Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The case against masks at school

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: The case against masks at school

#531

Post by jimmaswell »

TameAntelope wrote: post #356
nradov wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to act morally superior and make cheap emotional arguments for when you're not the one who has to make hard decisions. All lives have value, but no life has infinite value. You can't seriously expect the majority to endure perpetual mandates and restrictions just to provide some limited, temporary protection to a small minority who are vulnerable due to risk factors like obesity. https://reason.com/2022/01/…

I absolutely can expect the majority to endure a minor inconvenience, if that minority they're protecting is a thousand innocent children in a given year (you didn't pick a number, so I will, 78 million children). And the point is to lower the curve, not avoid exposure. But, again, you know all of this, you just don't care. Shameful.

> minor inconvenience

The impacts on their development shown in the article and rest of the comments are much more than a minor inconvenience

Re: The case against masks at school

#532

Post by endisneigh »

reanimus wrote: post #524
endisneigh wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody here is advocating for avoiding vaccinations so your entire point is moot.

I think if we're supposed to treat the position against vaccination being effective as "not stupid", we ought to hear reasons why that is.

Even if it’s stupid, what exactly is saying that going to accomplish other than feigning some superiority over the unvaccinated?

Re: The case against masks at school

#533

Post by vikingerik »

rmah wrote: post #443
vikingerik wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad that condemning everyone as sick with zero evidence isn't how a free society works. Let's imprison everyone who "might" commit a crime. Masks have gigantic effort/inconvenience and mental health costs. I can't think of anything but counting down the seconds until ripping that f*cking thing off my face while being strangled by that shit. Yet nobody cares about anyone else's mental health over their own perceiv…

Lol, if you think "Masks have gigantic effort/inconvenience and mental health costs", your life must be a continuous living hellscape.

It has been for the past two years, yes. Thank you so much for your concern.

Re: The case against masks at school

#534

Post by aqme28 »

tqi wrote: post #512
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.

1. If your Grandpa chose to not get vaccinated and gets COVID, thats his problem. 2. The idea that anyone who wants in person learning is a "screaming Karen" is fucking stupid. There is lots of evidence that remote learning has all kinds of negative outcomes for kids, and your (frankly sexist) dismissiveness is the reason this conversation never goes anywhere.

> 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.

Re: The case against masks at school

#535

Post by stvswn »

jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #389
taylodl wrote: post #304

General observation from reading the comments - the folks on HN must not have many friends working in medicine for if they had they'd realize those friends are swamped and burned-out. They'd also know that pretty much the only condition we're treating nowadays is Covid. Surgeries are continuing to be postponed - including surgeries that can lead to worse problems down the road such as removing cancerous tumors. And i…

Isn't the whole point of the article that school mask mandates probably don't reduce spread? If it doesn't reduce spread than it won't help your overwhelmed friends working in medicine. Sorry I guess I just don't understand what point you are trying to make.

His point is that the job satisfaction of adults is important and saving it requires our collective agreement that 1+1=3.

The point of masking in schools was maybe, once, based on the theory that it would keep the children and teachers safe. Now, the point is that we must exert every lever of control at our disposal. It just so happens that the only group of people who we can reliably control are children, as they cannot vote, do not have fully-formed civil rights, and (in the main) are legally required to attend government run schools each day.

So, while they'd love to make everyone else mask, they realize they practically cannot -- so they focus on children. It's grotesque.

Re: The case against masks at school

#536

Post by xyzzyz »

nradov wrote: post #477
baron816 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My daughter is in pre-med. Apparently people are dropping out like flies This may not be a bad thing in the long run. There’s a shortage of medical professionals because the medical industry wants it that way. If the crisis becomes acute enough, the government will be forced to loosen regulations, and that would allow for more people to enter the field faster and more easily.

The shortage of physicians is primarily caused not by regulations but by lack of government funding for residency programs. https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-fun...

So we didn’t have physicians before government started funding residencies? I think not, I think we used to have physicians just fine 100 years ago. So what changed?

Re: The case against masks at school

#537

Post by ngngngng »

xdennis wrote: post #472
ngngngng wrote: post #275

Funny to watch the Atlantic change directions on COVID over the last few months. I go back and forth on masks. In general I find them to be a minor inconvenience, although I believe they're more inconvenient for me than most because I'm blind and no matter what I do they always fog up my glasses. But while masks themselves are mildly inconvenient, harsh mask mandates and restrictions become much more of an annoyance…

> although I believe they're more inconvenient for me than most because I'm blind and no matter what I do they always fog up my glasses Sorry if this is an insensitive, stupid question, but why do foggy glasses bother you if you're blind?

Sorry, left it vague for brevity. I'm unable to do all sorts of things without glasses, such as reading or driving. I'm not legally blind, I just have terrible vision. So if I'm in a restaurant trying to see the menu and my mask causes my glasses to fog up there's nothing I can do. I can't see through the fog, and I can't read without glasses.

Re: The case against masks at school

#538

Post by youniverse »

taylodl wrote: post #304

General observation from reading the comments - the folks on HN must not have many friends working in medicine for if they had they'd realize those friends are swamped and burned-out. They'd also know that pretty much the only condition we're treating nowadays is Covid. Surgeries are continuing to be postponed - including surgeries that can lead to worse problems down the road such as removing cancerous tumors. And i…

I'll throw into this that my friend at a big hospital in Topeka, Kansas says all overnight surgeries are canceled so to staff shortage. Including heart surgery. Crazy.

Re: The case against masks at school

#539

Post by AussieWog93 »

adamrezich wrote: post #399
onedognight wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s only increasing due to immigration, if I’m reading this correctly. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

ah, so everything is going according to plan then. downvoters: is this outcome undesirable? if so, why, and what can we do to fix it? because I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to say that having more kids is a good thing, and using immigration/migration as a means of replacing those kids we're not having is a bad thing. thus, is this outcome (declining citizen birth rates, increased immigration/migration compensati…

(I think you may have been downvoted because your initial comment appeared to be referencing the "White Genocide" conspiracy theory - essentially the idea that the Jews are planning to slowly eliminate the white race in the West and replace them with blacks and Muslims.)

Re: The case against masks at school

#540

Post by lancesells »

taylodl wrote: post #381
concinds wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely asking - What's stopping a country, or hospital, from saying: "we'll prioritize cancer patients, scheduled surgeries, normal operation; you come in with Covid respiratory distress, and we're full? Go away." From the government data I've found, Covid patients are about 5-20% of emergency department patients in the US[0]; in Switzerland that leaves a healthy amount of free beds[1] (though I'm sure staffing is…

I've asked my friends working in medicine the same thing. What if hospitals were to start turning away those who are willingly unvaccinated? I haven't been able to get a clear answer but the basic theme I hear is you can't, state law prohibits that. Of course the law can be changed, but what legislature is going to do that? This is where politics enters the fray. They'd rather kick the can down the road and bring in…

I'm vaccinated and think everyone capable of receiving the vaccine should get it but turning people away is cruel. That's science-fiction dystopia cruelty in my opinion. Now if a hospital is full and at capacity maybe there are some calculations but just turning people away is wrong.
Post reply on HN