The case against masks at school • Hacker News Board

Re: The case against masks at school

#581

Post by sjg007 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:53 PM UTC

Closi wrote: post #550

sleepybrett wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why indoor dining rooms should still be closed. Pretending we aren't living through a pandemic that is respiratory in nature is fucking madness. Maybe if we had locked down harder for longer and treated this thing seriously in the beginning we wouldn't be almost two years into this with no end in sight.

> Which is why indoor dining rooms should still be closed. Pretending we aren't living through a pandemic that is respiratory in nature is fucking madness. Maybe if we had locked down harder for longer and treated this thing seriously in the beginning we wouldn't be almost two years into this with no end in sight. We aren't living through a pandemic anymore, we are now living in an endemic. Omicron isn't going away a…

You need to look up the definitions of pandemic, epidemic and endemic.

Re: The case against masks at school

#582

Post by jimmyjazz14 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:53 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #525

pcmoney wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The virus is endemic, we are all going to get it sooner or later.

No it is not and no we are not. You are advocating the sacrifice of lives which are not your own, which is unequivocally reprehensible.

I mean most experts agree that it is (or will be), soooo yeah you should probably accept that and figure out how to live your life accordingly, maybe just don't go into public policy making though.

Re: The case against masks at school

#583

Post by InsomniacL » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:54 PM UTC

sometimes I like to read the first paragraph of articles with the opposite bias they impose.

> In the panicked spring of 2020, as health officials scrambled to keep communities safe, they recommended various restrictions and interventions, sometimes in the absence of rigorous science supporting them. That was understandable at the time.

becomes:

>In the spring of 2020, as more health professionals than ever before worked together on a single issue, they recommended measures and interventions, based on our most up-to-date understanding of medicine and science. That was remarkable at the time....

Re: The case against masks at school

#584

Post by autoexec » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:54 PM UTC

vikingerik wrote: post #533

rmah wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, if you think "Masks have gigantic effort/inconvenience and mental health costs", your life must be a continuous living hellscape.

It has been for the past two years, yes. Thank you so much for your concern.

wait until you find out about the mental health costs of not being able to get healthcare when you need it because of staff shortages or constant interruptions in education, or the effects of long covid or the loss of a loved one. I'll take masks over more of those kinds of problems anytime.

Re: The case against masks at school

#585

Post by bcrosby95 » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:55 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #556

perardi wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or…grandpa can get vaccinated. I'd be more than happy to test and vaccinate in schools. In particular vaccinate. But having kids wear masks…which they don't do well, because they're kids…not like adults do it well either…is a fig leaf. It's not going to work. And you can see that from the massive infection rates in schools that have masks .

Is there a massive infection rate? My kid’s elementary school sends an email with the count of positive test results in the school each week. It seems like it’s consistently under 1% per week. (Typically 1-4 people testing positive in a city K-5 school, students and staff being tested.)

Our school has seemed to do OK keeping it from spreading between kids.

But they also do weekly testing. And did surveillance testing at the end of winter break, which kept about 15% of the school's students at home for the first week back because they had covid.

This statistic was also consistent with LA Unified surveillance testing after winter break - about 15%.

Before winter break, some parents of 2nd graders had an indoor, maskless, holiday party. Apparently all the kids got covid. Then gave it to the teachers - all 4 2nd grade teachers were out of school with covid the week before winter break. But from what our school's testing showed, it didn't spread beyond that.

I do know of a couple families who did seem to get covid from their school though.

Re: The case against masks at school

#586

Post by sleepybrett » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:55 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #529

sleepybrett wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of things happening. This 'they don't 100% work so we shouldn't even bother' bullshit .. is just that. Bullshit. What is the cost of masked students, it's the cost of the masks. Now granted our schools are, frankly, criminally underfunded. However that PPE could be supplied from outside the school's budget for those students that don't take care of the costs themselves. The other problem that i've…

> Now granted our schools are, frankly, criminally underfunded. They’re not, they’re one of the best funded schools in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_...

the US is 66th by % of gdp

Re: The case against masks at school

#587

Post by UncleOxidant » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:58 PM UTC

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…

> My daughter is in pre-med. Apparently people are dropping out like flies and not just because of the course load. They're watching how medical professionals are being treated and saying screw it!

And who can blame them at this point? If anything we need more doctors/nurses/healthcare workers, but now we're going to be moving in the wrong direction for many years.

Re: The case against masks at school

#588

Post by AllegedAlec » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:58 PM UTC

ajford wrote: post #476

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…

To me, this ignores the fact that a death of a loved/cared for individual is the most "minimum quality of life" you can get. Sure, being able to go watch a family movie together used to be a big family thing, but we can't do that anymore. Our QOL has dropped in that regard, but it's far less impactful than saying to heck with it and going to the theater and having my kid or an in-law catch Covid and die. Long Covid e…

> To me, this ignores the fact that a death of a loved/cared for individual is the most "minimum quality of life" you can get.

Counterpoint: my grandmother spent her last two years in perpetual loneliness because of covid measures in care homes preventing our family from ensuring full time visitors.

Re: The case against masks at school

#589

Post by pcmoney » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:59 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #581

Closi wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why indoor dining rooms should still be closed. Pretending we aren't living through a pandemic that is respiratory in nature is fucking madness. Maybe if we had locked down harder for longer and treated this thing seriously in the beginning we wouldn't be almost two years into this with no end in sight. We aren't living through a pandemic anymore, we are now living in an endemic. Omicron isn't going away a…

You need to look up the definitions of pandemic, epidemic and endemic.

An endemic disease is a disease that is always present in a particular population/region.

Ex. Flu, malaria, HIV, syphilis, and… COVID

Am I missing something?

Re: The case against masks at school

#590

Post by xdennis » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:59 PM UTC

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #318

naasking wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like having a kid constantly getting pinkeye from not wiping their ass properly, and then saying toilet paper is pointless, instead of teaching the kid how to wipe and wash properly. Poor adherence in young populations is exactly the point.

There is a deep irony in that this conversation concerns schools and yet we're here implying that it's pointless to teach children anything.

If they keep failing at teaching something, then maybe what's being taught is wrong, not who's taught.

It's like how left-handed kids have been taught to write with their right hand: how many lefties must fail until they realize writing with your left should be acceptable?