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The case against masks at school

theatlantic.com

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Re: The case against masks at school

#861

Post by landemva »

tjr225 wrote: post #751
rcurry wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only modern medicine was reserved for the Master Race, it would be so much simpler, and cost effective! But before you seek medical treatment we’ll just need you to fill out this questionnaire: 1. Have you ever had an alcoholic beverage? 2. Do you have a BMI greater than 18.5? 3. Have you ever eaten at The Cheesecake Factory? 4. Do you ride, run, or swim less than 40 miles per day? Please understand that your answ…

None of those things have forced us to all drastically alter our lives in the forms of economic and social lockdowns like covid has. It is a pretty silly thing to compare.

We have been vacationing in FL and TX specifically because lockdown mania did not infect those States. Those economies seemed to be doing OK.

I read that some politicians also choose to vacation in Miami, and without masks.

Re: The case against masks at school

#862

Post by thehappypm »

criddell wrote: post #114
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…

I have a feeling that if the same people were tasked with setting road speed limits, they would set it to 20 mph and argue that 30,000 lives will be saved each year. They aren't wrong, but it's misjudging the risk most of us are willing to accept for the benefits of being able to move around quickly.

They’d probably ban cars, airplanes, multi story buildings, solid food..

Re: The case against masks at school

#863

Post by michaelmrose »

throwawaythekey wrote: post #787
AnthonBerg wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N95 masks are not at all difficult to breathe in in my experience. Not at all.

> N95 masks are not at all difficult to breathe in in my experience. Not at all. My default assumption would be that if the mask doesn't make it more difficult to breathe then it is unlikely to be effective. The filtration mechanism should introduce friction which you then have to compensate for with additional pressure in your lungs.

This is a bad assumption that you can disprove for yourself in 10 seconds. You aren't pushing air up a slope you are creating a pressure differential. An impediment ought to at best result in a small decrease in the speed of filling and a tiny amount at that because your mask is very porous. Your mask is effective not in proportion to keeping air out but because larger items like globs of spit get stuck on it and because of electrostatic charge.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that effectiveness at preventing infection is linearly correlated with difficulty breathing or that to a degree that the additional friction induces difficulty must rise to the level of preventing breath in order to be effective. You aren't preventing 50% of particulates from getting in by preventing 50% of oxygen for example.

For example I imagine that you didn't believe that doctors wearing masks pre pandemic or construction workers weren't just going without breathing well for hours given paucity of air becomes an problem very very quickly

Re: The case against masks at school

#864

Post by jdminhbg »

standardUser wrote: post #465
remarkEon wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The idea is to reduce the spread of the virus in order to protect everyone from a lack of hospital beds and exhausted medical staff. People keep saying this, but if hospital capacity was actually the "real" bottleneck in treating covid then why haven't we seen massive campaigns to expand that capacity? "Do this thing that is marginally beneficial for adults and potentially actively harmful long term for children to…

"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…

The mitigation efforts have cost trillions of dollars in relief spending to make up for the economic damage they caused. Could we not have expanded capacity with one or two of the trillions we spent?

Re: The case against masks at school

#865

Post by pcmoney »

caddemon wrote: post #802
darth_avocado wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Slightly inconvenienced” is a term I can assure you would be only used by someone who doesn’t have kids. Sure, the first six months, or even a year can be discounted as an aberration in the child development process and can be compensated for. This is year 3 with no end in sight. Do you even realize how much children develop in 3 years? A 6 year old and a 9 year old have a significant difference in cognitive capabil…

I get your overall point, but you're greatly exaggerating the length of time here. The entire pandemic has been going on for less than 2 years. I also don't know any district that wasn't in person this entire school year. Every family I know in my area (a pretty liberal area of the US) had a packed summer involving camps, friends, and road trips. Kids truly sat at home for about 1 year.

Sounds like a wealthy area.

Now envision: You are a parent who HAS to work to make ends meet. Your work has to be in person (nurse, meat packing plant etc). You have two kids 3 years apart, say 7 and 10. One you just were able to adjust to school after years of sensory and social issues. The school is closed. The kids cant go in but bars are open.

Re: The case against masks at school

#866

Post by ern »

gilbetron wrote: post #779
dsl wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 G…

You are wrong. Deeply wrong. I respect HN's rules, so I won't reply as I really want to. There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. Have others had it worse in history? Sure. But that's like saying if you get run over by a Prius, it doesn't matter because people that got hit by a truck had it worse. And for all that keeping kids at home, we really didn't gain anything.…

There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year.

My kids and their friends repurposed their remote learning tools (MS Teams) and have had more creative interaction with their peers than they would have had otherwise (it's always been a pain organizing real-world play-dates). I'm surprised that this wasn't a more widespread experience.

Re: The case against masks at school

#867

Post by pcmoney »

GiorgioG wrote: post #823
gilbetron wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. Deeply wrong. I respect HN's rules, so I won't reply as I really want to. There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. Have others had it worse in history? Sure. But that's like saying if you get run over by a Prius, it doesn't matter because people that got hit by a truck had it worse. And for all that keeping kids at home, we really didn't gain anything.…

You're wrong. Deeply wrong. There is no deep psychological damage. Children are not fragile snowflakes - they're adaptable, resilient little humans. That's why as a species we continue to thrive. Stop inventing new problems that don't exist - there's already enough to go around.

Have you talked to kids? Seen them? This has deeply and possibly irrevocably damaged many if not most of them.

Re: The case against masks at school

#868

Post by cpursley »

dsl wrote: post #833
darth_avocado wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Slightly inconvenienced” is a term I can assure you would be only used by someone who doesn’t have kids. Sure, the first six months, or even a year can be discounted as an aberration in the child development process and can be compensated for. This is year 3 with no end in sight. Do you even realize how much children develop in 3 years? A 6 year old and a 9 year old have a significant difference in cognitive capabil…

Quoted post unavailable.

> Yeah, your kids might be a bit dumber or less socially adjusted.

What absolute lunancy; certainly you're trolling. Taking the position of sacrificing children is the position of the villain movies.

Re: The case against masks at school

#869

Post by michaelmrose »

thehappypm wrote: post #859
michaelmrose wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you experience a great deal of anxiety or feel like you are being strangled while wearing a mask you are either wearing it wrong or have a medical issue this isn't how most people experience wearing a mask. This is what I wear. https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/511sZBCeHES._AC_.jpg I have bad asthma. My lungs are basically shit. I can't jog a 1/4 mile without having breathing problems. I have no problems wearing…

I agree with them, I hate every second I am forced to wear a mask.

Since this is psychological not a physical limitation what are we to do about it?

Re: The case against masks at school

#870

Post by zippzom »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #599
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…

The hospital case load is overwhelmingly, screamingly, massively dominated by the elderly unvaccinated. Are you sure this is true? The data you linked to shows that hospitalization rate for 65+ unvaccinated is 7x 65+ vaccinated. But WA has a great vaccination rate, over 99% for 65+ with one or more shot. So even with 7x the rate, unvaccinated elderly probably aren't massively dominating hospitalizations because it is…

I think the relevant table is on page 13 "COVID-19 hospitalizations in unvaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals in Washington state by age group, February - December, 2021"

It shows that 79% of hospitalizations in the state are unvaccinated people and that of those, 3,000 are under 34, 11,000 are between 34-65, 7,000 are over 65.

So it is indeed largely elderly unvaccinated in the hospital.

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