There's a global pandemic caused by an airborne pathogen, and people throw an absolute hissy fit over a minor inconvenience like masks. My kids wear them all day long in school, and while they don't love them, they are not constantly whining about them like some adults.
My grandparents, on the other hand, dealt with wartime rationing for years (and they were lucky, because they lived in a place where they could hunt) because our country was in a global battle with Nazis. And all that after the depression.
People rightfully consider this to be a hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy can effectively dampen voter turnout of your supporters if they are idealistic enough. But it's an absolute non-factor if you can sufficiently demonize your opponent(s) and their positions, just look at Trump and how he has wrapped Evangelical America around his little finger.
Most orders after that where just polling their voters to see what they could do and look like "they are doing something" but angering the least people possible. That's bullshit, and even the governor of San Francisco and the governor of California where found bending their policy or breaking the rules multiple times.
Supposedly a lot of kids have needed to demask to get a good pulse ox. As a parent this terrifies me.
https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-a...
They don't "whine" because they know it's pointless and the school/you will punish them if they do. Adults have more options.
This theory is inconsistent with the evidence: mask mandates have no effect on case numbers and nor did lockdowns. Whether you like this or not is irrelevant - the data is final. Therefore the droplet theory is wrong, and by extension theories based on it are also wrong.
There is an alternative theory of how SARS-CoV-2 spreads through the air: that the viruses can exist in fine aerosols that can be suspended in the air for relatively long periods. This theory is consistent with the evidence actually available:
1. It's consistent with islands that closed their borders early being able to keep the virus out, but nowhere else.
2. It's consistent with mask wearing having no effect, because masks aren't airtight. You still need to breathe in the surrounding air and the holes in masks are much too large to stop a very fine suspended aerosol. Additionally it wouldn't matter even if they are airtight and very good filters because there's evidence the virus can enter via the eyeballs too.
3. It's consistent with lockdowns having no effect. Even in "lockdown" lots of people still need to be in areas recently vacated by other people, like shops, factories, anything to do with the supply chain.
4. It's consistent with the apparent lack of infections outside. Where the wind blows, aerosols emitted by an infected person are rapidly dispersed in the air.
5. It's consistent with the failure of measures like handwashing to keep the virus out of care homes.
It's also consistent with SARS-CoV-1, in which an outbreak was investigated and the conclusion was it circulated through an apartment block via air in drainpipes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/04/18/i...
That isn't possible with the droplet theory, but is perfectly possible with aerosol theory.
The fact that "actual scientists" doing "real research" show that masks work is actually evidence that their research is garbage and they aren't "actual scientists", at least not if we define scientists as people who successfully apply the scientific method to understand reality. If they worked then you'd be able to consistently see the impact in case numbers, but that's simply impossible.
If you read any of their studies you'll soon be struck by how universally poor the quality of COVID research actually is. The scientific method as normally meant has more or less gone AWOL and what's left behind is a bunch of people who very much have an agenda desperately trying to justify why their previous advice wasn't wrong. I really couldn't care less what "actual scientists" think at this point. If they want to be taken seriously they need to provide evidence that's strongly convincing on its own merits, because their institutional credibility has long since turned to dust.
And mandating something which neither prevents catching, nor transmitting the virus is definitely not a "minor inconvenience".
EDIT: In my last sentence, I wasn't referring to masks. I was referring to vaccine mandates which the truck driver also ran on.
They have studied this though. Actual scientists, not people on Youtube or Facebook, and they have found that masks diminish the transmission of COVID-19. This is kind of what you'd expect with something airborne.
At least 9 out of 10 children in the ICUs in North Carolina were obese.
https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-c...
The iron-fisted one-size-fits-all approach has never been used in medicine and health except COVID.
Along the same lines, ingoring this differentiator has allowed the gov the take a heavy handed on size fits all approach. If the risk is targeted, why is the loss of rights applied to everyone?
Finally, this approach is now being used to jab the kids.
That isn't justice. In fact - whether anyone agrees or disagree s - it smells like textbook authoritarianism. In that context, we are all discarded.
So all the bushiness owners and fancy lad writers, managers, programmers, and other white collars are better positioned to withstand the pandemic with virtually every advantage in both isolation and physical health. All those guys that eat shit because they don't have money or time and burn themselves out physically working hard get to die.
In a slightly different category of person, it's morbidly fascinating watching unvaccinated people on twitter note their buddy just died and say they had comorbidities with a profile pic that shows them to be obese.
In this case, we have to judge whether the petty authoritarianism of those that spread illness and death vs the government pushing everyone to help stop that with, at this point, a fairly convincingly safe vaccine.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577.long
Why does everyone promote cloth masks, instead of proper N95 masks?
Other developed countries are not masking kids as young as we are doing. Countries like France are rescinding mask mandates now. For us, there is no end in sight, even in highly vaccinated areas.
"Is it worth it" is an ongoing question; at some point, it's probably not, but we're not there just yet. Our vaccination rates are still pretty low. And remember: the bellowing about masks started before we even had vaccines.
It is a political and value judgement to err on the side of minuscule improvement, if any at all, from wearing masks and mandating vaccines for cohorts that statistically don't need to worry about covid, while degrading the social development of children, and hurting the wider economic interests of people affected by endless restrictions. These are all political questions. There are no all encompassing "facts" that delineate who is harmed and who is helped and in what proportions. That is the realm of politics.
Not really, 221 Million have had it-least 1 shot in the US and another 73 Million are under 18 and are at almost no risk (558 total deaths).
The covid risk for children is a rounding error. This is not prudent risk management; mind-boggling for someone from the tech industry who should be able to do a cursory look at statistics and dismiss this practice out of hand.
> Blocking the faces of children in the prime of their
> life, where they need to develop social skills through
> interaction and facial expression, is madness.
> The covid risk for children is a rounding error.
Assuming what you meant is "children are less likely to develop severe symptoms," and also that that's true: they can still spread the virus to the adults they live with in their homes, or the many adults that share the school building they're in. (Did you think we just shove kids in an adult-less environment, or that teachers are somehow immune?)
[1]: https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboa...
I disagree that it's worth harming kids development to attempt to avoid spreading a coronavirus that is becoming endemic, will always be around, and whose spread can't be stopped. Not worth it.
Ohio total covid deaths: 24,763
Ohio total 18 and under covid deaths: 12
Ohio total 18 and under population (2019): 2,578,019
If this isn't a rounding error, what is?
You are looking for the wrong thing. Look for what the benefits of things like smiling and seeing smiling faces has on people's emotional health.
> A happy face signals positive emotions, as well as attachment availability, care, support, and credibility [7,8,9]. Recently, Tamir and Hughes [10] argued that positive social signals such as smiling faces not only serve ultimate goals (e.g., forming strong bonds) but they are also rewarding in and off themselves.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6356968/
https://www.healthline.com/health/baby/when-will-my-baby-smi...
Hiding the main part of your face - the smile is not healthy for people, and especially not for kids whose entire social skills development heavily relies on these things.
Being proud to be "obedient" is not always a good thing. Also this cannot be generalized. Plus it doesn't make something being mandatory right, especially when looking at people's smiles is crucial for kids development.
What I'm observing is that peculiar mix of self consciousness, smugness, and pride you sometimes see in young children, when they believe they are acting morally.
I'm not using quite the right words here - the emotions I'm listing are more mature. But the same emotions exist in children, just not fully matured.
Since the parents were maskless, I think the kids wanted to wear theirs because they've been taught at school that it's the right thing to do. The ones I observed appeared to be around eight years old.
The choice is yours: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do.
- The White House, May 14, 2021
https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/videos/its-vaxxed-or-mas...
It looked like things were improving, and the more contagious Delta variant (or, as the airline likes to write, B.1.617.2) turned up.
Where I live in Oregon, our hospital was overflowing with people towards the end of summer, to the point where people have died because they couldn't get 'elective' surgery. In that kind of situation, you use a 'defense in depth' strategy, which includes both vaccines and masks.
It's really not that big of a problem to wear one.
That's not the problem. The problem is that those who were saying the "now correct" thing prior to the "experts" changing their minds were first called misinformation. The "experts" make definitive statements without any nuance and when they get proven wrong, they don't apologize.
For example the Press Secretary said "this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated" a week ago and then couple days later, she tested positive.
Here's another example:
> “We don't talk enough to you about this, I don't think. One last thing that's really important is, we're not in the position where we think that any virus, including the Delta virus, which is much more transmissible and more deadly in terms of unvaccinated people, the -- the various shots that people are getting now cover that. You're OK. You're not going to -- you're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” - Biden said on Jul 22.
I posted in July on HN that Israel's data shows this statement is literally not true. But I was called misinformation.
Basically no lockdown other than shutting down bars at 8 PM, plenty of exposure between proximity to China and super-crowded trains
The difference between Japan and the USA is their ubiquitous mask use
We went on a 20 year jihad over a single 9/11's worth of preventable deaths in the USA, and yet we can't be bothered to take any action when we're racking up a 9/11 every couple of days?
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view...
Can you show me statistics regarding this "real and obvious risk of psychological and social harm" of children wearing masks?
You're literally saying you don't require evidence for your views and trying to frame this as a virtue?
What possible study could give you definitive information to decide here? Social "sciences" are rife with replication errors, the whole industry is suspicious.
But so what? This is such a modern hyper rational mode of thinking. It's a weak mentality to be unable to use experience and judgement to act and decide but to defer to dubious "experts" to tell you how to live and raise your own children in the context of something so obvious as "kids need to see faces and be seen to develop socially" given masks don't stop the spread of covid and they're not at risk anyways; they should have normal social interaction and not live in a bubble for 2 years.
We already know the risk from covid for kids is virtually non-existent. You're willing to risk their social development because no one told you to do otherwise yet? How did your ancestors navigate such perilous environments and situations without a bunch of studies to tell them what the "facts" are for every decision? They had to think for themselves quite often, using their wisdom and intuition
This is the danger of politicized science. It becomes one sided and a-scientific.
Similarly, the current vaccine does not prevent infection, but it significantly reduces symptoms and helps reduce the amount of people who'd otherwise be hospitalized with COVID-19.[2]
Death rates are the most serious metric to look at (and it's abysmal), but certainly not the only metric. Long-term effects of the virus aren't well understood, but individuals have reported brain fog or lack of sense of taste/smell long after clearing the flu-like symptoms.[3] Folks who get sick and transmit the virus, or are severely hospitalized, have still been affected.
Most children do not have issues masking in school unless trusted adults are telling them it's a problem. I have two sons, both of whom mask at school with no complaint, and the school has a full mask mandate except at mealtimes for those eating. Neither the school nor the district have reported any instances of psychological or social harm, and I'm having a hard time finding a credible source that believes that's true.
So, we have a set of assumed (or just plain made up) negatives, and a whole host of scientifically proven benefits. When folks say we are not a serious nation, they mean that this debate is even happening in the first place. The reasonable asks: a facemask indoors in public, and a vaccine. Against a worldwide pandemic that's killed over 700,000 in the United States alone and shut down our hospital systems in some cities.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/keythings... [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/keythings...
Those are not reasonable. You may think they are, but there are obviously people who disagree.
Also, the vaccine and masks may have been a reasonable ask, but it is not a reasonable mandate! Once mandates started kicking in, and politicians started saying "The voluntary phase is over" while not following their own rules, then they became unreasonable and definitely not "asks".
Also, we have had far worse pandemics and have not had those "asks".
Also, the Hong Kong Flu might be close to COVID in per capita deaths.
However, it was a mainstay for a period of time without any where close to the current division over using masks.
Why do people forget that an infectious disease doesn’t stick to just one person? Do they not get what infectious means?
It would be much more beneficial to encourage weight loss and fitness regime for overweight people. The vast majority of deaths have occurred from overweight comorbidities. But this has never been widely addressed as a tactic to decrease severe cases.
Durr said Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s coronavirus executive orders, vaccine and school mask, unemployment benefits snafus and a general distrust of the South Jersey Democratic machine that has dominated the region for years all contributed to his strong performance.
Sweeney, Durr said, “never challenged” Murphy during the pandemic.
[0] https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2021/11/03/...I think many people, if they aren't exposed to it or live around it, underestimate the massive anger and frustration that exists towards the Covid restrictions and policies, and vaccine mandates.