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The case against masks at school

theatlantic.com

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Re: The case against masks at school

#831

Post by BeefWellington »

throwawaythekey wrote: post #772
dsl wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course all of our problems go away when you convince the remaining 40% of the population to get vaccinated. I'm actually in favor of doing away with masks and social distancing. Just create a nationwide policy that the unvaccinated will not be admitted or treated for COVID and we can all return to our daily lives.

Please refer to countries like Australia/Israel who are still experiencing massive case loads with a ~95% vaccination rate. It doesn't make it go away. For example please see https://twitter.com/orwell2022/status/1486330027549544452 Sure, you can deny some people medical treatment if you want to reduce the load on the hospital by a bit but it does not go away!

> Please refer to countries like Australia/Israel who are still experiencing massive case loads with a ~95% vaccination rate. It doesn't make it go away. For example please see

I think people underestimate how big a number 5% of a population of most countries -- even small ones -- actually is, especially when compared against available health care resources.

Re: The case against masks at school

#832

Post by rcurry »

scarygliders wrote: post #815
tjr225 wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Covid didn't make economic and social lockdowns. Governments did.

Shush, you’re going to ruin everything.

Re: The case against masks at school

#833

Post by dsl »

darth_avocado wrote: post #734
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…

“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…

No post body was provided.

Re: The case against masks at school

#834

Post by SkyPuncher »

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…

> They're watching how medical professionals are being treated and saying screw it!

This was a trend before the pandemic. The financials of becoming a doctor just don't make any damn sense any more. Sure you'll make more in the long run, but it's a grind to get there and you basically give up your 20's to get there. This has a lot of negative impacts on your social life and your ability to build any sort of financial stability until your 30's.

I'm really happy to see the change in attitude in medicine. Hospital leadership has been milking the Hypocratic Oath for all the can. Physicians (and other health care workers) are starting to realize this bullshit.

----

PS: I know it's not my place, but I'd really recommend having a conversation with your daughter about going into medicine. Take a peak at places like /r/medicalschool, /r/residency/, /r/medicine, and student doctor network.

March 18 will be a sobering day for many.

Re: The case against masks at school

#835

Post by fifteenforty »

andreareina wrote: post #4
fifteenforty wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of mask is she wearing?

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!

Re: The case against masks at school

#836

Post by SkyPuncher »

concinds wrote: post #334
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…

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…

Ethics.

Physicians take an oat to care for patients while looking past that.

Re: The case against masks at school

#837

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The case against masks at school

#838

Post by mmmpop »

uoaei wrote: post #676
pcmoney wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is endemic. Its everywhere. Its mutating. Humanity has never stopped the spread of similar coronaviruses and even if we could the death rate/risk is not bad enough to justify the cost (this isnt smallpox/polio) We have vaccines. They don’t stop you from getting it or transmitting it. They do lower probability of the vaccinated person getting severe/fatal covid. Clearly a personal health decision that should not be…

Not endemic. Will you accept a formal assessment of endemicity from a PI at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization? See as of two weeks ago: https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/14808999541638635... Not interested in playing word games. Words mean things. Get over it. > [Vaccines] don’t stop you from getting [COVID] or transmitting it. This is a harmful framing. What ultimately matters is Rt and adequa…

> Words mean things. Get over it.

Oh man, lemme tell you about the last time I used that one in an unrelated but equally controversial topic... I was browbeaten out of the room.

"Words mean things (when that is convenient for my argument!)"

Re: The case against masks at school

#839

Post by adamcstephens »

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.

Humans are social animals and we can most definitely have negative long term impacts from social issues at childhood.

Re: The case against masks at school

#840

Post by JadeNB »

perardi wrote: post #384
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…

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…

> So why make the kids put on hair shirts I mean masks?

Because wearing masks is a good thing. A large part of the resistance to mask wearing in the US stems from seeing it as an abnormal thing and an oppression, but, in fact, wearing a mask when you're sick—even if it's just a minor sickness, not in the context of a global pandemic—is a good and respectful thing to do, practiced as a matter of course in many countries. Kids who grow up wearing masks will not have the horror of them that their vaccine-avoiding forebears did, and hopefully will be better equipped to meet the next pandemic sanely.

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