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.
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.