So what I'm saying is that regardless of what people WANT to do, the state has the power and push to get people to do it. And this is why we need Biden in office yesterday.
In the more advanced countries, such as Thailand, this is automated.[1] The store entrance gate won't open until the automated face scan has seen a mask. Hikvision has a mask and temperature detection system integrated with their face recognition systems.[2] If you already have a face recognition system, adding mask detection is a software update. And yes, face recognition now works on people with masks.
[1] https://twitter.com/i/status/1312668730791403520
[2] https://www.hikvision.com/uk/solutions/solutions-by-applicat...
Having facial recognition everywhere isn't necessarily considered "advanced" in all circles. Technically, perhaps. Ethically? Not so much.
Facial recognition could be put everywhere in the US. Its primarily the political, legal, and social culture that prevents it, not the access to sufficient technology.
Are you sure it’s not building one?
[1] https://apex.aero/articles/facial-recognition-tech-works-mas...
I don't really like the idea of facial recognition, but the political class lives in a public facing world where every move they make is scrutinized. So they see the world maybe differently than when they're private citizens.
1. One risk is that the government will slowly erode any limitations. In Germany, one of the most privacy oriented countries, restaurants were required to collect contact information. This was announced as being strictly for covid contract tracing purposes. Less than a month later, the police in multiple states were found to have demanded and received access to those lists for reasons entirely unrelated to covid. So any default level of trust has already been betrayed.
2. Another risk is that the vendors themselves might prefer "alternative definitions" of record keeping and data sharing for various reasons (e.g. processing in the cloud and/or by third-party companies with even less restrictions, data collection for ML training purposes, selling the same dataset for profit, "flagged as hidden" vs "never actually stored", "stored to persistent media then deleted" vs "never persistently stored", preventing access by contractual/legal vs technical means...). The people making such promises are never ever the engineers that actually understand their system. And similar to the previous paragraph, companies have every incentive to slowly erode any guarantees they might've actually met at some point.
3. The people buying the products (shop owners) as a general rule have neither the expertise, time, motivation nor source code level access to call the vendors out.
That's not even mentioning that it's the people who are electing governments which don't require these basic public health requirements.
Not sure the name drop matters given the other information you shared ;) I won't name drop it either but for future curious readers
Clearly, yes.
> it's not meant to be a higher level of authority.
The Supremacy Clause fairly explicitly disagrees.
for epidemiological concerns, the public health services act is the relevant federal legal framework, as @dragonwriter mentioned elsewhere.
however, a national mask mandate is a political ploy unlikely to lower infection rates materially vs. less visible and harder-to-enforce mitigations. it's polarized pangeantry, being pushed to put some points on the political board and coalesce power. anyone who cares about getting past the pandemic should punish such ineffective partisan behavior in favor of real meaningful, targeted, and effective measures--start with focusing on private social gatherings, the primary vector of spread (and completely unrelated to interstate commerce), not meaningless public displays of compliance.
> for epidemiological concerns, the public health services act is the relevant federal legal framework, as @dragonwriter mentioned elsewhere.
The Public Health Services Act is almost entirely an exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause. (Some bits of it may be grounded elsewhere, but that is the main source of authority for the Act.)
You can't really say it's the right statutory authority and say that the Commerce Clause should not be invoked in this context.
some quick research reveals that the federal quarantine powers of the PHSA are largely restricted to state and national borders. so that's indeed based (partly) in the commerce clause, protecting trade across borders from destabilizing forces. but the 5th & 14th amendments (due process and equal protection) also contribute, as does the necessary and proper clause (allowing the fed to use unenumerated powers to carry out its charter, and only its charter, when necessary and proper).
but a true national quarantine, where people are confined to homes or communities, and other proposed national measures (like a mask mandate) would require broader powers that go beyond the commerce clause, and that was the (unstated) common understanding from which i was arguing from before.
i still find this use of the commerce clause troubling, as it's just another stepping stone in the consolidation of power away from states to a future autocrat. the commerce clause is meant to curtail human-induced distortions on interborder trade, not pandemics.
Publicly fire a few county bumpkin Sheriffs who refuse to enforce the mandates and you'd see an attitude change.
Also, I would imagine many of the sheriffs that refuse to enforce mandates probably have considerable support from their constituents. Surely that would make their impeachment a significantly more difficult ordeal for whatever agency is responsible for the impeachment proceedings.
Some do it out of shame, others necessity (e.g. shop not letting you in without a mask) but nobody is afraid of being arrested for failing to wear a mask.
I'm reminded of monthy python: those lost arms?!? Just a scratch!
https://covid-19.direct/state/OR
Much of this is in Portland:
Oregon is 47th place in terms of population adjusted total cases. In terms of number of absolute new cases, Oregon is 40th. Every state with fewer absolute new cases than Oregon is smaller with the exception of Lousiana. Oregon has done a fantastic job of handling Covid.
The fact that cases are going up all over the northern hemisphere - in places both with mask rules and without - should tell you something very important about the effectiveness of those rules.
What's so complicated?
Oregon’s restrictions were no more or less strict than, say, New York City. In New York, gyms are open, dining is open.
New York is currently at 20 per 100k cases per day. Portland is at 100 per 100k. I suppose this means that New York is masking harder?
What’s so complicated?
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k...
From what I can tell (I'm just staying home), people maybe did backyard gatherings when it was nice enough out, but moved indoors and that's gotten a lot of people sick.
Prove it.
When cases go down, it’s because of masks. When they go up in the same place, it’s because people suddenly stopped wearing them, but no proof is provided for either assertion.
Probably not, in which case we have to allow people to get outside their homes. When we do that we come up with rules to try to minimize infection rates, distance and mask wearing is supposed to help with that. Is your argument that mask wearing has 0 impact on COVID19 spreading rate?
This article seems to go over a number of studies showing correlation between mask wearing and lower death rates: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
But if mask wearing isn't helping at all with infectious diseases like COVID19, why are health experts always wearing them? It's a lot more comfortable to not be wearing any mask so they could do that instead. They'd have the data and the skills to determine if it helps or not, much better than we would.
Absolutely. If we were really serious about beating the virus, that's exactly what we would do: Real and strictly enforced stay-at home, and mask wearing for exceptional cases when you had to go out. Coordinated nationally so we didn't have this healthy state - sick state problem. Then stick with it until it succeeded. It would be temporarily economically painful, and people would complain about their freedom to get their nails done and eat at Olive Garden, but we'd get the public health benefit and come out the other side not-dead.
Instead, we managed to do an even worse thing: Announce half-assed "business closures" and stay-at-home orders (more like suggestions), uncoordinated with other states, and unenforced, which gave us the negative economic effects and did not provide the health benefit. To top it off, we opened up way too early, causing this yo-yo effect where cases predictably spike after re-opening, causing re-closing, then a rush to re-open because economy, then another spike, then an inevitable re-close, and on and on.
Unless the vaccines pan out, we're going to be in this exact situation a year from now. Constantly re-opening, faking surprise at the cases spiking, and then re-closing.
And yet, despite all of this, and despite some of the strictest mask rules in the world, and the highest rates of compliance...cases have almost quadrupled since mid-October:
https://covid-19.direct/county/CA/San%20Francisco
But sure, none of that matters: if cases go down, it’s because masks. If they go up, it’s because someone didn’t wear their mask right. There can be no other explanation.
The fact that we see the opposite is unfortunate and unnecessary.
Please cite me where the power to enact a requirement to wear masks is explicitly granted to the federal government. I'll wait.
Depends on the nature of the mandate. A simple hard mandate (everyone must wear masks in public or be subject individually to federal sanction) may not be authorized, but that's not the only shape of mask mandate possible.
A requirement that a state adopt and show adequate enforcement of control measures deemed necessary by the federal government, including (if deemed necessary) a mask mandate with given parameters or be subject to additional restrictions on interstate trade and travel to restrict the spread of disease to other states is absolutely not only within the scope of the Constitutional power of the federal government under the Commerce Clause, but also within statutory powers already granted to the executive branch under that Constitutional power, in the Public Health Services Act and elsewhere.
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/yourab...
When Trump was given his presidential megaphone he was able to convince a LOT of people to not wear masks by simply not wearing one and then telling people that's fine. At least by taking away the megaphone that's a step in the right direction. Even if there's no specific law that backs him up, that alone may save lives.
Second, even if technically not legal, presidential orders are OFTEN followed. It can be challenged in the courts for years but in the mean time, an order like that will probably have the effect of getting at least another 50M masks put on. That's a fucking win.
The other thing that is 100% legal, is the executive branch can restrict funding in specific ways if a state does not behave. If I was Biden, I would start there.
We need to start by recognizing that, although the Constitution is an important original source in understanding how our government functions, we have over 200 years of Constitutional interpretation that lies on top of it. You are welcome to make a Constitutional argument that goes against the existing jurisprudence, and Constitutional interpretation does change over time, but it does so only slowly. One of the most important principles in Constitutional interpretation is that of stari decisis, or issues which have already been decided. In almost all circumstances, courts adhere to precedence. This isn't always the case, but when you are fighting against the current understanding of the Constitution, you need to realize that you're fighting an uphill battle, and frame your arguments as such.
So where are we in our understanding of these issues? First, the Supreme Court has literally ruled that the Tenth Amendment is useless. Specifically, in US v Sprague (1931, SCOTUS ruled that the Tenth Amendment is a "truism" that "added nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified."[1] It was later used to create an anti-commandeering understanding, which in this circumstance just means that the federal government can't pass a law that requires states to enforce a federal mask mandate. There might be a public health exception to that though, but that's where the tenth amendment would be relevant.
You also need to understand that SCOTUS has repeatedly expanded the commerce clause to cover basically everything. The federal government can pass pretty much any law they want, say it affects interstate commerce, and win. You don't have to like that interpretation, but everyone follows it. It was only during the Rehnquist Court that a few exceptions were carved out, but they're very, very narrow. The most famous example was that the court ruled that the federal government couldn't ban handguns in schools under the commerce clause. But for anything even vaguely interstate, and a contagious virus certainly counts, the federal government is allowed to pass pretty much any law it wants.
The courts also tend to be pretty generous towards allowing emergency powers to deal with a genuine crisis. I expect that the federal government could do pretty much anything it wants to deal with COVID. I'm sure they'd allow a national lockdown by executive order right now. A legislative mask mandate would be completely non-controversial from a Constitutional perspective.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_... - Yes, this is Wikipedia, but I don't feel like reading a SCOTUS case to write a HN comment
However, I'm afraid that the cat is already out of the bag and many weak minds have been poisoned that wearing a mask somehow infringes rights or doesn't do anything.
Negative belief in at least the current reality of the pandemic (if not the historical reality of the disease itself), as well as in mitigation measures like masking, has become an important tribal identity marker. That's going to be difficult to counteract, and probably doesn't work on a rational level (that is, even if you could convince someone that the overt rationale was wrong, that would be more likely to prompt a shift in rationalization than a shift in belief.)
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/politics/mask-mandate-fact-ch...
> "I don't think that the statute can be read broadly enough to apply to all people merely moving on an interstate highway," Blackman said. "Once you go beyond people in federal facilities, you're really intruding on what the state's responsible for."
At best, they can cover Federal buildings with a policy. That is it.
Given that these roadways in question are interstate the federal government's power to regulate activity thereon is assumed as the power to regulate interstate commerce is one of the constitutionally enumerated powers of the federal government.
The thing that is lost on the national vs state debate is that the presidents role in a our state powered republic is mostly a sales job. Selling culture, building confidence, recruiting domestic and abroad. Having a new culture changes things whether you agree with the change or not. It's not a political statement, it's how the country works.
I am amused that anyone other than a small child still believes this. The 9th and 10th have been phantoms for longer than you have been alive and are of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.
Oh yeah, there is no 'if' there buddy. Biden won and will be able to enforce any public health measures available to him via executive order starting January 20th.
Sure he can.
The exact parameters of any such mandate and its manner of enforcement is circumscribed, but that doesn't mean there is no legally-enforceable federal mask mandate. A direct federal individual mask mandate, with direct personal liability for violations, is least likely to be Constitutional.
A federal mandate that states adopt, enforce, and demonstrate adequate compliance with such a mandate, with failure resulting in additional restrictions on interstate travel and trade, is certainly not only within the power of the federal government under the Commerce Clause, but also the executive branch under the Public Health Services Act and other laws relating to federal commerce-related responses relating to public safety.
I saw a Carls Jr. employee wearing a corporate-supplied t-shirt that used "maskhole" to describe anyone not wearing a mask... and he was not wearing a mask, just like all the other employees.
The hotel itself was the only place that seemed to be taking the pandemic seriously, so we retreated there, ate takeout, and left early.
The current spike in Oklahoma[0] does not surprise me at all.
0. https://mackuba.eu/corona/#oklahoma_united_states.daily?tren...
[1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339321846_Impact_of...
From FT.com [1], here are the number of new confirmed Covid-19 cases, per million residents, averaged over the last 7 days:
- Maine: 130
- Washington State: 230
- Idaho: 740
- Montana: 1000
- South Dakota: 1600
From this data, I conclude that mask use is effective at reducing the spread of covid-19.
[1] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&are...
As the weather turned colder people started staying indoors and the conditions for transmitting the disease turned more favorable. (Eg restaurants, etc.)
Plus after a critical mass regular (intuitive) precautions are not enough. Eg in France restaurants allowed people to dine if they looked okay, and had a mask on while waiting for a table, and while not actually eating.
Clearly this was too lax. (aug 31 https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Masks-in-Paris-r... )
To be fair, my mask has lovely periwinkle patterns and I am gay, but that's a lot of effort they're putting into getting attention and obviously comes from deep seated issues with their own masculinity that aren't my problem.
Nonetheless they have been the exception rather than the rule, so it may be good to assume the best unless someone is actually accosting you.
I've noticed there is a strong tendency for people to assume that a stranger's gaze is antagonistic when in reality they barely register you are there.
It is hard to not be extra sensitive to these things when you are a minority, I guess honestly a lot of people are learning what that feels like for the first time.
There were a good amount of masks in Pennsylvania, but in Ohio and Indiana it was as if pandemic didn't exist. Hotel employees didn't understand my reluctance to squeeze into a small space to pick up a to-go breakfast, and made snarky comments along the lines of "am I far enough for you sir?"
Madison, WI was much better, but starting from La Crosse all the way through Minnesota and North Dakota plains it was as if you were living in a different reality.
FWIW, I live in Utah, and in my urban neighborhood I actually see very good mask compliance. Further into the suburbs adherence drops.
Nevada: 1 in 1600
Utah: 1 in 4500
Montana: 1 in 2200
North Dakota: 1 in 1300
Minnesota: (outside of the 7 county Twin Cities) 1 in 3700
Michigan: (outside of Detroit area) 1 in 3600
In comparison
Where you moved from (Orange County CA)
1 in 2000
Where you moved to (Michigan/Detroit area Wayne/Detroit City/Oakland/Macomb) 1 in 350, not 1 in 3500, that’s one in three hundred and fifty.
If you moved to someplace six times deadlier (from a COVID standpoint), I’m guessing you have bigger problems to worry about than the COVID public health posture of those States you travelled through...
And therefore your comment is pretty pointless. If Detroit is doing worse about preventing infection than all these places that aren't using masks, then being there for the next month is probably going to be worse than passing through all those non-mask-using places for a week or two. (Unless you have reason to think that Detroit not only reached herd immunity, but did so long enough ago that people aren't currently contagious there. But if you think that, I'd like to see your data. More, I'd like to see why you think that about Detroit but not about the non-mask-using-and-therefore-presumably-spreading hinterlands.)
I assume "whalesalad" was a bad autocorrect that was meant to be "wholesale". But since most autocorrects learn from your past typing, I'm really curious what opportunity you had in the past to use the term "whalesalad".
https://www.covidexitstrategy.org/
and scroll down to the "Can Our Health System Handle the Spread?" and look at the concentric rings of new infections/million radiating out of North and South Dakota.
This lines up very well with the parent comment's observations.
1. Put on a mask before going outside 2. Stroll to your local favorite restaurant 3. Get a table indoors 4. Remove the mask 5. Socialize
Some rural citizens are skipping steps 1 and 4, but Science only confers protection from covid when all the steps are followed.
This sort of pandemic theater is why cases are at an all-time high here. The 90%+ are not being very well served by their scientific authorities.
Keep in mind that restaurants are at significantly reduced capacity and those tables are now more widely spread apart.
These guidelines mean you are much less likely to share airspace with strangers. Yes, it's not as safe as not going to a restaurant at all, but they are trying to balance mitigating risk while allowing some economic activity. It's a hard problem.
The last time I drove through central Washington, I saw crowds of people clustered together at the front of restaurants with no masks on. I don't see that here. People generally stay spread out and wear masks when around strangers.
> This sort of pandemic theater is why cases are at an all-time high here
This kind of black-and-white "if you aren't being 100% safe you're just doing pandemic theater" rhetoric helps absolutely nothing.
> why cases are at an all-time high here.
Still better here than in much of the US, despite being the first outbreak, being on lockdown longer than most of the US (and thus with the most pandemic fatigue).
Pandemic theater is a preference for the symbolic over the substantive. It's giving yourself a pass for risky behavior (bars, indoor dining) while sneering at others for actions that are far less impactful ("haha, dumb hicks don't wear masks at the gas station!").
The hicks aren't sick because they won't wear their masks. They are sick because they're doing the same exact thing as you, just more of it. It hardly matters that your tables are spread out, or that you wore your mask while waiting for your reservation. You don't want to sacrifice hanging out with your friends, fine. But it's offensive to use "Science" to justify such a transparently frivolous choice. And I don't see why you should attack people for not wanting to make sacrifices that you yourself refused to.
Assuming that all indoor dining is created equal is the kind of black-and-white thinking I'm referring to. Look at how detailed the CDC guidance for restaurants is:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/organiza...
This is not business as usual.
Also, the way restaurants are patronized in Seattle is different from Central Washington, at least that I have witnessed. In Seattle, I never see crowds of people clustered together, but I have elsewhere.
> The hicks aren't sick because they won't wear their masks.
I haven't characterized anyone a hick, but these people are spreading COVID more because they are not following the guidance:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/17-cases-tw...
> they're doing the same exact thing as you, just more of it.
I don't know why it's necessary to clarify this, but yes, doing a more of a thing that carries non-zero risk is riskier. No one is arguing that Seattlites are at zero risk. Again, black-and-white thinking. The claim is that the way people in Seattle follow the guidelines has a lower total risk than the behavior of people elsewhere.
> It hardly matters that your tables are spread out, or that you wore your mask while waiting for your reservation.
According to the CDC it does.
> And I don't see why you should attack people for not wanting to make sacrifices that you yourself refused to.
I haven't stepped foot inside any building without wearing a mask the entire time since February. I haven't gone to a restaurant or bar (indoors or outdoors) at all. To the best of my recollection, I can count the number of buildings I've been inside on one hand.
The most recent restrictions in Washington don't affect me at all because I never loosened my behavior after the first wave in April. I'm going well above and beyond what's necessary in order to reduce not just my risk but that of the people I come into contact with.
Meanwhile, jackasses are throwing parties and protesting wearing masks and making it worse for everyone.
I suppose it was assumed everyone had a mental-health condition.
City taxes are high, housing prices are steadily increasing, making changes to property is an expensive, bureaucratic nightmare, parking is a nightmare, etc. There aren’t (m)any good places to work that pay well enough to justify the taxes and cost of living. The winter is cold and dreary, the summer is humid.
If not for covid it would make a lot more sense to live in Boston or NYC.
I’m interested in moving to South Carolina or Florida.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Philly, Boston, and NYC are kith and kin (esp. politically), and have much more in common with SF than do SC or non-urban FL. There the tempo of life is slower and more formal, like their danse de rigueur, the gavotte.
With masks we can get back to normal relatively quickly, but people just need to wear them
https://www.publiccommentsf.com/post/u-s-postal-service-data...
I understand they put some pretty severe restrictions in place initially, though. Probably far too strict for most of us in the west to truly consider. But now they don't need them, and people are more or less living normally.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-face-mask-protection-vacc...
https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronav...
People in Asia, from both what I've seen and what my relatives keep telling me, no longer quarantine or social distance. Case in point: Singapore. They have a larger population than New Zealand yet live on an island that's smaller than NYC. They have virtually no local cases. They all wear masks.
btw which country were you referring to that had both mask mandates and strict border controls, and simultaneous are unable to contain it? Doesn't New Zealand has both? They seem to be managing it just fine.
Where was this same sentiment when places like NYC were getting swamped with Covid? Anyone?
I'm so damn tired of this holier-than-thou approach to COVID, and life in general. It gets nobody anywhere, except for making the person casting aspersions feel better than the ones they're looking down on.
If anything, this pandemic sure has made people show their true colors. Always a good thing, I suppose
Where are you getting this information from, if you don't mind me asking?
I'm not sure where you're getting your facts from, but I've been travelling all throughout the MidWest and the South for work this past year. Most people are plenty concerned about Covid, wear masks, etc. It's a highly contagious disease that no country, except for a very select few, have gotten under control in any way.
Once again, I think the country would be a lot better if we just stopped pointing fingers like this.
Please explain to me how this is "not normal"
I'm glad I live in WA. If I lived in one of those other states, I would look for work, then move when I found it. Family ties, whatever; wouldn't matter. It's a clear breakdown of competent government; time to leave for a better place. For myself and even more, my kid. Not particularly related to urban/suburban/rural divides. Nor per se even Dem vs GOP.
But it is scientifically proven to limit the rate of the spread, which is the least I can do to protect myself and those around me.
I don't care if I get covid ... I don't think it will kill me based on my vitals. However, we don't fully understand the long term physical and mental health implications of having it (both neurological and psychological), we don't understand it from a 'pre-existing condition' standpoint, and hey who knows it could hit me like a train and do me serious harm or kill me. Plus, I would like to further the goal of eliminating the virus entirely, and not spreading it to others helps that.
I can't believe there are still people out there clamoring to the idea that there is any other way.
As an analogy, I'd explain it like this. What if in the process to encourage people to wear seatbelts, drivers who did that then felt entitled to drive even faster thus resulting in even worse accidents and more frequent ones at that. Of course, no driver would actually think like that.
While I wear my mask, I do wonder about its overall effectiveness especially if in total we all engage in riskier behavior that we wouldn't have otherwise if we simply lived with the basic fear that you have to stay away from everyone.
Masks "help", but maybe they "help" most by thinking of them as not a help at all. It's a tough paradox to encode into public health messaging.
As a counter, my intuition is that masks also remind people of the risks and actually encourage safe behavior. I feel this in myself, a greater awareness of the pandemic, a nudge towards being more careful. Extending your analogy, it's as if the seatbelt reminded people that there are some pretty grisly accidents out there, and maybe they should take it easy.
Both effects probably exist, not sure what wins out, and how much it matters.
It doesn't.
There’s your answer then
fwiw, I wear a mask when I HAVE to go out for groceries, and avoid going out on unnecessary errands (shopping, dining out)
even if it encourages risky behavior, there's no evidence that it does it enough to translate to higher spread overall, which is what matters. As long as the net impact doesn't increase transmission, they're not a problem.
The worst neighborhoods for COVID over the summer were ones that were known for poor mask compliance, anyway.
Looking at it another way: I don’t smoke because I don’t want to risk pulmonary disease. Am I hurting the economy?
I don’t expect everyone to care about my life (maybe I’ll cause a blip in some chart) - but I do above almost everything else.
1. Hospital Capacity: Economic shutdowns have been largely to manage Hospital capacity since if all the hospitals in an area are overwhelmed, the death toll will grow since patients suffering any kind of acute issue will have nowhere to turn
2. The spread of disease (COVID-19): This is what is trying to be controlled by encouraging people to perform effective steps to limit the spread (with a second-order effect of reducing demand on the hospital) -- that is, if less people get the disease, less people die from the disease, and we can get a vaccine program and have an overall lower casualty rate from COVID-19.
Both of these strategies do not have to be employed.
For example, in the case where there's no effective vaccine in the near future, it might make sense to simply ensure that everyone gets infected at a slow enough rate that Hospital Capacity is not critical. This is because with this pandemic, over a long enough timeline (and again, without an effective vaccine), everyone will get the disease eventually. So in this scenario you are simply concerned about managing hospital capacity, and your tools are masks, social distancing, and economic shutdowns -- no need to track the infection, etc. Some locales are using this approach, and shutting down hot-spots without too much focus on how the disease is spreading, but most developed countries are tracking the spread much more closely and can be more targeted with the guidance. This was likely the initial thinking of many people, and why a shutdown did not occur before disease had spread widely.
On the other hand, if you assume a compliant population a near total economic shutdown to for a short period of time, with strict social distancing and containment measure to ensure that there is no spread, along with no new individuals, and a strong track-trace policy, then you can eradicate the cases with minimal masks. This is basically what China did, as far as I understand it. This was the initial model other locales tried to implement when they went into "Lockdown"-mode, but were not as successful, also -- again, from my limited understanding as a lay person.
On a third hand, if we assume we are going to have an effective vaccine in the near future (which was FAR from certain when this whole thing played out) it makes more sense to do both in concert -- that is, primarily limit the total number of people infected (masks and social distancing; this is because the long term outcomes of people afflicted with COVID-19 are unknown, limit that unknown risk) with a secondary task of managing Hospital capacity to prevent things from becoming catastrophic. This is sort-of where most locales have landed at the moment: Mandate masks (slow the spread) and shutdown hot-spots as they are detected (manage hospital capacity).
Masks alone don't cause the widespread panic, mass media did their part.
Nobody here panicked in February, or the first week of March. We were more or less going about our daily lives like normal, because that's what the state health people told us to do. Nobody wore masks, nobody social distanced.
By April 1st, NYC was seeing 500 deaths a day and increasing. It's the largest mass casualty event in NYC since 9/11, and was much worse, in body-count terms. It was comparable to the 1918 flu epidemic.
https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20200821/exce...
Of course, a NYC-level of mass death is absolutely not guaranteed to happen elsewhere. Different populations, different habits, luck- there's variables. But do not tell me that it's media hysteria when you didn't listen to ambulance sirens for a month.
> We are not defenseless against COVID-19. Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus -- particularly when used universally within a community setting. All Americans have a responsibility to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.
I trust his expertise and judgment. What's the basis for ignoring his advice and not wearing a mask?
Ordinary medical masks are easy to get now. N95 masks are still hard to get in the US. The trick that makes N95 masks work is that they have a middle layer that's an electret with tiny holes, with a semi-permanent static charge. That will capture solid particles smaller than the holes by electrostatic attraction. So it can actually stop an aerosol. Cloth masks and the lower tiers of medical masks don't have that.
It's pathetic that, nine months into the epidemic, the US doesn't have N95 masks in volume production. Prices on eBay are 10x normal. Normal price is under $20 for a box of 20. Where's the "free market"?
Meanwhile, in South Korea, the government adopted a non-free-market solution and has been making KN95 masks available to its population through a combination of rationing and subsidies. Everyone has access to two masks a week, and the overwhelming majority of people wear them.
South Korea has one of the lowest rates of infection in the world and is one of the few economies expected to grow in 2020.
It's hardly a free market when there's anti price gouging laws.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22789340
>The common theme is that during an outbreak like this, everybody wants to be his customer. But as soon as an outbreak subsides, his customers dump him and run back to China. The reason? His masks may cost a dime each, but a made-in-China mask might go for two cents.
>“Last time he geared up and went three shifts a day working his tail off,” the mayor recalled. “As soon as the issue died, he didn’t have any sales. He had to pay unemployment for all these people, and he had to gear down.”
Of course the need for ventilators was predicted well before the rationing was occuring, so if the administration had acted sooner rationing may have been avoided.
Instead ventilators were no longer and issue by the time they were being produced.
ISTR recently seeing that 90% of "KN95" masks independently tested do not meet the published requirements for the rating, so, I'd hope that is worse than N95 (the requirements are slightly different, but substantively similar), though still probably better than cloth masks.
And yet state regulations (even once the Bill of Rights was generally -- though not, I note, explicitly) applied to states via the 14th Amendment requiring people to cover body parts in public to protect some vague combination of public health and public morality have remained in place in all 50 states.
I don't think "cover your nose and mouth in public" mandates (by the states) have any federal constitutional vulnerability as long as "cover your genitals and anus in public" mandates are widely recognized as enforceable.
Federal mandates for mask wearing in public generally would probably have to be conditional mandates on the states and/or have travel/commerce consequences for noncompliance to be secure (mandates on the states with state-level travel/commerce consequences being the most secure), though.
That pattern of behavior is just edgelord/trolling bullshit.
I don't necessarily think your posts should be getting flagged, but you seem to be arguing in bad faith.
In the same way, it may be a lot more palatable to have such laws around covid, (higher tax on businesses which refuse to require masks for customers, but they're allowed to refuse if they choose etc, employees would likely still be require to mask) instead of mandated requirement to wear a mask
I somehow doubt it! I can hardly imagine a smaller burden to place on a person than to compel them to wear a mask, and yet look at the endless bickering it's caused. The idea that the people protesting mask mandates would find this tax more palatable seems completely implausible.
The whole idea about taxing away undesirable behavior is fine in general I guess, but if you think of the major effect as reducing the R0 of the virus, then why not just go further and make a full mask mandate? The smoking thing for example might have secondary effects, but not the way a /virus/ does. Is there no burden so small, no benefit to society so large, as to justify a mandate?
A casual encounter with a SARS-CoV-2 infected individual coughing on you without a mask can easily land someone in the ICU.
Being incapacitated by drugs and alcohol are permissible in certain situations (being in your own home), not in others (driving on the freeway).
In a similar fashion, not wearing a mask is permissible in some situations (being in your own home), not in others (standing six inches behind me in line at the grocery store).
which is why all those things are limited by law. I can't smoke in public spaces, I can't drive drunk, etc.
They are not 'rights' as you seem to argue, and they are limited/regulated just like a million other behaviors. Wearing a mask is no different. Personally, I'd say mask regulations are the equivalent of seatbelt laws - maybe uncomfortable, or inconvenient but basically harmless.
The American constitution is designed (in principle) to give Americans freedom against undue interference into their private affairs by government.
The constitution does not, and cannot, give you protection against wild animals, natural disasters, drowning, or a virus that is not sentient.
Citing “the freedoms guaranteed by The Constitution” is fairly meaningless in the abstract. There are specific protections and rights afforded by the Constitution that have been defined in the actual constitutional text and whose interpretation has been refined through legislation and the courts. Those are what you should be able to point to rather than vaguely gesturing at some poorly-defined concept of “freedoms.”
Not unsurprisingly, there is a record of jurisprudence permitting limitations on freedom of association, movement, etc. during public health crises. Are you suggesting that that the decisions in those cases are somehow opposed to the (actual, specific) text of the Constitution? If so, what specific provisions are being violated?
- Freedom of speech? No.
- Freedom of the press? No.
- Freedom of religion? No.
- Freedom of assembly? No.
- Right to petition the government? No.
- Right to bear arms? No.
- Protection against housing soldiers in civilian homes? No.
- Protection against unreasonable search and seizure? No.
- Protection against the issuing of warrants without probable cause? No.
- Protection against trial without indictment? No.
- Protection against double jeopardy? No.
- Protection against self-incrimination? No.
- Protection against property seizure? No.
- Right to a speedy trial? No.
- Right to be informed of charges? No.
- Right to be confronted by witnesses? No.
- Right to call witnesses? No.
- Right to a legal counsel? No.
- Right to trial by jury? No.
- Protection against excessive bail? No.
- Protection against excessive fines? No.
- Protection against cruel and unusual punishment? No.
If someone doesn’t want to wear a mask that is their choice. Your choice is to avoid situations where you might be in contact with people who don’t wear masks. It’s not to force everyone into your beliefs.
I personally believe in wearing masks, though primarily feel the value in the typical cloth or surgical masks are keeping you from touching your face.
Do you also believe this about laws prohibiting drunk driving, or regulating seatbelt wearing and the side of the road you're allowed to drive on? OSHA rules around workplace safety, hardhats, fall protection? I'll wait to see if the anti-mask crowd crusades against the infringement of their "right" to drive intoxicated. Otherwise, I'll continue to see it for what it is: Political virtue signaling and contrarianism sans empathy.
It should be (and is) perfectly possible to legally avoid wearing a mask in places with mask regulations. You may do this by avoiding public places.
> It’s not to force everyone into your beliefs.
Strange how selectively this idea is applied by some in this country.
Natural rights are a social fiction and have as much or as little power as we believe they have. You appear to have a strong belief in them, but their power is limited by how much you can convince others to believe.
I hear your line of reasoning from these same crazed individuals so I am lead to believe that this is the extreme end of that set of beliefs without also observing the corollary that I mention above..
Would the same principal apply if the other person had ebola?
What about someone like Typhoid Mary - should her right to do what she wanted be placed higher than the rights of others not to be infected?
No different than requiring you to wear shirts and shoes.
They are, in fact, government granted whether or not the theory of granting them is that the government was obligated to because of preexisting moral rights, and its quite likely that there was not universal consensus on the underlying theory among everyone involved in drafting, proposing, and ratifying them.
But more importantly, "the right to not be mandated to wear covering over some part of the body to protect either public health or public morality" is not explicitly, or given the history of such mandates and their survival against challenge, on the evidence of legal precedent implicitly a right in the Constitution. You are arguing for a novel right that goes against the well-settled understanding of the rights in the Constitution (whether Amendments 1-10 or otherwise); which is fine, most people would agree things like Loving or Brown were good decisions despite the fact that the rights involved had not previously been recognized in the form those decisions found them. But to argue for such a novel interpretation of Constitutional rights, you need more than vague handwaving at the Constitution in general, you need an argument about how the explicit text in the Constitution supports your novel interpretation.
> If someone doesn’t want to wear a mask that is their choice.
Yes, but it is not a choice that, either morally or Constitutionally, needs to be free of consequences, including restricting the scope of available activities one may engage in.
If someone chooses not to wear covering over their genitals, that's their choice, but its fairly uncontroversial that the law may restrict them from being in public places when they make that choice.
> Your choice is to avoid situations where you might be in contact with people who don’t wear masks. It’s not to force everyone into your beliefs.
I have yet to see a mask mandate that concerns itself with mandate beliefs, only actions in cases where one is exposed to other people (and, invariably in those I've seen, people who live outside of the subject's household.)
> I personally believe in wearing masks, though primarily feel the value in the typical cloth or surgical masks are keeping you from touching your face.
The value of cloth or surgical masks is in reducing the distance (and quantity at any given distance) of droplet spready from exhalation, sneezes, and coughing. They aren't as good as better masks, or social distancing, but the general recommendation (and, in many case, mandate) is for them to be worn in situations where essential activities make the recommended social distancing impossible to maintain/guarantee.
In my mind, the above facts are really all that's necessary: dense population + minimal lock down + universal mask wear == low Covid19 rates.
There are many other good reasons as well.
I appreciate the contrary feedback.
Do you have a link to the high mask compliance in Indiana handy? I've honestly looked for this kind of data and haven't been able to find it, and so assumed fairly poor (US-wide at least) mask wear based on anecdotes.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/06/pandemic...
That's horseshit. I live in lefty, liberal, science-believing Silicon Valley and I see less than half the people walking on the streets wearing masks.
That is to say, I believe the survey is targeted for indoor mask usage, as this is also the mandate in most states that mandate mask wearing (while indoors, or outdoors when 6 feet is not possible)
One hard lockdown, supported by incredibly through contact tracing was.
I don't think a single polity in the US, including NYC had a single hard lockdown.
And I know that not a single polity in the US has managed to do effective contact tracing.
To be clear: I wasn't saying that minimal lockdown was the reason for low numbers, though how I laid it out is definitely unclear.
My belief is that near universal mask compliance is the main reason some countries have managed to keep the virus under control even though they haven't been forced to do severe lockdowns.
Your point about contact tracing is relevant of course. I know both Japan and S. Korea did a lot of that, and of course the US didn't even try.
This may perhaps (along with masks, and the use of pretty much every source of data by Korea) explain much of the variance in outcomes.
Protecting those around me if I happen to be carrying but asymptomatic. If it reduces the chances of spreading the disease by even 1% then it's worth a slight inconvenience to help keep my fellow humans safe.
IMO, being willing to accept a minor inconvenience for the betterment of the population as whole is a key facet of being a functioning member of society.
First of all, we need central coordination to have a chance to beat something like covid19. Information about it increases daily and news outlets are notoriously bad about getting science-facts correct. Human-to-human communication (aka: let's play telephone) is demonstrably bad at keeping a coherent message. This all leads us to:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-scien... [Nov 10, 2020]
This lists actual studies based on human populations and outbreaks that indicate mask wearing is effective. It also lists references if you want to dive into the sources for yourself.
Bottom line: this isn't about belief in masks. It's about belief in real world results.
[0] https://outbreak.info/epidemiology?location=METRO_42660%3BME...
When taking the differences in total population and population density into account, the spikes in sparsely populated states like OK are nothing like the spikes in densely populated states like NY.
if you'd have focused more on the lack of distancing indoors, that might have been a legitimate concern. but masks are for show in most places, at most times, and your focus on them indicates a retreat to symbolism rather than effect. the primary appeal of masks is for quelling fear and anxiety, not preventing spread.
the one common place they would help, the private social gathering, is where they're donned the very least, because masks have strong connotations of mistrust, which is antithetical to socializing. so masks won't save us, no matter how much force is put behind them. even in countries commonly cited for high mask usage, other more primary mitigative measures are what led to propagation control, not masks. masks are marginal.
walking through a lobby/store or sitting at a table in a restaurant with your family isn't a significant risk, no matter what the other patrons are doing, as long as there's a little distance between (no, the virus is not floating around in significant concentrations to probabalistically infect you from across the room; it falls to the ground and dies quickly). the only other person you should worry about there is your server, who, out of at least "corporate necessity", will likely be wearing a mask, a decent use of masking as someone who interacts closely with lots of strangers (rather than, say, outside, where they're wasted).
this kind of moralizing is not out of a cohesive worry for others, but a divisive fear (anger is a primal reaction to fear). so why are we so fearful and anxious? deconstructing that would be a more fruitful discussion than dwelling so much on the anxiety itself.
The appeal of masks for me is definitely to lower spread. Yes there is signaling, but also because masks reduce amount of possibly covid-infected droplets expelled from the mouth and nose while breathing and speaking.
It is not possible to have a 6 foot bubble around everybody at all times. It is possible to always wear a mask.
This is not moralizing, this is science.
2) Masks are much less effective for aerosols than for droplet transmission. I think the consensus is they at least somewhat reduce aerosol transmission. Only n95 w/o exhale vents that are properly worn are believed to be good at reducing aerosol transmission.
The fact that your glasses fog up shows that surgical masks certainly are very leaky.
People seem to always assume/project the other party is controlled by high levels of anxiety around using masks when in reality I see most people know that distancing/masks are a risk mitigation technique (NOT a one-stop-fix, but a risk mitigation) used to bring virus spread rate down and flatten the curve. Instead of being an emotionally charged subject, I think most people see distancing/masks as a tool to reduce the spread of the virus so that we can go out more often as opposed to taking no mitigations and contributing to exponential rates of virus spread.
With this perspective, I think feeling violated by people avoiding masks is a healthy, normal response. It's not about feeling anxious for going outside, but that we have been violated by people spreading the virus to others causing us to have to extend the lockdown and keep our economy dead in order to not over-burden the hospitals.
it’s important to dig into these nuances to dispel the anxiety and fear we have against each other (like feeling violated). and lockdowns (in the US at least) are political theater, accruing benefit to a few and wreaking discriminate havoc on the many. the mediopolitical apparatus deserves that blame, not the vilified ‘other’.
Masks are one additional piece—and truly one of the easiest measures—to reduce overall exposure. It’s been well established that even basic masks significantly reduce the amount of aerosols emitted as we talk, so when I’m in a grocery store surrounded by others, I do feel unsafe if people aren’t wearing masks, because it means far more of their airborne spit emitted when they breathe, talk, cough, or sneeze is reaching my eyes and lungs than if they would just wear a simple, cheap surgical mask. Medical personnel don’t wear masks for the hell of it; they wear them because it substantially reduces the amount of transmission, and does provide some small amount of protection to the wearer versus wearing nothing.
I don’t even blame people for coming to the conclusion that masks don’t need to be worn. The science has gotten much clearer over the past year and yet our governmental leaders have not only failed to accurately convey what we’ve learned, but have actually lost the trust they may have had. It’s no wonder people are confused about what works to reduce risk and what doesn’t, and how significant the risks are, when our leaders fist told us masks only protect doctors, then told us we could stop the spread with short, poorly enforced lockdowns that maximized economic harm without sufficiently quarantining the population, and now are telling everyone to wear a mask without properly acknowledging that aerosols are a major mechanism for superspreader events.
“...restaurants were by far the riskiest places” for new infections, “about four times riskier than gyms and coffee shops, followed by hotels,”
https://sf.eater.com/21561143/covid-19-restaurants-indoor-di...
"...case-patients were more likely to have reported dining at a restaurant (aOR = 2.4, 95% CI = 1.5–3.8) in the 2 weeks before illness onset than were control-participants."
the simpler, more likely explanation is that those were three different sets of transmissions that happened to be sitting next to each other in a restaurant at the same time, with a clever narrative tying it together. cleverness restrains our otherwise natural skepticism.
we'd likely have seen dozens of similar stories if this was a significant mode of transmission. and nyt is biased and partisan enough to have featured those stories prominently if they'd have been available.
We decided to drive the northern route. Heading through Vegas, Utah, Yellowstone and Montana. Then onward through the plains of North Dakota and Minnesota. Turning north we entered Wisconsin and finally the UP (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan. After a few days exploring we turned south to Detroit.
In Vegas the concern for masks started to wane. By Utah, no fucks were given and pretty much not a single fuck was given until we crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the lower peninsula of Michigan.
When I say no fucks were given - I mean that pretty much no one around me cared about wearing a mask, social distancing, etc. Hotels would participate out of corporate necessity. We drove hundreds and hundreds of miles sometimes and were the only people in stores with masks on. Sometimes I felt like an outsider alien, being stared at by the people around me. I was surprised yet not surprised at the same time.
So the surge and issues the comminuties up there are facing don't surprise me in the least.