Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 73 posts

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

#51

Post by albertop »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #48
albertop wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is tragic but what this has to do with forcing kids to wear mask? Sweden hit zero COVID death months ago, even though they never closed elementary schools and did not require masks. Children bear an incredibly small health risk with respect to the virus. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics suggests “children continue to face a far greater risk of critical illness…

> In addition, children are unlikely to spread the virus. That is something you have choose to believe.

Or not.

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

#52

Post by blub »

perl4ever wrote: post #25
dustintrex wrote: post #5

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…

I remember reading that cloth masks may even be worse than no masks because while they stop large particles they also aerosolize the virus. They provide nearly no protection for the wearer. Don’t have the reference any more as I’ve long switched to surgical/FFP2, but this matches policy in central Europe.

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

#53

Post by Method-X »

Izkata wrote: post #29
CamperBob2 wrote: post #13

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.

Interesting. I guess the issue with COVID is it’s more contagious than the flu?

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

#54

Post by dustintrex »

perl4ever wrote: post #25
dustintrex wrote: post #5

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…

We're a year and half in at this point, and I've been masking throughout because I thought it would make a difference, plus I live in a country where it's compulsory anyway.

However, I've yet to see a peer-reviewed, statistically significant study about non-medical mask use in social settings having a measurable effect. If you have any pointers, I'm all ears.

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

#55

Post by igetspam »

albertop wrote: post #30
perl4ever wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Citation needed. My anecdotal evidence of my four year old not giving a crap about wearing a mask disagrees with you.

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

#56

Post by igetspam »

gfor1011 wrote: post #43
s5300 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge, Florida recently stopped reporting all hospitalizations of children due to COVID (either 0-17 or 0-18 ages) So I don't think > has been steadily improving ever since schools opened. Is as truthful as one might think.

If you look at outbreak graphs in many countries, the shape of this Florida outbreak looks exactly like previous ones last year. These outbreaks appear to be seasonal and come and go without vaccines (last year no one was vaccinated and the shape of the graphs was the same). They also come and go without lockdowns. This is why the blog post encourages the reader (using satire) to find other mechanisms than Aquinas' p…

Trends and scale are not the same. One would expect a similar trend line, especially with the volume of anti-vax in this country. The volumes are significantly lower.

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

#57

Post by seanmcdirmid »

brighttank wrote: post #49
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has already mandated N95s, even those with the valves that aren’t allowed in much of the west. The idea I think is that they are focusing filtering inbound while cloth masks only really filter outbound (so wearing the mask protect others, vs an N95 that has a higher chance of protecting the wearer). Florida only reports their numbers once a week now and they aren’t breaking them down by county. They look good b…

Where did you hear that China has mandated N95 masks? I live in Beijing and I can't say I've seen anyone wearing one. We basically have to wear the normal surgical masks when in shops, on public transport etc.

I was browsing China daily the other day:

https://govt.chinadaily.com.cn/s/202109/03/WS61397ce6498e6a1...

No cloth masks seem to be allowed.

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

#59

Post by Jensson »

Method-X wrote: post #53
Izkata wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Interesting. I guess the issue with COVID is it’s more contagious than the flu?

People have been vaccinated from the flu. Before flu vaccination every flu year was about as bad as the last covid year, with close to 1% of the entire population dying. That was just life, so when there was a vaccine that meant the flu no longer had high risk of death people were really excited to get vaccinated.

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

#60

Post by s1artibartfast »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #46
polote wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandating vaccines is an indirect solution the real solution is to have more at risk people to TAKE the vaccine. Whether or not mandate is the right strategy is another question. It is almost probably sure it is the wrong strategy but fines and mandates are the only things our politicians know how to do

Simply allowing actuaries to price in vaccinated versus non vaccinated into health insurance premiums would solve this problem very quickly.

Fewer young people would get the vaccine then
Post reply on HN