Just because kids aren’t actively complaining doesn’t mean it’s not bothering them. My kid is a conformist Asian like me, and we’ve been going along with masking this whole time because her private school is full of democrats. But she broke down crying last fall when she found out that we’d be doing another year of masking. It’s not just the inconvenience of the masks, or the eating outside on the ground, but the whole exercise of disrupting normal life for these kids: no field trips, no birthday parties, etc. We’re into the third year of this reduced childhood.

If pants had been invented in 2018 in order to cure horniness, I'd treat them with the same gravitas that I give to graham crackers. One person's "set in one's ways" is another person's "doesn't change with the wind".

Well that was...some words.

> If pants had been invented in 2018 in order to cure horniness

What if they'd been invented hundreds of years ago to stop the spread of disease, and prevented millions of deaths since then? Curious that you use a weak and hyperbolic analogy when the reality is so readily available.

Well, you can call me foolish, but I don't think COVID is severe enough to be worth long-term realignment of cultural norms around wardrobe. Most people agree with me, which is why so much of the debate has been based on panic.

i had speculated months ago that perhaps cultures that wear veils and mouth coverings originally did it for health purposes

If that was true, why are only women forced to wear veils? In reality the veils are all about controlling women's sexuality.

you will see that I avoided referencing specific cultres and made claims about the past. too much racism / elitism on HN in some threads, although those issues need to be discussed too.

Exactly, kids simply reflect what they hear at home.

Go to any store, chin-maskers are with maskless kids, while parents with N95 masks are without kids or with fully masked kids.

Don't kid yourself. Children are suggestible and easily manipulated by adults on BOTH extremes of this polarising argument.