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Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

reuters.com

21–30 of 73 posts

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#21

Someone posted a facetious comment ("Stupid Chinese bat flu. Deadly enough to be problem. Not deadly enough to be solution.") in reply to an even more offensive one earlier ("Florida needs thinning out anyway" or something along those lines.) Both were quickly sent to -4 [dead] land, but I do think there's an underlying truth behind the offensive sentiment that is going unappreciated. If we were dealing with some kin…

It's just below the danger threshold that would disqualify it for use as a political weapon.

2000 jumbo jets full of dead USians (and counting!) is below that threshold, which is sort of amazing to believe.

Human life is cheap to partisans there, apparently.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#22

Someone posted a facetious comment ("Stupid Chinese bat flu. Deadly enough to be problem. Not deadly enough to be solution.") in reply to an even more offensive one earlier ("Florida needs thinning out anyway" or something along those lines.) Both were quickly sent to -4 [dead] land, but I do think there's an underlying truth behind the offensive sentiment that is going unappreciated. If we were dealing with some kin…

> If we were dealing with some kind of hemorrhagic fever that spread like wildfire through all cross-sections of the population, sending dying people lurching into the street within a few hours of infection, moaning and bleeding from their eyes, there would be no controversy.

Are we sure about that? Scientific measures to control Ebola met with great resistance when they seemed to go against local cultural practices in Africa [1]. While cultural practices in the U.S. are different, I would expect some resistance here too.

> The bug is bad but not that bad. It "almost never" kills children, it targets "old" or "fat" people disproportionately

Interestingly these are demographics that seem to be somewhat over-represented in Florida given how many retirees move there.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4709130/

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#23
post #19

I'm curious if this ruling would have any impact on a district's ability to enforce a uniform policy/dress code. If a district doesn't have the authority to require masks, how can they have the authority to require that students tuck in their shirts?

Governor explicitly prohibited mandating wearing masks. He did not prohibit mandating dress code.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#24
post #3

No matter what position one holds on the matter, it's always impressive to witness the multi-layer democracy process in the US. Not many countries in the world would have a dispute between a governor, individual school districts, non-profit organizations and judges. The US is a very non-ideal country, but it's a working one.

> The US is a very non-ideal country, but it's a working one.

In many cases it definitely has strong democracy baked into it, much more than the faux-democracy presented in almost every other country in the world. But I wouldn't call it "working." The US has significant, deep-rooted problems from housing to safety -- and US foreign policy, even towards US citizens, is rotten to the core.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#25

FWIW, the mask mandate ban appears to have precisely zero effect on the COVID situation in Florida, which has been steadily improving ever since schools opened. Here's a blog facetiously suggesting that not wearing masks in school caused the improvement, and while it's obviously written tongue in cheek, from a stats/causality point of view it's pretty much indistinguishable from a lot of arguments for masks. https://…

>the COVID situation in Florida, which has been steadily improving ever since schools opened

There have been articles about how Florida recently switched to reporting deaths with the date of death, so it seems that it will continually appear that the rate plummeted recently. As time goes by, though, the graph will be filled in. Maybe people are being deceived by this.

>pointless hygiene theater at this point

You can be blasé about covid-19 and masks or not, you can be distrustful of all the random "experts" or not, but if you are, then it's "pointless theater" squared to spend time, money, and energy arguing, debating publicly, and fighting in court on exactly what we should do. It doesn't matter!

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#26

Someone posted a facetious comment ("Stupid Chinese bat flu. Deadly enough to be problem. Not deadly enough to be solution.") in reply to an even more offensive one earlier ("Florida needs thinning out anyway" or something along those lines.) Both were quickly sent to -4 [dead] land, but I do think there's an underlying truth behind the offensive sentiment that is going unappreciated. If we were dealing with some kin…

If an enemy nation sent troops to our shores with orders to kill even 0.1% of our population, we'd all rise up to defeat them

Interesting analogy to choose on today of all days. 0.1% is 330,000. How about 0.001%?

Pedant alert: yes obviously they were technically non-state actors.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#27
post #20
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US is a very non-ideal country, but it's a working one. The US works because of the multilayer democracy process. The combination of federalism and separation of powers in the US is slow, by design. It provides multiple layers of protection against bad ideas. It allows for the governance of a continent-sized country composed of 50 semi-sovereign entities, each acting as mini laboratories for good ideas that can…

Many other places work better without this system, so I'm not sure your conclusion supports your premise.

Feel free to name the country with more than 100 million people, a continent-sized geography, and a multitude of ethnicities that works "better" than the US. Heck, raise the minimum population to 130 million and use that as the sole criterion.

To put another way, every one of the countries with a GDP per capita (PPP-adjusted) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...>) higher than the US has a population smaller than that of Los Angeles County.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#28
post #3

No matter what position one holds on the matter, it's always impressive to witness the multi-layer democracy process in the US. Not many countries in the world would have a dispute between a governor, individual school districts, non-profit organizations and judges. The US is a very non-ideal country, but it's a working one.

It's a working one because Amazon kept packages coming to your door during the pandemic and the government accelerated the development of vaccines with Warp Speed and because scientists did their job, not because school teachers and governors block each other over minuscule nonsense.

The US works despite it's multi-layer democracy, not because of it. All the parts that work aren't democratic.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#29

Someone posted a facetious comment ("Stupid Chinese bat flu. Deadly enough to be problem. Not deadly enough to be solution.") in reply to an even more offensive one earlier ("Florida needs thinning out anyway" or something along those lines.) Both were quickly sent to -4 [dead] land, but I do think there's an underlying truth behind the offensive sentiment that is going unappreciated. If we were dealing with some kin…

> and it "only" kills about 1% of patients.

IFR estimates are actually down to 0.1%, putting it on-par with the flu, but the flu is worse because it hits kids just as hard as the elderly.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#30

FWIW, the mask mandate ban appears to have precisely zero effect on the COVID situation in Florida, which has been steadily improving ever since schools opened. Here's a blog facetiously suggesting that not wearing masks in school caused the improvement, and while it's obviously written tongue in cheek, from a stats/causality point of view it's pretty much indistinguishable from a lot of arguments for masks. https://…

>the COVID situation in Florida, which has been steadily improving ever since schools opened There have been articles about how Florida recently switched to reporting deaths with the date of death, so it seems that it will continually appear that the rate plummeted recently. As time goes by, though, the graph will be filled in. Maybe people are being deceived by this. >pointless hygiene theater at this point You can…

Psychological harm caused by forcing mask on young children is well documented. So forcing something on them that has no positive effect matters a lot.
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