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The case against masks at school

theatlantic.com

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Re: The case against masks at school

#511

Post by [deleted] »

perardi wrote: post #425
lr1970 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: The case against masks at school

#512

Post by tqi »

dsl wrote: post #406
perardi wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and? The hospital case load is overwhelmingly, screamingly, massively dominated by the elderly unvaccinated. https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/... Given the extremely contagious nature of Omicron, what plausible way do we have to prevent these individuals from getting COVID and using hospital space? And don't say masking up kids—because if they haven't gotten vaccinated, then why do you…

I know multiple households where the initial infection vector was the kids. Grandpa might be stupid and refuse the vaccine, but keeping little Billy from becoming a carrier lessens the hospital load. If screaming Karens are going to insist on in person learning, we need to mask test and vaccinate in the schools.

1. If your Grandpa chose to not get vaccinated and gets COVID, thats his problem.

2. The idea that anyone who wants in person learning is a "screaming Karen" is fucking stupid. There is lots of evidence that remote learning has all kinds of negative outcomes for kids, and your (frankly sexist) dismissiveness is the reason this conversation never goes anywhere.

Re: The case against masks at school

#513

Post by sgt »

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…

I was never really a good mask wearer. Ideally I keep a distance but at this point of the pandemic I've just started taking the mask off or leaving it at home. There is a mask mandate where I live if you go to the store and so on, but I haven't had any complaints yet. I'm just drawing a line in the sand at this point.

Re: The case against masks at school

#514

Post by seanmcdirmid »

colpabar wrote: post #461
perardi wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Gosh, it's like vaccines work and that's the way out of this. You know, I see snarky little comments like this becoming more and more common on this site, and I'd just like to point out that they are not helpful in any way. Who is it directed towards? Do you think you are convincing anyone , or encouraging a productive discussion? I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people on this website are va…

> You know, I see snarky little comments like this becoming more and more common on this site, and I'd just like to point out that they are not helpful in any way.

It just represents a general fatigue that a lot of people have with the anti vaxxers. That we have hard numbers that vaccines actually work seems to be irrelevant to them, so maybe they would be convinced by snark and sarcasm instead?

> In my opinion, that line is the equivalent of saying "gosh, maybe black people should just stop committing crimes if they don't want to go to jail" or "gosh, maybe gay people should just stop having unprotected sex if they don't want HIV."

You are comparing getting a couple of free shots at the pharmacy to much more complicated lifestyle circumstances.

Re: The case against masks at school

#515

Post by champagnois »

autoexec wrote: post #314
champagnois wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind the fact that they are not rated to filter viruses.

It doesn't matter. Putting literally anything in front of your virus spewing face hole is going to help to some degree. It's not as if the crook of our arms are rated to filter viruses, but that hasn't stopped health organizations all over the world from recommending the vampire cough for years. It's true that a mask alone isn't enough to guarantee anyone's safety and while community spread is high sending kids into…

Interventions work differently for different diseases. Influenza is significantly hampered by social distancing, surgical masks, and elbow coughs.

Covid 19 is a different virus and the interventions of a flu pandemic are not going to yield the same results.

Infection is a binary status. You are either infected or not. There is no such thing as half infected or slightly infected. The probability of infection goes up when the air is more and more saturated with airborne virus... When air in a poorly ventilated space is fully saturated with virus, it simply does not matter if you wear a surgical mask or not as these interventions are doing nothing of significance for you in that situation.

Re: The case against masks at school

#516

Post by endisneigh »

watersb wrote: post #510
colpabar wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gosh, it's like vaccines work and that's the way out of this. You know, I see snarky little comments like this becoming more and more common on this site, and I'd just like to point out that they are not helpful in any way. Who is it directed towards? Do you think you are convincing anyone , or encouraging a productive discussion? I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people on this website are va…

I actually want to hear good reasons for avoiding vaccinations, because many people care a lot about that. I can understand immuno-compromised people, an underlying medical condition, for whom a vaccine may not work or may be dangerous. Undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer? Got it: vaccines won't help you (or anyone else) until you can get past the cancer. I don't agree with an argument from stand-my-ground,…

Nobody here is advocating for avoiding vaccinations so your entire point is moot.

Re: The case against masks at school

#517

Post by xigoi »

ajford wrote: post #497
xigoi wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the restrictions were mandatory, so all people had to follow through…

Yeah, just because it was mandatory doesn't mean people followed through. I live in a very progressive city and we still had many people refusing to follow mask mandates at the height of pre-vaccine pandemic. People ripping down mask signs, spitting on people, arguing at the doors to a store, etc.

Interesting, I haven't noticed any of that. Maybe my country has a different mentality. I do see some people not having the masks cover their nose, but definitely nowhere near 50%, more like 5% at worst.

Re: The case against masks at school

#518

Post by aeternum »

JangoSteve wrote: post #455
aeternum wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A randomized study was run in Bangladesh. There they handed out masks to randomly selected villages among a pool of 600 villages with similar vaccination and political stances. That study showed that the effect of surgical masks was statistically significant when used by the elderly 50+ population. For other age groups and for cloth masks, the advantage was statistically insignificant. All the headlines around this s…

Saying the effects of masking on younger age groups and with cloth masks in this study were statistically insignificant is also a misrepresentation of what the study found. The actual paper itself can be downloaded here: https://www.poverty-action.org/publication/impact-community-... From the paper: We found clear evidence that surgical masks are effective in reducing symptomatic seropreva- lence of SARS-CoV-2. While…

The question is how effective masks are w.r.t. Covid. For this the test really needs to be seroprevalence, not just symptoms. Symptoms can be caused by many non-Covid causes like allergies or the common cold.

The researchers state:

> We selected the WHO case definition of COVID-19 for its sensitivity, though its limited specificity may imply that the impact of masks on symptoms comes partly from non-SARS-CoV-2 respiratory infections

Re: The case against masks at school

#519

Post by stvswn »

dsl wrote: post #406
perardi wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and? The hospital case load is overwhelmingly, screamingly, massively dominated by the elderly unvaccinated. https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/... Given the extremely contagious nature of Omicron, what plausible way do we have to prevent these individuals from getting COVID and using hospital space? And don't say masking up kids—because if they haven't gotten vaccinated, then why do you…

I know multiple households where the initial infection vector was the kids. Grandpa might be stupid and refuse the vaccine, but keeping little Billy from becoming a carrier lessens the hospital load. If screaming Karens are going to insist on in person learning, we need to mask test and vaccinate in the schools.

You somehow manage to be condescending against all parties here.

Calling mothers who want their children to receive an in-person education "screaming Karens" is terribly out of touch.

I have young children, and my position is simple: the hospital load, the vaccination status of the elderly, the burn out of the teachers -- it's not my child's burden. It's the adults' burden.

You are free to wear a mask for the rest of your life for all I care. I find it pathetic, but I really don't care. But you and people like you do not deserve power over my children, and if you don't see the reckoning coming you are not paying close enough attention.

Re: The case against masks at school

#520

Post by nradov »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #199
throwaway22032 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the fundamental issue with coronavirus mitigation measures. There are circumstances in which "drop everything" makes sense - if coronavirus were ten times more fatal, we'd do it naturally. But in general, looking at life from a perspective of "what is the minimum possible quality of life we can have" is depressing and fundamentally incompatible with the human spirit. I tend to think that people who operate in…

>There are circumstances in which "drop everything" makes sense - if coronavirus were ten times more fatal, we'd do it naturally. It was pretty damn fatal when we had no containment measures or vaccines. We're in a totally different situation now, and need to get out of the "minimize cases" mentality.

When we had no containment measures or vaccines the CDC estimated the infection fatality rate at about 0.6%.
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