Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said • Hacker News Board

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

#701

Post by bdavis__ » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:20 PM UTC

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…

There was a period in time where it was disclosed that the vaccines might have an efficacy of 40% or 50%.

In this case, the combination of masks and vaccines might have been required for a long time.

(hacker news analogy: "just in case Rust doesn't remove all defects, we are still going to need to debug"

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

#702

Post by silicon2401 » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

teachingassist wrote: post #591

livinginfear wrote: post #221

I think it's worth noting that among the demographics that frequent this site there is ostensibly a deep distrust and skepticism of the American government on matters of surveillance, and law enforcement. Yet simultaneously there is ostensibly a high degree of trust in the motives and competency of the American government when it comes to COVID. There's been multiple threads lately, including one that is on the front…

A doctor friend of mine told me, at the start of the pandemic, that they found it important to correctly follow Public Health advice whether or not they (an expert) agreed with all of it. The importance of following the principles for public health is greater than the importance of the advice being unbiasedly perfect at every moment.

> The importance of following the principles for public health is greater than the importance of the advice being unbiasedly perfect at every moment.

You're falsely conflating "principles for public health" with "public health advice". Principles for public health include protecting yourself against airborne diseases, which meant that anybody with some knowledge on the issue and ability to think for themselves should have disregarded "public health advice" when it contradicted "principles for public health". It also means we should be wary when "public health advice" doesn't line up with "principles for public health", and even more so when "public health advice" has been shown to be a deliberate lie when it suits the advice giver.

Following principles of public health is important, but you stretch too far and without basis to equate that to following public health advice. That kind of unthinking obedience to authority is how people commit atrocities by "just following orders"

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

#703

Post by ineedasername » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #197

ineedasername wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and make it past child mortality That's the hard part in less developed countries. In 1960 Bangladesh had a child mortality rate of almost 30%. At that time the US was under 3%. Even today with antibiotics etc., Bangladesh is about 5x higher than the US. I'm honestly not sure what you mean by America's fascination with health: I'm an American, so it of course would seem normal to me. But whatever we're doing, Banglad…

There’s a reasonably famous anecdote I saw about that time on Pakistani television, from Qudratullah Shahab’s (federal civil servant at then time) autobiography. The US was sending sanitary aid to Pakistan and the East Bengalis asked for their fair share of it and were told sitting there in the federal secretariat building by the West Pakistanis “Go use a banana leaf” (to wipe your @$&!?!)

“Go use a banana leaf”

the history of what people have resorted to using over the centuries is pretty interesting. There's even a satirical book named Gargantua & Pantagruel written in the 1500's France where characters debate the most comfortable option. IIRC, they settle on a life goose's neck: the feathers make it quite soft.

In the US, a dried out corn cob was a popular choice during the early days, before the 1900's when toilet paper really hit the mainstream. Likely not for comfort though, just because it was what was available. It's probably not great for the average health of a population if they use discarded food that might be partially rotting to wipe their butts. Actually

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

#704

Post by syops » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

Siira wrote: post #662

syops wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It adds up to significant unnecessary suffering. It’s clear to me that doing, e.g., human challenge vaccine trials was a much more cost-effective measure (nowadays just get the bloody vaccine and be done with pandemic), and masks are just a weak band-aid for which I have not seen much more evidence since the Slatestarcodex review (which called CDC on its bullshit very early: masks probably help a bit, but not much, a…

Wearing a mask is not suffering. If you think this then you have a badly misconstrued idea of what the word suffering means.

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

#705

Post by mrkramer » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:30 PM UTC

Freedom at last.

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

#706

Post by bhupy » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #698

rayiner wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean all the exercising and fretting about “clean food” versus “processed food,” pollution, etc. We don’t do all that. The difference in child mortality obviously isn’t about “healthy living”—its access to clean water, basic prenatal care and post-delivery care, etc. The difference in life expectancy between Bangladesh and the US at age 60 is just 4 years.

difference in life expectancy between Bangladesh and the US at age 60 is just 4 years. Which just means the deaths are front-loaded even more towards younger people. It doesn't matter how likely you are to live to X age once you're Y age when there are significant hurdles just to get to Y age. In 1850 in the US, the life expectancy of someone who made it to age 70 was to live another 10 years ~80 or so. Which sounds…

I think you both appear to be aggressively agreeing with each other.

Yes, deaths are front-loaded towards young people because the biggest variance in average life expectancy is child mortality. In countries like Bangladesh, one's ability to clear that hurdle is certainly correlated with socioeconomic status

Yes, once you clear that hurdle (i.e. for most people in America), there are diminishing returns to life expectancy.

I, for one, am not sure that I fully agree with that last statement. I'd love to see some research studying the average life expectancy of groups that engage in, for example, regular fitness and meditation (especially their effect on life-reducing hypertension).

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

#707

Post by silicon2401 » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

vletal wrote: post #338

CraigJPerry wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that logic, the compulsion to send your kids to school in the USA is on shaky ground.

Is not the US education system very ideological? Among the US citizens (mostly LA area) which I know it was not uncommon to hear how they "love America", similarly to how Christian believers "love Jesus". Moreover from what I understand the local historical textbooks are censoring displeasing moments from the time of oppression of the black community. I'm far from an anarchist yet I would take my kids out of the syst…

The US education system is inconsistent, so you can't really generalize. I love America, but I'm also aware of its flaws and don't have any illusions about it being perfect or anything like that. I was also taught plenty of material about the darker sides of American history: slavery, mistreatment of natives, etc. Similarly I learned a lot about 'family health', science, etc. However some schools might lean more towards non-scientific teachings or leave out unsavory material depending on what school you inspect.

Your tone makes me wonder if you're German; having studied German for many years, we learned about how Germany has somewhat of a complex around country pride given certain historical events. My school system had people from over a hundred countries and love for your country was almost universal, including to the extent of wearing clothing with the national flag on it like some Americans do

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

#708

Post by silicon2401 » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

serf wrote: post #602

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are very patriotic. Singing the national anthem and waving the flag is second nature. I don't think a conspiracy is needed: every opportunity to show how great America is will be used.

>Americans are very patriotic. Singing the national anthem and waving the flag is second nature. I'm pretty sick of these kind of nation-based generalizations. They're never as true as the person pretends they are, and they're usually just thinnly-veiled hate speech of various types. Generalizing other human beings by what country they were given membership to -- usually uncontrolled by birth, by the way -- is about…

This is especially true given how common criticism of the US is among Americans these days. Not to mention it also leaves out that plenty of other countries around the world don't hesitate to sing their national anthem and wave their flag either.

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

#709

Post by josephcsible » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #486

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 don't find it "interesting" at all that a particular group of people has decided to err on the side of caution in both cases. It's entirely consistent. This is how critical thinking works. If an organization advises something you think might be risky, you question it, and maybe don't do the potentially-risky thing until you have more information. But if an organization advises you to do something they claim reduces…

> If an organization advises something you think might be risky, you question it

My point is that last year, the party line was "the CDC is above questioning."

> If information later comes out that this risk-reducing thing wasn't useful, then you stop doing it; you haven't lost anything by trying it.

Pretty much every COVID mitigation has some negative effect, so I don't think "you haven't lost anything" is accurate.

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

#710

Post by postalrat » Fri, May 14, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #564

quickthrowman wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won’t, they’ll simply rescind the mask mandates and let the vaccine skeptics fend for themselves. Minnesota will be doing this within 6 weeks, I’m sure it’ll be more states soon, if not already.

The problem is that those who can't get the vaccine due to allergies or other medical conditions either a) then get lumped in with the skeptics to fend for themselves, or b) have to further increase their level of precautions and isolate from society.

Isn't that unavoidable? There are no signs covid-19 is just going to disappear.