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The case against masks at school

theatlantic.com

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Re: The case against masks at school

#421

Post by JangoSteve »

docfort wrote: post #96

This argument is poorly constructed. I think there could be better ones, but here’s my problem. It goes through the three CDC studies and correctly observes that they fail to separate regions that have high vaccination rates from schools without a mask mandate. Indeed, the ideal experiment would involve two schools that are otherwise identical in the same geographical area with high vaccination rates: one that has no…

There's another problem with the article's argument. It contends that the many studies on mask effectiveness have various shortcomings such as not being specific to kids, or having vaccination rates as a confounding variable. And therefore, we should not have mask mandates (despite the evidence that they work, however non-specific to school children they may be).

But its reason for concluding that children should not wear masks is because of all of these issues that themselves aren't well studied or understood by the article's own admission:

> Despite how widespread all-day masking of children in school is, the short-term and long-term consequences of this practice are not well understood, in part because no one has successfully collected large-scale systematic data and few researchers have tried.

Why in this case should the serious lack of evidence for the risks of masking children outweigh the greater-but-imperfect evidence for the risks of increased transmission of Covid by not masking children? It seems like a double-standard allowing the author to arrive at their desired conclusion.

Re: The case against masks at school

#422

Post by plandis »

jmull wrote: post #398

Hm... this does not actually make an argument against masks in school. It's perfectly fair to point out the limitations of the available studies. Of course we want better ones -- that's a good argument for more, better studies. But the lack of absolute proof isn't an argument against masks in school. That's dumb. Until we conduct some well-designed rigorous controlled experiments on human children (which we'll never…

> But the lack of absolute proof isn't an argument against masks in school. That's dumb.

How so? It seems more ignorant to assume that masks would help more when the data we do have doesn’t show that.

> Can children be swayed/educated/convinced to wear a quality mask often enough to make a difference in the transmission of covid among their teachers or their families? IDK. Good question. We aren't completely sure, but probably.

You call the authors ideas dumb, but then yourself make unfounded inferences as an argument for continuing to require masks in schools.

Re: The case against masks at school

#423

Post by otikik »

downrightmike wrote: post #281
ngngngng wrote: post #275

Funny to watch the Atlantic change directions on COVID over the last few months. I go back and forth on masks. In general I find them to be a minor inconvenience, although I believe they're more inconvenient for me than most because I'm blind and no matter what I do they always fog up my glasses. But while masks themselves are mildly inconvenient, harsh mask mandates and restrictions become much more of an annoyance…

bandaid over the nose and mask should stop your fogging. You can also use a little saliva on the lenses like they do in scuba diving. I usually just move the glasses a little further down my nose and that does like 95% of the solution.

Soap (dry, no water) rubbed and spread with a paper towel until "apparently clean" also works - the thin layer of soap prevents fogging. You might have to try several brands of soap.

Re: The case against masks at school

#424

Post by heartbreak »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #197
aeternum wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gives you a positive opinion of the CDC? By their own admission they have lied to the public multiple times. That's not something that is indicative of good leadership, even if supposedly done for benevolent reasons.

>By their own admission they have lied to the public multiple times. Supporting evidence please.

Good point I’m not sure they ever actually admitted to lying about masks.

Re: The case against masks at school

#425

Post by perardi »

lr1970 wrote: post #413
taylodl wrote: post #304

General observation from reading the comments - the folks on HN must not have many friends working in medicine for if they had they'd realize those friends are swamped and burned-out. They'd also know that pretty much the only condition we're treating nowadays is Covid. Surgeries are continuing to be postponed - including surgeries that can lead to worse problems down the road such as removing cancerous tumors. And i…

> They'd also know that pretty much the only condition we're treating nowadays is Covid. This statement might be true for your location but is not true in general. Here in New York City hospitalizations due to covid are not very high and going down quickly. Elective surgeries and procedures go on as scheduled. ICUs are not overrun with covid specific cases. Majority of the patients with positive PCR test are hospital…

NYTimes has a pretty good source on this.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-...

I'll tell you that here in Chicago, based off data, and anecdotes: really depends on the neighborhood. Vaccinated areas? Doing fine. Undervaccinated areas? Not doing so well.

Gosh, it's like vaccines work and that's the way out of this.

Re: The case against masks at school

#426

Post by meragrin_ »

Georgelemental wrote: post #365
Hokusai wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans debating every day whether strongly authoritarian and invasive measures are OK, if they save lives. In Europe seatbelts are mandatory, and it is forbidden to smoke in most places. I think that these are reasonable measures. I think, for the exact same reasons, that mask mandates are reasonable. In public transport is mandatory to wear at least a t-shirt, as skin to skin contact gets unhealthy fast. And re…

The US is not as different as you think. Seat belts are mandatory in 49/50 states, restrictions on smoking are common, restaurant employees generally need to wash their hands after going to the bathroom, "no shirt no shoes no service" is the general rule, nudity in public places is generally against the law. I don't know where you are getting your impression of US laws from, but it's just wrong.

My take was not that the US does not have same/similar rules, but that the US does have same/similar rules while thinking mask mandates as somehow different from those.

Re: The case against masks at school

#427

Post by vanviegen »

autoexec wrote: post #378
vikingerik wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your face hole is not virus spewing if you aren't sick.

Too bad you can't know if you're sick or not until it's too late. It's one of the reasons this virus spreads so quickly. Even if you're not sick wearing masks also helps to protect you from getting sick. It's win/win for extremely minimal effort/inconvenience.

Extremely minimal?

Masks make it a lot harder to communicate effectively. People are harder to understand, emotions are harder to read, speaking takes more effort.

If communicating is the main thing you do all day, because you're a teacher for instance, that is a significant inconvenience.

Re: The case against masks at school

#428

Post by adamrezich »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #158
hydrok9 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about if you have anxiety issues and the reduced inflow of air from masks gives you panic attacks? This has been my life for this pandemic. I take medication but it does not stop them 100% from happening, and I have to use anti-anxiety techniques most times I put one on to stop from being overwhelmed by anticipation. Does anyone care about people like me? It sure feels like they don't. And I have seen my physical…

[ EDIT: other commenters response to this comment made me go look up some original research on the topic. As a result, I fully retract what I've said below. I found several papers that report substantial restrictions of airflow from wearing a correctly fitted N95 mask. I was wrong, and I apologize for the misinformation. I did try to explicitly say that I was not doubting someone's experiences, but I apologize for ap…

the retraction is appreciated but, if you'll excuse me for saying so, the fact that you thought this at all shows that we're well into "brainwashing" territory with this mask nonsense.

it should be beyond obvious to any neutral observer that putting a covering over one's nose and mouth will affect their breathing airflow, especially so when exercising. you don't even have to try it yourself to intuit this, it's just common sense. but once you have tried it, there should be zero doubt in your mind that your breathing airflow is affected, especially if you're actually going out of your way to ensure that you've sealed the mask on your face properly.

I don't say this to shame or disparage you specifically, but instead to point out how people, broadly, are having their thoughts programmed, on a massive scale, to truly believe things that are obviously contradictory to reality.

this should be very concerning to everyone.

Re: The case against masks at school

#429

Post by dahfizz »

ngngngng wrote: post #275

Funny to watch the Atlantic change directions on COVID over the last few months. I go back and forth on masks. In general I find them to be a minor inconvenience, although I believe they're more inconvenient for me than most because I'm blind and no matter what I do they always fog up my glasses. But while masks themselves are mildly inconvenient, harsh mask mandates and restrictions become much more of an annoyance…

This is the kind of thing that just drives me crazy.

If the mandates were at the very least logically consistent, I would not consider them a burden. "You are not allowed into the restaurant unless you are masked, but you may immediately take it off once you've walked 10 feet to your table" is nonsense. Forcing you to leave the coffee shop with everyone unmasking to drink anyway is nonsense.

It is security theater. It is virtue signalling. And if you have the audacity to question the irrational rules, people unironically call you a murderer.

Re: The case against masks at school

#430

Post by benbenolson »

kareemm wrote: post #344
claytongulick wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article, in the only large randomized studies that have been performed, masking showed little, if any benefit. As far as I'm aware, most studies, including WHO, show that lockdowns were counter productive, and could result in increased transmission. I haven't seen a single study that showed school closures resulted in any decrease in transmission, or provided any benefit. I have seen many that showed…

> According to the article, in the only large randomized studies that have been performed, masking showed little, if any benefit. I have this open in another tab. It links to three studies that show masks in school do work: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/mask-requirem... > most studies, including WHO, show that lockdowns were counter productive, and could result in increased transmission. Do you have…

The author of that blog post sees that states like Tennessee and Texas had a high number of school closures, but that plot is simply plotting raw numbers of school closures. Not only are those numbers affected by a plethora of variables (for example, population density, population number, vaccination rates, number of schools, closure policies...), but how could you possibly compare raw numbers of school closures in individual states? Then, they use this incredibly skewed plot to draw the conclusion that "Public health mitigation measures in schools, like mask requirements, work." Talk about jumping to conclusions.

For the first two studies, these kinds of probabilities are extremely dangerous and prone to "playing with the data." Given the exact same dataset, one could draw nearly any conclusion with such disparate and varied data, especially when attempting to control for other factors. Could these increased "change in daily number of cases per 100,000 children" be due to other factors; for example, a correlation between a mask policy and other policies, such as closure and a decrease in class size? I'm not saying that I know the answer, either, but plots like this should be taken with a pinch of salt.

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