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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

#781

Post by ses1984 »

mlyle wrote: post #728
ses1984 wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do the studies in the third category account for compliance?

I wonder if we’re splitting hairs, so what if mask wearing is confounded with other voluntary measures of general caution?

For me the take away is that some people take precaution, and some don’t.

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

#782

Post by scythe »

tryonenow wrote: post #224
scythe wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 10-30% of Americans got COVID-19 so far, depending on how you tally the numbers. Of those, approximately 8% can be expected to experience long-term effects that disrupt their daily lives: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/91270 >About 8% of all participants said at least one activity of daily living suffered long-term consequences, most commonly household chores. That puts the net risk for…

And how do you measure the mid to long term risk of a novel mRNA technology which is effectively in trial now, under emergency approval, when vaccines typically take years of safety evaluations? Particularly considering that there are preprints out with a mechanism identified for reverse transcription of the spike producing mRNA, which could result in chronic inflammatory disease in some proportion of recipients, giv…

>Particularly considering that there are preprints out with a mechanism identified for reverse transcription of the spike producing mRNA, which could result in chronic inflammatory disease in some proportion of recipients

This doesn't make sense because the mRNA-based spike protein, unlike the natural spike protein, is specifically tuned to annoy the immune system. Any cells incorporating the vaccine mRNA into their DNA will be summarily executed for the very same reason that the vaccine works as a vaccine in the first place: it's an antigen.

>I think it's irresponsible to downplay the risks associated with this novel technology

What's irresponsible is couch-quarterbacking the epidemiological community and the medical authorities of ~every developed country in the world, based on preprints, in the face of a pandemic that has claimed ~10M lives globally.

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

#783

Post by mlyle »

ses1984 wrote: post #781
mlyle wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do the studies in the third category account for compliance? I wonder if we’re splitting hairs, so what if mask wearing is confounded with other voluntary measures of general caution? For me the take away is that some people take precaution, and some don’t.

One of the studies was an ecological study comparing mask wearing rates in many locales (some with compulsory requirements, and some without) and their change over time vs. disease growth rates.

Another measured case growth in a hospital community where there was a very strictly enforced mandate for patients compared to the rate of case growth before, so compliance is a small factor.

It's very likely that masks help. It's also very likely that the effect is relatively small. But even a tiny effect can become a big one when raised to a big power-- 1.1^20 is 6.7x growth in cases, and 1.07^20 is 3.8x.

I'd have liked this guidance change in masks to come a week or two later. Keeping another couple weeks of somewhat sharper decline in cases means a lot fewer people affected through the rest of the pandemic.

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

#784

Post by stolenmerch »

ceejayoz wrote: post #772
stolenmerch wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. I'm talking about the life we all had for over a year and some of the harm it did.

The subject of this HN thread is the CDC lifting the masking requirement, and some folks choosing individually to still wear them at times; an act that causes no one any harm. A debate on mask mandates in general over the last year is probably off topic, but I'm inclined to see them as quite justifiable.

Fine, then the claim that "If masks work, and you don’t wear one, you are potentially killing people and worsening the pandemic." is off-topic and irrelevant since this is no longer true.

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

#785

Post by mlyle »

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.

Common sense comes up with the wrong answer here. The individual benefit was likely very small. The cumulative effect over many weeks on buildup in cases is much larger.

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

#786

Post by dang »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #360
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…

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting flamewar comments and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? We're trying for something other than this here.

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

#787

Post by mesebrec »

chrischen wrote: post #479
99_00 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the essential worker was concerned wouldn't they have gotten vaccinated? In which case, what difference does it make if the other person was vaccinated or not?

Essential worker can a) be an anti-vaxxer or b) unable to get the vaccine for various reasons (allergies). Now, if it’s a) and you’re arguing that maybe they deserve the risk of infection then that’s another argument.

Or c) still get sick even though they're vaccinated (bad luck or mutations)

I'd be very cautious to say that anti-vaxxers "deserve" the risk. A large part of the anti-vaxxers I know are people who've been down on their luck for a long time, have lost all hope in society and the government, are isolated, and have been convinced by people who prey on those weaknesses.

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

#788

Post by galgalesh »

kjsingh wrote: post #58

Who sowed the seed of doubt in me.. that vaccinated folks can still transfer the disease?

It was unknown whether they could spread the disease for a long time. A bunch of research has done out in recent weeks/months showing it's also effective to slow the spread.

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

#789

Post by acituan »

joshribakoff wrote: post #718
acituan wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> science is a process. If research came out that changed the recommendations, well, that's how science works. CDC is a public health organization, not a science making organization. Its responsibility is to make the competent public health decisions based on the best available data and sound risk management. No one is faulting CDC for eventually course correcting, they are criticizing it for not having followed a mo…

> updating their decision on safety as more data came in. That’s literally what they do. They paused when there were concerns over blood clots, then expanded access to more cohorts as more studies were completed.

"with minimal trial" is the operative word, which didn't happen. The point being there is a balance between waiting for perfect data and making risk based policies.

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

#790

Post by vmception »

scrollaway wrote: post #561
vmception wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that that’s not gonna happen. Unless the President said that, your message is not going to get across. 848 Americans died today marked as a Covid contributed death. There were lockdowns across 90% of the country a year ago when less people were dying from this. So we’re just past that, sorry. Good luck to them. The goal was just to keep ICU capacity available for the normal distribution of emergencies in…

You cannot compare death and infection numbers with those of a year ago when zero people were vaccinated and the vaccine was still months away.

Whatever you are saying is just reinforcing my point?

It means we’ve all been reduced to statistics for 15 months and we have now simply reverted to a mean where the world is not compatible with immunocompromised people and good luck to them, just like before Covid, and just like during and after Covid. They had a 15 month time period where people and the state would help reduce exposure to them, and that was the luckiest time for them to be immunocompromised and thats over now.

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