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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

#721

Post by DanBC »

covidthrow wrote: post #277
brighton36 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets wait to see what the economic impacts of this fear culture brings, before announcing there are no casualties.

You're being downvoted, but it's abundantly clear that at least some view masking as a moral or intellectual signal, and this "othering" is certain to have some impact, either personally or socially. Furthermore, just as many warned in the early days of the lockdowns that extended lockdown may induce unhealthy behavior—which is evidenced in significantly higher suicide, mental illness, drug abuse, and so on—there are…

> which is evidenced in significantly higher suicide,

Most places haven't yet seen increased suicide rates, and certainly not "significantly higher suicide".

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

#722

Post by dosethree »

thrwhizzle wrote: post #240

For some people the goalposts are moving faster than the speed of light. The goal was to flatten the curve. Remember that? Flatten. The. Curve. Is the curve not flat? How much flatter do you want it to be before returning to normal life? Do you want literally 0.000% risk?

nobody ever said the end goal was to flatten the curve. like everything else, we are playing it by ear, to suggest we had plans to do otherwise is just writing your own history

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

#723

Post by stolenmerch »

ceejayoz wrote: post #606
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.

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.

> no harm has been done

This isn't the evaluation we're having though. If it was purely a personal choice to wear one or not then maybe. As it stands, most people were compelled by law to wear a mask under every circumstance whether it made sense or not. The argument quickly went from "wear a mask to protect yourself" to "everyone MUST wear a mask under every situation". It then split into two silly sides signally to their camps and a horrible political divide got much worse. Yeah, harm has been done.

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

#724

Post by dosethree »

Tade0 wrote: post #596
walrus01 wrote: post #434

I have a personal theory that humans do not fully understand death rate when it's spread out widely across many geographic areas. Let's say, for instance, that the covid19 death rate is about 450 people a day. It might be more or less than that right now, I haven't specifically checked (but I do recall that it's easily been 2000-3000 a day for some periods of time in very recent memory). But that might be 450 people…

I think it has a lot to do with expectations and how they need to change in light of such an event. In 2017 there were no commercial passenger jet deaths - that's how amazingly safe these machines are. Any such crash casts doubt on this idea. Imagine the difference between "literally perfectly safe" and "can (rarely) cause death". Same with events like 9/11 - no one going to work that day expected to die like this ju…

well, not literally perfectly safe. just not enough data

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

#725

Post by mylons »

Kye wrote: post #685
slowmotiony wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they've been vaccinated and still insist on wearing the masks, I kinda think you're proving OP's point here. What do you even mean with "waiting for this to be over"? You're vaccinated, it's over, are you now waiting for a super-vaccine or something?

Some of us invested in nice masks, or enjoy not being told to smile. Not everything people do is with politics in mind.

lol. this is hilarious

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

#726

Post by helen___keller »

thrwhizzle wrote: post #240

For some people the goalposts are moving faster than the speed of light. The goal was to flatten the curve. Remember that? Flatten. The. Curve. Is the curve not flat? How much flatter do you want it to be before returning to normal life? Do you want literally 0.000% risk?

"flatten the curve" was essentially a marketing slogan (which worked remarkably well, by the way, in terms of market penetration). So let's not worry too much about that.

With exponential growth, numbers either trend to 0 or to infinity, and they do so very quickly. There's only 2 endgames possible in a pandemic:

(1) The numbers trend to 0 and the risk is 0.00% (see: polio)

(2) The numbers trend to infinity (i.e. the disease goes endemic) and risk is equal to whatever risk the disease carries on infection/reinfection over your lifetime (see: the spanish flu)

Pre-vaccine, "flatten the curve" and other marketing-speak meant "stall on option 2 because we can't handle that level of risk in our society right now" - hospitals overflowing, etc. The death rate would have been out of control if we went straight to infinity at the infection rates we were seeing.

With the vaccine rollout, and with medical advances in treating severe covid, we've dramatically lowered the risk of option 2, and additionally we've opened the door to potentially taking option 1.

The CDC is probably gunning for option 1 here (and based on data in Israel it seems like it's possible with a high enough vaccination rate, although I think globally it will be a challenge).

If you keep this framework in mind, the goalposts haven't really moved at all- just the marketing used (hence: "flatten the curve" became "new normal" which then became "get vaccinated")

Edit: Evidently discussion about this sort of thing is quite polarizing. Just to be clear, this is a personal analysis of decision makers' true "goalposts", as the parent post seemed distressed by the moving of goalposts

I'm not advocating for or defending any particular policy, so please don't interpret my post as such. Thank you.

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

#728

Post by mlyle »

ses1984 wrote: post #614
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.

Can you point me toward some of that research?

There's a massive number of studies. A selection of 3 links out of 100+ would only reveal my biases. I'd rather just discuss my summation of the research and if there's something in particular you'd like to see, share that.

* Various studies of droplet propagation, which show well-fitting masks reduce droplets significantly. In theory, this should reduce spread.

* Many confounded observational and cohort studies tied to voluntary compliance with mask guidelines that show a lower risk of infection or secondary transmission. They are confounded because voluntary compliance with this measure increases the likelihood of general caution. Many show somewhat large effect sizes.

* Many population based trend-line studies/other ecological studies that show post requiring it as a public health measure in various environments, that daily case counts began to decline by .4% to 2.0% per day.

The studies in the second category showing larger effects are generally inconsistent with the third category, because the results in the third would be much bigger if the effect was real. And even the third category isn't great, because the mask requirement measures weren't instituted in a vacuum independent of other controls.

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

#729

Post by TheCoelacanth »

josephcsible wrote: post #211
zuminator wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of businesses having to verify, it would make more sense for the county or municipality to establish a policy based upon the prevailing positivity rate. If there's a low level of infection in the community, indoor masks are at the wearer's discretion, if there's a high level, indoor masks are mandatory. This would also establish a causal link between a getting vaccinated and helping to keep the community open…

Your suggestion is contrary to the CDC's guidance. It doesn't say that it's only safe for vaccinated people to stop wearing masks if the prevailing positivity rate is low.

There is no way for a business to determine if someone is vaccinated or not when enforcing whether people wear masks or not.

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

#730

Post by ZeroGravitas »

varjag wrote: post #684
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"anti-mask hysteria by authorities"? People were having difficulty providing evidence that Fauci admitted to telling a white lie elsewhere in these comments, yet it's widely believed by certain people that he did so. There's a link to a factcheck in the comments that quotes what he actually said and it's not at all what many people in this thread seem to sincerely, but mistakenly, think he said. So allow me to doubt…

Do not confuse medical and scientific community with authorities. The ill advisory was coming from WHO and parroted by national authorities (including CDC). All while the efficacy of masks against airborne/pulmonary diseases was pretty much established. WHO is not a scientific body conducting independent research but a bureaucratic organization with heavy dose of politics. However back in spring 2020 when the officia…

> in spring 2020 when the official position amounted to "a mask is a facehugger"

Well I guess it would be fruitless to ask for a source on this.

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