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Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

reuters.com

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Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#11

Post by roenxi »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #7
dustintrex wrote: post #5

FWIW, the mask mandate ban appears to have precisely zero effect on the COVID situation in Florida, which has been steadily improving ever since schools opened. Here's a blog facetiously suggesting that not wearing masks in school caused the improvement, and while it's obviously written tongue in cheek, from a stats/causality point of view it's pretty much indistinguishable from a lot of arguments for masks. https://…

China has already mandated N95s, even those with the valves that aren’t allowed in much of the west. The idea I think is that they are focusing filtering inbound while cloth masks only really filter outbound (so wearing the mask protect others, vs an N95 that has a higher chance of protecting the wearer). Florida only reports their numbers once a week now and they aren’t breaking them down by county. They look good b…

Well, case numbers have been shaky through the entire pandemic to date. Hospitalisations and deaths are categorise though to get wrong though.

> China has already mandated N95s...

The part of China that the west should be copying is the "It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white; as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat" approach of experimenting with policies to figure out which ones work in practice. Not the authoritarian systems underpinning the surveillance and control. More 1990 Hong Kong, less 2020 Hong Kong.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#12

Post by polote »

dustintrex wrote: post #5

FWIW, the mask mandate ban appears to have precisely zero effect on the COVID situation in Florida, which has been steadily improving ever since schools opened. Here's a blog facetiously suggesting that not wearing masks in school caused the improvement, and while it's obviously written tongue in cheek, from a stats/causality point of view it's pretty much indistinguishable from a lot of arguments for masks. https://…

> it's starting to look like "casual" mask wearing (fabric masks loosely worn and taken off regularly for eating etc) is mostly just pointless hygiene theater at this point.

No one has ever proven that mask mandates worked for covid, and it has been more than a year that we know that places which had a mask mandate didn't have a different trajectory that place that did, or that mask mandate didn't change the trajectory of the covid cases. So this is common knowledge at this point.

But the same way the market can stay irrational longer than you are solvable. A useless measure can stay in place longer that we know it has no effect

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#13

Post by CamperBob2 »

Someone posted a facetious comment ("Stupid Chinese bat flu. Deadly enough to be problem. Not deadly enough to be solution.") in reply to an even more offensive one earlier ("Florida needs thinning out anyway" or something along those lines.) Both were quickly sent to -4 [dead] land, but I do think there's an underlying truth behind the offensive sentiment that is going unappreciated.

If we were dealing with some kind of hemorrhagic fever that spread like wildfire through all cross-sections of the population, sending dying people lurching into the street within a few hours of infection, moaning and bleeding from their eyes, there would be no controversy.

We wouldn't have antivaxxers making up all kinds of ridiculous reasons to avoid the shot, we wouldn't have state governors suing the President or vice versa, and we wouldn't think twice about yanking the broadcast licenses of any Fox or Sinclair affiliates who spread misinformation or otherwise spewed propaganda against best public health practices. We would have something to unite against, rather than something to further divide us.

But that's not what happened. The bug is bad but not that bad. It "almost never" kills children, it targets "old" or "fat" people disproportionately, and it "only" kills about 1% of patients. It is bad enough to bring out the worst differences among us, but not bad enough to make us set those differences aside.

If an enemy nation sent troops to our shores with orders to kill even 0.1% of our population, we'd all rise up to defeat them... but somehow a virus is different. The virus gets a free pass from 30%-40% of our population which is strongly (but admittedly not exclusively) correlated with a specific political party.

Makes no sense, but then, not much does these days.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#14

Post by throwawaymanbot »

dustintrex wrote: post #5

FWIW, the mask mandate ban appears to have precisely zero effect on the COVID situation in Florida, which has been steadily improving ever since schools opened. Here's a blog facetiously suggesting that not wearing masks in school caused the improvement, and while it's obviously written tongue in cheek, from a stats/causality point of view it's pretty much indistinguishable from a lot of arguments for masks. https://…

I love how you make it seem everything you say is 100% logical.

When even the dogs in the street know that (for example) when you sneeze in to your arm as we have been taught at school (like wearing a mask of sorts, right?) it’s better than when you sneeze straight out in the open, spreading your potential infection. The only problems I see with masks are people politicizing them.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#15

Post by seanmcdirmid »

roenxi wrote: post #11
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has already mandated N95s, even those with the valves that aren’t allowed in much of the west. The idea I think is that they are focusing filtering inbound while cloth masks only really filter outbound (so wearing the mask protect others, vs an N95 that has a higher chance of protecting the wearer). Florida only reports their numbers once a week now and they aren’t breaking them down by county. They look good b…

Well, case numbers have been shaky through the entire pandemic to date. Hospitalisations and deaths are categorise though to get wrong though. > China has already mandated N95s... The part of China that the west should be copying is the "It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white; as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat" approach of experimenting with policies to figure out which ones work in practice. Not the…

I’m not sure other stuff China does has to do with them mandating N95 masks because cloth masks are not effective enough? The parent comment makes the same observation, which isn’t invalidated by china’s authoritarian tendencies.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#16

Post by s5300 »

dustintrex wrote: post #5

FWIW, the mask mandate ban appears to have precisely zero effect on the COVID situation in Florida, which has been steadily improving ever since schools opened. Here's a blog facetiously suggesting that not wearing masks in school caused the improvement, and while it's obviously written tongue in cheek, from a stats/causality point of view it's pretty much indistinguishable from a lot of arguments for masks. https://…

To my knowledge, Florida recently stopped reporting all hospitalizations of children due to COVID (either 0-17 or 0-18 ages)

So I don't think

> has been steadily improving ever since schools opened.

Is as truthful as one might think.

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#17

Post by Proven »

anothernewdude wrote: post #4

It would be good for Florida to shed some population and thus have less weight in the electoral college.

I don't think Covid-19 will help you - more than enough people are escaping from socialist strongholds in the US to make up for that!

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#18

Post by brianpan »

dustintrex wrote: post #5

FWIW, the mask mandate ban appears to have precisely zero effect on the COVID situation in Florida, which has been steadily improving ever since schools opened. Here's a blog facetiously suggesting that not wearing masks in school caused the improvement, and while it's obviously written tongue in cheek, from a stats/causality point of view it's pretty much indistinguishable from a lot of arguments for masks. https://…

Theater, like security theater, is implementing something that doesn't work but doing it anyway for appearances. Masks work as you say. The fact that people don't want to wear them not is not hygiene theater, it's non-compliance.

More to your point, of course the mask ban had little effect in FL when it's on-again-off-again and challenged in courts. The situation is changing and confusing, so people will do what they want. The bigger factor is that covid is currently decreasing everywhere in the US as it has with previous waves.

Children in schools has never been a outsized contributor to covid numbers so school starting shouldn't be expected to have a major impact. (Children are getting covid in greater percentages because they are yet to be vaccinated.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/schools-ar...

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#19

Post by dstaley »

I'm curious if this ruling would have any impact on a district's ability to enforce a uniform policy/dress code. If a district doesn't have the authority to require masks, how can they have the authority to require that students tuck in their shirts?

Re: Court rules for Florida governor, reinstates ban on mask mandates in FL schools

#20

Post by sneak »

TMWNN wrote: post #6
krasin wrote: post #3

No matter what position one holds on the matter, it's always impressive to witness the multi-layer democracy process in the US. Not many countries in the world would have a dispute between a governor, individual school districts, non-profit organizations and judges. The US is a very non-ideal country, but it's a working one.

>The US is a very non-ideal country, but it's a working one. The US works because of the multilayer democracy process. The combination of federalism and separation of powers in the US is slow, by design. It provides multiple layers of protection against bad ideas. It allows for the governance of a continent-sized country composed of 50 semi-sovereign entities, each acting as mini laboratories for good ideas that can…

Many other places work better without this system, so I'm not sure your conclusion supports your premise.
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