It wasn't 'leashed'; people were just more oblivious to it when mainstream media preferred to politely ignore it rather than tell people it was happening.
Hydroxychloroquine bad because orange man took it, and orange man bad. Never mind other countries are using it successfully if given early, not the near-death application used to ban it.
Ivermectin has been shown to work much better, but that will become banned too. If the government gave a damn, they'd be recommending everyone take 5000 IU vitamin D.
Setting aside the issue of government suppression, social media (Facebook, Reddit, Twitter all being specific examples) have been terrible with censorship this year.
It has become impossible to discuss any scientific question for which there is a political angle without being censored. I've seen peer-reviewed publications on Facebook and Twitter, hidden behind "misinformation" flags. Questioning orthodox views (even with well-sourced, rational scientific arguments) is enough to get you banned or blocked on the major social media platforms.
We're in a dark place that I didn't think I'd ever see in my lifetime. If you cannot question science, it isn't science.
None. Twitter and Facebook and Reddit should not be promoting a viewpoint or source.
It is unfortunate that some people will use freedom of speech to share misinformation, but the alternative -- convincing the public that any form of skepticism is bad, and only the "consensus" is correct -- is unthinkable. Virtually every scientific theory of any impact has been opposed by the "consensus" at one point or another.
I saw a pretty powerful "joke" tweet the other day where "Galileo" tweets about thinking maybe the sun is the center of the solar system instead of the earth, and it gets slapped with a "learn more about how experts agree on the geocentric model." Pretty funny, but also eerily relevant.
No matter the answer, it will fall short in some scenario.
So I'd say kill the premise instead. Facebook and Twitter should show me things that my friends posted. That's it. If I don't follow someone—or search directly for something—then I don't see it.
There, now you don't need to make tough choices on how to tune your algorithm. There is no algorithm!
Of course, this will reduce engagement and DAU and whatever other metrics they track. But that's a fundamental conflict: earnings vs. neutrality. You can't maximize both.
IMO flagging on HN falls into this darkness too. Frequently people are flagged without knowing why. Would be nice if flaggers had to provide a short sentence of why...
I get downvoted lots and lots but it’s not censorship. If you don’t like your audience here, go find or build it elsewhere. No one is stopping you. But you’re not entitled to this one.
Exactly. This is the home of the HN community. They get to choose the mode of engagement. I, too, am frequently downvoted and often flagged when communicating civilly. This is, imho, just fine.
I’ve only been flagged once (that I recall) and I definitely wished I had some explanation. But I don’t feel suppressed by not having it. Just baffled. But then I’m baffled by a lot of what gets me downvoted too, and it’s... well, a heterogeneous community where I have some outlier opinions so I just carry on.
Sure. If you don't like your opinions being hidden, you just have to go build your own community of millions of people. Simple. And of course, nobody should be concerned that the communication channels for ~all forms of public debate are privately owned.
Look: I don't mind being downvoted. I don't care about karma points. But the HN system is one where downvoted comments are hidden, which is itself a form of censorship. Marginal opinions are routinely buried -- and I'm not even talking about my own. I upvote unfairly grayed-out comments that I disagree with, all the time.
It is deeply ironic, for example, that my parent comment about censorship is now hidden at the bottom of the page, in light gray, because one person downvoted it.
> Sure. If you don't like your opinions being hidden, you just have to go build your own community of millions of people. Simple.
No less simple than someone building it for you while you reject the idea that they might have conditions on sharing it with you.
> I don't mind being downvoted. I don't care about karma points. But the HN system is one where downvoted comments are hidden, which is itself a form of censorship.
Moderating a private property isn’t censorship. It’s not. If HN or FB or whatever controlled your access to basic internet protocols sure. That would be dystopian and would be an example of censorship. You’re just failing to meet social expectations in a community you’re willingly participating in, and experiencing the consequences of that. It’s no more censorship than not being invited to someone’s birthday party.
> It is deeply ironic, for example, that my parent comment about censorship is now hidden at the bottom of the page, in light gray, because one person downvoted it.
That... isn’t how the algorithm works, and I’ve been downvoted enough to know it. You’ve likely gotten a lot of upvotes and downvotes leaving an average of -1 (which is -2 btw, you start at +1), but the volume of downvotes is much greater than average. I don’t know the precise formula but I know with certainty that one downvote doesn’t get me greyed.
> Yeah, I get it. That's why I said what I said about all public debate being moved to private property.
Huh? No one captured you in a web browser and made you go to any website. There’s a whole world out there, go talk all you want.
> I don't know, and don't care. The graying out of comments happens quickly, and people use it to hide comments they don't like.
Yes. You’re not the only person who gets to have opinions. Part of having disagreements is the people who react negatively to your opinions may also want to minimize your opinions’ presence in their life. You’re not entitled to their audience. I mean this sincerely: did you not learn that you can’t demand friendships before now?
> Would be nice if flaggers had to provide a short sentence of why...
Yes, and same for up and downvotes: I'd like to require a selection from a small set of required tags, and for the aggregates to be visible (perhaps with a delay). I'd actually like up and down values to be applied to individual tags - for example, I might add +1 to the "correct" score of a story, but -1 for "rude / unkind" (we could bikeshed the names all day, but I don't think any realistic set would be worse than the zero info you get today when your comment goes grey but no-one has taken the time to explain why)
I'm not sure that Slashdot's community is/was inherently a result of their voting/tagging system. Their heyday was a long time ago, and the communoty standards were different to here. It was maybe somewhere between reddit and HN (I'm not sure either existed in Slashdot's hayday)
Most of the good discussion here happens without much mutual upvoting or downvoting. Frequent downvoters fit other users into political/technical/social narratives that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, and the downvoted would reflect that.
It appeared to be making a factual claim about how MDM works, (and here's where I get subjective) counter to a prevailing narrative in the thread. It's not downvoted anymore, but there was no explanation available (and there still isn't). Was the comment wrong? Did people just not like it? Did they think it was off-topic to what it was replying to, or missing the point? We'll never know. I'd like to know :)
Also, I think a system like I'm proposing would make it easier to find the quality comments and threads, and avoid (if you want to) the controversial stuff, the hot-takes, the me-too comments, the pandering to the HN crowd / tropes - etc...
To me that seems like one that will attract angry downvotes because it goes against a Google Bad narrative (not that they necessarily aren’t, or are.) I don’t think those kinds of readers are reflective enough to give good feedback. It’s difficult to discuss the particulars of many FAANG-related subjects here right now.
Yes, it’s a dark time when the social media platforms, which have always been our only outlet to engage and challenge science, suppress the scientific process by choosing what content is allowed on their privately owned websites.
Same as penalties for triggering fire alarms when there is no fire diminish 1A.
We didn't have FB, Twitter, Reddit 15 years ago and people could express their opinions. Currently those are being weaponized to subvert our democracy. Right now we have president trying to start a coup and 70M of people don't see problem with that.
What a ridiculous comparison. Being blocked and banned from what is essentially a public forum, despite having something of value to add to the discussion, is absolutely in opposition to the concept of freedom of speech.
I’m not proving anything of the sort. In another comment I invited GP to find the audience they desire. But that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to an audience on someone else’s dime.
> Politicians often claim to follow the science, but that is a misleading oversimplification. Science is rarely absolute. It rarely applies to every setting or every population. It doesn’t make sense to slavishly follow science or evidence.
You can pretty much find a study or experiment that validates whatever opinion you have. It's not common for our society to immediately react to the result of one study or very few studies by applying them directly to the real world. Science takes time. Yet here we are.
Somehow we went from "masks for the general public are ineffective against fighting covid and most other diseases" to "any piece of garbage you put over your face is effective" almost instantly. I tried finding studies that proved that covid transmission is reduced when people put any piece of material over their face. I couldn't find any and still have yet to find one. They all show that things that may imply masks are effective but not of them show masks are actually effective.
They all seem to be based on the effectiveness of blocking droplets. To the best of my understanding we don't even know if it's airborne yet. Also, why aren't there any older studies? Droplets and masks have been around forever. Why did it take a few new studies to figure this out?
There are also so many other variables that are completely neglected such as the way people handle and wear their masks, how the masks fit, the material used (some studies cover multiple materials but are far from comprehensive), the social aspects like not being able to read someones expression, etc.
Cloth masks are all the rage these days but when you go to buy one none are approved by the FDA and say "not for medical use". Yet we are mandating that people where these things for medical use even though they haven't been proved by the FDA. They have been approved by this magical thing called "science" though. Why even have these government regulatory agencies if we can just bypass them in certain circumstances?
> Governments and industry must also stop announcing critical science policy by press release. Such ill judged moves leave science, the media, and stock markets vulnerable to manipulation. Clear, open, and advance publication of the scientific basis for policy, procurements, and wonder drugs is a fundamental requirement
They way covid policies are communicated is awful. When they change policies they always site science but never link to exact studies. They imply that this is the science they used is the "real" science and that all that matters.
I live in California and we have a site dedicated to covid (like I'm sure most other places do). A couple months ago they put up a "blueprint for reopening" that was supposedly based on science. There are arbitrary tiers that counties go through to determine what's banned. However, just recently, Newsom introduced a 10pm "curfew" and threatened another stay at home order. That wasn't part of the "blueprint". Where is the science for that?
Yeah the thing that’s driven me nuts the most over this is the belief that masks seemingly stop any and all transmission. Yes, even that cotton mask you haven’t washed in a week and throw in your purse when not in use.
Tens of thousands of people crammed together, yelling and shouting for hours on end? No problem if you’re wearing a piece of cotton over your face!
I wish there was just a little more nuance in the role of masks from our leaders and health officials like, “they help but they don’t make you invincible.”
I've been wearing mine because I expect it probably gives the people around me a slight benefit. I have no illusion that it's keeping anyone anywhere close to totally safe, and though common sense dictates that it does something, I'm not totally sure it does.
They way masks truly work is that they afford a sense of comfort to the wearers and those surrounding them. That comfort lowers stress levels and thereby facilitates the immune system to focus its resources on pathogens and foreign bodies. This has been scientifically proven to be true 50% of the time based on a consensus of scientists doing sciencey things.
Masks were not recommended in the early stages of the pandemic in most countries because that would have cut into the limited supply of N95 masks that were prioritised for medical staff.
Then there wasn't much good evidence to show if COVID specifically could be stopped by masks, or if so, what kind of masks help and how much. Thankfully, many research groups took to the challenge and published paper after paper in rapid succession to show that, yes, masks help a lot, even if they're made at home from a t-shirt. E.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNeYfUTA11s
With the pandemic running rampant across the United States, the advice was updated.
This is real world data (more relevant than any study) from Victoria where a mandatory mask mandate for anyone outside their home was abruptly introduced, it's the orange and red stripes toward then end of July. You can can see a very clear reduction with the reproduction rate of the virus shortly after the mandate was introduced. The full effect of masks is probably greater than shown because we were in lockdown at the time, so not a lot of people on public transport.
They certainly aren't a magic barrier, but they do help.
You are assuming causality here. You can't know that with associative studies.
All epidemics follow a natural curve where the pathogen initially spreads exponentially, but slows down over time as R(t) decreases due to the increased presence of population immunity. That creates a natural drop-off, and given that mandates and other "public health" responses tend to occur late in the cycle, it gives the impression that the natural drop-off is attributable to the intervention. It's rarely the case that it truly is. (By the way, if you look when they reverted to orange and then yellow the spread did not pick back up, which supports what I'm saying about this just being the natural epidemic curve)
If we want to talk masks specifically, the evidence that outdoors transmission of COVID-19 is rare anyway, and furthermore the purported mechanism of action of masks only works if (a) large respiratory droplets are the primary transmission mechanism as supposed to aerosol spread, and (b) people follow rigorous protocols to avoid contamination of the mask or from the mask. (b) is certainly not true, and (a) is likely not true when you look at the overall evidence of how viral spread (and specifically SARS-CoV-2) spread occurs.
Indeed, if the primary transmission mechanism is aerosol, masking could and likely would worsen transmission. The logic is pretty simple: masked individuals breathe more deeply to get the same amount of oxygen as an unmasked individual (this has been shown in numerous studies due to the local co2 buildup), meaning masked individuals move a greater net volume of air. Given masks cannot filter out aerosols, that greater volume of air will translate to worsened spread. This is made worse by the fact that when speaking to another individual, you have to speak louder for them to hear you through the mask.
(Sticking with the aerosol reasoning, there is one possible tiny benefit which is the masks still do alter the path of the aerosol; it smokes out and around the mask wearer rather than it being as directed as unmasked aerosol. But it's a very minor effect at best. You can look at any of the many videos of someone hitting a vape and then exhaling out of their cloth mask/surgical mask/bandana and you'll see what I mean)
So, in conclusion, no it's really not as simple as you're alleging, and this type of tenuous speculative post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning is all too common these days unfortunately.
> All epidemics follow a natural curve where the pathogen initially spreads exponentially, but slows down over time as R(t) decreases due to the increased presence of population immunity.
We were absolutely no where near this point, we have one of the lowest infection rates in the world and other interventions (lockdowns) had happened weeks earlier.
> If we want to talk masks specifically, given the evidence that outdoors transmission of COVID-19 is rare anyway
Outdoor transmission may be rare, but this was a political decision so we could get to near 100% conformity
> and (b) people follow rigorous protocols to avoid contamination of the mask or from the mask. (b) is certainly not true
On the contrary, I just posted real world data that clearly demonstrates that mask discipline isn't very important. Maybe it's important under lab conditions but in the real world it's not.
> Indeed, if the primary transmission mechanism is aerosol, masking could and likely would worsen transmission.
So why did the reproduction rate fall and not rise after masks were introduced?
1) I'm sure the people in Victoria did a lot more things than wear masks. If you throw everything and the kitchen sink at a problem, it's very hard to figure out which of the things you did actually worked.
The closest thing I've seen to a controlled study was a Danish one that showed that wearing a mask - everything else equal - reduces your risk of getting it from 2.1% to 1.8%, which is a weak 20% reduction. No study on the efficacy of preventing spread to others. (It's a bit problematic to perform an experiment like this in a controlled setting to say the least.)
I'm sure masks do something, and mask mandates hopefully have a net positive effect, but how large is it? I have no idea.
The mask mandate went into effect on April 16th, and there's just zero correlation between that and the case curve. It's two weeks after the peak of the initial bump in cases, and apparently the mask mandate and obligatory quarantine for all incoming travelers and everything else in the emergency orders did nothing to stop the much larger peak in July-August. It's also not the case that people have been slacking off, mask compliance is very high.
> 1) I'm sure the people in Victoria did a lot more things than wear masks. If you throw everything and the kitchen sink at a problem, it's very hard to figure out which of the things you did actually worked.
We were. But this was the only significant change during this period until stage 4 of lockdown started which reduced the reproductive rate further.
We clearly see the reproduction rate drop just after mandatory masks were introduced, in the absence of a better or even half plausible explanation it certainly looks like masks were the cause.
> The mask mandate went into effect on April 16th, and there's just zero correlation between that and the case curve.
As I said, they aren't magic, they won't stop the virus by themselves. You can't just wear masks and go about life as normal, but that does not mean that masks don't work at all.
How do you know which change had the largest effect?
Also, if you introduce a mask mandate, people will obviously change their behaviour, they won't just go on and live their lives exactly as before, but with a mask on. Therefore, mask mandates might reduce the spread not because of the masks themselves, but because they cause people to behave differently.
> You can't just wear masks and go about life as normal
Right, and that's exactly my point, you have no idea how much mask mandates contributes to minimizing spread because it always happen in conjunction with a ton of other restrictions and behaviour changes. Yet you are arguing that masks - in isolation - are so good that it's a no-brainer to mandate them?
That is when stage 3 of the lockdown started and everyone had to work from home, the next big decline was when stage 4 started and more people had to work from home or not at all. This did have a larger effect as the source I posted indicated. This reduced the reproduction rate to about 1.1 and plateaued at that level, weeks later masks were introduced bringing it under 1.
> Yet you are arguing that masks - in isolation - are so good that it's a no-brainer to mandate them?
I'm arguing no such thing, the source I posted indicated that masks would at best slow down the spread of the virus without other measures. That doesn't mean they don't work.
> Also, if you introduce a mask mandate, people will obviously change their behaviour, they won't just go on and live their lives exactly as before, but with a mask on. Therefore, mask mandates might reduce the spread not because of the masks themselves, but because they cause people to behave differently.
This is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how they work, as long as they work. The only question that needs to be answered is "do masks reduce the spread of this virus?" Directly or indirectly doesn't matter.
Factors like this are a great indication of why real world data trumps controlled studies though, you wouldn't see these effects in controlled studies.
Unfortunately I'll have to leave the conversation here because the anti-masker and anti-data crowd on HN have down voted enough to rate limit me.
> The only question that needs to be answered is "do masks reduce the spread of this virus?"
A mask mandate means that police can now force you to wear a mask in various situations, with fines and possibly jail time if you do not comply.
For such a drastic measure, we need a lot more evidence that masks are a net positive, and such a large net positive that it warrants such a strong measure of violence.
"It can't hurt" is absolutely not enough evidence. "They probably do" is absolutely not enough evidence. Your correlations are absolutely not evidence at all.
It's perfectly fine to recommend them, encourage them, or do information campaigns about them. Let people make their own informed choices. And if you think masks are fantastic, and that people who aren't wearing them are assholes, stay away from those people then! It's so simple.
That's hardly scientific though. You can't say with such certainty that masks caused that reduction - in the simplested terms there are too many uncontrolled variables. As one example - was the rate of testing over that time the same? You also share that there were lockdowns during that time, which would obscure the true effect of the masks.
Making a claim that the data shows your conclusion to be true is what is not scientific. I.e. your statement is not based on any scientific evidence whether you think it is or not.
We've know that COVID is airborne since the early days. Cluster tracing revealed clusters that just wouldn't be possible without it (the famous WA state choir practice[1] comes to mind). Blatant disregard for these simple facts (I wouldn't even call it science) has brought many countries into current situations. The more inconvenient findings were, the more they were disregarded in favor of other data points.
Dr Fauci came out in an interview and admitted that he was knowingly lying about masks being ineffective. He did it to manipulate the public. He didn't want people to go out and buy/hoard all the masks, especially masks that can be used by medical personnel[1].
Whether you think the ends justify the means or not, I think it's a great example of the politicization of covid.
I value my personal liberty over all else, even if science says it increases my risk of contracting a serious virus. I’m all about choice. If you want to stay home, please do.
Unbiased advice coupled with freedom of movement is really the only thing I can accept. Help me be smart, but don’t tell me what to do under the premise of civil fines.
I think that's fair, but using the No Harm Principle as a guide, I think you should be liable for all the illness you cause should you infect anyone. You should be able to, of course, collect from anyone who could have infected you.
FWIW I also value personal liberty above restrictions but I do value internalizing externalities concurrently.
> I think you should be liable for all the illness you cause should you infect anyone.
I don't know of any society that has had a social contract or laws to this effect, unless a person is maliciously, intentionally, spreading a disease.
The US is also full of people who literally cannot afford to take sick days, which creates a culture of people going to work sick and toughing it out. Even in middle-class and upper middle-class jobs there's a prevalent fear of having to be seen in the office at all cost to avoid being fired.
What you are suggesting is the exact opposite of this, with the addition of being extra cruel against people who are not privileged enough to have a cushy job that allows them to work from home.
> I don't know of any society that has had a social contract or laws to this effect, unless a person is maliciously, intentionally, spreading a disease.
It isn't much of a leap, honestly. Few societies permit me to drive drunk for instance, even if I genuinely intend to kill no one. And I assure I don't want to kill anyone ever. I'm a lover not a killer.
Not only is that impossible to know, what if you infected some people who were immnuno-compromised.
Whereas it's possible you may kill a small number of people while drunk in a car- even if we assume it's a bus you are driving and hit several other buses- eventually your vehicle or yourself will have sustained injuries keeping you or it from harming others further.
However you could easily infect who knows how many people since covid is transmissable, and anyone you infected will keep infecting others, every one of which is your fault.
Exponential growth. Not only deaths but possible permanent damage to respiratory, circulatory, and nervous systems.
I agree, do what you want, but I think you should also be liable for the damages you inflict on others. If this means jail time (possibly life if enough are infected and killed), how does that help your 'personal freedom'.
> Not only is that impossible to know, what if you infected some people who were immnuno-compromised.
Firstly, yes drunk driving is far more dangerous to the public per incident than a Covid infectious positive case. This is glaringly obvious.
Secondly, you don't need to be immuno-compromised to be killed by a car. I.e. that's a small section of the population.
Digressing: There are many things in society where the risk of injury exists where it probably isn't a good idea to punish the person causing injury.
One problem with drunk driving is that it is illegal. It's not just illegal to kill someone while driving drunk. So no injury is even required.
Yet, being near others in a grocery store with a cloth mask (that does practically nothing) isn't nearly as dangerous and shouldn't be treated as such.
So you're making a point about injury where the law starts way before that, risk of injury. But everything has risk. Playing baseball is risky of the off chance of the ball hitting someone in the head. Less risky, but could kill someone, say someone who was skull-compromised like an infant. Do you want to outlaw baseball games?
That's an obvious "way on the other side of the spectrum" example. Where do you draw the line?
And clearly, drunk driving (driving not even being a right) is MUCH more dangerous than possibly infecting someone with a virus that kills, to be honest, a minority of those infected.
There are other viruses for example that is also transmitted in the same way, kills somewhat less frequently though like the flu.
Do you propose (like drunk driving) that not wearing a mask in public period should be illegal? Because you never know if you're interacting with someone who is immuno-compromised.
Sure, and that will be reflected in the amount you would have to pay in a free market to insure against the worst case. If it is a very rare event you will have to pay very little. If you're huffing whippets of aerosolized sars-cov-2, your insurance will be higher.
> I don't know of any society that has had a social contract or laws to this effect, unless a person is maliciously, intentionally, spreading a disease.
Intentionally and maliciously is one thing, but there is a level below that, which is well-established: reckless endangerment, manslaughter, etc.
Not wearing a mask in the middle of a pandemic is somewhere within the ballpark of this, and it’s reasonable to enforce and punish it, as we do with other reckless behaviors.
Who decides when a mask is needed/not needed? Should we always be forced to wear masks going forward given that we've been made aware of the efficacy?
Why stop at Corona? Flu is next.
Then "we" (or whoever chose masks) learn that 70% of mask wearers still get sick (because either masks don't work or because plebs can't be trusted with them) next we need universal vaccination or else we get fined. And if we don't pay fines, jail...
What, today, is stopping a billionaire from parking nearly anywhere they like and then just paying the fine, over and over? Or, beyond that, the quality of civil or criminal defense you can expect to receive is directly correlated to how much you're willing to pay.
Before we get to the answer we need to realize that a slippery slope is often presented to make the opposition realize that they're being irrational or missing something. Once this realization has been made it is often also unnecessary to actually answer the question.
Engaging in this type of discussion leaves the choice of where to stop at the individual level to justify and not swallowing what an expert says today or tomorrow and ignoring all information left out of the communication.
Forcing mask wearing probably won't go anywhere federally. The states is where it becomes a problem.
The elected authorities, whether local, regional, state, or federal, preferably as advised by trained and trusted experts.
> Should we always be forced to wear masks going forward given that we've been made aware of the efficacy?
If that makes sense, as determined by the above answer.
> Why stop at Corona? Flu is next.
If that makes sense. In fact, there would almost certainly be a net benefit to society for the majority of the population to wear masks during flu season, and literally no reasonable downside. But it won't happen, despite making rational, logical sense, because our society can't even get people to wear masks, maintain social distance, wash your hands, etc. during an actual, honest-to-God pandemic.
> Who decides when we are required to wear masks?
See the first answer.
The value of your "slippery slope" argument doesn't seem to be there to me; you seem to have already decided that the buck of mask wearing or public health in general stops at the individual level, ignoring the fact that that's simply not true. Cue rehashed arguments discussing seat belts, nudity, etc. etc.
> Forcing mask wearing probably won't go anywhere federally.
Cue: I'm not comfortable giving that type of power to the elected officials. Their power should be limited.
Cloth masks aren't effective yet we're all pretendying, even the experts (who were all laughing at the plebs who were scared before mask mandates, wanting to wear masks and not knowing how to use them) [I'm in a very large medical community and this was the general sentiment before the WHO and Fauci changed their tune]
Experts disagree. Politicians fear blowback so they see who the media are agreeing with and then do that. They aren't rational actors.
And no, mask wearing has many negative effects.
E.g. of Experts and Politicians making mistakes: lockdowns, they have much worse negative effects than positive but they look politically good. Experts don't present any reason for them that is backed scientifically as a whole.
Who should we give the right to take away our freedom?
Experts lie, politicians lie and they do don't care. I don't trust them with that much power.
Absolutely cruel and unjust, unless you want to redefine manslaughter’s punishment to perhaps the cost of a couple doctor’s copays. A jury trial would hopefully protect most people by refusing to condemn under such a punitive and anti-social regime.
Humans cannot survive if they reduce social interactions to such a naked transactional level.
Reminds me of that short story in which, in the future, we all pay each other micro-transactions for the dozens of small IP infringements we commit every day.
I’m not saying coronavirus isn’t serious, in case it need be said.
The first couple weeks, I was all "let's stay inside" and "those people are wreckless!" and "ok, those partygoers were egregious, fine them!"
After a few weeks I realized it was mostly to reduce hospital load.
It's been 9+ months now, and it wont end anytime next year. If a government leader thinks they can put pandora back in the box at this point, by taking more liberties away, they're a fool
Well, my home is in SF and I'm just about to go out to get some dinner in Hollywood so you know where I am on this issue but I do understand the need to ensure that personal liberty doesn't ruin society through externalities.
> If a government leader thinks they can put pandora back in the box at this point, by taking more liberties away, they're a fool
I don't think anyone believes they're putting pandora back in the box. Most officials pushing for restrictions are compromising their public goodwill (and [re]electability) to try to save lives.
Liable for what? The virus is a separate agent from humans carrying it, like a background weather condition. It isn’t the person unknowingly carrying it who is causing harm. It also seems arbitrary to assign liability to such an intermediary. If anyone is liable it might be the CCP, for initially suppressing reports of the coronavirus when that information could’ve prevented international spread. Would you support everyone with COVID taking China’s government to international court?
Also where would your proposed approach to managing externalities end? If you want to start tracing the cost of externalities across the board then you have to also do things like start taxing people below certain IQ levels for the externality of being a burden (net loss of utility) on society.
> I think you should be liable for all the illness you cause should you infect anyone.
My entire rationale is that this has shifted to risk management. Can’t I be taught how to minimize the probability of infecting others? It’s not black and white. I can conduct my life and do my best to help my fellow human.
There is no fault here and this shouldn’t remotely suggest “covid transmission insurance”. It’s about making educated, science based risk calculations. Right?
I wasn’t literally suggesting insurance but using it to address concerns of compliance. Liberty is implicit trust that you’ll do the right thing. Can’t we have that?
Most people aren't in a position of choosing whether to go into work or not. Talking about personal choice only makes sense after addressing the debt treadmill that's forcing most everyone to keep churning. Without that, you're fallaciously invoking libertarianism in support of what is really a top-down system.
Killing jobs won’t help debt treadmills, either. It will likely have a cascade effect to many folks.
We know a lot more about covid than we did 8 months ago. It’s reasonable to allow someone to measure their own risk. If that means they absolutely must work I support it. Philosophically I think there’s a great deal of reflection to be done but it shouldn’t force folks who are willing to accept the risk to abandon their routine.
Er yeah, my point is that we at least need to mitigate the debt treadmill (eg suspend all rent and interest) before it's sensible to talk about individuals being able to evaluate their own risk tolerance versus need for income. Ideally we'd slowly unwind the debt spiral in non-crisis times by raising interest rates and letting the various asset bubbles deflate (ie young people could buy houses again). Failing that it would be a long term benefit if the treadmill were allowed to lock up via defaults, although it would be painful in the immediate future.
Realistically there's no political will to do any of this, but my overall point remains about the overarching structure of our society not being one based on voluntary association. Insisting individuals have a choice while they do not is Orwellian tyranny.
Let's not create an either-or strawman for either side on this issue. The fact of the matter is - there has always been and always will be a convenience/liberty <---> safety tradeoff. This is a spectrum. We can all disagree with each other on where the right place is to draw the line on the spectrum - but it is ridiculous to imply that reasonable people can't have drawn their line (for good reasons) in a different place than you.
I agree, but a statement like "I value my personal liberty over all else" is not about finding a reasonable tradeoff.
Furthermore, following that up with "even if science says it increases my risk of contracting a serious virus" means it's not about valuing the health and safety of others, just yourself.
You have probably drawn this line in similar areas in life yourself but were probably not thoughtful about it because the media wasn't shaming you into it.
So he draws his line in a different place. Perhaps he didn't do his full position justice. Maybe he feels like the lost human connection, dress code for your face, forced shutdown of certain businesses, school closures (and online learning) are costs that are not worth the benefit we get. I could hardly blame him. The online communities I follow often seem to be overwhelmingly in support of stricter mitigations, etc. Maybe he feels like he's been yelling into the wind for too long to keep up the nuanced discussions.
For me personally, I likely feel similar to him. From all the data I've seen - the vast majority of people - especially the workforce - have very little to worry about personally. The small (but not negligible) fraction of people that have increased risk can often reasonable take their own appropriate extra precautions. Then there is the even smaller fraction that can't reasonable take the precautions that they feel they need - those are the people we should work to support directly. We should be able to do this without broad, sweeping measures that are just completely not necessary for the direct benefit of most people.
Totally agree. Those who are risk averse should impose restrictions on themselves, not require everyone else to alter their lives. Life after all, carries risks. Anything you do has a nonzero risk. And if normal life is OK during a seasonal flu why is COVID any different? It seems arbitrary to suddenly claim that personal choice and individual assessment of risk-benefit tradeoff is not allowed above some risk threshold. Same for the potential reality of required vaccinations - bodily autonomy is sacrosanct and it should not be violated.
I say this as someone who wears masks, hasn’t been to any gatherings, and is fully vaccinated. Freedom and choice matters.
More power to you. Sustain yourself with your own self-contained air supply in your personal biosphere until the pandemic is over, and feel free to do whatever you want.
Oh.. Look at that. You also appear to be instantly allergic to criticism. Be sure not to expose yourself to any.
It would be nice if an article complaining about not following the science would give some science to back up its central claim that the things it complains about have actually killed people. The article offers no evidence at all that rates of infection or death from COVID-19 were affected by any of the things it talks about.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadWell, I think state corruption was already prevalent before COVID-19, but point taken.
Ivermectin has been shown to work much better, but that will become banned too. If the government gave a damn, they'd be recommending everyone take 5000 IU vitamin D.
It has become impossible to discuss any scientific question for which there is a political angle without being censored. I've seen peer-reviewed publications on Facebook and Twitter, hidden behind "misinformation" flags. Questioning orthodox views (even with well-sourced, rational scientific arguments) is enough to get you banned or blocked on the major social media platforms.
We're in a dark place that I didn't think I'd ever see in my lifetime. If you cannot question science, it isn't science.
It is unfortunate that some people will use freedom of speech to share misinformation, but the alternative -- convincing the public that any form of skepticism is bad, and only the "consensus" is correct -- is unthinkable. Virtually every scientific theory of any impact has been opposed by the "consensus" at one point or another.
https://twitter.com/marcorandazza/status/1327263962799480832...
So I'd say kill the premise instead. Facebook and Twitter should show me things that my friends posted. That's it. If I don't follow someone—or search directly for something—then I don't see it.
There, now you don't need to make tough choices on how to tune your algorithm. There is no algorithm!
Of course, this will reduce engagement and DAU and whatever other metrics they track. But that's a fundamental conflict: earnings vs. neutrality. You can't maximize both.
One of the few things I like about reddit is that downvotes don't hide comments (immediately, anyway).
Look: I don't mind being downvoted. I don't care about karma points. But the HN system is one where downvoted comments are hidden, which is itself a form of censorship. Marginal opinions are routinely buried -- and I'm not even talking about my own. I upvote unfairly grayed-out comments that I disagree with, all the time.
It is deeply ironic, for example, that my parent comment about censorship is now hidden at the bottom of the page, in light gray, because one person downvoted it.
No less simple than someone building it for you while you reject the idea that they might have conditions on sharing it with you.
> I don't mind being downvoted. I don't care about karma points. But the HN system is one where downvoted comments are hidden, which is itself a form of censorship.
Moderating a private property isn’t censorship. It’s not. If HN or FB or whatever controlled your access to basic internet protocols sure. That would be dystopian and would be an example of censorship. You’re just failing to meet social expectations in a community you’re willingly participating in, and experiencing the consequences of that. It’s no more censorship than not being invited to someone’s birthday party.
> It is deeply ironic, for example, that my parent comment about censorship is now hidden at the bottom of the page, in light gray, because one person downvoted it.
That... isn’t how the algorithm works, and I’ve been downvoted enough to know it. You’ve likely gotten a lot of upvotes and downvotes leaving an average of -1 (which is -2 btw, you start at +1), but the volume of downvotes is much greater than average. I don’t know the precise formula but I know with certainty that one downvote doesn’t get me greyed.
Yeah, I get it. That's why I said what I said about all public debate being moved to private property.
"I don’t know the precise formula but I know with certainty that one downvote doesn’t get me greyed."
I don't know, and don't care. The graying out of comments happens quickly, and people use it to hide comments they don't like.
Huh? No one captured you in a web browser and made you go to any website. There’s a whole world out there, go talk all you want.
> I don't know, and don't care. The graying out of comments happens quickly, and people use it to hide comments they don't like.
Yes. You’re not the only person who gets to have opinions. Part of having disagreements is the people who react negatively to your opinions may also want to minimize your opinions’ presence in their life. You’re not entitled to their audience. I mean this sincerely: did you not learn that you can’t demand friendships before now?
HN is a private website of course, and has no obligation whatsoever to provide this level of insight.
Yes, and same for up and downvotes: I'd like to require a selection from a small set of required tags, and for the aggregates to be visible (perhaps with a delay). I'd actually like up and down values to be applied to individual tags - for example, I might add +1 to the "correct" score of a story, but -1 for "rude / unkind" (we could bikeshed the names all day, but I don't think any realistic set would be worse than the zero info you get today when your comment goes grey but no-one has taken the time to explain why)
I'm pretty sure this is what Slashdot used to do?
Yes, that's definitely a community we should emulate.
/s
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25280929
It appeared to be making a factual claim about how MDM works, (and here's where I get subjective) counter to a prevailing narrative in the thread. It's not downvoted anymore, but there was no explanation available (and there still isn't). Was the comment wrong? Did people just not like it? Did they think it was off-topic to what it was replying to, or missing the point? We'll never know. I'd like to know :)
Also, I think a system like I'm proposing would make it easier to find the quality comments and threads, and avoid (if you want to) the controversial stuff, the hot-takes, the me-too comments, the pandering to the HN crowd / tropes - etc...
We didn't have FB, Twitter, Reddit 15 years ago and people could express their opinions. Currently those are being weaponized to subvert our democracy. Right now we have president trying to start a coup and 70M of people don't see problem with that.
You can pretty much find a study or experiment that validates whatever opinion you have. It's not common for our society to immediately react to the result of one study or very few studies by applying them directly to the real world. Science takes time. Yet here we are.
Somehow we went from "masks for the general public are ineffective against fighting covid and most other diseases" to "any piece of garbage you put over your face is effective" almost instantly. I tried finding studies that proved that covid transmission is reduced when people put any piece of material over their face. I couldn't find any and still have yet to find one. They all show that things that may imply masks are effective but not of them show masks are actually effective.
They all seem to be based on the effectiveness of blocking droplets. To the best of my understanding we don't even know if it's airborne yet. Also, why aren't there any older studies? Droplets and masks have been around forever. Why did it take a few new studies to figure this out?
There are also so many other variables that are completely neglected such as the way people handle and wear their masks, how the masks fit, the material used (some studies cover multiple materials but are far from comprehensive), the social aspects like not being able to read someones expression, etc.
Cloth masks are all the rage these days but when you go to buy one none are approved by the FDA and say "not for medical use". Yet we are mandating that people where these things for medical use even though they haven't been proved by the FDA. They have been approved by this magical thing called "science" though. Why even have these government regulatory agencies if we can just bypass them in certain circumstances?
> Governments and industry must also stop announcing critical science policy by press release. Such ill judged moves leave science, the media, and stock markets vulnerable to manipulation. Clear, open, and advance publication of the scientific basis for policy, procurements, and wonder drugs is a fundamental requirement
They way covid policies are communicated is awful. When they change policies they always site science but never link to exact studies. They imply that this is the science they used is the "real" science and that all that matters.
I live in California and we have a site dedicated to covid (like I'm sure most other places do). A couple months ago they put up a "blueprint for reopening" that was supposedly based on science. There are arbitrary tiers that counties go through to determine what's banned. However, just recently, Newsom introduced a 10pm "curfew" and threatened another stay at home order. That wasn't part of the "blueprint". Where is the science for that?
Tens of thousands of people crammed together, yelling and shouting for hours on end? No problem if you’re wearing a piece of cotton over your face!
I wish there was just a little more nuance in the role of masks from our leaders and health officials like, “they help but they don’t make you invincible.”
"The Astounding Physics of N95 Masks" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdanPfQdCA
Masks were not recommended in the early stages of the pandemic in most countries because that would have cut into the limited supply of N95 masks that were prioritised for medical staff.
Then there wasn't much good evidence to show if COVID specifically could be stopped by masks, or if so, what kind of masks help and how much. Thankfully, many research groups took to the challenge and published paper after paper in rapid succession to show that, yes, masks help a lot, even if they're made at home from a t-shirt. E.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNeYfUTA11s
With the pandemic running rampant across the United States, the advice was updated.
This is real world data (more relevant than any study) from Victoria where a mandatory mask mandate for anyone outside their home was abruptly introduced, it's the orange and red stripes toward then end of July. You can can see a very clear reduction with the reproduction rate of the virus shortly after the mandate was introduced. The full effect of masks is probably greater than shown because we were in lockdown at the time, so not a lot of people on public transport.
They certainly aren't a magic barrier, but they do help.
All epidemics follow a natural curve where the pathogen initially spreads exponentially, but slows down over time as R(t) decreases due to the increased presence of population immunity. That creates a natural drop-off, and given that mandates and other "public health" responses tend to occur late in the cycle, it gives the impression that the natural drop-off is attributable to the intervention. It's rarely the case that it truly is. (By the way, if you look when they reverted to orange and then yellow the spread did not pick back up, which supports what I'm saying about this just being the natural epidemic curve)
If we want to talk masks specifically, the evidence that outdoors transmission of COVID-19 is rare anyway, and furthermore the purported mechanism of action of masks only works if (a) large respiratory droplets are the primary transmission mechanism as supposed to aerosol spread, and (b) people follow rigorous protocols to avoid contamination of the mask or from the mask. (b) is certainly not true, and (a) is likely not true when you look at the overall evidence of how viral spread (and specifically SARS-CoV-2) spread occurs.
Indeed, if the primary transmission mechanism is aerosol, masking could and likely would worsen transmission. The logic is pretty simple: masked individuals breathe more deeply to get the same amount of oxygen as an unmasked individual (this has been shown in numerous studies due to the local co2 buildup), meaning masked individuals move a greater net volume of air. Given masks cannot filter out aerosols, that greater volume of air will translate to worsened spread. This is made worse by the fact that when speaking to another individual, you have to speak louder for them to hear you through the mask.
(Sticking with the aerosol reasoning, there is one possible tiny benefit which is the masks still do alter the path of the aerosol; it smokes out and around the mask wearer rather than it being as directed as unmasked aerosol. But it's a very minor effect at best. You can look at any of the many videos of someone hitting a vape and then exhaling out of their cloth mask/surgical mask/bandana and you'll see what I mean)
So, in conclusion, no it's really not as simple as you're alleging, and this type of tenuous speculative post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning is all too common these days unfortunately.
We were absolutely no where near this point, we have one of the lowest infection rates in the world and other interventions (lockdowns) had happened weeks earlier.
> If we want to talk masks specifically, given the evidence that outdoors transmission of COVID-19 is rare anyway
Outdoor transmission may be rare, but this was a political decision so we could get to near 100% conformity
> and (b) people follow rigorous protocols to avoid contamination of the mask or from the mask. (b) is certainly not true
On the contrary, I just posted real world data that clearly demonstrates that mask discipline isn't very important. Maybe it's important under lab conditions but in the real world it's not.
> Indeed, if the primary transmission mechanism is aerosol, masking could and likely would worsen transmission.
So why did the reproduction rate fall and not rise after masks were introduced?
The closest thing I've seen to a controlled study was a Danish one that showed that wearing a mask - everything else equal - reduces your risk of getting it from 2.1% to 1.8%, which is a weak 20% reduction. No study on the efficacy of preventing spread to others. (It's a bit problematic to perform an experiment like this in a controlled setting to say the least.)
I'm sure masks do something, and mask mandates hopefully have a net positive effect, but how large is it? I have no idea.
2) I live in Hawaii which is also an isolated island in the Pacific, and it has a case curve that looks like this: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/hawaii/
The mask mandate went into effect on April 16th, and there's just zero correlation between that and the case curve. It's two weeks after the peak of the initial bump in cases, and apparently the mask mandate and obligatory quarantine for all incoming travelers and everything else in the emergency orders did nothing to stop the much larger peak in July-August. It's also not the case that people have been slacking off, mask compliance is very high.
We were. But this was the only significant change during this period until stage 4 of lockdown started which reduced the reproductive rate further.
We clearly see the reproduction rate drop just after mandatory masks were introduced, in the absence of a better or even half plausible explanation it certainly looks like masks were the cause.
> The mask mandate went into effect on April 16th, and there's just zero correlation between that and the case curve.
As I said, they aren't magic, they won't stop the virus by themselves. You can't just wear masks and go about life as normal, but that does not mean that masks don't work at all.
No, there's a very noticeable drop in social mobility as well in mid-July according to: https://covid19.apple.com/mobility
How do you know which change had the largest effect?
Also, if you introduce a mask mandate, people will obviously change their behaviour, they won't just go on and live their lives exactly as before, but with a mask on. Therefore, mask mandates might reduce the spread not because of the masks themselves, but because they cause people to behave differently.
> You can't just wear masks and go about life as normal
Right, and that's exactly my point, you have no idea how much mask mandates contributes to minimizing spread because it always happen in conjunction with a ton of other restrictions and behaviour changes. Yet you are arguing that masks - in isolation - are so good that it's a no-brainer to mandate them?
That is when stage 3 of the lockdown started and everyone had to work from home, the next big decline was when stage 4 started and more people had to work from home or not at all. This did have a larger effect as the source I posted indicated. This reduced the reproduction rate to about 1.1 and plateaued at that level, weeks later masks were introduced bringing it under 1.
> Yet you are arguing that masks - in isolation - are so good that it's a no-brainer to mandate them?
I'm arguing no such thing, the source I posted indicated that masks would at best slow down the spread of the virus without other measures. That doesn't mean they don't work.
> Also, if you introduce a mask mandate, people will obviously change their behaviour, they won't just go on and live their lives exactly as before, but with a mask on. Therefore, mask mandates might reduce the spread not because of the masks themselves, but because they cause people to behave differently.
This is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how they work, as long as they work. The only question that needs to be answered is "do masks reduce the spread of this virus?" Directly or indirectly doesn't matter.
Factors like this are a great indication of why real world data trumps controlled studies though, you wouldn't see these effects in controlled studies.
Unfortunately I'll have to leave the conversation here because the anti-masker and anti-data crowd on HN have down voted enough to rate limit me.
A mask mandate means that police can now force you to wear a mask in various situations, with fines and possibly jail time if you do not comply.
For such a drastic measure, we need a lot more evidence that masks are a net positive, and such a large net positive that it warrants such a strong measure of violence.
"It can't hurt" is absolutely not enough evidence. "They probably do" is absolutely not enough evidence. Your correlations are absolutely not evidence at all.
It's perfectly fine to recommend them, encourage them, or do information campaigns about them. Let people make their own informed choices. And if you think masks are fantastic, and that people who aren't wearing them are assholes, stay away from those people then! It's so simple.
There really aren't. This was the only major change in that period for 6 million people.
> As one example - was the rate of testing over that time the same?
More or less (https://covidlive.com.au/report/daily-tests/vic). The positivity rate was also quite high during that period, likely obscuring the full effect that masks have.
> That's hardly scientific though.
It's better. What happens in a petri dish doesn't always translate to what happens in the real world.
No, you misunderstand.
Making a claim that the data shows your conclusion to be true is what is not scientific. I.e. your statement is not based on any scientific evidence whether you think it is or not.
It's just an unproven statement.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e6.htm
Whether you think the ends justify the means or not, I think it's a great example of the politicization of covid.
[1]: https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...
Unbiased advice coupled with freedom of movement is really the only thing I can accept. Help me be smart, but don’t tell me what to do under the premise of civil fines.
FWIW I also value personal liberty above restrictions but I do value internalizing externalities concurrently.
I don't know of any society that has had a social contract or laws to this effect, unless a person is maliciously, intentionally, spreading a disease.
The US is also full of people who literally cannot afford to take sick days, which creates a culture of people going to work sick and toughing it out. Even in middle-class and upper middle-class jobs there's a prevalent fear of having to be seen in the office at all cost to avoid being fired.
What you are suggesting is the exact opposite of this, with the addition of being extra cruel against people who are not privileged enough to have a cushy job that allows them to work from home.
It isn't much of a leap, honestly. Few societies permit me to drive drunk for instance, even if I genuinely intend to kill no one. And I assure I don't want to kill anyone ever. I'm a lover not a killer.
If you expose someone to corona on purpose (i.e. you're so drunk you can't avoid people) they likely won't die.
It's not Ebola. And the analogy doesn't fit.
How about speeding? That fits a little better.
Whereas it's possible you may kill a small number of people while drunk in a car- even if we assume it's a bus you are driving and hit several other buses- eventually your vehicle or yourself will have sustained injuries keeping you or it from harming others further.
However you could easily infect who knows how many people since covid is transmissable, and anyone you infected will keep infecting others, every one of which is your fault.
Exponential growth. Not only deaths but possible permanent damage to respiratory, circulatory, and nervous systems.
I agree, do what you want, but I think you should also be liable for the damages you inflict on others. If this means jail time (possibly life if enough are infected and killed), how does that help your 'personal freedom'.
Firstly, yes drunk driving is far more dangerous to the public per incident than a Covid infectious positive case. This is glaringly obvious.
Secondly, you don't need to be immuno-compromised to be killed by a car. I.e. that's a small section of the population.
Digressing: There are many things in society where the risk of injury exists where it probably isn't a good idea to punish the person causing injury.
One problem with drunk driving is that it is illegal. It's not just illegal to kill someone while driving drunk. So no injury is even required.
Yet, being near others in a grocery store with a cloth mask (that does practically nothing) isn't nearly as dangerous and shouldn't be treated as such.
So you're making a point about injury where the law starts way before that, risk of injury. But everything has risk. Playing baseball is risky of the off chance of the ball hitting someone in the head. Less risky, but could kill someone, say someone who was skull-compromised like an infant. Do you want to outlaw baseball games?
That's an obvious "way on the other side of the spectrum" example. Where do you draw the line?
And clearly, drunk driving (driving not even being a right) is MUCH more dangerous than possibly infecting someone with a virus that kills, to be honest, a minority of those infected.
There are other viruses for example that is also transmitted in the same way, kills somewhat less frequently though like the flu.
Do you propose (like drunk driving) that not wearing a mask in public period should be illegal? Because you never know if you're interacting with someone who is immuno-compromised.
Do I need to pay up or am I clear? Maybe getting the courts involved is not such a bad idea.
Intentionally and maliciously is one thing, but there is a level below that, which is well-established: reckless endangerment, manslaughter, etc.
Not wearing a mask in the middle of a pandemic is somewhere within the ballpark of this, and it’s reasonable to enforce and punish it, as we do with other reckless behaviors.
Why stop at Corona? Flu is next.
Then "we" (or whoever chose masks) learn that 70% of mask wearers still get sick (because either masks don't work or because plebs can't be trusted with them) next we need universal vaccination or else we get fined. And if we don't pay fines, jail...
Etc. Etc.
Who decides when we are required to wear masks?
'Rule by expert'?
What, today, is stopping a billionaire from parking nearly anywhere they like and then just paying the fine, over and over? Or, beyond that, the quality of civil or criminal defense you can expect to receive is directly correlated to how much you're willing to pay.
The answer to any slippery slope argument, when asked "when does it stop" is to just choose a point to stop.
(And in the case of a representative Democracy like the U.S., the choice mechanism is well documented if imperfect)
Engaging in this type of discussion leaves the choice of where to stop at the individual level to justify and not swallowing what an expert says today or tomorrow and ignoring all information left out of the communication.
Forcing mask wearing probably won't go anywhere federally. The states is where it becomes a problem.
The elected authorities, whether local, regional, state, or federal, preferably as advised by trained and trusted experts.
> Should we always be forced to wear masks going forward given that we've been made aware of the efficacy?
If that makes sense, as determined by the above answer.
> Why stop at Corona? Flu is next.
If that makes sense. In fact, there would almost certainly be a net benefit to society for the majority of the population to wear masks during flu season, and literally no reasonable downside. But it won't happen, despite making rational, logical sense, because our society can't even get people to wear masks, maintain social distance, wash your hands, etc. during an actual, honest-to-God pandemic.
> Who decides when we are required to wear masks?
See the first answer.
The value of your "slippery slope" argument doesn't seem to be there to me; you seem to have already decided that the buck of mask wearing or public health in general stops at the individual level, ignoring the fact that that's simply not true. Cue rehashed arguments discussing seat belts, nudity, etc. etc.
> Forcing mask wearing probably won't go anywhere federally.
Here's hoping Biden can be persuasive https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/11/joe-bi...
Cloth masks aren't effective yet we're all pretendying, even the experts (who were all laughing at the plebs who were scared before mask mandates, wanting to wear masks and not knowing how to use them) [I'm in a very large medical community and this was the general sentiment before the WHO and Fauci changed their tune]
Experts disagree. Politicians fear blowback so they see who the media are agreeing with and then do that. They aren't rational actors.
And no, mask wearing has many negative effects.
E.g. of Experts and Politicians making mistakes: lockdowns, they have much worse negative effects than positive but they look politically good. Experts don't present any reason for them that is backed scientifically as a whole.
Who should we give the right to take away our freedom?
Experts lie, politicians lie and they do don't care. I don't trust them with that much power.
Humans cannot survive if they reduce social interactions to such a naked transactional level.
Reminds me of that short story in which, in the future, we all pay each other micro-transactions for the dozens of small IP infringements we commit every day.
I’m not saying coronavirus isn’t serious, in case it need be said.
After a few weeks I realized it was mostly to reduce hospital load.
It's been 9+ months now, and it wont end anytime next year. If a government leader thinks they can put pandora back in the box at this point, by taking more liberties away, they're a fool
I don't think anyone believes they're putting pandora back in the box. Most officials pushing for restrictions are compromising their public goodwill (and [re]electability) to try to save lives.
The governor of CA violated his own rules to attend a party while demanding others dont
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/11/biden-covid-advisor-says-us-...
Also where would your proposed approach to managing externalities end? If you want to start tracing the cost of externalities across the board then you have to also do things like start taxing people below certain IQ levels for the externality of being a burden (net loss of utility) on society.
My entire rationale is that this has shifted to risk management. Can’t I be taught how to minimize the probability of infecting others? It’s not black and white. I can conduct my life and do my best to help my fellow human.
There is no fault here and this shouldn’t remotely suggest “covid transmission insurance”. It’s about making educated, science based risk calculations. Right?
If you want to be slightly riskier then your insurance will be more expensive. Or you can go without and be on the hook.
We know a lot more about covid than we did 8 months ago. It’s reasonable to allow someone to measure their own risk. If that means they absolutely must work I support it. Philosophically I think there’s a great deal of reflection to be done but it shouldn’t force folks who are willing to accept the risk to abandon their routine.
Realistically there's no political will to do any of this, but my overall point remains about the overarching structure of our society not being one based on voluntary association. Insisting individuals have a choice while they do not is Orwellian tyranny.
As much as I find Objectivism distasteful, even they agreed the right to throw a punch ends at someone else's face.
It's not about you contracting a serious virus; the problem is you're going to spread it around unknowingly for days.
Furthermore, following that up with "even if science says it increases my risk of contracting a serious virus" means it's not about valuing the health and safety of others, just yourself.
You have probably drawn this line in similar areas in life yourself but were probably not thoughtful about it because the media wasn't shaming you into it.
For me personally, I likely feel similar to him. From all the data I've seen - the vast majority of people - especially the workforce - have very little to worry about personally. The small (but not negligible) fraction of people that have increased risk can often reasonable take their own appropriate extra precautions. Then there is the even smaller fraction that can't reasonable take the precautions that they feel they need - those are the people we should work to support directly. We should be able to do this without broad, sweeping measures that are just completely not necessary for the direct benefit of most people.
I say this as someone who wears masks, hasn’t been to any gatherings, and is fully vaccinated. Freedom and choice matters.
Oh.. Look at that. You also appear to be instantly allergic to criticism. Be sure not to expose yourself to any.