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The case against masks at school

theatlantic.com

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Re: The case against masks at school

#91

Post by me_me_me »

usefulcat wrote: post #19

The article talks a lot about how there's little or no evidence showing benefits of masking for kids, and also talks a lot about the unknown long-term effects of masking on kids. However, as with so many articles trying to make a point or persuade people, it barely mentions at all the unknown long-term effects of covid. I'm willing to be persuaded by evidence, but (for me) any piece that fails to address such an obvi…

This is actually a thing I had my mind changed almost immediately upon hearing argument for primary and early secondary schools.

Children need facial expressions to read the emotions of teachers/peers and are important part of their development. So forcing them to wear mask impede that part of development. Now its up to you to decide whats more important.

Just to support the point. There are videos of mother interacting with a very toddler everything normal, then she is told to hold steady and neural face all the time. The baby quickly notices and becomes increasingly distressed.

Re: The case against masks at school

#92

Post by toomanybeersies »

abfan1127 wrote: post #47
criddell wrote: post #15

My kids attend a university in Canada and live in residence on campus. They have had incredibly strict rules around masking and gatherings. It's clear that they are only considering one variable - number of infections - and it seems like they aren't considering any other factors. For example, in the dorm there is a common area with a piano. Because of COVID, playing that piano is banned. Even if there was a reasonabl…

its the public health equivalent of the broken window fallacy.

I would've said it was more a case of Goodhart's law:

> When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric

The public health equivalent of the broken window fallacy would be maximising the spread of disease in order to boost the medical industry.

Re: The case against masks at school

#93

Post by superkuh »

The article is right that generic "masks" don't work well enough to see the effect. But N95 respirator masks do and we should all be wearing them if indoors in public for long periods.

Well fit N95 (or better) respirators are needed in schools. Not just "masks". Unfortunately this does imply that very young children cannot be effectively masked because they will seriously degrade the protection by not maintining fit and seal. That is if the N95 respirator masks fit their small faces well enough to seal at all. This isn't an all or nothing issue though. Even a badly or intermittently fit N95 on a young childs face will protect more than a strap of cloth.

The CDC (and other institutions) not only failed on mask messaging, they actively told people the wrong things for months and then years. But it's pretty obvious from first principles. It's aerosol spread so you need to actually filter the air, not just block spittle.

Re: The case against masks at school

#94

Post by throwaway22032 »

restingrobot wrote: post #84
throwaway22032 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, hence my use of the term "generalizable".

>generalizable across most industries. I was trying to point out that it is not just industries, its literally life. This is anecdotal, but many of the teachers I personally know are anti-in person learning, but still willing to eat out a restaurant, which makes me question their true motives for remote learning.

Ah, yes, I agree.

My eyes tend to glaze over whenever I hear "because covid" now, it's devoid of meaning and simply means "I don't want to" most of the time.

Re: The case against masks at school

#95

Post by mr_tristan »

afavour wrote: post #14

In a way it's reassuring that people of all political stripes can at least come together on one point: that the CDC has been asleep at the wheel during most of this pandemic. Hopefully at some point there will be a discussion about how to reform the body to be much more proactive.

The CDC is not so much asleep at the wheel, we just don't have any kind of coherent public health system in the USA. There's basically an independent public health officer for practically every county, and there's very little coordination between them and the CDC.

Michael Lewis' book "The Premonition" is eye-opening to how dysfunctional public health is in the US.

And it's not like he's alone, even the head of the CDC this week called for a reform of the public health system in the US (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/21/rochelle-walensky-c...). The only picture I'm getting is that the CDC doesn't really feel like they can do anything.

Re: The case against masks at school

#96

Post by docfort »

This argument is poorly constructed. I think there could be better ones, but here’s my problem. It goes through the three CDC studies and correctly observes that they fail to separate regions that have high vaccination rates from schools without a mask mandate. Indeed, the ideal experiment would involve two schools that are otherwise identical in the same geographical area with high vaccination rates: one that has no mask policy, and one that has mandatory masking. The article essentially complains that such an experiment has yet to be done, so therefore, the universal masking recommendation is unfounded.

It is empirical fact that vaccination rates on a county by county is strongly predicted by the overall political alignment of a county (not implying anything further). It is also empirical fact that mask mandates are also correlated in a similar way. It is also fact that COVID-19 is an airborne disease.

The first two facts determine that the ideal experiment cannot accidentally occur in the United States. The last fact precludes an intentional experiment ethically. But the last fact at least makes the masking recommendation reasonable.

I think the political correlation with these two variables (masking and vaccination) is a confounding variable. It would be very preferable for it be otherwise, but complaining that it is so while not seriously engaging with the real situation is a poor argument.

Re: The case against masks at school

#97

Post by [deleted] »

criddell wrote: post #15

My kids attend a university in Canada and live in residence on campus. They have had incredibly strict rules around masking and gatherings. It's clear that they are only considering one variable - number of infections - and it seems like they aren't considering any other factors. For example, in the dorm there is a common area with a piano. Because of COVID, playing that piano is banned. Even if there was a reasonabl…

[deleted]

Re: The case against masks at school

#98

Post by [deleted] »

nkrisc wrote: post #55
throwaway22032 wrote: post #21

The case against masks is quite trivial and generalizable across most industries. Today, a teacher now has two realistic options: a) self-isolate indefinitely, either teaching remotely or quitting their job b) contract coronavirus at some point Given that, masks are an irrelevance. A teacher who is clinically vulnerable and unwilling to roll the dice is left only with the option to quit their job, regardless of wheth…

The point of masking and being cautious at this point is not to avoid ever catching COVID, because it seems certain now that everyone will catch it at some point. The point is to be the last person to catch it when hospitals are at normal capacity and everything else is back to normal, just in case you happen to have a very poor reaction to it. It also just sounds kind of miserable. I also avoid catching the flu as m…

[deleted]

Re: The case against masks at school

#99

Post by colechristensen »

gms7777 wrote: post #66
dennis_moore wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't expect an article that talks about the long-term effects of COVID to also address the downsides of mask and restrictions, so why should the opposite be true? You can read independent arguments for both sides of the issue, judge their strengths and weaknesses, and then make up your own mind.

> You wouldn't expect an article that talks about the long-term effects of COVID to also address the downsides of mask and restrictions The parallel of this example would be an article discussing the evidence for the effectiveness of masking, in which case you would be right -- discussion of long-term effects of COVID wouldn't be necessarily relevant. But that isn't this article -- this article is discussing policy:…

The built in assumption is that you can stop it. Yup, masking usually slows down infection rates but when you roll those dice every day with a very infectious variant it doesn’t matter. If the hospitals aren’t full what difference have you made if everybody gets it over the course of two months instead of two weeks? (And hospitals aren’t full of children, the peak is past, so we’re definitely solidly entering “what’s the point” territory)

Re: The case against masks at school

#100

Post by dfxm12 »

jimmyswimmy wrote: post #75

An interesting article. I was recently unimpressed by the new Virginia governor's first action to reaching the mandate on masks in schools. My county has elected to retain its own mask mandate. At first blush a mask mandate is generally a public good. I keep my germs to myself, you keep yours too yourself, and we don't get the flu, or a cold, or COVID, whatever. And so for me despite not living wearing a mask I have…

And the article provides evidence of that, cutting neighboring counties in Tennessee with similar vaccination rates where one had a 23% lower making rate, but similar spread. How can that be? Truly fascinating.

There's more to this than vaccination and masking rate. When we're talking about being indoors all day, one other variable in this is ventilation. For their part, the CDC does suggest considering improving ventilation in buildings. Vaccination is probably the best single tool we have and if everyone who could have been vaccinated was, we'd be in a different situation. However, with so many refusing, you have to get into the minutia about wearing masks, sitting certain distance apart, ventilation, etc., but people aren't good about going into the minutia or dealing with the fact that people in different situations (like different building with different ventilation) should behave differently.

Even knowing this, a lot of places simply don't want to spend money on infrastructure, including improving schools.

0 - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/ventilat...

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