The case against masks at school • Hacker News Board

Re: The case against masks at school

#871

Post by spookthesunset » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

veemjeem wrote: post #674

spookthesunset wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why is that the fault of the general public? These hospitals had 2 years to figure this out.

Why would it be the fault of hospitals? They have no incentive to construct more ICUs. A large percentage of covid patients entering the ICU for ventilation will die, and you can't collect on a dead patient. ICUs are a money hole -- they require specialized equipment, isolation construction, experienced medical team, etc. If a hospital is motivated by profit, they would construct as few ICUs as legally possible.

It’s not my problem to fix hospitals. I shouldn’t be forced to wear some worthless mask because my lousy government can’t find a way to staff some kind of emergency Covid hospital. I only pissed away two years of my life waiting for them to do so… Time is up. Not my problem.

Re: The case against masks at school

#872

Post by JPKab » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

tagoregrtst wrote: post #778

JPKab wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General observation from reading YOUR comment - you must not have young kids at a key developmental age in primary school for if you did you'd realize how detrimental arbitrary, poorly-fitting, non-medical masks are to small children's ability to learn to speak, read other's emotions, and other crucial milestones. It's an uncontrolled experiment that was launched, without any regard for potential negative consequence…

This. Adults have offloaded as much of the burden of the pandemic on young people as possible. - Suicide rates are through the roof - Developmentally delays - Societal debt And it goes on. Medical professional have it rough… oh well! Open up more medical schools, theres far more people willing to go to med school than get in. Id rather not go to the Dr. and not need prescriptions to buy most drugs. Lets loosen those…

You can't open up more medical schools because the American Medical Association has lobbied for decades and use their accreditation authority to put a cap on the number of seats in med schools in the US. There's been virtually no change since the 1980s despite a 30% increase in the population.

They are perhaps one of the most significant drags on economic growth in the history of the United States. Because of the artificially induced scarcity, we pay mediocre physicians the wages that CEOs earn in other industries.

Everyone in the US thinks insurance companies are to blame, while they are certainly not efficient, there have been numerous studies that show that the majority of growth in price increases in medicine are due to physician wages and their organized bargaining power with insurance companies driving up prices.

What other service have you encountered where you routinely have the person you are paying reschedule your appointments at the last minute? Thanks to the American Medical Association, they have the ability to do this with impunity. What's insane is we actually have to import medical workers from overseas where they are trained in countries that don't have an evil organization limiting supply.

Knowing about this has made it even more unbearable to get scolded by these people for 2 years. I'm terribly sorry that they have to endure such horrible conditions while earning over $400,000 a year. It really is primarily a profession of non-creative, rule following mid-wits, kissing the ass of their licensing boards and taking defacto bribes from pharma reps to push the latest overprescribed Big Pharma product.

Re: The case against masks at school

#873

Post by spookthesunset » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

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.

As they should. Mask mandates were always more religion than science. Calmer heads decades from now will suggest as much.

Re: The case against masks at school

#874

Post by lovich » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:34 AM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #732

lovich wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the hospitals collapsing because of aids patients or so many people getting heart attacks? If so then maybe we should start using carrots/sticks to limit peoples risky behavior or make them absorb more of the cost. If they’re not collapsing the hospitals then why bring them up?

The US medical system is financially untenable due to the massive percentage of adults drinking sugary sodas with every meal, getting fat, and developing Type II diabetes. Guess we should let them die too, right? You are making an argument with no limiting principle, because it's poorly thought out and shallow, and it shows.

Was it untenable before covid? There were twos of needing more nurses before every boomer was in a nursing home, but I don’t remember reading reports of elective surgeries being cancelled or hospitals going to extremely understaffed.

> You are making an argument with no limiting principle, because it's poorly thought out and shallow, and it shows.

It wasn’t poorly thought out. Our system sucked but was sustainable before the unvaxxed group decided to eschew medical prevention for this disease. Now it sucks _and_ is unsustainable.

Any argument you bring out that doesn’t recognize that the situation has changed due to covid, that also points out other health problems as a reason to not react to the change caused by covid, is poorly thought out.

If any self inflicted problem causes our healthcare system to tip over we should react to it.

People refusing the covid vaccination have tipped over the system. People getting type II diabetes have not

Re: The case against masks at school

#875

Post by andreareina » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:45 AM UTC

fifteenforty wrote: post #835

andreareina wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a former asthmatic. Even cloth masks are restrictive enough that they'd have been an issue for me.

I suspect that’s exactly the problem. Cloth masks are often less breathable than N95s!

Could be. Unfortunately N95s are hard to find by here. I can't say that I've noticed much difference with my KN95s versus the cloth mask.

Re: The case against masks at school

#876

Post by michaelmrose » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:45 AM UTC

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,…

> 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.

This is exactly backwards from reality. The groups you mentioned are at much higher risk from covid and ergo it is much more important to vaccinate. The risk in absolute terms will remain much higher even with vaccination but this is a poor reason not to vaccinate. The reason you vaccinate is the degree of risk mitigated not the expectation of reducing that risk to zero.

Re: The case against masks at school

#877

Post by andreareina » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:52 AM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #45

andreareina wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a former asthmatic. Even cloth masks are restrictive enough that they'd have been an issue for me.

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…

Didn't think about that, and I did sometimes put the mask on outside for comfort!

Re: The case against masks at school

#878

Post by caddemon » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:54 AM UTC

pcmoney wrote: post #865

caddemon wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Certainly my circle is wealthier, but it is a major city and any mandates would apply city-wide. Rural areas have even fewer COVID restrictions. Please point me to a school district in the United States that has had no in-person option this school year.

Re: The case against masks at school

#879

Post by krferriter » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:57 AM UTC

sleepybrett wrote: post #499

pcmoney wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an open air room, the difference between walking past and sitting in the same room as is negligible. Total theatre, does nothing besides allowing restaurants and patrons to feel ok/that they are “doing something” and stay open.

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.

I mean if you want to argue to close all indoor dining rooms, that's a case you could try to make. I disagree, but at least it'd be a consistent thing to argue for. Opening dining rooms, but then requiring everyone to wear a mask while they walk from the door to the table is pure theater that does nothing at all.

Re: The case against masks at school

#880

Post by yellow_postit » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:58 AM UTC

lovich wrote: post #655

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, there no way to check someone’s vaccination status. There are fake cards, there are people who got vaccinated before government databases, there are people who got vaccinated without documentation, there are people who got documentation from medical people who didn’t actually perform the vaccination. Secondly, it is massively against a breach of ethics to intentionally withhold care from people because of a…

> Secondly, it is massively against a breach of ethics to intentionally withhold care from people because of a moral judgement. I don’t think framing it as a moral judgement is correct. We don’t have the capacity in our medical system to keep this up forever, and the electorate has signaled they don’t want to pay for increasing the systems capacity. Cutting off the purposely unvaccinated is just triage

I don’t have an answer but I always get stuck on the slippery slope intersection about what differentiates willingly unvaxxed vs people that don’t exercise and eat healthy enough.