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The case against masks at school

theatlantic.com

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Re: The case against masks at school

#611

Post by alsetmusic »

perardi wrote: post #384
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…

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…

There’s a simple solution, but good luck getting everyone on board with it: stop treating the willingly unvaxxed in hospitals. Only vaxxed patients and medically-ineligible unvaxxed patients get treatment. If you can’t do this minuscule thing to help society then society can’t be turned on its head to help you.

Re: The case against masks at school

#612

Post by ricardobeat »

"Let's check research studies"

Okay, we found three studies.

- study A says that masks work, BUT xx

- study B says that masks work, BUT yy

- study C says that masks work, BUT zz

"The CDC also points to several other studies, BUT BUT BUT BUT". Therefore the obvious conclusion is that masks don't work.

Re: The case against masks at school

#613

Post by jimmyjazz14 »

jmull wrote: post #487
adamrezich wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Masks aren't exactly burdensome. We make kids wear shirts and shoes, even when it's unnecessary in summer. Given the current situation, if you could magically set aside politics and the associated mouth-breathers (which of course we can't) wouldn't we actually demand proof that masks are a net negative before we stop mandating them? normally you're supposed to actually demand proof that something is a net positive…

> normally you're supposed to actually demand proof that something is a net positive before you start mandating it Are you unaware of the massive amounts of clear-cut evidence that properly worn quality masks substantially reduce the transmission of covid? Come on.

I am not aware of "clear-cut" evidence that masking in schools work in fact that's the entire point of the article in question here so if you have some silver bullet that debunks all the authors claims than you should absolutely share it.

Re: The case against masks at school

#614

Post by beiller »

aqme28 wrote: post #534
tqi wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If your Grandpa chose to not get vaccinated and gets COVID, thats his problem. Unfortunately though that's not true. It's putting a huge burden on hospitals that affects us all.

Isn't the point way up that nurses are quitting. This creates a burden at the hospital. Why are they quitting? Because they are treated like cattle instead of employed human beings. See the court case on the hospital suing the nurses in an at will employment state for quitting and going to another hospital for higher pay. There are even some who are fired for not getting a vaccine regardless of any special circumstance the individual may have.

Re: The case against masks at school

#615

Post by standardUser »

remarkEon wrote: post #574
standardUser wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"why haven't we seen massive campaigns to expand that capacity?" Maybe we should, but we are talking about an astounding cost, with ongoing upkeep, for once-every-hundred-year events. And that's just for new facilities - we already have nursing shortages. Instead, we (and just about every other country) have used mitigation efforts to reduce the transmission rate when hospital capacity is threatened. It's a lot cheap…

I’m not following your point. You say this is expensive and hard, but so what? Isn’t that what you do when a pandemic occurs? You also point out we have a nursing shortage currently (we did before the pandemic as well). Isn’t that a reason why we should do this? Kill two birds with one stone … solve the prior nursing shortage with a training and hiring blitz.

Expanding hospitals, building new hospitals and training scores of new highly-skilled staff all takes many years. In addition to being extraordinarily expensive.

And then what? The pandemic ends and we have incredibly expensive facilities sitting empty (but still incurring maintenance costs forever) and a surplus of highly-trained staff who cannot find jobs because 98% of the time, we simply don't need any more capacity than we had in 2019.

Re: The case against masks at school

#616

Post by emteycz »

gkbrk wrote: post #541
tqi wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If your Grandpa chose to not get vaccinated and gets COVID, thats his problem. Sure thing. Can we get the Grandpa's to sign documents saying they're going unvaccinated by choice and would like to opt-out from any hospital care related to COVID if their resources are needed for any other patient?

Why? We're on a free market. Surely they could simply add a big surcharge. I'd expect their insurance to go way up too.

Re: The case against masks at school

#617

Post by pcmoney »

sleepybrett wrote: post #602
pcmoney wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and your friends are well off and it looks like you dont have children and can work remote. Thats great! Unfortunately most are living under wildly different and much more difficult circumstances that they are being asked to bear month after month with no end and with dubious effect.

If half our population hadn't decided covid was a hoax and didn't take even the simplest precautions from the beginning we probably wouldn't be in the situation we are in now.

Sure but woulda, coulda, shoulda.

CDC told us not to wear masks initially. Democrats were vaccine skeptics until Biden won. But who cares? Thats in the past, get vaccinated or not. Go out or not. Just dont try to control others.

Also, the world hasn’t stopped it so it is unlikely ANY US only measure would have done much unless we went fill isolationist which would probably have had worse outcomes.

Re: The case against masks at school

#618

Post by jjeaff »

amerkhalid wrote: post #466
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 .

Another thing I wonder about is what are the affects of wearing masks at young age and not getting usual amount of exposure to viruses and other germs. I remember reading here and elsewhere that early childhood exposure to germs builds a robust immune system. While my kid doesn’t wear mask in his class but his school is following very strict cleaning procedures. So he hasn’t gotten sick as much before pandemic. Maybe…

Having young kids myself, I can say pretty confidently that kids are going to expose themselves to quite a lot of germs no matter what precautions we take, short of putting them in solitary confinement in clean rooms.

So I think it's possible that precautions reduce viral and bacterial exposure, but since they don't completely stop it, immune systems may still get enough exposure to build immunity to things while still not getting enough exposure to actually make them sick.

Re: The case against masks at school

#619

Post by xdennis »

occamrazor wrote: post #7
sul_tasto wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps an unmask would be helpful: https://www.getunmask.com/

On their website I couldn’t find any statement about their effectiveness, nor any certification.

You're kinda like the guy who complains that Australian covid protesters are outside without QR codes that prove they're allowed to protest. I.e. that's the point.

Re: The case against masks at school

#620

Post by 323 »

champagnois wrote: post #320
elsonrodriguez wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the test aerosols they use to test N95s and similar are smaller than the coronavirus. Also they have done virus measurements from sick people through masks that prove there is filtration happening.

N95s work via an electric polarity of the filter. This charge is what captures the viruses. Filtration fades when the charge is lost. I don't need to see your studies because I have helped build and certify N95 factories and know a lot about it. The masks arent usable for long and arent reusable, either. Cloth masks do nothing and are not a consideration to any serious adult.

> The masks arent usable for long and arent reusable

Only because lawyers got involved and are trying to minimize liability (ie: you used it wrongly, not our problem anymore).

Or are you telling me that if I put an N95, and remove it after 5 min, I can't reuse it 1 hour later, but it's fine if I wear it 8 hours straight. Yes, yes, it could get contaminated on the inside surface in between, I know. But will it stop filtering viruses just because I took it off?

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