
| work, and surgical masks work better than cloth masks. This
| aligns with what many other studies have found as well.
| However, even though that's probably a valid inference to
| draw from the data collected in the trial, it's not really
| what the trial was designed to find, which was more
| specifically that if you actively distribute masks to people
| and encourage them to be worn, then more people will indeed
| wear them, and this in turn seems to have a positive effect
| on reducing both the transmission and severity of Covid.
| aeternum wrote:
| The question is how effective masks are w.r.t. Covid. For
| this the test really needs to be seroprevalence, not just
| symptoms. Symptoms can be caused by many non-Covid causes
| like allergies or the common cold.
|
| The researchers state:
|
| > We selected the WHO case definition of COVID-19 for its
| sensitivity, though its limited specificity may imply that
| the impact of masks on symptoms comes partly from non-SARS-
| CoV-2 respiratory infections
| jmull wrote:
| Teachers are the "50+ population" in schools, right?
|
| I never know what to make of posts like this. It seems almost
| insulting to have to explicitly point out that masks are
| about reducing transmission, and that transmission could
| occur between students (not 50+) and teachers (many 50+).
|
| Right?
|
| So your conclusion should be that the Bangladesh study is
| quite relevant to schools, yet you seem to be suggesting the
| opposite?
|
| Though I knew about it, I don't think I really appreciated
| how people could cherry-pick information to fit their
| preconceived ideas until covid.
| tehjoker wrote:
| It's going to be darkly funny when all the people that thought
| infecting kids constantly was a good idea start to have to cope
| with the social and biological consequences of it for decades.
| DaltonCoffee wrote:
| Curious what you feel the biological consequences of in-school
| covid transmission will be decades from now.
| standardUser wrote:
| What you are suggesting is wildly speculative and not backed up
| by the science. Individuals not in high-risk groups nearly
| always make a full recovery from COVID infections.
| usefulcat wrote:
| The article talks a lot about how there's little or no evidence
| showing benefits of masking for kids, and also talks a lot about
| the unknown long-term effects of masking on kids. However, as
| with so many articles trying to make a point or persuade people,
| it barely mentions at all the unknown long-term effects of covid.
|
| I'm willing to be persuaded by evidence, but (for me) any piece
| that fails to address such an obvious counterpoint immediately
| loses a great deal of credibility.
| nradov wrote:
| That's a non sequitur. Forcing children to wear masks in
| schools won't prevent them from being exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
| The virus is highly contagious and can never be eradicated, so
| just because there might be some long-term effects for a
| minority of patients (as with any viral infection) that's not a
| valid reason to continue mask mandates.
|
| We obviously can't expect healthy children to wear masks
| forever. That would be absurd and dystopian. So what are the
| exit criteria?
| christkv wrote:
| If you have small children you know what joke masks are in
| school. Little kids are not responsible adults. They touch
| their face, take their masks on and off, exchange them with
| their friends and even eat them.
|
| Pretending that masks on young kids contribute anything to
| slowing the spread is complete wishful thinking.
| DarylZero wrote:
| Hell, quite a few adults do that stuff.
| wvenable wrote:
| And yet my impression of slightly older children and teens
| (admittedly in Canada) is that they're better and more
| consistent at mask wearing than adults are. My son couldn't
| care less if he's wearing a mask or not -- heck I think he
| hates wearing socks more.
|
| I wonder how much of these breathless articles against
| masking children is more about adults than about the
| children.
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, if you have elderly parents you will also learn a thing
| or five about mask-wearing discipline. They will do all of
| the things above (except maybe eating them). My personal
| favorite: removing the mask when they have to cough. And even
| in the in-between age groups, the "responsible adults" are
| fewer than you might think...
| [deleted]
| jpthurman wrote:
| I second this. The article mentions how dubious it is that
| kids can wear their masks properly. I'll site my own son who
| routinely pulls his down below his mouth and nose. I can
| imagine the stress on teachers who have to keep up
| appearances that masks are being enforced while also watching
| the kids in their class do anything but keep them on in an
| effective manner.
| scionthefly wrote:
| About 50% wear masks correctly when it's mandated.
| Correcting them works for 30s to 5 min.
| xorcist wrote:
| Demanding evidence of things we know nothing about in order to
| consider evidence of things we do know about is a rather tall
| order, even theoretically speaking.
| me_me_me wrote:
| This is actually a thing I had my mind changed almost
| immediately upon hearing argument for primary and early
| secondary schools.
|
| Children need facial expressions to read the emotions of
| teachers/peers and are important part of their development. So
| forcing them to wear mask impede that part of development. Now
| its up to you to decide whats more important.
|
| Just to support the point. There are videos of mother
| interacting with a very toddler everything normal, then she is
| told to hold steady and neural face all the time. The baby
| quickly notices and becomes increasingly distressed.
| dennis_moore wrote:
| You wouldn't expect an article that talks about the long-term
| effects of COVID to also address the downsides of mask and
| restrictions, so why should the opposite be true? You can read
| independent arguments for both sides of the issue, judge their
| strengths and weaknesses, and then make up your own mind.
| gms7777 wrote:
| > You wouldn't expect an article that talks about the long-
| term effects of COVID to also address the downsides of mask
| and restrictions
|
| The parallel of this example would be an article discussing
| the evidence for the effectiveness of masking, in which case
| you would be right -- discussion of long-term effects of
| COVID wouldn't be necessarily relevant.
|
| But that isn't this article -- this article is discussing
| policy: should students mask in schools? In which case,
| weighing the long-term effects of covid is absolutely
| relevant.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The built in assumption is that you can stop it. Yup,
| masking usually slows down infection rates but when you
| roll those dice every day with a very infectious variant it
| doesn't matter. If the hospitals aren't full what
| difference have you made if everybody gets it over the
| course of two months instead of two weeks? (And hospitals
| aren't full of children, the peak is past, so we're
| definitely solidly entering "what's the point" territory)
| endymi0n wrote:
| While your point is spot on, it probably won't matter in the
| long run. With the infection rate of Omicron, we as a society
| were faced between even more ridiculously restrictive measures
| to contain it after the first economy destroying measures -- or
| just taking the jump into the unknown unknown of what will
| happen if we let everyone get infected and move into the
| endemic state.
|
| With probably only the exception of China, most countries have
| decided that they will take the latter path, at various degrees
| of throttling.
| lambdaba wrote:
| That's assuming we're containing it at all. This all seems
| very hubristic to me, but I just wanted to point out the
| assumption. It's not because we do things that burden us to a
| degree that the virus' spread is also burdened to the same
| degree. I feel that this is an unconscious assumption that's
| made in this discussion.
| colechristensen wrote:
| We're not, people are pretending that we are or still have
| the opportunity.
|
| Most of the US is at or past the omicron peak, it stopped
| growing because it's running out of people to infect. The
| more cautious people will make up a long fat tail, but it
| really seems doubtful that anything can be done.
|
| We've had 72 million _detected_ cases in the US, if you
| assume a certain number didn't test and a big number never
| knew they had it at all... we are really running out of
| people to "save" from covid infections. During the national
| peak, there were something like a million infections a day.
| nradov wrote:
| The CDC estimated that we're only detecting about a
| quarter of actual cases.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
| updates/burd...
|
| In Santa Clara County CA wastewater monitoring data
| indicates that we're past the peak Omicron wave.
|
| https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboard-wastewater
| restingrobot wrote:
| >there's little or no evidence showing benefits of masking for
| kids,
|
| If the masks don't prevent the spread of COVID, or reduce the
| likelihood of having symptomatic illness, then the long term
| effects of COVID don't matter in regards to masking arguments.
| rhino369 wrote:
| If there is little to no evidence that it reduces spread
| amongst children, the effects of covid on children is
| irrelevant. You wouldn't say an article shitting on Ivermectin
| effacy failed to take into account Long COVID.
|
| The article doesn't mention the other uncomfortable truth--
| every kid is getting covid sooner rather than later regardless
| of mask mandates. Even if masks are 50% effective at reducing
| the spread, Omicron variant is more contagious with a mask than
| the original variant was without one. And there is little
| reason to believe masks reduce 50% of spread.
|
| Washington DC infection rate 20X'd in a month. Even if you
| reduce the slope of the curve, the area under it is going to be
| roughly the same.
| kenjackson wrote:
| The article also seems to contradict itself. It notes that
| there are negatives to mask wearing in terms of lip reading and
| clarity of voice, but the people in class that talk the most
| are the teachers, and they seem to show the most benefit from
| wearing masks. At least at my child's school, children don't
| have to wear masks at lunch and recess (which are held
| outside). This is when children mostly communicate with each
| other.
|
| That said, the most compelling reason to get rid of mask
| mandates in the school is that they don't work. Kids wear them
| all over their face. As noted in the article, no one wears good
| ones, and no one wears them close to correctly. Part of the
| reason why I suspect we see evidence that teachers masking up
| is effective while children aren't effective is that teachers
| are more likely to wear their masks correctly.
| kart23 wrote:
| Thats not what the article is about. The article is showing the
| lack of evidence for masks at schools. If transmission isn't
| impacted by masks, then the severity of covid has nothing to do
| with the decision of whether to require masks or not.
| teepark wrote:
| But while it points out that the evidence for masks being
| effective is scarce, it does little to identify positive
| evidence that masks are specifically _ineffective_. So we
| just don 't know as much as CDC's consistent guidelines seem
| to suggest, and it makes sense to weigh the risk. That the
| article neglects to frame it in this light highlights the
| one-sided nature.
| a9h74j wrote:
| In terms of weighing risk, find one IRB anywhere which
| would have approved an experiment to mask all of the
| students in a school district for a year.
| sjg007 wrote:
| There is plenty of evidence that masks work.
| nradov wrote:
| There is plenty of evidence that high quality, well
| fitted masks (N95 or equivalent) work in the sense of
| reducing the risk of transmission in any single close
| contact interaction. But so what? The virus is here to
| stay and can never be eradicated. Obviously people aren't
| going to spend the rest of their lives wearing masks. In
| fact outside the HN bubble in many areas people have
| already stopped. We're all going to be exposed multiple
| times throughout our lives no matter what. Masks can only
| slightly delay that at best.
|
| Instead of fighting a futile battle by trying to prevent
| exposure we should instead accept that everyone will be
| exposed and try to maximize their odds of survival. That
| means encouraging eligible people to get vaccinated, and
| take other steps to mitigate co-morbid conditions.
|
| https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| [citation needed] Studies that don't use a model or beg
| the question? The Danish one that shows 3% effectiveness?
| Or the Bangladesh one that shows 11%?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-protect-
| sch...
|
| Also the minor detail that countries with masking
| cultures - like Japan - have relatively excellent Covid
| stats with minimal deaths.
|
| Honestly, we're through the looking glass if we're even
| pretending there's any kind of debate about this.
|
| Masks work for adults. Period. There are tens of papers
| proving that now. Any good faith web search will find
| them. For every cherry picked paper "proving" they don't
| there are ten much better designed studies proving they
| do.
|
| If masks work for adults, they work for kids - not just
| to cut spread between kids, but also between kids and
| adults, and especially between kids and vulnerable
| adults.
|
| The UK has decided to have an outbreak of political
| psychosis over this, and there are already significant -
| double digit - percentages of both teachers and kids off
| sick with Covid in many schools.
|
| Risks to kids are relatively insignificant compared to
| the trauma of lost school friends, lost hours from
| school, lost relatives and - in too many cases - lost
| parents.
|
| The promotion of irrational and human-hostile anti-masker
| anti-vaxxer nonsense _really_ needs to stop.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| I'm not sure how "we're through the looking glass"
| because there is still debate on the issue, the Atlantic
| article lays out pretty strong evidence to suggest there
| is at the very least still plenty of room for debate.
| Further I don't understand how debating issues is "human-
| hostile" as you put it. All public measures should
| continuously be up for debate.
| rkk3 wrote:
| have a vaccinated 5 year-old and really frustrated that her &
| other kids in an overwhelmingly vaccinated & non-english language
| immigrant community, have to wear masks all day at school. The
| impact to speech, language & general development just seems so
| overwhelming compared against the potential benefit of children
| wearing a mask.
| [deleted]
| friendlydog wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220127154033/https://www.theat...
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| The case against masks is quite trivial and generalizable across
| most industries.
|
| Today, a teacher now has two realistic options:
|
| a) self-isolate indefinitely, either teaching remotely or
| quitting their job
|
| b) contract coronavirus at some point
|
| Given that, masks are an irrelevance. A teacher who is clinically
| vulnerable and unwilling to roll the dice is left only with the
| option to quit their job, regardless of whether masks are used,
| or windows are left open, or whatever else.
|
| Coronavirus is too contagious for any sort of avoidance strategy
| to actually work. It's not like, say, cooking chicken, in which
| you can basically solve food poisoning.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| My kids school district did not require masks but highly
| recommended them. I figured I would send the kids to school
| with masks as I did not want to be disrespectful to their
| teachers who I assumed would be masked out of concern with
| being around so many children all day. None of their teachers
| wore masks, so that was the end of that. Essentially 15% of
| people including teachers and students wear masks. None of the
| adults (school staff) in their on campus after school program
| are masked either.
| jedberg wrote:
| Do you know what the positivity rate is of your school
| population?
|
| Our school requires masks at all times on campus, inside or
| outside, vaccinated or not (we're in California). However,
| prior to omicron we had 0 cases (school has about 500 people
| at it teachers+staff+kids). With Omicron we've only had 37
| cases.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Official numbers say we have 10 active cases and 35 total
| for the year in my kids elementary school which has ~750
| people on campus. My kid is one of those positive cases so
| he is quarantined for 10 days. Keeping my youngest home as
| well just to be sure he does not infect anyone, just
| assuming he is positive as well but no symptoms. They go to
| the same school. Prior to omicron I think they only had 5
| positive cases at the school, no masks during delta either.
| At this point just assumed that if no one else is masking,
| there is no point and the kids are not going to keep them
| on if the teachers don't make them or wear them themselves.
| Assuming wife and I have it currently as well as we are not
| isolating from our kid but no symptoms. Wife and I are just
| working from home to avoid infecting anyone at work.
| [deleted]
| wrycoder wrote:
| C) Take a COVID therapeutic and get well.
|
| If only the powers that be would take that approach.
| nkrisc wrote:
| The point of masking and being cautious at this point is not to
| avoid ever catching COVID, because it seems certain now that
| everyone will catch it at some point. The point is to be the
| _last_ person to catch it when hospitals are at normal capacity
| and everything else is back to normal, just in case you happen
| to have a very poor reaction to it.
|
| It also just sounds kind of miserable. I also avoid catching
| the flu as much as possible. And if I ever go back to commuting
| by train, I'll probably wear masks on the train too. I used to
| get colds all the time just from riding a completely packed
| train with sick people coughing and sneezing all over.
| DeWilde wrote:
| Sterilizing your environment might be actually
| counterproductive for your immune system. A better strategy
| is eat more healthy and do moderate exercises, especially
| during flu season.
|
| Eventually you will come in to contact with a virus, unless
| you plan to remove all contact with people and animals.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Who's talking about sterilizing their environment? Reply to
| wrong comment?
|
| Of course I'll get sick, I've had the cold a few times this
| year already. That doesn't mean I _try_ to get sick. Don 't
| you wash your hands?
|
| Wearing a mask on a crowded train with people sneezing and
| coughing seems pretty rational to me. I don't _like_
| catching a cold and will take reasonable measures to avoid
| it. Wearing a mask for an hour is hardly a big deal.
| graeme wrote:
| This is unlikely to be true for respiratory viruses.
| Compared to an ancestral environment, we have:
|
| * Much less contact with bacteria, dirt, allergens, due to
| sterilization
|
| * Much more contact with respiratory viruses, due to
| enclosed spaces and modern energy efficiency standards
|
| The whole overactive immune system/hygiene hypothesis is
| much more likely linked to lack of exposure to the first
| group of pathogens and substances.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| But that's the trick; I can _temporarily_ remove all
| contact with people and animals, while there 's an active
| deadly virus killing astronomically large numbers of people
| in my country.
|
| Will I need to be like this forever? No. Can I be like this
| for another year or so? Yes. It's highly unpleasant, but I
| (and some others like me) can actually isolate to the
| degree you jokingly suggest.
|
| And why wouldn't I? Because of some primitive need for
| physical social interaction? Because of my weak will, my
| inability to place the needs of others before the _totally
| optional_ needs of my own?
|
| It just seems like anyone who can isolate and doesn't
| should have a hard time looking themselves in the mirror.
| It's obviously a different story for those who can't (most
| people, really).
| nradov wrote:
| Humans aren't robots. There's nothing primitive or
| optional about the need for physical social interaction.
| The people who disagree with you aren't wrong, they
| simply have different subjective priorities and values.
| [deleted]
| spookthesunset wrote:
| In this post-vaccine world we now live in, is slowing the
| spread of Covid really the absolute most important thing we
| all need to focus on?
|
| Shouldn't we move on at this point? What is the end goal
| here? Why are fully vaccinated adults continuing to freak out
| about Covid?
| davidw wrote:
| Once again: people are dying, right now, because they can't
| get access to health care, because hospitals in some places
| are overflowing with mostly unvaccinated people with COVID.
| This seems like a fairly location-specific issue, so I
| would expect that different places could do different
| things at different times.
|
| We can and are focusing on other things, but hospital
| capacity is a good one to work on keeping down. Once that's
| down, I guess we see where we are and probably lift some
| restrictions.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Where are people dying because they cannot get access to
| healthcare?
| davidw wrote:
| https://healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/news/idaho-activates-
| cris... - comes to mind. Here where I live in Oregon,
| during the Delta surge, people were waiting on "elective"
| surgeries for things like cancer treatment, and the
| hospital system was pretty clear that some ended up dying
| because the hospital was overloaded.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I'm not freaking out. I'm just trying to avoid getting
| myself and my family sick. Who likes being sick? I'm not
| living in some underground bunker, just taking basic
| precautions. It's the same reason I buckle my seatbelt:
| huge potential upside with negligible downside. So worst
| case scenario, I accidentally wore a mask I didn't need to
| wear. Oh no.
|
| I have no reason to believe COIVD would be bad for me. But
| what if it is? Then I'd rather get sick when things have
| calmed down and hospitals are at normal capacity.
| rhino369 wrote:
| >The point is to be the last person to catch it when
| hospitals are at normal capacity and everything else is back
| to normal, just in case you happen to have a very poor
| reaction to it.
|
| By that reasoning you would only wear masks when rates are
| very high. But a lot of schools require it when case rates
| are very low.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > The point of masking and being cautious at this point is
| not to avoid ever catching COVID, because it seems certain
| now that everyone will catch it at some point. The point is
| to be the last person to catch it
|
| Great justification for making 5 year-olds wear masks for 6+
| hours 5 days a week in school. This makes even more sense for
| the 5 year old kids that have ESL or Speech Pathology needs.
| restingrobot wrote:
| There is inconclusive evidence that children are vectors of
| transmission to teachers. At the very least it is the same as
| any public gathering. So your "options" would apply to every
| aspect of life, (Grocery store, restaurant, etc.)
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Yes, hence my use of the term "generalizable".
| restingrobot wrote:
| >generalizable across most industries.
|
| I was trying to point out that it is not just industries,
| its literally life. This is anecdotal, but many of the
| teachers I personally know are anti-in person learning, but
| still willing to eat out a restaurant, which makes me
| question their true motives for remote learning.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Ah, yes, I agree.
|
| My eyes tend to glaze over whenever I hear "because
| covid" now, it's devoid of meaning and simply means "I
| don't want to" most of the time.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I mix in society, wear masks everywhere, and have yet to
| contract coronavirus.
| [deleted]
| JasonFruit wrote:
| c) get lucky
| mandmandam wrote:
| Statistically speaking, isn't that just normal luck? Aren't
| 80% or so of infections mild to symptom free?
| mdorazio wrote:
| You have _yet_ to get coronavirus. There's a pretty good
| chance that you will before the year is out. Omicron is
| extremely infectious even among the fully vaccinated. For
| example, among my friends group all of us are fully
| vaccinated and boosted, and so far 60% have gotten omicron
| despite wearing masks in public, washing hands frequently,
| etc. I expect further mutations in the future will probably
| happen and similarly reduce vaccine effectiveness in
| preventing infection.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Depending on what test people are getting, there may be a
| good portion of the population who have gotten Omicron but
| don't know it if they had very mild symptoms.
|
| Plenty of us have off days, or may feel a little sick but
| don't assume it is Covid because of expecting extreme
| reactions even when it absolutely could be due to its
| symptoms overlapping others and many people being affected
| very little or even being asymptomatic.
| scatters wrote:
| How do you know that? Unless you've been taking PCR tests at
| least weekly, it's more likely that you've had at least one
| asymptomatic infection.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| We're three months in to Omicron and only two years in, your
| situation right now is irrelevant.
|
| The only way you're getting away with this is either by
| having some innate immunity, or by simply not noticing you've
| had it.
|
| I wouldn't have realised if not for a friend saying "get a
| test", my only symptom was a purple line on a bit of paper. I
| actually felt better than normal because I went out drinking
| less.
| naasking wrote:
| > I mix in society, wear masks everywhere, and have yet to
| contract coronavirus.
|
| Or you did and were asymptomatic. Something on the order of
| 70% of cases are largely asymptomatic IIRC. Unless you're
| claiming you got a PCR test every 21 days since the beginning
| of the pandemic?
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I have not (only a few tests so far) but I'll do you one
| better. I have a few doctors friends who mix in society,
| wear masks everywhere, work in covid wards and have yet to
| contract coronavirus. They have to take an ungodly amount
| of PCRs.
|
| Point is, a lot of people have been infected so far, but
| not all people.
| DeWilde wrote:
| More likely, you've had contact with it but it did not cause
| any symptoms.
|
| I don't think it is possible to avoid Coronavirus at this
| point. Unless someone had barricaded themselves in for the
| past 2 years they are likely to have had contact with the
| virus at this point.
| restingrobot wrote:
| You will get COVID at some point, and it won't be because you
| were careful, you forgot to wear a mask, or you encountered
| unvaccinated/unmasked people. It will be because this virus
| is endemic and at some point everyone will get it.
|
| The idea that somehow getting or not getting COVID is due to
| level of diligence is absurd on its face.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I've been exposed to covid-positive people multiple times in
| my home (each time they found out they were positive after),
| no masking involved.
|
| I get tested after each exposure and have yet to get it
| either.
|
| Wearing masks and not catching covid is like wearing a
| bandana and not getting into a bike accident. It is an
| extremely contagious aerosolized virus that cloth masks
| simply aren't sufficient to stop.
|
| Meanwhile, the effects of perpetual masking are obvious-
| harmful to deaf people, harmful to the development of speech
| and socialization in children, asthmatics and more.
| skrbjc wrote:
| Funnily enough, I've seen many people riding bikes in the
| street with no helmet, but wearing a cloth mask.
| brimble wrote:
| I've found myself leaving them on on the walk back to the
| car a whole lot more now that it's Winter. Zero extra
| safety, but it keeps the face warm.
| shard wrote:
| I was already regularly wearing masks in the winter
| before the pandemic for the same reason, it kept my face
| nice and warm. Of course it was cloth masks, not N95. But
| I did wear N95 when the air quality was especially bad.
| mosdave wrote:
| https://stanfordreview.org/stanford-bicycles-helmets-
| masks/
| Panther34543 wrote:
| > Meanwhile, the effects of perpetual masking are obvious-
| harmful to deaf people, harmful to the development of
| speech and socialization in children, asthmatics and more.
|
| There's a ton more. I now have tons of facial scars due to
| continuous breakouts over the past two years due to masks
| (and, yes, I've spent about $2k trying all sorts of silk
| and other supposedly "comfortable" masks).
|
| Another thing that hasn't been talked about is cartilage
| deformities in young children due to the pressure of masks
| on developing features. My sister is a plastic surgeon and
| she has talked about this quite a bit, but it hasn't gotten
| much media attention. The pressure caused by elastic loops
| around the ear is quite harmful to the correct development
| of the ear by permanently modifying the cartilage of the
| concha in growing children[0].
|
| She also mentioned that there may be affects on the shape
| of the nose if a mask is worn tight enough. A "celestial"
| nose is a nose shape with an upturned tip, stereotypically
| considered a sign of attractiveness in many cultures and a
| common feature of celebrities. It's the most requested
| shape for those interested in rhinoplasties.
|
| Forcing young children to wear tight masks is quite
| literally deforming them.
|
| [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7302120
| flycaliguy wrote:
| My son wears a mask to kindergarten and I've been
| impressed by just how much it doesn't seem to bother him
| or really matter at all. That link about deforming ears
| is interesting! It's funny actually, my family tends to
| have stuck out "Obama ears" as well call them. Maybe this
| will create more "ear peers" with the potential to
| actually increase their hearing capabilities?
| zeku wrote:
| I still wear my mask to slow the transmission of covid so that
| less vulnerable people die, and so that our hospitals can stop
| being overrun.
|
| I also personally think of this as well:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/health/coronavirus-mask-p...
|
| Masking may reduce the severity of your covid infection, which
| would be pretty sweet.
|
| So it's not an all or nothing.
| damontal wrote:
| We are all getting coronavirus
| afavour wrote:
| In a way it's reassuring that people of all political stripes can
| at least come together on one point: that the CDC has been asleep
| at the wheel during most of this pandemic. Hopefully at some
| point there will be a discussion about how to reform the body to
| be much more proactive.
| comrh wrote:
| I wish we could all come together and say, "this needs more
| study" too and admit we might not have enough data to actually
| make a real decision.
| mr_tristan wrote:
| The CDC is not so much asleep at the wheel, we just don't have
| any kind of coherent public health system in the USA. There's
| basically an independent public health officer for practically
| every county, and there's very little coordination between them
| and the CDC.
|
| Michael Lewis' book "The Premonition" is eye-opening to how
| dysfunctional public health is in the US.
|
| And it's not like he's alone, even the head of the CDC this
| week called for a reform of the public health system in the US
| (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/21/rochelle-
| walensky-c...). The only picture I'm getting is that the CDC
| doesn't really feel like they _can_ do anything.
| criddell wrote:
| I have a mostly positive opinion on the CDC and I wonder if
| some of the problems are a result of political influence?
|
| The WHO and their fight against the idea that COVID is airborne
| is even more confusing to me. It felt like they didn't even
| want the idea discussed.
| aeternum wrote:
| What gives you a positive opinion of the CDC? By their own
| admission they have lied to the public multiple times.
|
| That's not something that is indicative of good leadership,
| even if supposedly done for benevolent reasons.
| criddell wrote:
| > What gives you a positive opinion of the CDC?
|
| There are a lot of really great people working for the CDC
| and they are doing some excellent work. They also made some
| bad decisions around respect to COVID-19 that absolutely
| does affect their trustworthiness.
|
| However, if I add up the positives and negatives, they
| still are come out with a net positive rating for me.
| There's a lot more to the CDC than their COVID response.
| mandmandam wrote:
| A million times this.
|
| Break it up and scatter it to the four winds. Being heavily
| taxed for the "privilege" of being lied to is anathema to
| democracy, even if all the cool politicians, media, fossil
| fuel and arms companies are doing it.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| >By their own admission they have lied to the public
| multiple times.
|
| Supporting evidence please.
| heartbreak wrote:
| Good point I'm not sure they ever actually admitted to
| lying about masks.
| skrbjc wrote:
| This is one of my main qualms with how public health does
| their work. Lying is justified if you think it will
| convince more people to do something that will improve
| metrics at a population level. Maybe that works for a
| period of time, but once people find out, it destroys their
| credibility.
| a9h74j wrote:
| "When science mixes with politics, what you mostly get is
| politics."
| criddell wrote:
| This is an amazing quotation and now I'm reading about John
| Barry, so thanks for posting it.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Heard it recently, did not know who to attribute it to.
|
| "when you mix science and politics, you get politics" --
| John Barry
| spookthesunset wrote:
| When policies masquerade as science, is nothing but
| politics.
| rhino369 wrote:
| The CDC has never balanced risks in any reasonable way. If you
| listened to the CDC, you wouldn't eat sunny-side up eggs,
| medium-rare steak, and Prosciutto.
|
| I'm not sure its limited to just the CDC. The entire medical
| field misapplied basic fluid dynamics for over 50 years and
| incorrectly concluded that covid couldn't be airborne.
| deeg wrote:
| Surely mistakes have been made (proving that they are human)
| and we should always be ready to reassess something as
| important as a pandemic response but this seems ungenerous. The
| multitude of factors that make up the disease and how our
| bodies respond, along with externalities, is hugely complex.
| Trying to come up with a single unified response that is
| understandable by most people makes it harder. Lastly, the
| political situation just exasperated everything.
|
| Imagine trying to design a national Kubernetes process that
| everyone would install in their home. ;)
| tootie wrote:
| > To justify mask requirements in school at this point, health
| officials should be able to muster solid evidence from randomized
| trials of masking in children.
|
| I think that's a false premise right off the bat. Even if you
| stipulate that evidence for masking is not settled beyond a
| reasonable doubt, it's still at least very plausibly true and
| very low cost to enforce. I'd need to see pretty strong evidence
| of why we shouldn't enforce masking.
| 1shooner wrote:
| I may be missing something, but I don't see any sort statistical
| accounting for vaccination rates in any of this article's
| referenced studies. The authors explicitly use this to dismiss
| studies that saw mask effectiveness, but then go on to offer
| similarly deficient studies as evidence arguing against masks in
| schools.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Whether this article means to it makes the case for requiring
| vaccination instead, which, yeah we should do that.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| If vaccination was the answer, why is my triple vaccinated self
| still required to wear a mask at a grocery store? Worse, why do
| I need to show proof of vaccine to enter a restaurant yet still
| be required to wear a mask anyway?
| standardUser wrote:
| First of all, the number of places where you need to wear a
| mask inside of stores is fairly tiny. Second, for those
| places with mask mandates for shops, it's really hard to
| check everyone for vaccine status and really easy to see if
| someone is wearing a mask.
|
| As for restaurants... where do you need to wear a mask in a
| restaurant these days? I often wear it when talking to the
| host, just to be polite, but that is the only moment I wear a
| mask in a restaurant.
|
| As for vaccines, they are the "answer" because they
| dramatically reduce hospitalizations and all of the
| downstream catastrophes that come from overwhelmed hospitals.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| It's easier to enforce mask compliance than vaccine
| compliance because masks are visible and vaccination status
| is not.
|
| Masking in restaurants for the twenty feet from entrance to
| table is a bit silly, though.
| mandmandam wrote:
| The cost / benefit to vaccinating kids is extremely suspect.
|
| Ireland has 1 million children aged 0-14. 1 has died of Covid
| this entire time. One.
|
| So we need to vaccinate them all every year to _maybe_ prevent
| half an annual death? No way does that make sense from a cost
| /benefit perspective (unless you're a Pfizer shareholder).
|
| "But those kids can spread it to their triple- and quadruple
| vaccinated grandparents!" - What's the NNTV on that?
| duderific wrote:
| It seems like you're dismissing the reality of small children
| spreading Covid to more vulnerable populations.
|
| My daughter who is 3 and thus unvaccinated, caught Omicron at
| daycare. Unfortunately the parents of the child who was
| spreading it, neglected to inform the daycare that the child
| was positive. Because of this, we unknowingly spread it to my
| 81 year old mother in law. This was around Christmas and
| although she is ok, it was a little touch and go for a while.
|
| I imagine I'm far from the only person who found themselves
| in this kind of situation.
| mandmandam wrote:
| I'm glad your MIL is okay. Are you sure she only got ill
| because we didn't vaccinate every 3 year old?
|
| Say all those children _had_ been vaccinated, all of them,
| before daycare started. They 'd have gotten a shot or two
| to be ready for August.
|
| In all likelihood, that wouldn't have done much to protect
| them from Omicron in December. Omicron featured 32
| mutations on the spike protein alone, and previous
| 'vaccines' delivered only 4 months ago offer "very limited
| protection".
|
| Repeated mass vaccination, of entire generations of
| children, to protect _already vaccinated_ grandparents -
| man, that 's going very far. There are many possible
| unforeseen health consequences to such action - and the
| lengths to which you'd have to go to get every parent to
| comply are very fucking far indeed.
| restingrobot wrote:
| >requiring vaccination instead
|
| Why not natural immunity instead?
| Avshalom wrote:
| "let god sort em out" is just eugenics.
| restingrobot wrote:
| >"let god sort em out" is just eugenics.
|
| LOL its not eugenics, its the same for every other
| infectious disease without a vaccine. Everyone will get
| omicron/some variant at some point.
| Avshalom wrote:
| But we have a vaccine.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| But it doesn't work (well enough) to matter.
| brimble wrote:
| It's still really good at reducing hospitalization &
| death rates, anyway. That's not nothing.
|
| Does seem to be nearly useless at preventing symptomatic
| Omicron, though. Just makes it, on average, much less
| awful.
| restingrobot wrote:
| Not for omicron, or the next variant, or the one after
| that. At some point we have to face reality, and no it is
| not eugenics, it called "life".
| amalcon wrote:
| We do have several vaccines for Omicron. They are the
| existing COVID vaccines. They aren't as effective as they
| were against prior variants, but they're still more
| effective than e.g. flu vaccines, which save many lives
| each year.
|
| Note that I don't agree with the eugenics comments, but
| this misinformation about the effectiveness of COVID
| vaccines is getting out of hand.
| standardUser wrote:
| Natural immunity from which strain and how long ago? Does
| someone who recovered from the original strain 18 months ago
| have comparable protection to someone who recovered from
| Omicron yesterday? Or someone who has been vaccinated? We do
| not know these answers.
|
| What we do know - based on mountains of data - is that
| vaccinated people take up hospital beds far, far less often
| than unvaccinated people.
| nradov wrote:
| There is no valid scientific or medical basis to mandate masks at
| school. It's pure scientism and politics. For anyone who believes
| that mask mandates should continue please take the time to
| educate yourself by listening to this panel discussion by a group
| of leading physicians. UCSF professor and infectious disease
| expert Dr. Monica Gandhi explains the current science very
| clearly.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/
|
| https://profiles.ucsf.edu/monica.gandhi
|
| Most European countries don't mandate masks for schoolchildren.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| What? Do masks reduce infection rates? If yes, mandates work.
| If no, mandates don't. Spoiler: they do. [0]
|
| This is pants-on-head stupid, and has nothing at all to do with
| politics. Mandates increase adoption rates of measures that
| _are_ proven to help, and trying to manipulate the situation to
| say otherwise is the problem, not the mandate.
|
| Anyone opposing masking in schools at this point is literally
| choosing to risk killing children for stupid political points,
| and should be profoundly ashamed of their behavior.
|
| [0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
| conditions/coronavirus/i...
| johnnyb9 wrote:
| If the childhood mortality risk associated with Covid is
| comparable to the flu (which seems to be the case) why
| weren't we masking every child before Covid?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Because the Covid mortality risk for children is _already_
| with masks, compared to _without_ masks for the flu.
|
| Also, there are considerations other than specifically a
| child's death that are relevant here, like who that child
| can spread it to and what negative longterm effects
| surviving COVID-19 carry, neither of which are as
| pronounced or unknown as with the flu.
|
| But you knew that already, didn't you?
| nradov wrote:
| According to the CDC the COVID-19 infection fatality rate
| for children is 0.002%.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
| updates/burd...
|
| Children can spread the virus to adults, but adults who
| want to be vaccinated have been for months now. And since
| everyone will be exposed anyway it hardly matters who
| does the exposing.
|
| https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
| TameAntelope wrote:
| How many children are there in the US? I'll let you pick
| the number you'd like to multiply by 0.00002, to get the
| number of children you're okay with killing.
| nradov wrote:
| It's easy to act morally superior and make cheap
| emotional arguments for when you're not the one who has
| to make hard decisions. All lives have value, but no life
| has infinite value. You can't seriously expect the
| majority to endure perpetual mandates and restrictions
| just to provide some limited, temporary protection to a
| small minority who are vulnerable due to risk factors
| like obesity.
|
| https://reason.com/2022/01/03/cdc-covid-19-children-
| hospital...
|
| And in the long run it won't make any difference anyway.
| Everyone will be exposed regardless of whether or not
| schoolchildren are subjected to mask mandates. So what's
| the point of continuing the charade?
|
| https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
| kareemm wrote:
| > You can't seriously expect the majority to endure
| perpetual mandates and restrictions just to provide some
| limited, temporary protection to a small minority who are
| vulnerable due to risk factors like obesity.
|
| Who is saying the mandates and restrictions are
| perpetual?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I absolutely can expect the majority to endure a _minor_
| inconvenience, if that minority they 're protecting is a
| thousand innocent children in a given year (you didn't
| pick a number, so I will, 78 million children).
|
| And the point is to lower the curve, not avoid exposure.
|
| But, again, you know all of this, you just don't care.
| Shameful.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > minor inconvenience
|
| The impacts on their development shown in the article and
| rest of the comments are much more than a minor
| inconvenience
| [deleted]
| xigoi wrote:
| The mortality of a virus is not affected by whether you
| were wearing a mask when you caught it.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > Because the Covid mortality risk for children is
| already with masks, compared to without masks for the flu
|
| This is false, which we know because we can measure the
| fatality rates for children in unmasked locales, and they
| do not differ from those in masked locales.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Too many confounding variables, those measurements are
| useless.
| standardUser wrote:
| The idea is to reduce the spread of the virus in order to
| protect everyone from a lack of hospital beds and exhausted
| medical staff. It's not about protecting the individual
| children (at least not primarily, because they are so low
| risk). Whether or not this is still a useful approach
| probably depends on the locale. It seems like places where
| the Omicron wave is rapidly ending, having children wear
| masks is entirely pointless.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >The idea is to reduce the spread of the virus in order
| to protect everyone from a lack of hospital beds and
| exhausted medical staff.
|
| People keep saying this, but if hospital capacity was
| actually the "real" bottleneck in treating covid then why
| haven't we seen massive campaigns to expand that
| capacity? "Do this thing that is marginally beneficial
| for adults and potentially actively harmful long term for
| children to possibly impact hospital capacity elsewhere"
| is not something that makes sense to me. If this was just
| another bottleneck in some system and not related to the
| pandemic you'd address the real problem, right?
| standardUser wrote:
| "why haven't we seen massive campaigns to expand that
| capacity?"
|
| Maybe we should, but we are talking about an astounding
| cost, with ongoing upkeep, for once-every-hundred-year
| events. And that's just for new facilities - we already
| have nursing shortages.
|
| Instead, we (and just about every other country) have
| used mitigation efforts to reduce the transmission rate
| when hospital capacity is threatened. It's a lot cheaper
| and can be done quickly, unlike building new ICU capacity
| and training new doctors and nurses (many of whom would
| be out of the job once the pandemic is over).
| remarkEon wrote:
| I'm not following your point.
|
| You say this is expensive and hard, but so what? Isn't
| that what you do when a pandemic occurs?
|
| You also point out we have a nursing shortage currently
| (we did before the pandemic as well). Isn't that a reason
| why we should do this? Kill two birds with one stone ...
| solve the prior nursing shortage with a training and
| hiring blitz.
| autoexec wrote:
| > People keep saying this, but if hospital capacity was
| actually the "real" bottleneck in treating covid then why
| haven't we seen massive campaigns to expand that
| capacity?
|
| You mean like calling in the national guard to help
| alleviate the problem or busing in nurses from all over
| the country, or creating temporary wards, or fighting to
| get more ventilators and medications? All of those things
| and more have been happening.
|
| > "Do this thing that is marginally beneficial for adults
| and potentially actively harmful long term for children
|
| Not only are you minimizing the benefits here, but you're
| prioritizing potential outcomes over proven ones. That is
| not something that makes sense to me. I want to make my
| choices based on our best understanding of the evidence
| we have right now, not based on things that may or may
| not ever happen in the future.
|
| Right now, getting vaccinated and wearing a mask when
| community spread is high in your area are proven to do a
| lot of good to help prevent very real harms. That's
| enough for me.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Nurses in Boston have been striking for almost a year.
| I've seen one instance of calling in the national guard
| recently, and ventilators are no longer the preferred
| treatment protocol in every case. I haven't seen a single
| effort to literally build more hospital wings with ICU
| beds. Have you?
|
| >Not only are you minimizing the benefits here
|
| CDC's own studies did this, not me.
|
| >but you're prioritizing potential outcomes over proven
| ones.
|
| Yes exactly. We _know_ that kids have an infinitesimally
| small risk from covid, we know that teachers have a
| similar risk profile if they 're vaccinated. The
| "potential" outcomes are catastrophic to development, and
| we won't know _for years_ what detrimental effects
| forcing small children to wear masks all the time will
| have.
|
| Sorry, still doesn't make sense to me. We have one set of
| known knowns, and one of unknown-ish unknowns, and we're
| still doing this because people (not you, necessarily)
| seem to think the goal is to "never get covid".
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Makes you kinda wonder what kind of emergency this is? I
| mean they tried setting up fully staffed field hospitals
| in the beginning but they were closed--most without
| seeing a single patient.
|
| Whatever the hell society is doing right now, it ain't to
| protect hospital capacity. If hospitals were truly
| falling apart we'd have done something to fix them.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| The chance of a child dying from coronavirus is
| infinitesimal, the response should be proportional.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It's only infinitesimal due to all of the precautions being
| taken. Remove those precautions, and more children will
| die.
|
| Also pretty great, you're cool with a couple dozen kids
| dying because otherwise some kids might be mildly
| inconvenienced by wearing a mask.
|
| The discomfort is infinitesimal, the response should be
| proportional.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| More children dealing with Covidism (it's a cult at this
| point) enforced in schools are going to off themselves
| from the psychological abuse of being denied a social
| life than will be saved by enforcing cloth mask policy.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Luckily Covidism isn't real, so it's not very harmful to
| children.
| brimble wrote:
| I've been pro-masking-in-schools for other reasons
| (including the practical reality that many schools would
| have had to shut down without it, since many teachers
| would have just quit--I know a lot of teachers, and
| whether you think it's right or wrong, that _was_ going
| to happen, last school year especially, if precautions
| like masking, distancing, and long quarantine periods
| hadn 't been enforced) but the risk _specifically_ to
| kids under ~12 has been low enough not to trigger my
| "this is significantly-enough riskier than the average
| time a kid spends being driven around in a car in a given
| year, that I should worry about it" alarm pretty much
| throughout the pandemic. I looked into it when the first
| semi-reliable mortality numbers started to come in (I
| have some young kids, so of course I did) and it seemed
| well below nearly anyone's freak-out threshold, _except_
| for kids with other risk factors, some of whom probably
| shouldn 't have been in school at all for any of this.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > except for kids with other risk factors, some of whom
| probably shouldn't have been in school at all for any of
| this
|
| You're likely getting into ADA territory there. Masking
| during a pandemic to permit at-risk kids to continue to
| go to school sounds very much like a "reasonable
| accommodation" of the sort schools are required by law to
| provide.
| brimble wrote:
| > You're likely getting into ADA territory there. Masking
| during a pandemic to permit at-risk kids to continue to
| go to school sounds very much like a "reasonable
| accommodation" of the sort schools are required by law to
| provide.
|
| I agree it is a reasonable accommodation, but also cannot
| imagine sending my own kid to in-person school if they
| were one of the rare high-risk kids, especially before
| vaccination was an option. Masking helps over a
| population, absolutely, but if you're a particular person
| who's prone to and weak against infection, the way it's
| been spreading in school even with masking--yikes. Masks
| and the (mostly lame and questionable, for the simple
| reason that doing better would have meant building new
| schools--I saw some _hilariously_ pointless and even
| _alarmingly counterproductive_ guidelines forwarded from
| teachers I 'm friends with) distancing practices aren't
| anywhere _near_ sufficient for that case, IMO.
|
| OTOH, lots of people don't have the option to stay home
| and watch a high-risk kid. So masking it is (again, I am
| mostly _very in favor of it_!) but man, that _sucks_ for
| those kids and their parents.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Right, but _you_ aren 't really someone who should have
| much of a say over this, and neither are any parents. The
| people most knowledgable about this topic are (though not
| universally) arriving at the conclusion that children
| should continue to wear masks.
|
| Besides, wearing a mask is not exactly a heavy burden to
| bear. Yes, it's annoying, but the consequences of not
| doing so are _also_ annoying, and in more than zero cases
| deadly.
|
| It's such a low burden, that it's almost silly to think
| about _not_ doing it, given the current situation.
|
| Honestly, it just seems like parents are taking out their
| frustrations about the _situation_ on other people who
| are also stuck in this _situation_. It 's absolutely
| bananas, how acrimonious this has gotten, all because
| political actors saw a way to divide the country in a way
| that benefitted them.
| brimble wrote:
| > Besides, wearing a mask is not exactly a heavy burden
| to bear. Yes, it's annoying, but the consequences of not
| doing so are also annoying, and in more than zero cases
| deadly.
|
| Sure, but _tons_ of things are deadly in a non-zero
| number of cases, which most people give _no_ thought to.
| Micromorts are everywhere.
|
| I've been baffled at the strong anti-mask reaction and
| the way so many people've wanted to toss mask mandates
| and other measures out the _second_ things even slightly
| improve, but if current trends continue (Omicron burning
| out, the virus generally getting less-bad, vaccinations
| continuing to be administered) I 'll have (weakly,
| without really caring _that_ much) joined team-no-mask-
| mandates-in-schools by next school year. My kids have
| been _champs_ at wearing them but it 's clear they're a
| (minor) problem in school, from the muffling effect if
| nothing else, and that compliance and good mask-wearing
| generally is pretty shit among younger kids anyway. I
| think we're probably past the cost/reward tipping point
| already, but again, I've tended to favor sticking with
| safety measures until we're _extra_ sure, if only to
| avoid policy change whiplash.
|
| OTOH I kind of love masks and hope it remains non-weird
| to go out in public in one. Two years of _no illnesses_
| in our house has been awesome.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| There aren't _tons_ of things you do that actively harm
| others, and when there are those things, they 're
| regulated and compliance is enforced via legislation.
|
| Wearing/not wearing a mask is not a heavy burden to bear,
| _and_ by not doing it, you 're increasing the net risk of
| everyone around you, in addition to your own.
|
| That's what makes this different from wearing a helmet
| 24/7. But you knew that! Why is this the thing we can't
| do for one another, this small, one thing?!
| brimble wrote:
| I'm having trouble figuring out how you're not advocating
| for never-ending mask mandates, as long as risk reduction
| is greater than zero (which it would have been _even
| before Covid_ ). That's how these posts read. _Is_ that
| what you 're in favor of?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| If I'm saying anything, I'm saying we should do what the
| collective expert institutions tell us (and stop
| listening to individuals, regardless of how qualified),
| and those institutions are generally sticking with the,
| "keep masking, kids!" message.
|
| I'm not sure how you can read what I've written and not
| see how the risk is actually substantially higher than 0,
| and additionally to other people who have less of a
| choice about their comfort taking on that risk. I think
| you are fully aware I'm not suggesting we wear masks
| forever, but I'm curious about why you feel the need to
| present that strawman as my position. Is this generally
| an effective way to communicate for you?
| remarkEon wrote:
| >If I'm saying anything, I'm saying we should do what the
| collective expert institutions tell us (and stop
| listening to individuals, regardless of how qualified),
| and those institutions are generally sticking with the,
| "keep masking, kids!" message.
|
| This just isn't true. Just the other day Sweden decided
| that they will not be recommending the vax for kids under
| 11 [1], and the UK has ended their mask mandates all
| together. The US is part of a select club that is
| actively ignoring what the data says about how effective
| these intrusive measures really are. There's other
| examples from all over the world and their covid outcomes
| are _better_ that the US, largely because so many in the
| US were simply unhealthy, out of shape, and fat which
| weakens your immune system.
|
| Taking your strategy will do much to _weaken_ the general
| populous ' trust in these institutions.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-decides-
| against-...
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It is absolutely true:
|
| The CDC does. [0]. So does the Mayo Clinic [1]. So does
| the Cleveland Clinic [2]. So does Johns Hopkins [3]. So
| does the American Academy of Pediatrics [4].
|
| And the WHO _does_ suggest many children wear masks. [5]
|
| If you don't trust even one of these institutions over
| your own judgement, you are failing to participate
| successfully in society.
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/s
| chools-...
|
| [1]
| https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/benefits-
| of-ki...
|
| [2] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/-/scassets/files/org/e
| mployer...
|
| [3] https://www.hopkinsallchildrens.org/ACH-News/General-
| News/Ki...
|
| [4] https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-
| covid-19...
|
| [5] https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-
| answers/item/cor...
| remarkEon wrote:
| I'm making a point that the US is _unique_ in this
| regard, and few other countries are being this draconian
| about masking kids. TFA notes that the CDC 's own data
| don't lead to the conclusion that these measures do much
| of anything, and the measures actively ignore the other
| potential developmental effects on e.g. language
| processing. Those clinic articles (they're articles,
| written by what looks like some random communications
| staffer, not official guidance or studies) just reference
| CDC guidance. If you look at what the WHO is actually
| recommending - ignoring how piss poor their guidance has
| been thus far - it's way more nuanced than you are
| implying.
|
| I don't really care to reiterate the CDC's own studies
| cited in TFA, as you and many others seem convinced that
| we should be masking indefinitely, even after the
| pandemic "ends".
|
| >If you don't trust even one of these institutions over
| your own judgement, you are failing to participate
| successfully in society.
|
| Okay then cast me out? What a weird sentiment. Blind
| faith in institutions seems unwise.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Firstly, who said anything about faith, let alone blind
| faith? These institutions are constantly on the forefront
| of public health policy, and have an overwhelming number
| of credentials and positive track records that justify
| trusting them to speak accurately. There is no faith
| here, only earned trust.
|
| Secondly, you yourself said the US is uniquely
| vulnerable. Are you now saying it's not?
|
| You can try to strawman all you like, the unavoidable
| fact is that the institutions with the most credibility
| in the world are speaking with one voice: mask your
| children before sending them back to school, and that
| schools should enforce mask wearing to reduce covid
| transmission rates.
| nradov wrote:
| The European experts institutions aren't recommending
| masks for schoolchildren.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/cdc-school-mask-guidelines-fuel-
| cul...
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The CDC does. [0]. So does the Mayo Clinic [1]. So does
| the Cleveland Clinic [2]. So does Johns Hopkins [3]. So
| does the American Academy of Pediatrics [4].
|
| And the WHO _does_ suggest many children wear masks. [5]
|
| If you don't trust even one of these institutions over
| your own judgement, you are failing to participate
| successfully in society.
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/s
| chools-...
|
| [1]
| https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/benefits-
| of-ki...
|
| [2] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/-/scassets/files/org/e
| mployer...
|
| [3] https://www.hopkinsallchildrens.org/ACH-News/General-
| News/Ki...
|
| [4] https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-
| covid-19...
|
| [5] https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-
| answers/item/cor...
| brimble wrote:
| It's not a straw man, I've been noting that risk to
| _nearly all_ kids, especially young ones, has _always_
| been so low that _any_ amount of effort or expense to
| reduce it would have been questionable (but I was still
| pro- various measures, including mask mandates, to
| protect _other people_ in and connected to schools and
| students, to reduce community rates of infection, while
| still letting us go back to in-person school-- _that_ was
| always by far the stronger argument for, specifically,
| _school_ mask mandates) which is just true unless you 've
| got some figures at hand that look very different from
| any I've seen, and that _at some point_ --which we are
| likely at least approaching--the broader risk and the
| amount of mitigation we gain from school mask mandates
| drops below the level of being worth any attention at
| all, _baring_ some drastic change in the current
| trajectory of the pandemic.
|
| But you keep coming back like that's an unreasonable
| position. What's left is... what? The conclusion I came
| to, right?
|
| > Is this generally an effective way to communicate for
| you?
|
| I'm just trying to understand WTF you're getting at. I
| don't have a clue what you _think_ I 'm trying to do.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Why are you ignoring the multiple times I've talked about
| the effects that _aren 't_ directly related to the
| children? They're carriers too, and that matters, on top
| of everything else.
|
| And the institutions I trust _do not_ agree with you that
| we 're "rapidly approaching" any such loss of value from
| masking in schools. That's just straight up wrong.
| brimble wrote:
| > Why are you ignoring the multiple times I've talked
| about the effects that aren't directly related to the
| children? They're carriers too, and that matters, on top
| of everything else.
|
| How is posting that exact thing--so, _agreeing_ with
| you-- _more explicitly_ ( "to protect other people in and
| connected to schools and students, to reduce community
| rates of infection") than you have until this very post
| (it's at best implied in all your other posts, from what
| I can tell, and I just re-read them to be sure--but maybe
| you had that on your mind and it just didn't come across
| strongly?) ignoring that point? It's far and away the
| strongest argument for masking in schools.
|
| > And the institutions I trust do not agree with you that
| we're "rapidly approaching" any such loss of value from
| masking in schools. That's just straight up wrong.
|
| We better be, because I'm pretty sure they're going away
| before long no matter what either of us want (again,
| barring a large change in course for the pandemic). Shit,
| around here they already did drop them for a couple weeks
| right before the Omicron surge and schools had to
| scramble to bring them back to avoid having to shut down
| completely (again: man, I _hate_ the insistence on
| removing safety measures ASAP, it 's been proven a stupid
| idea every single time it's happened so far in my city,
| yet people, including e.g. school administrators, _keep_
| going "OK looks better this week, we should start
| removing our safety measures"). Our city-wide mandates
| are currently gone and were being largely ignored for
| about a month before they were removed. It borders on
| miraculous that schools have been successful at keeping
| mandates in place as long and consistently as they have--
| and if not for the _fact_ that they 'd have ended up
| horrendously under-staffed and had to shut down without
| them, I absolutely don't think they'd have worked as hard
| at it as they have. Admin _hates_ pissing off parents,
| even if it 's only a few of them, and the anti-maskers
| have been the angriest and most-active participants in
| these goings-on. From what I can see the (very credible)
| threat of mass teacher resignations and walk-outs (plus,
| you know, just the risk of too many of them being sick at
| once) are the only reason mask mandates in schools
| persisted for any amount of time at all (and, again, I'm
| glad they have!) outside maybe the "bluest" of "blue"
| strongholds, but I don't think that pressure's gonna keep
| up much longer.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The high school in my conservative county has reinstated
| mask mandates, and it hasn't really been very dramatic at
| all. Most parents generally get it, but I live in a
| flyover state so nobody cares that it's working fine
| here.
| brimble wrote:
| Yeah, they all kinda had to with Omicron because it's
| _so_ damn contagious that even with the reduced 5-day
| quarantine guidelines and drastic reductions in the
| circumstances under which one must quarantine (which
| changes I 'm about 90% sure are BS from a pure public
| health perspective, and just a practical-minded
| compromise aimed at preventing a _de facto_ shutdown from
| having half the damn country in quarantine at once in the
| Omicron surge) some local districts were seeing days when
| they were short _hundreds_ of subs to cover for all the
| teachers who were out.
|
| [EDIT] BTW, no hard feelings, I genuinely wasn't trying
| to piss you off. Communication is hard. Sorry if it
| sucked this time. [EDIT EDIT] LOL, and that phrasing was
| too wishy-washy. Sorry if _I_ sucked at it, this time.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm just sick of giving an inch to evil people and
| watching them take a mile. I'm done doing it, even if it
| makes me sound like an ass as a result.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Um, it says "can" and not "do". It says "can" because it
| depends entirely on the person wearing it. Trained
| professionals in a short term controlled environment, I am
| sure they work great. Kids in a school, not worth it. The
| neglect in "frequent hand-washing", "physical distancing",
| and other habits are going to lay waste to any positive
| impact the masks may have. No one is going to spend the time
| to instill the necessary habits to make masks worthwhile in
| school.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| So teach the children how to wear masks. We don't let kids
| shit on the floor because they don't innately know how to
| use toilets...
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Who's going to teach them? Parents aren't going to have
| time or will miss critical areas. Teachers won't want to
| do it. If teachers do attempt it, it would likely be
| weeks or months of education down the drain since they'll
| be constantly taking breaks to correct students one by
| one.
| dymk wrote:
| More children will probably die in the years to come by
| suicide due to overburdensome restrictions and nuked social
| development than by COVID.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Exec summary: N95s work. Others, not so much, and less than
| we've been claiming up until now.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Sadly they are not just killing children but children are
| clearly one of the most important vectors carrying the virus
| from family to family. Childcare and schools are the super
| nodes in an otherwise socially distanced network. Any effort
| to slow down the spread in these places will be multiplied
| across the whole population. Considering the breakdown of
| medical care system not doing anything right now is
| irresponsible.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| > scientism
|
| Thanks for that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Monica Gandhi has been incorrectly predicting the end of the
| pandemic for quite some time. Long thread with video examples
| here:
| https://twitter.com/KindAndUnblind/status/147038993167988326...
|
| For example: June 29, 2021: "I actually do not wear masks
| unless the business asks me to, bc I feel really protected by
| my vaccine, and I also feel that I can't spread it to
| others...these vaccines are effective against variants, they
| make it so that you can't transmit..."
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > For example: June 29, 2021: "I actually do not wear masks
| unless the business asks me to, bc I feel really protected by
| my vaccine, and I also feel that I can't spread it to
| others...these vaccines are effective against variants, they
| make it so that you can't transmit..."
|
| That was exactly the CDC's publicly stated view at the time.
| Pre-Delta, it was to a first approximation true. Citing this
| as if it's evidence of her spreading misinformation is
| exceptionally dishonest.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Even the most optimistic data we ever had was ~90%
| reduction in infection. That the vaccines on the market
| were not sterilizing has been evident since the start.
|
| There are a _lot_ of examples in that thread, too. She 's
| been confidently predicting hitting herd immunity, no need
| for boosters, last wave, etc. sort of stuff for a long
| time.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| It's fine to say with hindsight that vaccine predictions
| were wrong, but again, that was the official position of
| the CDC and Biden administration at the time as well, so
| it's hugely dishonest to pretend like she's some kind of
| extremist or disinformation artist for being on the same
| page as them.
|
| It's not really the reader's responsibility to check
| everything else in the thread to see how you and/or the
| thread author are either lying or failing to remember
| very public facts about the pandemic.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It's fine to say with hindsight that vaccine
| predictions were wrong...
|
| It's also fine to say I'm not inclined to trust the
| opinions of someone who has been _repeatedly and
| demonstrably_ wrong in this fashion.
|
| I know Biden got out over his skis on a number of
| statements, but can you cite the CDC ever making this
| claim? The wording they were using in June 2021 was
| _reduce_ infection.
| https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0607-mrna-
| reduce-ri...
|
| "I also feel that I can't spread it to others" is a
| confident, evidence-free, and _wrong_ statement.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Those CDC claims are now _demonstrably wrong_ in the same
| post-Delta world you're judging her claims by. When the
| CDC recommended that vaccinated people no longer needed
| to wear masks, exactly what do you think they were
| claiming that is different from Gandhi?
|
| It's fine if you want to ignore people who've made
| predictions about Covid that turned out to be wrong, but
| it just means you have to ignore everyone.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Gandhi's claim was wrong _at the time_. Right then and
| there. There was no indication the vaccines were
| sterilizing; she was just wishful thinking.
| pcmoney wrote:
| Vaccines for Covid are available. Vaccines do not stop the spread
| of Covid. Vaccines do not stop you from getting Covid. Vaccines
| do reduce the probability of severe/fatal cases of covid.
|
| Masks are available. Most masks in most situations do little to
| stop the spread of Covid. Well fitted N95s are more effective.
|
| Getting vaccinated or wearing a mask is clearly a personal health
| decision. Vaccine mandates are ridiculous given the above. Mask
| mandates are ridiculous given the above. Mandates in general show
| little impact on actually changing behavior.
|
| The risk to children is incredibly low. The coronavirus is
| endemic, we are all going to get it.
|
| Lets move on already.
|
| If you are fearful of coronavirus or at risk you can do what you
| think is necessary to stay safe. You don't get to use your fear
| or neuroses to control others.
| ASinclair wrote:
| > Vaccines do not stop the spread of Covid. Vaccines do not
| stop you from getting Covid.
|
| The vaccines still reduce the likelihood of infection and thus
| slow the spread of Covid. It's true their effectiveness against
| Omicron is reduced compared to prior variants.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, please copy and paste this at the top of every covid
| thread. i can't believe people still believe 2 years on that
| there is "something" we can do to stop covid. it's endemic,
| assess/mitigate your own risk and move the fuck on.
| k2enemy wrote:
| I thought the paragraphs about requiring KN95 in schools were
| interesting.
|
| My kids' school district recently had a policy change that
| requires everyone to wear KN95 or KF94 masks. What I've noticed
| is that most kids (including mine) have switched from high
| quality (Halo) well fitting cloths masks with filters to 95 or
| 94s with huge gaps around their noses. It is hard to believe that
| this is an improvement in safety.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| It's safetyism. It's to prevent snarky parents from speaking
| out and holding the school liable if one kid gets a head cold
| from Omicron.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| I used to use KN95 mask for sanding projects but they never
| worked because only after a short period I almost always ended
| up with a gap that allowed a lot of sanding dust (which I
| assume is a large particle than a virus) in causing me to have
| headaches all day. So I don't have a whole lot of faith that
| KN95s are much better (at least over long term wear).
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| As ever, another pro Covid article makes it to the front page.
|
| As ever, HN falls over itself to demonstrate ignorance and
| selfishness.
|
| Meanwhile Covid continues killing and maiming. The butcher's bill
| for this our collective failure is going to be hard reading.
|
| Shame on us all.
| hogrider wrote:
| Wtf, masks absolutely work. Who is pushing this stuff and for
| what nefarious reasons? Do they think all children should get
| exposed early to the virus and then we'll develop heard immunity
| in decades to come? We have the vaccine for that.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| If we have a vaccines, why do we need masks? Do vaccines not
| work or something?
| skrbjc wrote:
| It's not saying to not vaccinate kids, it's saying the evidence
| says masks are ineffective at preventing the spread of covid in
| schools, which means it's meaningless to wear them, and that
| there is a negative cognitive effect on kids with wearing
| masks, so we should weigh that.
|
| Feel free to post a link that confirms "Wtf, masks absolutely
| work" in the context of kids in schools and the Omicron
| variant.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| The person "pushing" this is apparently Margery Smelkinson who
| according to bio on the Atlantic is an infectious-disease
| scientist whose research has focused on influenza and SARS-
| CoV-2, further research indicates that she is a staff scientist
| at The National Institutes of Health. So you know, just another
| one of those run of the mill nut jobs out there. Although she
| did at least manage to string together a few paragraphs laying
| out her case and citing sources as compared to you single
| sentence rebuttable.
| desmosxxx wrote:
| Context matters. In this case it is in the context of spending
| multiple hours in close proximity with a virus as contagious as
| Omicron.
| xondono wrote:
| > Wtf, masks absolutely work.
|
| I'm not that sure. A lot of experts agree that there's not much
| quality data to reach that conclusion.
|
| Most "definitive proof" comes from mechanical studies (they
| measure how far your saliva is reaching with and with out
| mask), but that's not the only important factor.
|
| Masks are not designed for full day use, and by wearing them
| everyone is constantly touching their face, mouth and nose.
| This sounds to me like a _way_ worse infection vector. Viruses
| like covid can survive for a long time on surfaces.
|
| It's hard to separate the effects of masks from that of hand
| sanitizer, vaccinations, or other measures taken.
| veemjeem wrote:
| Nurses working in the ICU during the beginning of the
| pandemic would use the same mask for an entire week without
| losing efficacy. If the masks didn't work, we would have seen
| a huge number of them infected in the NYC hospitals but that
| didn't happen. Most viruses don't survive very long on
| surfaces.
| xondono wrote:
| Nurses in ICU are constantly sanitizing their hands, use
| gloves and are trained about the dangers of constantly
| touching your face.
|
| > Most viruses don't survive very long on surfaces.
|
| Virus can last for days on glass, metals and other non
| porous surfaces.
| dusing wrote:
| ICU nurses wear N95 masks that are fitted and tested (a bad
| tasting/smelling aerosol is used). It is completely sealed
| around the face. This is how my SIL did COVID ICU for 1.5
| years every week without contracting it. Not the same as
| the one size fits all n95 people loosely place on their
| faces.
| twic wrote:
| > masks absolutely work
|
| The handful of large, high-quality studies show that cloth
| masks have no significant effect on transmission, and FFP2/N95
| masks have at best a small effect. The article talks about
| specific reasons to think that even FFP2/N95 masks might be
| substantially less effective in schools.
| jimmyswimmy wrote:
| An interesting article. I was recently unimpressed by the new
| Virginia governor's first action to reaching the mandate on masks
| in schools. My county has elected to retain its own mask mandate.
|
| At first blush a mask mandate is generally a public good. I keep
| my germs to myself, you keep yours too yourself, and we don't get
| the flu, or a cold, or COVID, whatever. And so for me despite not
| living wearing a mask I have been happy to anytime I'm near
| others.
|
| The article makes a decent case that, at least for kids in
| schools, the science to support the utility of masks just isn't
| there. At first I found this surprising - how could it not be? At
| least it should help. But kids are in school, together, for 6+
| hours a day. I barely wear my mask properly for two hours at a
| time and I understand how they work. Kids don't care, they're
| just doing what they're told, cargo cult style. Of course they
| won't be written perfectly, which reduces their effectiveness.
| But the idea that they don't help at all, or at least
| statistically so, is astonishing.
|
| And the article provides evidence of that, cutting neighboring
| counties in Tennessee with similar vaccination rates where one
| had a 23% lower making rate, but similar spread. How can that be?
| Truly fascinating.
|
| Much as we've seen the downside of forced closures and lockdowns,
| this article reminds us that there may be downsides for kids and
| masks. I wasn't open to this possibility previously. What could
| be the downside to putting on a mask? And the answer is, we just
| don't know. How can we follow the science if we don't have any
| research?
|
| I continue to be glad to be a resident of the US, whose
| federalist system allows all these different jurisdictions to try
| different rules that may work better for them. It gives us a
| chance to study these differences and learn from them.
|
| Really thought provoking article. While I wait for more studies,
| guess I'll keep wearing this mask around people. Can't hurt,
| right? Probably.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| A large portion of people wear cloth masks, which are largely
| ineffective. In addition, you're talking about a group of 20+
| people being in close proximity for at least an hour. (Most)
| masks are only going to reduce the number of viruses spread, so
| it might buy you a little extra time around someone that's
| infected - but at some point enough will get through.
| davidw wrote:
| In the US, at least. In countries like Italy, they mostly
| wear surgical masks and have started a broader push for FFP2
| masks. I find this kind of bizarre - the US has a lot more
| money than a place like Italy, but I guess they cared more
| about trying to layer some preventative measures instead of
| turning crappy cloth masks into some sort of weird self-
| expression thing.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _And the article provides evidence of that, cutting neighboring
| counties in Tennessee with similar vaccination rates where one
| had a 23% lower making rate, but similar spread. How can that
| be? Truly fascinating._
|
| There's more to this than vaccination and masking rate. When
| we're talking about being indoors all day, one other variable
| in this is ventilation. For their part, the CDC does suggest
| considering improving ventilation in buildings. Vaccination is
| probably the best single tool we have and if everyone who could
| have been vaccinated was, we'd be in a different situation.
| However, with so many refusing, you have to get into the
| minutia about wearing masks, sitting certain distance apart,
| ventilation, etc., but people aren't good about going into the
| minutia or dealing with the fact that people in different
| situations (like different building with different ventilation)
| should behave differently.
|
| Even knowing this, a lot of places simply don't want to spend
| money on infrastructure, including improving schools.
|
| 0 -
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/ventilat...
| naasking wrote:
| > But kids are in school, together, for 6+ hours a day.
|
| This is probably the relevant variable. If you're sharing the
| same air space with someone carrying an airborne virus, it
| probably doesn't matter that a mask is filtering 95% if you're
| both breathing the same air in an enclosed space for 6 hours.
| Some minimal viral load is needed for infection, and even with
| 95% filtering you'll probably surpass that threshold after 6
| hours.
| another_story wrote:
| In Taiwan we've been wearing masks for over 2 years with near
| zero complaint at school. I have to remind a few kids a day to
| put it over their nose. We've had Omicron here for awhile, but
| it's still only a trickle of cases, with no exponential
| explosion. The policies here, with contact tracing, quarantine
| and masks, have kept things open and people from dying. I don't
| understand the hesitancy.
| u801e wrote:
| It appears that the article is looking at vaccination in addition
| to mask usage. There are many areas of the US where vaccination
| percentages are relatively low and vaccination percentage of
| children between the ages of 5 to 11 are even lower.
|
| While children may not wear masks correctly, at a population
| level, it stands to reason that wearing masks will reduce the
| chance of transmission. Just like condoms have a theoretical
| effectiveness of 98% when used properly, but real world use shows
| an effectiveness rate of 82%, mask usage should still reduce
| transmission, but not to the extent that they would given proper
| use. But that doesn't mean that they're not effective at all and
| there's no need to use them. Looking at it from a population
| perspective versus an individual perspective in terms of
| transmission and the chance of contracting the disease, they
| should still have some beneficial effect.
|
| The other part of the equation is the use of multiple strategies
| to mitigate transmission. For example, social distancing,
| limiting the number of people, and reducing the time spent
| indoors. All these factors put together will reduce transmission
| even if people aren't perfect in terms of compliance.
| dchichkov wrote:
| You may look at the data of how much protection masks add
| between the ages of 5 to 11 and 2 to 5. And how much other
| mitigations measures add (ventilation, cohorting, etc). You'll
| find that high quality masks for teachers reduce spread a lot.
| Masks for kids - the effect can't be clearly registered.
|
| And using masks for kids, particularly outdoors is a hazard in
| itself. Masks tend to block lower peripheral vision. Which
| results in kids tripping and falling more often. Falls and
| playground injuries are a common cause of hospitalizations in
| the US [the order of 100k kids/year]. Masks also reduce ability
| to communicate [hazard]. And it is unclear what is the long-
| term impact on kids development.
|
| Overall, at least to me, masking kids outdoors at this stage
| seem wrong. Indoor - questionable, it'd be good to see more
| statistics for this particular mitigation measure, if de-
| correlated from other mitigation measures.
| apgwoz wrote:
| > And it is unclear what is the long-term impact on kids
| development.
|
| Keep in mind that it's also pretty unclear the long term
| effects of contracting COVID (even with no symptoms) in the
| first place. What about getting COVID twice? Three times?
| Four times? I'd rather do what I can to ensure my kids don't
| get it at all, are vaccinated, social distance, etc.
| Hopefully we'll get to a place where vaccinations / natural
| immunity reduce cases to a point where masks no longer make
| sense, but until then...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-27 23:01 UTC)