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The case against masks at school

theatlantic.com

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Re: The case against masks at school

#681

Post by uoaei »

pcmoney wrote: post #546
uoaei wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don’t want to contract it feel free to make whatever personal decisions you think will prevent it. Don’t use your fear to control others and prevent them from making their own decisions.

The problem with this argument is the slipperiness of the slope. So we shouldn't try to enforce gun laws either, eh?

You're either going to have to be more specific, or concede that we live in a society where individual actions have consequences that influence others.

Re: The case against masks at school

#682

Post by pcmoney »

ericd wrote: post #580
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.

People over here in France are generally living pretty normally. Far from madness, it's pretty nice. Sure, everyone masks up and whips out their phone for constant QR scanning, but restaurants are still pretty full, trams busses and trains as well, and people are getting together. Schools are in person. It probably helps that home tests are cheap ($25 for 5) and super easy to get. It's frankly pretty weird that these…

Jealous of your tests. Pretty sad we printed a couple trillion and didnt get testing etc with it.

Re: The case against masks at school

#683

Post by jjeaff »

sleepybrett wrote: post #473
dsl wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course all of our problems go away when you convince the remaining 40% of the population to get vaccinated. I'm actually in favor of doing away with masks and social distancing. Just create a nationwide policy that the unvaccinated will not be admitted or treated for COVID and we can all return to our daily lives.

Convincing that 40% to get vaccinated while members of our elected government preach to that particular choir about how things that are partially or mostly effective (masking, vaccines, etc) are NOT effective simply because they are not 100% effective is a losing battle. Watch the widely circulated video of the Florida's nomination hearing for their new Surgeon General, where a democrat asks the nominee if he, yes or…

The denial is so palpable. I know a couple in their early sixties who refused to get vaccinated because "COVID is way overblown". They were both regular weight and normal health. The wife contracted COVID and died in the hospital. Later, when asked if he was going to get vaccinated, he said no, because "COVID is no worse than a cold."

He apparently believes that even though his wife went into the hospital for COVID, she actually died from pneumonia, and not COVID. I guess no doctor explained to him that pneumonia is simply an infection that has spread to the lungs.

You can't help people like this.

Re: The case against masks at school

#684

Post by seanmcdirmid »

wallacoloo wrote: post #675
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do you think the people reading your words who have vaguely opposing views might not also be fatigued when your group flatly denies their concerns as irrelevant? In the sense that a conspiracy theorist or a crank gets tired of people not believing them, yes, I guess they are annoyed. I just little empathy for them: I want this pandemic to be over, and they are getting in the way of that. Barring that, I hope that t…

> I have little empathy for them, however: I want this pandemic to be over, and they are getting in the way of that. funny, because most everyone i know wants this too, and it’s always “the other side” which prevents the pandemic from “being over”. from a person standing in the middle, it appears that it’s the divide which blocks this, whereas from deep behind lines i guess it looks like everyone past that divide is…

> funny, because most everyone i know wants this too, and it’s always “the other side” which prevents the pandemic from “being over”.

Yes, that's true. The anti-vaxxers think the vaccines will kill them or make them sterile, or something...it is really hard to keep track of what their current theory is. Again, it's a free shot you can get at the pharmacy, the only rational reason for avoiding it is if you thought it could do harm rather than just being thought ineffective.

But given that unvaccinated are dying 10X more in hospitals due to COVID than unvaccinated cases that come in, maybe this problem will just solve itself the good ole fashioned Darwin way. Mind you, as long as they don't increase unvaccinated deaths, aren't clogging the hospitals or causing my health care costs/premiums to rise (faster than they would otherwise), I believe they should have the liberty to make that decision.

Re: The case against masks at school

#685

Post by margalabargala »

aidenn0 wrote: post #83
margalabargala wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have the opposite experience with my exercise-induced asthma. It's quite dry and cold where I am currently, due to winter. Wearing a cloth mask increases the temperature and humidity of the air I breathe when working hard, and makes it less likely that asthma will be triggered. It's a significant enough effect that I will sometimes wear a cloth mask specifically for this effect when doing something strenuo…

That would probably be true if we lived somewhere with actual winters. My daughter's PE class is in the afternoon, and the lowest high-temperature we've had all winter is 63.

Gotcha, that makes sense. The high today for me was 28.

Re: The case against masks at school

#686

Post by svachalek »

pcmoney wrote: post #662
taylodl wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you're unvaccinated you're much more likely to require hospitalization should you get Covid. The impact to others is the unvaccinated are consuming medical resources and causing burn-out amongst medical practitioners.

We dont make this distinction with the vast majority of personal choices. Obesity causes a ton of strain on our health system. Should we start a class system based on BMI?

Seatbelts. Helmets. Cigarette taxes. Drinking ages.

Re: The case against masks at school

#687

Post by pcmoney »

reanimus wrote: post #648
pcmoney wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How Does an individual choice to get vaccinated or not impact others? Vaccines do not stop transmission of Covid nor do they stop you from getting Covid. They merely decrease your chances of getting severe Covid or dying from Covid. Thus the decision to vax or not is clearly a personal choice.

> Vaccines do not stop transmission of Covid nor do they stop you from getting Covid. They don't stop it, but they do decrease your chances of acquiring it and they do reduce the viral load you shed. > They merely decrease your chances of getting severe Covid or dying from Covid. So they prevent you from taking up a hospital bed, exposing the people who have to care for you to COVID and preventing other non-COVID eme…

Should we apply the same standards to the obese? Arguably a greater strain on our health care system.

Re: The case against masks at school

#688

Post by dsl »

brimble wrote: post #653
dsl wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If screaming Karens are going to insist on in person learning In defense of the Karens (ew, I feel gross even typing that) remote learning absolutely was the disaster they say it was. It was really, really bad. It's hard to exaggerate how bad it was. And I mean specifically for the kids, not for the parents (it also sucked for them/us, obviously). We can probably recover well-enough from a semester or two of it, bu…

No. It wasn't that bad. School still continued. Your children are at most slightly inconvenienced during a global pandemic that has killed MILLIONS of people.

All you have to do is keep your kid looking at a screen. They may need to repeat a year of school. At some point in their future your kids boss may say "oh right, you were a pandemic kid, here let me show you."

It's like someone in WW2 UK complaining that the Germans dropping bombs on their neighbors houses knocked some of the good dishes off the shelf.

Re: The case against masks at school

#689

Post by rhexs »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #673
aqme28 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Maybe insurance companies should drop them (or raise their premium, just like what they do with smokers).

Should insurance companies also drop low income Americans with diets that trivially lead to heart disease? Shouldn't we, as a society, take care of those who don't know better?

Re: The case against masks at school

#690

Post by jjeaff »

stvswn wrote: post #519
dsl wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So in other words, if you get sick because of my kids, that is your problem, not mine? Sounds like the perfect definition of a Karen right there.
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