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Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

nytimes.com

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Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#641

Post by podgaj »

evandijk70 wrote: post #401
Rebelgecko wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the CDC's original statements on masks (they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degree, don't wear masks on planes, etc) contributed a lot to the distrust and politicization of mask wearing. When you expect an institution to always be impartial and tell the truth, those sorts of white lies can quickly erode trust.

The Dutch CDC (RIVM) made the same statements. As a result, people don't really believe in masks here either, but it not a big political issue. I am not sure why the mask became such a symbol for the corona measures in the US, but not here.

Because "Freedom".

Seriously. I have explained this many times to my European friends. It is difficult to appreciate how people here will always want to push their own personal freedom of choice out as far as they can no matter how much someone else suffers.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#642

Post by Siira »

rsfern wrote: post #287
josephcsible wrote: post #254

I find it interesting that the people who screamed "trust/listen to the CDC!" the loudest when the CDC's position was "everyone wear your mask and stay home as much as you can" are now the ones looking hardest for reasons to ignore/downplay/criticize the CDC's guidance.

I think most probably have a more nuanced position than that. My personal hesitation is that people are just going to ignore the explicit condition of full vaccination. Worst case outcome could result in dragging the pandemic out and providing opportunity for new variants to develop. A concern closer to home is that this will increase risk for my parents, who have been hesitant about the mRNA vaccines and refuse J&J…

Your parents are making their own tradeoffs. People need to accept responsibility for the tradeoffs they choose.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#643

Post by podgaj »

imtringued wrote: post #520
garmaine wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One need only go back about 80 years to find horrific abuses by public health officials in both Europe and America (e.g. involuntary sterilization, to say nothing of Nazi experimentation). What I find strange is that Europeans have such a short memory regarding these things…

>What I find strange is that Europeans have such a short memory regarding these things… Everyone knows about these things. By everyone I mean everyone who went to the same schools as me.

Knowledge is not emotional, empathy is.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#644

Post by syops »

Siira wrote: post #629
syops wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The greater good in this case means following rules/mandates that do not in any way lead to an outcome of supporting atrocities. There is no valid critical analysis by which one concludes that not wearing masks or engaging in social distancing is a fight against atrocities.

Masks are a minor inconvenience but they affect millions. It adds up.

It adds up to something comparable to bringing up atrocities apt? I don’t see how. It’s not like the inconvenience of wearing a mask done billions of times leads to overall a massive inconvenience that becomes intolerable. This type of inconvenience is not additive. There is no compounding effect.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#645

Post by Siira »

ianai wrote: post #632
anonymouse008 wrote: post #312

Can anyone offer guidance to one who has recovered from the actual Covid infection why they would receive the vaccine? Edit: This recent caveat included Lasting immunity found after recovery from Covid-19 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27125728

The vaccine keys your immune system on a mostly unchanging part of the virus. It’s such a key part of the virus that for the virus to mutate that part it would be a dramatically different and less deadly mutation. In an infection your body randomly keys on any of a large number of characteristics of the virus. Those almost certainly will be less lasting than the vaccine. That’s why to get the vaccine.

This needs empirical evidence though. It’s a just-so story without that. Not that I disagree with the prior.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#646

Post by usrusr »

avereveard wrote: post #532
usrusr wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “not aerosol“ hypothesis was based on the assumption that the spread rate would have been much higher than observed with an aerosol capable virus. Turns out this one just happened to be quite bad at spreading amongst humans, despite being capable of residing in the air for quite a while. It's rather unsurprising then that we now see many mutations that fix some low hanging fruit "bugs", bringing the spread closer…

pneumonia and influenza whose main transmission vector is contact:

Droplet is the "popular" middle ground. Contact is completely overshadowed by both types of air travel unless air travel is either completely out of the picture (non-respiratory viruses like various herpes) or if the virus particles excel at durability outside the body (e.g. the rhinovirus family, whereas being bad at this is an outcome of the defining property of corona viruses, they are short-"lived" almost by definition).

And droplet basically translates to: "yes, masks would help, but simply keeping a few feet of distance will be just as good". Unfortunately, distance does to aerosol transmission what soda cans do to a wildfire.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#647

Post by JohnBooty »

sharken wrote: post #467
mlyle wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, we still don't really know if masks work. They look like they probably do something, but the evidence is weak and the effect size small. It's totally worth it to bend an exponential function. But the individual benefit from mask wearing in any given interaction is negligible.

Which leads to huge arguments which really benefits nobody as we just establish that we disagree. Common sense seems to say that masks make s difference, but if that is the strongest argument, then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense.

Mere common sense? I wouldn't characterize it that way.

The wearing of masks to combat airborne disease spread is a decidedly not a new thing. That was never a novel concept, at least since the early part of the 20th century.

Coronaviruses in general aren't a novel concept either; we have a pretty good idea how they're spread.

So, when confronted with a new coronavirus, it's a little bit stronger than "common sense" to surmise that masks will be effective to some extent. The burden of proof would be on anybody suggesting that this virus is somehow so different than other airborne disease that the wearing of masks had no benefit.

    then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense.
If masks are not effective, the downside to wearing masks was that we waste a relatively modest amount of time and money on masks and perhaps damage our credibility in the future when we recommend their use.

If masks are effective to some degree, the downside to not wearing masks was that millions of additional people would suffer and die worldwide, and we would incur a financial and human cost orders of magnitude greater than the modest cost of masks.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#648

Post by ceejayoz »

Siira wrote: post #640
ceejayoz wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One must evaluate the consequences of not following a particular piece of advice. If masks work, and you don’t wear one, you are potentially killing people and worsening the pandemic. If they aren’t needed, and you do wear one anyways, no harm has been done.

> If they aren’t needed, and you do force other people to wear it There, corrected your typo for you.

No, you entirely changed my point to construct a straw man.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#649

Post by coffeefirst »

josephcsible wrote: post #254

I find it interesting that the people who screamed "trust/listen to the CDC!" the loudest when the CDC's position was "everyone wear your mask and stay home as much as you can" are now the ones looking hardest for reasons to ignore/downplay/criticize the CDC's guidance.

On the other hand, I walked down the street last night without a mask and almost everyone I crossed paths with wasn't wearing one either.

This would have been unthinkable yesterday.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#650

Post by JohnBooty »

makomk wrote: post #507
mlyle wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, we still don't really know if masks work. They look like they probably do something, but the evidence is weak and the effect size small. It's totally worth it to bend an exponential function. But the individual benefit from mask wearing in any given interaction is negligible.

Part of the problem is that the American media spread misinformation about the effectiveness of masks for political gain. For example, I remember the New York Times pushing the idea that vaccines would be less effective than mask wearing even though all evidence suggested that even a vaccine which met the minimum standards for approval would likely be substantially more effective than mask wearing, seemingly because…

    seemingly because Trump supported vaccines but 
    not masks.
I read both conservative and liberal media and have never seen it suggested that masks were somehow better than vaccines.

First I must strongly state that the idea itself makes no sense: one can wear a mask and be vaccinated; they're not competing ideas in any meaningful way.

However, at the outset of COVID-19, we certainly were not sure that there would be effective vaccines, or how long they might take to develop, or what their supply levels would be.

Therefore it made sense to take whatever (effective) measures we could, while waiting for a vaccine that was never guaranteed to exist. Nobody argues that a fire extinguisher is better than a squad of professional firefighters, but fire extinguishers can have important utility, especially while you're waiting for help to arrive.

As far as the Trump angle, perhaps you can show us a counter example, but I have seen zero evidence that anti-Trump folks have rejected vaccines because Trump favored them. It's a non-factor.

One, the liberal/progressive/whatever crowd is overwhelmingly pro-vaccination (in general) to begin with. Two, and perhaps more importantly, they're just not competing with masks in any way. Masks are imperfect; vaccines are more effective but also imperfect and not approved for all people even today. That is how you deal with many if not most threats in the real world: multiple layers of imperfect defences.

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