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The case against masks at school

theatlantic.com

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Re: The case against masks at school

#851

Post by adamcstephens »

jjeaff wrote: post #731
wallacoloo wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It just represents a general fatigue that a lot of people have with the anti vaxxers. That we have hard numbers that vaccines actually work seems to be irrelevant to them, so why maybe they would be convinced by snark and sarcasm instead? and you think this is an experience unique to your viewpoint? do you think the people reading your words who have vaguely opposing views might not also be fatigued when your group…

>and you think this is an experience unique to your viewpoint? Can attest to that. As a flat earther, I am just so sick of the snarkiness of everyone who believes what mainstream science preaches. We should all equally appreciate ALL differing views because no idea is more or less valid than any other idea. Evolution, creationism, alien seed planted by Xenu, they all deserve our time and attention.

You don't have to give them time nor attention. Being snarky is giving them both, and is done precisely to increase animosity between groups.

Re: The case against masks at school

#852

Post by thfuran »

svachalek wrote: post #686
pcmoney wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We dont make this distinction with the vast majority of personal choices. Obesity causes a ton of strain on our health system. Should we start a class system based on BMI?

Seatbelts. Helmets. Cigarette taxes. Drinking ages.

And, of course, the numerous other routine vaccines.

Re: The case against masks at school

#853

Post by CamperBob2 »

dahfizz wrote: post #442
CamperBob2 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and all the halfway measures we've taken haven't achieved their stated goals. You have some good points up until this one. Go to your local hospital and ask them how they'd like it if their case load went up by 2x due to a lack of "halfway measures." In some places, that will be OK, while in others, it will be utterly catastrophic. Obviously that doesn't justify ridiculous overreactions to unmasked toddlers, as you p…

> Go to your local hospital and ask them how they'd like it if their case load went up by 2x due to a lack of "halfway measures." I love this argument. "Just imagine how much worse things could have been! The observed outcome is better than a worst case scenario I made up!" "Just imagine if I didn't wear my lucky socks to the game. We would have lost even worse!" The data does not bear out your position. Places with…

Places with less / no mandates did not have measurably worse outcomes.

A meaningless statement without context. Places with different levels of mandates also tend to be disparate in terms of population density and demographics. A cherry-picked study showing that masks weren't needed to conserve hospital utilization in Bumfark, Oklahoma will tell us nothing about what to expect in crowded urban areas.

Then there's the easily-justified suspicion that officials in right-leaning areas are rigging the data they report ("Stop testing so much, it makes us look bad!")

These debates always seem to turn into perpetual playground games where duelling studies are whipped out like Magic cards. For every one you cite, I'll cite one that says something else. Consensus is the only way to make good decisions in such an epistemic environment. I'll continue to look to public health authorities for that, not bloggers, podcasters, politicians, celebrities, or HN commenters.

Re: The case against masks at school

#854

Post by landemva »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #730
ianferrel wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data that is showing 99+% with one or more shots is bad. Lots of second and third doses could not be linked to the original dose and got counted as "first" doses, then the percentage of people with first doses got capped at 99.9% (or something very high) because it would be obviously absurd if 115% of people had one or more doses. Vaccination rates in liberal states for the elderly are pretty good. But not 99%.

I dug out a more accurate number, 93.6%, from the Washington dashboard. Even at 93.6%, the remaining 6.4% unvaccinated can't overwhelmingly account for hospitalizations even if they are being hospitalized at 7x the rate. https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/COVID19/DataDashboard edit: According to the dashboard, 59.5% of people in the hospital with covid like illness are 60+. That's vaccinated and and unvaccinated comb…

With or 'because of'?

Re: The case against masks at school

#855

Post by jmull »

pcmoney wrote: post #475

Vaccines for Covid are available. Vaccines do not stop the spread of Covid. Vaccines do not stop you from getting Covid. Vaccines do reduce the probability of severe/fatal cases of covid. Masks are available. Most masks in most situations do little to stop the spread of Covid. Well fitted N95s are more effective. Getting vaccinated or wearing a mask is clearly a personal health decision. Vaccine mandates are ridiculo…

When you spread covid misinformation, you help people die earlier than they otherwise would.

The fact is, the vaccines reduce the transmission of covid. Likewise well-fitted quality masks. So when you opt out, or encourage others to do so, there's an incremental harm to other people. To the extent anyone reads and is persuaded by you comments, people are being harmed. Hopefully, no one is, but I see from the responses at least one dummy is encouraged. I wonder how you feel about that?

> The risk to children is incredibly low.

I don't think you're actually unaware there is a substantial number of people in schools that aren't children. So what's the point of this observation in relation to the topic?

Re: The case against masks at school

#856

Post by adamrezich »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #743
thoms_a wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bizarrely specific conspiracy theory (and seems to be designed for maximum divide & conquer of voting populations) which I've never heard of. What exactly led to its inception? I always enjoy engaging with conspiracy theories, as they are a great training regimen for keeping one's mind sharp and empirically grounded, but I don't even know where to start with this one!

>What exactly led to its inception? From what I understand, people noticed the fact that whites were gradually becoming a smaller proportion of the population of Western nations, due to both lower fertility and increased immigration. In addition to this, some migrant groups (notably Muslims from the middle-east) have higher-than-replacement fertility rates. Extrapolating this out, the idea was that whites would event…

notice that I did not say anything about races or religions or groups or anything, aside from, implicitly, "people who were already citizens of any given Western nation" and "people who are immigrating/migrating to said nation, en masse". my original post, untainted by your invocation of specific groups of people to brand my post as being an invocation of a specific—named even—"conspiracy theory" to be harmful to discourse, because once you have invoked that, not only is all further discussion is off the table, but now I'm now actively in a pickle here because I have to say something or else risk possibly being perceived as an anti-Semite when someone looks in my post history and sees your accusations not responded to by me. I don't know if that was your intent or not but I ask that you please be more sensitive to these things, especially when I'm posting here using my real name.

Re: The case against masks at school

#857

Post by thehappypm »

autoexec wrote: post #579
vanviegen wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely minimal? Masks make it a lot harder to communicate effectively. People are harder to understand, emotions are harder to read, speaking takes more effort. If communicating is the main thing you do all day, because you're a teacher for instance, that is a significant inconvenience.

> Extremely minimal? compared to hospitals being overrun, people getting seriously ill and dying (2,200+ US deaths every day) continuing economic harm and disruptions in education yeah it's pretty small thing that it's a little harder to communicate because your voice is muffled and you cant watch people's lips form words.

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 level when an infected person wears a well-fitted, effective mask like an N95, but at a population level it hasn’t seemed to really help much. Every study seems to have huge error bars and a lot of confounding variables.

Re: The case against masks at school

#858

Post by tragictrash »

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…

Stop spouting disinfo. Your actions have real repercussions.

Re: The case against masks at school

#859

Post by thehappypm »

michaelmrose wrote: post #463
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…

If you experience a great deal of anxiety or feel like you are being strangled while wearing a mask you are either wearing it wrong or have a medical issue this isn't how most people experience wearing a mask. This is what I wear. https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/511sZBCeHES._AC_.jpg I have bad asthma. My lungs are basically shit. I can't jog a 1/4 mile without having breathing problems. I have no problems wearing…

I agree with them, I hate every second I am forced to wear a mask.

Re: The case against masks at school

#860

Post by ern »

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.

Kids have had long holidays as long as the school system has existed, and they never regressed enough for the general public to raise the alarm.

My own children just repurposed the tools used for remote learning, and now interact more with their peers than they did before the pandemic (and its not just video games either: there's a fair amount of creative activity that happens). Kids are incredibly resilient.

Poor education practices like chaining them to Zoon for hours at a time to attend class, on the other hand, would damage anyone, and show there's a long way to go in the remote learning space. You'd have expected some high profile projects to shine, but I haven't heard a lot from them.

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