The case against masks at school • Hacker News Board

Re: The case against masks at school

#951

Post by JPKab » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #927

JPKab wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he should foot the bill for private school because people like you don't understand basic statistics, or even bother to look at the data? With all due respect, there's a name for fear that is divorced from reality and not in proportion with the actual risk: paranoia. And that's what this is. The number of kids who have died of COVID is in the hundreds, over a two year period. TWICE AS MANY KIDS DROWN EVERY YEAR. V…

> The number of kids who have died of COVID is in the hundreds, over a two year period. That's just deaths, though. What about other long-term effects? Long COVID and MIS-C come to mind. > TWICE AS MANY KIDS DROWN EVERY YEAR. And you'll notice that schools tend to take measures to prevent drowning - namely, barring unsupervised access to bodies of water deep enough for kids to drown. > The number of children dying of…

Care to back up any numbers with long COVID? Or am I again going to have to suffer with hand waving and zero quantitative analysis?

Throughout this pandemic, measures were taken with a public health benefit in mind that was purely limited to the virus, and any and all mentions of weighing the cost of these measures or even trying to quantify it was met with "You're killing people!!! You shouldn't have a platform. You should be silenced!" Shaming tactics are the last resort of people with bad policies and bad ideas.

I wasn't aware that any schools had completely closed their doors to prevent kids from drowning or were preventing kids from learning to speak by forcing them to cover half of their faces to prevent drowning. The point is that you don't know a kid that's drowned most likely and most of us don't.

Additionally, masks don't stop the spread. So we're sitting here arguing about an intervention that hasn't done anything to prevent omicron from spreading all over classrooms anyway. If you had school age children you would know this, but I'm going to take a wild guess you don't do you?

Your last question indicates that you think making mask wearing in school by children a permanent feature should be explored. I would welcome you to submit your own children if you ever have them to this experiment, but good luck finding researchers that think it would be ethical to conduct this experiment. They certainly wouldn't endorse it for more than a short period of time, but we did it to all of our kids in an uncontrolled experiment born out of panic.

You are on the wrong side of history.

Re: The case against masks at school

#952

Post by JPKab » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 3:50 PM UTC

lovich wrote: post #874

JPKab wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

The way you talk about the unvaccinated is telling.

I'd like to propose a solution that I think you would really prefer:

Let's make it really obvious who the unvaccinated are. I'm thinking we could maybe have some kind of article of clothing that could be worn over top of normal clothes. Perhaps an armband would suffice? Would that make you feel comfortable? It would also make it easier for you to mistreat them and shame them at will. Perhaps we could have a different armband for people that are unvaccinated but have a record of a positive test and recovery. They could be subject to shaming as well for not going along with your sacrament.

59% of Democratic party voters surveyed support a policy of confining unvaccinated people to their homes. We should go ahead and do that right? I'm taking this to its logical end because you don't dare do so.

I voted Democrat my entire life. People have no idea what it was like campaigning for Barack Obama in southwestern Virginia. I literally had a man brandish a shotgun at me in his driveway. It's coal country. I was a die-hard supporter and they betrayed me and other people like me.

This coercion was the last straw and I'm never voting for the party again. Congratulations you and your ilk have created a monster.

Re: The case against masks at school

#953

Post by nisegami » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #811

kodah wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can see what our child-bearing aged children think of all this - they're not having kids. I don't think this is a short-term aberration. We're a population literally in decline. I'm one of these folks. I think it's wrong to blame this solely on COVID. I won't have kids because my position in the United States is nowhere near guaranteed. I have survived three economic recessions, one of which I lost everything i…

You're under no obligation to have children but historically it has been very rare for anyone to have a "guaranteed" position. The norm of human existence has been brief periods of stability punctuated by wars, famines, epidemics, depressions, and disasters. Yet through it all our ancestors kept reproducing. Our problems today are minor by comparison.

Wasn't right then, isn't right now.

Re: The case against masks at school

#954

Post by nradov » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

DeWilde wrote: post #925

TameAntelope wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There absolutely is something optional about the need (as in food, water) for physical social interaction, and the people who disagree with me are , factually, incorrect, know they're incorrect, and are acting selfishly at the cost of human lives. Is it entirely pleasant? No. Is it temporary? Yes. You will survive without physically being around your buddies for a few years while a global fucking pandemic is resolved…

That is one way of looking at it, the other is why force yourself to suffer if neither you nor anyone around you is at threat from the virus. My threat model is different, everyone around me is healthy and young--with I myself being the only one with a chronic condition leaving me more vulnerable to Covid but still no that much--locking myself would be more unhealthy. I don't see it as selfish, I'm not forcing anyone…

There is a long religious tradition of suffering for the sake of faith in order to signal one's virtue or gain favor with a deity. While some pandemic control measures such as vaccination and mitigating co-morbid conditions are well supported by evidence based medicine, others have become kind of a weird secular religion largely detached from science.

I think some people just want to feel like they're in control. Surely if I dance in a circle while beating a drum the rains will come. Surely if I wear the sacred garment and perform the proper cleansing rituals the virus will see my piety and spare my life.

Re: The case against masks at school

#955

Post by tagoregrtst » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #872

tagoregrtst wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 art…

“ 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. ”

Thats what I was implying, but I wasn’t sure if this was also the case in the US as in other countries. Like you say, its their doing so they can go and cry me a river for all I care.

Re: The case against masks at school

#956

Post by thehappypm » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #898

thehappypm wrote: post #857

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The benefit is always vastly overstated with masks, and the cost always downplayed. You’re implying masks lead to happy hospitals, and masks are just a minor inconvenience. Reality? Masks don’t seem that effective, they may reduce spread in some circumstances, but there’s so little evidence that mask mandates (the way we do them in America) have done much good. Obviously there’s a risk reduction on an individual leve…

> You’re implying masks lead to happy hospitals, and masks are just a minor inconvenience. Masks lead to fewer cases and yes that means happier hospitals. The science says that masks work and the majority of people accept that fact. Mandates work too, but only to the extent that they are followed and enforced. In fact they work so well that a certain embarrassed republican governor who had evidence that they work dec…

The problem, as you point out, is that mask mandates are effective only in the fantasy world where the population adheres rigorously and uses the right kinds of masks. And even then, you’re only limiting spread by some amount in masked scenarios. A mask mandate doesn’t stop one family member from infecting the whole family. The biggest spread vector has always been the home.

Re: The case against masks at school

#957

Post by zippzom » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

reylas wrote: post #938

zippzom wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, help me here. If 7000 hospitalized are over 65 and 11,000 are under 65, does that not show that there are 4000 less elderly hospitalized than middle-aged? If I look at those numbers, the elderly are not "dominating" the hospitals. In fact, that would show that if you looked in a hospital at any given time, there would be more middle-aged than elderly. I get that "per-capita" the rate is higher, but that does not…

I was including some of the 34-65 crowd in "elderly"

Re: The case against masks at school

#958

Post by reylas » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

JoBrad wrote: post #940

reylas wrote: post #938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, help me here. If 7000 hospitalized are over 65 and 11,000 are under 65, does that not show that there are 4000 less elderly hospitalized than middle-aged? If I look at those numbers, the elderly are not "dominating" the hospitals. In fact, that would show that if you looked in a hospital at any given time, there would be more middle-aged than elderly. I get that "per-capita" the rate is higher, but that does not…

Isn’t it 3,000 + 11,000 65?

Yes, which makes it worse. It can't be the elderly filling up hospitals if there are twice as many non-elderly in there.

I was just using middle-aged (39-65) as a direct comparison.

Re: The case against masks at school

#959

Post by brimble » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #935

ern wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My kids didn’t. What’s your point? It’s hard to measure this systematically and I’m glad that your experiences were positive. My kids had marked drop in grades and really suffered. It wasn’t so much the social aspect as teachers and schools not being to adapt to new methods. I’d like to see trends in standardized tests during this period as I think the real harm was in knowledge not gained.

I've got decent insight into several local school districts. From less-close information I've picked up from around the country, our city doesn't seem to be an outlier.

For both fully-remote and alternating-day in-person, if schools still failed kids, they'd have had to fail over half of most classes. Percentages of engaged-enough-to-be-OK kids in online schools tended to sit in the 10-20% range. It wasn't unusual for half or more of kids to effectively be absent for an entire semester. [EDIT] The alternating-day half-in-half-out in-person schedule kids, in the one district that I have insight into that did that for fall 2020/spring 2021, seemed to fare even worse than the online cohort, incidentally.

> I’d like to see trends in standardized tests during this period as I think the real harm was in knowledge not gained.

Any places that did them, they'll be awful, guaranteed. IIRC at least some states skipped them in Spring 2020 since it'd have been nearly impossible to proctor them and everyone knew they'd be "tainted" anyway. The main point of them is to compare year-over-year progress to see what needs to be adjusted and whether progress is being made, for which a during-remote-learning standardized test would be worthless, since you already know it'll be bad and why it's bad and won't be able to get any actionable info out of comparing it to prior or future years. It'll probably be another couple years before we have something like a new baseline and the tests start to be useful for their intended purpose again.

Re: The case against masks at school

#960

Post by sjg007 » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

pcmoney wrote: post #710

sjg007 wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polio used to be endemic in the USA and now it has been eradicated.

This is VERY different than polio/small pox. We have no chance with current medical tech of eliminating a highly mutagenic coronavirus. Even if we did the cost/benefit of doing so would not be adequate.

Mutagenic describes a mutagen which is something that mutates DNA.