What's weird to me is how freaked out people are about this. I get that it is a higher risk than a lightening strike, but given that the absolute number of deaths in 2020 was lower than 2019 (even given that deaths of despair were up significantly), I'm thinking our society has turned into a bunch of nervous nellies. Or maybe city folk don't think they should ever get to die.
In any case, the scared worried self-isolating comments I have read in this thread from "man-folk" make me think that when we got rid of TB and SPox and Polion - we probably got rid of Testosterone at the same time.
Re:Things I Didn't Learn in 2020
by zaptheimpaler on Saturday January 02, 2021 @06:08AM
(#25611978)
for me it was always clear that masks were effective, but institutions were trying to accumulate enough for health workers by flat out lying to the public. maybe they shouldn’t have lied so blatantly, but it doesn’t make me skeptical about the effectiveness of masks itself.
Re:Things I Didn't Learn in 2020
by PapaSpaceDelta on Saturday January 02, 2021 @11:34AM
(#25613933)
My impression was that during the early stages there was more concern about touch based transmission, so there was a feeling that the benefits of masks (trapping respiratory droplets) might be outweighed by causing people to touch their faces more frequently.
Let’s say we take it “some skepticism” is useful. The question is - how do you use this skepticism to enable quick decision making?
Re:Things I Didn't Learn in 2020
by RobertRoberts on Saturday January 02, 2021 @04:15AM
(#25611440)
Maybe quick decision making _is_ what being sceptical is for?
Way too many times leaders and people wanted quick decisions in 2020 when what scepticism may help us do is slow us down to be more thoughtful, critical and careful.
One thing that really caught my attention is how reddit went from 'if you wear masks you are overreacting and a bad person' to 'if you don't wear masks you are killing people and a bad person' in a heartbeat.
I'm not advocating not wearing masks or anything, I was just surprised how the definition of what was the "obviously" right thing to do changed in a heartbeat without any concern on how diagonally opposite these two advices were.
When such opposite advices are given by the same institution I think some skepticism is really useful. (Did they know the previous advice was wrong in which case they lied? Did they not know any better but gave advice anyway? What was the compelling evidence to change their minds?). Again, I think you should wear masks, but the total lack of questioning and the instantaneous change of opinion I saw online was really weird.