It's the only responsible path forward when so much of the US population is so deeply dedicated to being irresponsible. The intentionally unvaccinated brought this on themselves (outside of legitimate medical reasons remain unvaccinated, which are very, very limited).
Edit: This is clearly an unpopular view, which is sad for a community that seems to like science so much.
Edit x2: Yikes. It's shocking to see the lack of reason and science on HN these days.
Edit x3: What a bizarre world we're living in. Truly depressing to see this kind of anti-science insanity in this community. It's disgusting. Done wasting my time here with this kind of userbase.
Edit x4: primarily for the mods - and frankly - if you want to ban me, go right ahead. You are allowing an unscientific cancer to spread through HN. You should be ashamed.
The guidelines for the unvaccinated (that is, keep masking) haven’t changed, while the immunized are once again being called upon to act. “Asking people to mask up again is triggering a lot of emotional stuff,” Lindsey Leininger, a public-health-policy expert at Dartmouth, told me. “You can’t tell people that those feelings are invalid.”
I'm not sure what point you're going for here, but at the end of the day, when the Delta variant results in 1000x the viral load in the nose/mouth for both unvaccinated and vaccinated folks, the only responsible solution is for everyone to mask.
Had we not ended up in a situation where we're nowhere close to herd immunity because of the anti-vax sentiment through so much of the US population, the Delta variant might never have taken hold like it has. So I stand by my original statement.
The Delta variant came out of India, so the US course of action is of little concern here.
Also, from the very beginning it has been stated that, like almost all respiratory illnesses, covid will become more contagious and less severe over time. Now that it has happened, everyone is pointing fingers.
The reactions to those feelings ARE harmful to children, disabled people, and (yes) the unvaccinated. Even if you don't care about the last group, the first two groups don't deserve to get long COVID, or die, because you had a hard feel about having to wear something over your mouth.
Covid will be here for years, if not forever. So at this point you might as well just admit that we will have to wear masks forever with this argument.
The pandemic is over for people that got vaccinated. For those that can't, they should evaluate their risks and act accordingly.
It isn't over though. People want it to be over, people are acting like it's over, and cases are rising rapidly. Wanting something to be true doesn't make it true.
So why can't we vaccinated let them reap the consequences of their irresponsible actions? Why are we obligated to protect people from their own conscious decisions?
In a world where vaccines are widely available, there is little value in forcing the vaccinated to collectively protect people from their decisions to remain unvaccinated. If anything, it just sows more social discord and ill will in the population that is doing the most good from a public health perspective. If some parent doesn't want their kids to get chicken pox vaccination and their kid gets chicken pox and dies, so be it. They made their choice, I made mine to vaccinate my kids against varicella.
As I've said in another comment, the science is demonstrating that the vaccinated can spread Covid just as easily (though likely for a much shorter duration) than the unvaccinated. And the vaccinated can still (rarely) get severely sick. So it's still a danger to everyone.
Given that reality, the only responsible choice is for everyone to suck it up and wear a mask.
Now had the unvaccinated in the US bothered to get vaccinated, the Delta variant might never have taken hold.
You should, because you can still get Covid from one of those unvaccinated people - and you might die from it, or spread it to someone else who might die from it.
" They made a choice, let them deal with the repercussions"
Oi vei.
You will pay the price along with them.
So long as the pandemic persists, any number of our systems are compromised, especially our healthcare system.
You still have a decent chance of getting COVID even with the vaccine, though it'll likely be mild, you can still be hospitalized and face consequences.
The vaccine is not a 'seat belt' i.e. just an individual action resulting in some individual consequence, it affects everyone.
> Now had the unvaccinated in the US bothered to get vaccinated, the Delta variant might never have taken hold.
That's conjecture. A conclusion from this study[1] is that vaccines correlate with dominance of fitter variants, including Delta. That suggests that it's possible that vaccines allow them to propagate.
"the decline in lineage diversity was indeed correlated with increased rates of mass vaccination. Furthermore, the decline in lineage diversity was coupled with increased dominance of the B.1.1.7 (alpha), B.1.1.617 (delta) and P.1 (gamma) variants of concern, suggesting that these variants may be “fitter” SARS-CoV-2 lineages.”
Well maybe hospitals should start charging more for specifically covid admissions. Nothing like an economic/financial incentive to get vaccinated.
On top of that though, this doesn't seem like a long term concern. Eventually enough people will have natural immunity or vaccinated immunity that it's not really possible to overwhelm hospitals like it was when the virus was totally novel.
Here in America we get sued regardless, its called the bill. Many many many people are effectively uncovered from covid bills regardless of their insurance. My daughters 7k bill from early 2020 says so (less than 1 day of treatment!! No outpatient or take home drugs!!). Now I can't say for sure whether she had covid but she received exactly the emergency treatment I've come to see is used in covid ICU, so the bills ought to be the same.
So we'll update the vaccinations annually like we do with influenza. We can't hope to prevent covid from mutating, it's a game of whack-a-mole that requires a totalitarian state to win at.
The highest rates of mutation have been observed in the immunocompromised, many of whom can't get vaccinated. Add to that the fact that vaccines don't terminate the spread by any means, and there are vast reservoirs of animals and people in the Global South who will never be vaccinated all at once, and the idea that mutations can be prevented by mass vaccination quickly comes into focus as a scientific fairy tale.
It would be nice if Covid was a slow-moving target like smallpox. It isn't.
Over-exposed individuals, collectively, serve as a population where the virus can thrive and mutate over time.
Eventually, a mutation may allow partial or large bypass against current vaccines -- then it is everyone's problem.
In the short term, increasing ICU loads result in less ICU space for others (e.g., those in a car accident). They also drive up group insurance costs, which we'll end up seeing in our premiums in coming years.
There are children who can't get vaccinated and people with immune issues that also can't get vaccinated. Neither of these people are responsible but together they are millions of folks who could potentially be put in danger.
"why can't we vaccinated let them reap the consequences"
Because they won't reap it alone, everyone else will.
COVID is not 'bad' because of the case fatality rate - it's dangerous, but if just a few people had it, it wouldn't be huge cause for alarm.
What makes COVID evil is it's virality.
The contagion means a lot of people get it, a lot of people suffer, and systematically it causes all sorts of lingering problems.
For example - as long as it lingers, pretty much all of Healthcare System is seriously hampered and compromised.
Every person who gets sick or who undergoes some kind of serious thing (i.e. surgery after accident) is going to be 'much more vulnerable to COVID' etc..
COVID is not an individual problem, it's a systematic problem.
That clashes with notions of choice, freedom, and individuality etc. - which makes it a particularly pernicious issue from a Public Safety perspective.
Edit: It's usually evident to me why my comments are downvoted, I should say in this case, especially without any reasonable retort ... I'm at a loss, but I'll triple down on my comment: until smart people get it in their heads that the issue is systematic and mostly not individual - then we're not going to be make progress. It's not a question of 'I Am Vaccinated' - it's a question of getting to 'Effective Herd Immunity' and suppressing the net virality / R0 of the virus. It's an issue that exposes the material fact that we live in communities whether we like it or not, and that this may challenge some of our assumptions about 'liberty' - then take it as an opportunity for a little bit of personal development, but in the meantime, reality is not waiting up, so we have to get with the program together, or face the consequences, together.
Yes but it doesn't explain why we've allowed people to willingly not get flu vaccines or why prior to 2020 we didn't force people with flu-like symptoms to stay home from work or mask up even though flu kills tens of millions over the course of a few decades.
Not everyone benefits equally from vaccination. The elderly, sick, or immunocompromised especially.
Not everyone who's unvaccinated is making the decision themselves. Infants, children, the disabled, and elderly may not be competent (or allowed) to make the decision, and if denied vaccination by an antivaxxer, are put at risk without informed consent.
Vaccines aren't an absolute protection. They seem to reduce rates of infection about 8-fold, and hospitalisation and death by about 25-fold. But illness, hospitalisation, long-term health impacts, and death, can still result.
The longer the disease is around and spreading actively, and the more different individuals it spreads amongst, the more it mutates. Delta is already more effective at breaking through vaccinations than the original Covid virus, and the likelihood of more infectious or more severe mutations persists.
Much of the world cannot yet get vaccinated, and is at greater risk of transmission by Covid spreading elsewhere.
Covid patients use resources and staffing of healthcare workers, first responders, and caregivers which are already overtaxed and which will result in undertreatment of other medical conditions.
The most powerful argument though was made to me elsewhere:
But of course these people weren’t fully informed; they were misinformed. They chose to believe people who lie to them. They trust people who betray them and are willing to sacrifice your lives to score some political points. They are the victims of a massive misinformation campaign that didn’t just start with the pandemic, but started way back in the 1980s. All of America is the victim of that, and much of the rest of the world too, but these people in particular. They are the dupes mobilised and sacrificed as part of the murderous political game that the Republicans and conservative media have been playing for decades now.
> In a world where vaccines are widely available, there is little value in forcing the vaccinated to collectively protect people from their decisions to remain unvaccinated.
Three reasons unvaccinated-by-choice individuals continue to pose a public health burden:
1. Vaccines not yet available for children under 12
2. Economic costs of covid treatment for unvaccinated (including long covid) passed on to taxpayers / insurance groups
3. Increased risks of even more deadly / infectious / vaccine-resistant virus mutations emerging from ongoing spread
1. Some people aren't vaccinated because they're too young, they have some medical condition, or they had the misfortune to be born to anti-vaxxer parents.
There are also other downsides, like people in need of non-urgent treatment getting turned away from packed hospitals, and medical staff who are pushed to the point of exhaustion.
2. This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans.
A lot of Democrats are squeamish about people's deaths, even when it's a result of the person's own informed choices.
If I killed myself juggling chainsaws, many people would say "ha, what a dumbass" - but if somehow Biden came to comment on it, he wouldn't say that - he'd say every death is tragic and his thoughts are with my family.
That, alongside the fact they've spent a lot of time telling their supporters how very important it is to wear masks, means it's unlikely you'll find any Democrats politicians agreeing with you publicly.
And as for Republicans politicians? Well first of all it's their supporters who are dying, they're not going to come out in support of that; and second of all, by maintaining the stance that these deaths are avoidable and a result of the crisis being mishandled, they can use that against Biden at the midterms.
> Some people aren't vaccinated because they're too young, they have some medical condition, or they had the misfortune to be born to anti-vaxxer parents.
Kids being unvaccinated strikes me as a weak argument because they are the least vulnerable demographic on average. Rare medical conditions is also a weak argument because those types of people are exceedingly rare.
> This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans.
Ouch, this really strikes at one of the core issues. In a very real sense, covid could be re-framed as a proxy war for political control, a crisis that has (and continues to be) artificially hyped and prolonged for political advantage.
> Kids being unvaccinated strikes me as a weak argument because they are the least vulnerable demographic on average.
I have heard that, yes.
But I've also heard [1] saying when a Houston 11-month-old presented with Covid, five "major pediatric hospital groups" said they had no beds available, and she ended up at a hospital 150 miles away.
I can understand why a politician might not give two thumbs up to such a state of affairs.
This is an ultra-cherry picked example. How many such 11-month-olds is this happening to? Is this a frequent occurrence or an astonishing rarity? I want to know how many children are being hospitalized after infection per capita. Everything I've read makes it seem like children being hospitalized by covid is around 1 in 100,000 with closer to 1 in 1,000,000 dying from it. Kids are at higher risk just going to a swimming pool. In a nation of 330M+ people, it's not hard to find examples of extreme outliers (just google "kids struck by lightning" for example).
If the vaccines are so fantastic at preventing hospitalizations and deaths, and they've been taken up by the vast majority of the elderly who are most at risk, then why are we still trying to slow the spread of an endemic respiratory virus?
the unvaccinated are filling up hospitals -- would it be ethical to kick out an unvaccinated covid patient and give priority to vaccinated patients (regardless of illness of injury)?
Honestly at this stage if people had the opportunity to be vaccinated and didn’t I’m OK prioritizing care for those who chose to be vaccinated and are sick with non-preventable illnesses.
Triage has lots of ethical questions, this doesn’t seem to be among the most controversial to me. There are patients haranguing doctors for daring to tell them they are dying of COVID. We are exhausting our medical system to care for the uncaring.
If you're polling, I'll go out on a limb and say yes.
Obviously triage is more complicated than that, and acuity is always going to be the dominant factor. But if you have limited resources and have to make hard choices about who gets treatment, I don't see why vaccination status shouldn't be considered.
Every single American adult has had the opportunity to get the vaccine. Any who don't have made a personal decision and there should be no reason to continue mandated masks or lockdowns for any group (vaccinated or unvaccinated).
Children are not contracting the virus in meaningful numbers, and in even fewer numbers are having serious side effects.
The biggest pushers of mask mandates for the vaccinated are other vaccinated individuals. No unvaccinated individual I have encountered has pushed for everyone else to mask up at their behest.
It's not strictly a personal decision when others will be paying for unvaccinated people's hospital bills, or potentially disability income, through insurance and taxes respectively.
19% of new US COVID cases the week of July 29 were in children [0]. Deaths and hospitalizations in children are extremely rare but medium-term side effects, including cognitive effects, appear to be relatively common [1]. It's unclear how long those effects will last and whether they'll be permanent, but the societal impact of a double-digit percentage of children experiencing noticeable long-term cognitive declines would be absolutely devastating.
Children weren’t contracting the virus in meaningful numbers.
The delta variant has changed that and Louisiana had 3,000 child cases in just 4 days. The child death rate from COVID is higher than the child death rate from the flu AND many many more kids will be exposed to COVID than will be exposed to influenza.
Because COVID has many severe effects other than death?
For example long term respiratory system damage. People with long COVID have had diabetes diagnoses at a high rate. This hasn’t had the side effects of a typical respiratory virus.
There are a few cases where they haven’t chosen to - mostly people under 18 whose parents are antivax.
Or elderly people under guardianship of antivax - like my grandma being cared for by my aunt (though I doubt my grandma would have received the vaccine even if she was fully capable of making decisions, from past comments).
There’s also the fact that every cell producing the virus has the chance of making a mutation that will ravage the global poor who cannot receive vaccines because production is limited and the rich are hoarding them.
I am sympathetic to your viewpoint though. If I had a magic wand and could ensure the immunocompromised and others wouldn’t be harmed I’m OK with letting the willingly non vaccinated reap their own consequences.
I still fail to see why people are so vehemently opposed to masks. Yes, they are annoying but is it really that big of a deal? And it's usually not staff that are required to wear them for extended periods that get so upset about them - it's people that have to put one on for a few minutes while shopping. Of all things to be upset about, why is this the hill so many people are determined to die on?
The thing is that actual anti-authoritarianism is quite rare. The litterbug in your example is still choosing their actions based on authority. And most anti-mask/anti-vax seem to be following authorities, but malevolent ones. From a libertarian perspective, a refrain of "freedom" about what is ultimately herd action is a performative fig leaf that burns goodwill towards the general concept.
If the Covid situation were transposed onto drugs, it's as if hard drugs were legal but still discouraged, and we had an entire political movement turning themselves and their kids into junkies just to spite public health.
The problem is - mask mandates are not just in big box stores. If that was the case, most of us wouldn’t give a shit. It’s just that it’s everywhere.
And to make it worse - these mask mandates are preventing a lot of social venues from happening because very few people want to go to some of these social venues with a mask on.
It’ll likely be two years since I’ve been able to go to a social dance by the time we are getting back to “normal”. Tons of events people were planning for September are now back to cancelled indefinitely. People aren’t able to commit to big events anymore because now the government is acting unpredictably and causing a lot of panic among people.
Dancing is a super high risk venue. And btw - people are cancelling these events when they required all attendees to be vaccinated. So, it’s fucking over people who are 100% vaccinated and take plenty of precautions.
I agree very much with this. Many of us rely on facial expressions - both sending and receiving - to improve communication. Its a big loss for some of us and I look forward to masks going away.
I want to see smiles. I can't even tell if someone is laughing at my jokes. Tones are muffled.
They're awful.
And eventually I will just stop.
My time is finite. Eventually I will just experience life how I want to, and stop living indefinitely for some other vague, "we're all in this together" goal.
I take my 2 year old swimming weekly and last week one of the lifeguards didn't wear his mask and he was smiling, laughing and making facial play expressions with the kids. The kids LOVED it. Prior to that when he wore his mask, he looked really scary and pissed off all the time. Sure other culture may cover their faces (I am from Asia myself so it's common to wear them due to air pollution) but coming from that to a Western country where emotions and feelings are valid and starting to be recognized, it's a lot more liberating than what I grew up in.
The question posed was 'why are people vehemently opposed' and the context is 'a pandemic'.
It would be 'vehemently ridiculous' for people to arbitrarily wear masks, but missing your swimming instructors smile is a relatively small price to pay for controlling a pandemic which is still unfortunately ongoing, and which has major consequences.
If wearing masks for 6 more months can materially push COVID
out of business, then the trade off is a 'no brainer'.
The arguments made here seem to really lack context, it doesn't give confidence. We already know wearing masks sucks, that's not the point. The point is wearing them in the context of a deflating but nevertheless persisting public health crisis.
I’ve been in countries with outdoor mask mandates almost since the start of this thing, and I don’t really understand this. How has it become a chore? Don’t you just pick up a mask from a pack or a reusable one as you leave your home? I haven’t noticed any difference in sense of smell, albeit my sense of smell is very keen.
But again, what’s the chore here? It just feels like habit
> Don’t you just pick up a mask from a pack or a reusable one as you leave your home?
> It just feels like habit
That's as close to the meaning of chore as one could expect in a comment, and why are you extending your own experience to others who are explicitly telling you that they find it uncomfortable and a nuisance? I can't imagine that kind of thing working with any other article of clothing but masks seem to have their own special status, even though they affect breathing.
Not smelling some places is a large positive. I really don't miss smelling supermarkets and the stores that insist on odorizing every one of their products.
I get this, but when the alternative is spreading a virus that can have vulnerable people end up on a ventilator or worse... is it not a small price to pay?
My nephew also goes nuts when he is strapped into a car seat, but sometimes you just need to deal with meltdowns and teach kids that they can't always get their way.
> the alternative is spreading a virus that can have vulnerable people end up on a ventilator or worse
We're already at a point in terms of wealth and technology that Amazon could deliver all of our durable goods and nonperishables, Instacart could deliver all of our groceries, and schooling and most jobs can be completed online.
Every family of average or greater means can already afford to buy everything from these two companies.
Every family of below-average means could be supported by a government stipend to enable them to receive goods this way.
We have the ability to build a society where most people leave their homes only a few times per year.
Surely this is just a small price to pay in the fight against a virus that could leave vulnerable people on a ventilator or worse, right?
> I get this, but when the alternative is spreading a virus that can have vulnerable people end up on a ventilator or worse... is it not a small price to pay?
It was a small price to pay in 2020 before there was a vaccine, and I paid it. Now that the vaccine is available I wonder why said vulnerable people are choosing to not get the vaccine and putting undue burden on me and my family and so I tend to think it is is not worth paying that price anymore. If said vulnerable person is unable to get the vaccine for medical reasons... those types of people are exceedingly rare and have always had to be super careful. For them I recommend just sheltering in place indefinitely or something like https://microclimate.com/ in public.
Stupid meme responses like this are counter-productive. Imagine if for a period of time everyone wore masks when necessary and when the time finally came, vaccinated if they are able to. We wouldn't be having this discussion.
But I'm glad the unprecedented nature of this event has given you the opportunity to regurgitate low level quips.
You think it's stupid, I think it's poignant. The situation we're in now was all perfectly predictable. Bad science, bad models, and bad medicine from the jump. The government will never admit it's failures.
My guess is that you couldn't be less qualified to make such an evaluation. The evolution of this pandemic has been something difficult to predict. The only certainty now is that vaccination is the key to moving on.
Where I live it's less than 60% vaccination for adults. Most of the 3rd world is not vaccinated. Vaccinating the entire planet was never a solution to a respiratory virus that will mutate quickly.
The vaccination campaign was always going to be a failure.
> My guess is that you couldn't be less qualified to make such an evaluation.
I'm as qualified as the president or any governor. I'm capable of understanding facts and making a decision like any other person on the planet.
I don’t want to speak for the commenter, but I suspect they are talking about getting the US beyond a 70% vax rate goal and not the vaccine success against the virus. That rate was always going to be a tall order and was made all the more difficult by the politicization around the pandemic and the vaccine along with some of the serious bonehead moves in the last year by the CDC and Fauci.
Basically the US gov made it easy for a couple of groups that were already distrustful of the government to justify their distrust.
> Imagine if for a period of time everyone wore masks when necessary and when the time finally came, vaccinated if they are able to. We wouldn't be having this discussion.
You say this based on what, exactly?
On the contrary, if the general public had more broadly acceded to these mandates they would simply have been cemented in place, and more aggressive ones would have been rolled out already. We'd already have the no-fly lists and hospital bans for the unvaccinated, instead they're having to manufacture the consent for this stuff with a big propaganda campaign.
Unfortunately it hasn't shown resounding efficacy at preventing reinfection or enough breakthrough infections to keep feeding variants. Even with perfect coverage, its likely we'd still have delta and future variants too.
This isn't an anti-vaccination comment. The vaccines are showing great results at what they were intended to do, reducing hospitalizations and deaths.
In cold winters I used to wear a scarf around my mouth while running, which was magnitudes more restricting to breathing than any mask.
I guess most people who complain do it "out of principle" because they want to see themselves as the type of person who cannot be forced to do anything by authorities. Weirdly other believes are really authotarian.
Are you really free when you don't use your own head but reflexively do/don't do something just because you like/dislike the person which says it?
>Are you really free when you don't use your own head but reflexively do/don't do something just because you like/dislike the person which says it?
Not quite sure what is the point you are trying to make. If you ask somebody why they don't want to do something for you and one replies "Fuck you, that's why!" do you imply that this person is not free because he or she denied your request based on personal animosity and not "using own head"? Or is it something else you wanted to say?
The question I ask is simple: If you always do the opposite of what your enemy says you should do, are you more free or less free than someone who decides on their own merits what they wanna do or not?
That is a valid question in this day and age, with a death toll attached.
Nobody always does the opposite though. Nor anybody always does what their friends say. Regardless it's orthogonal to freedom, being free includes being able to always do the opposite of what one's told.
Oh, replace enemy with "government" and friend with "authoritative leader". I am not US citizen and just observe US politics from the outside, but what seems spot on is the way many republicans choose self-harming options just to "own the libs" or do the opposite of what an authority tells them they should do it (e.g. wear masks, get vaccinated).
Sure they will not always do the opposite of what their opposition party says, but the constructive "we don't care what the libs say, we do it because it is the right thing"-topics are kinda rare these days.
I see, you probably should lay off Twitter. JFYI, the "authoritative leader" is advertising [2] covid vaccination (if you meant Trump, as I suspect) and if you find out who does not get vaccinated, you will be surprised, I promise (also if you find out who are the "antivaxxers" i.e. the people against all and any vaccines, not just the covid, then another big surprise's incoming).
As for masking, I for one don't wear a mask because I read the studies [1], I have not heard the "authoritative leader" advertising them one way or another and certainly not because I think they are beneficial for me but I want to own the libs. Can't say for everyone but I suspect a lot of people are like me, not necessarily reading studies but do what they think benefits them.
I don't even have twitter and I don't live in the US.
Also: the consequence of your study shouldn't be not to wear masks, but to wear masks that work (the study just shows evidence for plain cloth masks, which at least everybody on central europe stopped wearing in the second wave).
Also: there are manyfold reason to do something of course. I'd be highly interested in the rational explaination of the GOP policy on all things covid tho (first the virus didn't exist and simulataneously was just like the flu for example). This might not have been the common joes opinion, but watching capa it certainly painted a clear picture
I meant reading Twitter, not writing. You had to learn the things you believe from some opinions, most likely Twitter or people paraphrasing Twitter for you.
> the consequence of your study shouldn't be
Well, you are free to make your own conclusions and I am free to make mine. I repeat myself, but this is an example of people actually "using their head" as you suggested instead of doing the opposite just to piss you off.
>I'd be highly interested in the rational explaination of the GOP policy
Sure, direct me (e.g. provide with a link or some other reference) to the points of the GOP policy you are interested in. Ones that you mentioned do not seem to appear in any GOP policy I could find, to the contrary, "the virus does not exist" had been the topic of the Left in November 19-February 20 e.g. https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/079-20/mayor-d... or is this the old HN's trope "Ah, I am an European so all Americans are GOP to me, that's how far to the left we are in Europe!"?.
> I still fail to see why people are so vehemently opposed to masks.
For me the sense of suffocation is strong and despite dozens of hours in one I have not grown accustomed to it, or even more tolerant of it. It's bad enough that while I'm willing to mask up for an emergency, as a permanent thing I would rather accept a bit more risk of a terrible disease or death. The size of the acceptable risk for me has only grown over time.
Given the number of people who insist on wearing a mask in a way that gives nobody any protection, I'm not alone in this.
If you got vaccinated you did your part. And now you're being asked to wear a mask so you lessen the chance of spreading a disease to people who didn't get vaccinated and could get very sick because of that personal choice. They made their choice and that's fine - but why should the vaccinated (who put an experimental molecule into their bodies for the greater good) now have to carry the burden for them?
You are also masking to protect children and people who have immune conditions that make vaccination less effective/prevent them from receiving vaccinations. That's millions of people who are unvaccinated through reasons outside of personal choice.
All 349 of them had serious preexisting conditions.
(Not to say that each of the 349 isn't a tragedy, only that the coronavirus is unequivocally not dangerous to children without preexisting conditions.)
Also - if you're considering it, please save the "long covid" histrionics. We used to call that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and there's no reason to believe "long covid" is different, scarier, or more prevalent than CFS. I have a strong suspicion that the patient's psychological suggestibility and media consumption are greater predictors of "long covid" than infection.
Breathing is noticeably harder. There's probably some low grade physiological stress when you use a mask. I don't know how people who wear them long term feel comfortable with that.
You need a citation for this? I feel the urge to shift my mask every couple minutes to get some uninhibited breathing in. Without it, I start to get a headache. Why would you think restricting air flow would not cause issues for some, especially those with higher metabolism (i.e. oxygen consumption).
Kids generally have higher metabolisms than adults, which made me feel particularly horrified about the mask mandates in schools. The sad thing is kids don't know any better, and trust older people who are telling them what to do, so there's probably many who feel noticeably worse and don't know why.
> There's probably some low grade physiological stress when you use a mask.
When you inhale, your diaphragm contracts and creates a negative pressure inside your thoracic cavity (relative to the outside atmosphere's 101.3 kPa). This pressure, ordinarily, is proportional to the force with which your diaphragm contracts. Adding a layer of fabric restricts the outside air's ability to flow into your thoracic cavity and equalize the pressure. It's like having a congested nose but being unable to open your mouth to bypass the congestion.
There's also the problem of carbon dioxide buildup within the mask. Your unconscious breathing effort is ordinarily controlled by the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in your blood. Carbon dioxide levels, not oxygen levels, are what make you feel "out of breath". The lungs may hold almost a liter of air, but an ordinary unconscious breath exchanges only a tiny fraction of this. That unconscious breath is so small that a large percentage of it may come from air trapped inside your mask, and your alveoli end up being faced with a much higher percentage of carbon dioxide in the air into which they are trying to exhaust carbon dioxide from your blood.
I'm not opposed to cooperating with more masking out of hand, but I do wonder how effective it is, and what the evidence looks like. I know the support initially for just using any mask at all was predicated on the idea of spread primarily happening via droplets. I believe we now know that the virus is shed and spread by much smaller particles, and I doubt cloth masks or poorly fitted medical masks help much with that. I have a giant box of KN95s that I used in some settings, and I often feel air moving in and out around the sides, and they fit pretty well. I don't want to go through the whole exercise if it isn't actually doing anything useful.
[edit] I'm not sure what people are opposed to here. I am as I said happy to comply with public health measures that work and are supported by evidence.
I could tell you how much blend new human relationships have become in my little bubble since the covid plan has been in place but I don't think that's the gist of it.
The gist of it is the stigma.
People feel marked. Dehumanized. Forced to wear the stuff by people that they don't respect or trust.
COVID is as much a health crisis as it's a trust crisis: people in charge have exhausted their credibility during the last decades of misbehavior, and citizens don't want to wear a mask because the message comes from those they have nothing but disrespect for.
The condescending tone of the citizens than are actually defending masking and vaccinating doesn't help either. I'm vaccinated, but if you call anti-vax names, you are part of the problem.
People have been screwed over for years, covid communication has been fubar, and we are all under a lot of pressure, so be compassionate. They have more chance to join the team if you understand their grudge than if you insult them.
There's a bit of dissonance here, since Americans frequently complain that medical care is so expensive it can bankrupt a family, yet most of those who oppose hygiene measures against COVID don't seem to be wealthy enough to take the risk. It's more like they don't even believe the virus is dangerous.
It’s political - that’s why. The people opposing masks, vaccines, and lockdowns (to the point of non-compliance) are mostly folks who are listening to conservative talking points. And it’s nothing new to know that most of those folks who listen to such talking points typically aren’t wealthy.
In my country most opposed to the vaccines are leftists, and most pro vaccines are right wing. I think the distrust is a better, more general cause that political orientation.
> I still fail to see why people are so vehemently opposed to masks.
In my case it's driven because of a) evidence for their being effective at all is lacking[1], and b) as you rightly put it “they are annoying”.
I'm not sure why I wouldn't be against that. Additionally, I live in Japan where the kind of mask-adherence those back in the west can only have wet dreams about is the norm here, and there's no evidence it's helped here either. You may have noticed the lack of crowds at the Olympics as Tokyo is under a state of emergency due to a wave of cases. Masks just don't seem to have any effect against the delta variant. I'm not surprised.
> I'm not sure why I wouldn't be against that. Additionally, I live in Japan where the kind of mask-adherence those back in the west can only have wet dreams about is the norm here, and there's no evidence it's helped here either.
I don't think that's "no evidence it's helped here either." It's is evidence that masks didn't completely solve the problem. But mitigations aren't bad.
You have to keep in mind that different places have different ideas of what "failure looks like." Many Americans seem to think failure is only when they, as an individual, are personally dying of COVID right now.
I support wearing a mask for individuals who are symptomatic or have a positive test result.
Beyond that, it's likely that mandatory nonpharmaceutical interventions such as masks and lockdowns will be bad for public health in the long run.
Consider the possibility that all the masking and isolation we've done is setting us up for an extremely bad flu season in the coming year or two [1]. We see the same pattern in forest management, where by constantly preventing the small natural forest fires, we unintentionally set the stage for massive record breaking wildfires.
> Beyond that, it's likely that mandatory nonpharmaceutical interventions such as masks and lockdowns will be bad for public health in the long run.
> Consider the possibility that all the masking and isolation we've done is setting us up for an extremely bad flu season in the coming year or two [1].
That logic is frankly messed up. That's like saying better die now, because if don't you're just setting yourself up to die later. In most situations, that extra span of life is worth it.
Even if that's true about the next flu season, it's not an argument against masks. It's a warning not to declare premature victory.
This is not a great analogy, because you don't accumulate susceptibility to disease by avoiding it. Your immune system will work either way. And as long as we continue social distancing and masking, these other viruses will have their R0 reduced at the same time.
If anything, this is a better argument for continuing the mitigations and slowly removing them over time rather than going all in on removing all restrictions like some jurisdictions are doing.
> you don't accumulate susceptibility to disease by avoiding it
But you do accumulate protection against pathogens by being exposed to them.
> as long as we continue social distancing and masking
The source I cited mentions that one of the primary risks is overwhelming medical facilities with huge waves of people who are all sick at the same time with endemic illnesses like the flu, RSV, etc.
> this is a better argument for continuing the mitigations and slowly removing them over time
An idea worth exploring for sure, but I think it will be difficult to achieve practically. At some point in that process there is going to be a majority of people out living their lives and not adhering to the mitigations, which is when the aforementioned consequences of these NPI's will become relevant.
If it doesn't mention testing[1] then that figure is misleading by lack of context. That's only where I'd begin. To really show any impact it would need comparison with a similar population, e.g. one part of Japan with another, not a country the size of a continent with an island whose populace doesn't have an obesity problem.
If you think that highlighting how a statistic is misleading* is moving the goalposts then I'm happy to continually move goalposts, but you might learn or use the definition of "moving the goalposts" correctly in the meanwhile.
If you don't like the fact that the studies show no evidence that masks are of benefit, that's your problem, but don't try and attribute any fallacy to me without providing a damn sight more reasoning and evidence as it gives the appearance of you wishing to smear me to cover up what you lack, a valid, considered, and persuasive argument.
* or worse, being used to mislead, which I don't think was happening from @tablespoon but I wouldn't put it past those who'd jump in with ad hominem and think it was a worthy contribution to the debate.
Also, given how much mass transit the average person in Japan is likely to use and the higher population density on average, it seems like a pretty big mistake to conclude that masks are useless.
I fail to see the causal link you're proposing. Where is the evidence that masks have had an effect on preventing cases?
On the other hand, we have good evidence[1] that obesity levels have a huge impact on cases:
> Professor Rachel Batterham, Royal College of Physicians' lead adviser on obesity, said:
> “The link between high levels of obesity and deaths from COVID-19 in the UK is indisputable, as is the urgent need to address the factors that lead so many people to be living with obesity.
> “With 30% of COVID-19 hospitalisations in the UK directly attributed to overweight and obesity, and three quarters of all critically ill patients having overweight or obesity, the human and financial costs are high.
From just the opening page of the report[2] itself:
> We show that in those countries where overweight affects only a minority of the adult population, the rates of death from COVID-19 are typically less than one tenth the levels found in countries where overweight affects the majority of adults.
> We also show that the drivers of overweight – especially high levels of consumption of processed foods – are associated with mortality from COVID-19.
From the report's country profiles:
Adult overweight BMI >25kg/m2 (2016)
US : 67.9
UK : 63.7
Japan : 27.2
Adult obesity BMI >30kg/m2 (2016)
US : 36.2
UK : 27.8
Japan : 4.3
Insufficient physical activity % adults (2016)
US : 40.0
UK : 35.9
Japan : 35.5
Pulses per capita kg/pa (2014-2017)
US : 3.6
UK : 3.7
Japan : 1.5
Root vegetables per capita kg/pa (2014-2017)
US : 55.5
UK : 88.5
Japan : 24.9
Vegetable oil per capita kg/pa (2014-2017)
US : 19.5
UK : 13.1
Japan : 15.5
Animal fat per capita kg/pa (2014-2017)
US : 3.3
UK : 5.6
Japan : 1.0
Sugar per capita kg/pa (2014-2017)
US : 66.2
UK : 37.8
Japan : 26.9
Sugar energy per capita kcal/pd (2014-2017)
US : 607
UK : 342
Japan : 252
Sugar-sweetened beverage per capita l/pa (2015)
US : 236.6
UK : 124.0
Japan : 144.3
There is much more in that report, it's well worth a read.
This CDC report[3] states:
> Among 4,899,447 hospitalized adults in PHD-SR, 540,667 (11.0%) were patients with COVID-19, of whom 94.9% had at least 1 underlying medical condition
> Certain underlying conditions and the number of conditions were associated with severe COVID-19 illness. Hypertension and disorders of lipid metabolism were the most frequent, whereas obesity, diabetes with complication, and anxiety disorders were the strongest risk factors for severe COVID-19 illness.
Cases are most frequently discovered due to severity of symptoms as being symptomatic will lead to testing. Thus the link between confirmed cases and underlying health conditions is easy to see. It goes on to state:
> The analysis also shows that the total number of underlying conditions is strongly associated with severe COVID-19 illness.
> The percentage of the US adult population known to have 2 or more underlying medical conditions ranges from approximately 38% to 64% by state (12). Previous studies demonstrated that patients with medically attended COVID-19 often had multiple underlying medical conditions (6). However, studies have rarely focused on the effect of the number of conditions on severe COVID-19 illness. We found that the risk of death, IMV, and ICU admission was often incrementally higher with a higher number of underlying medical conditions. Our finding that the number of underlying medical conditions is itself a risk factor for severe disease from COVID-19 identifies a population that has not been clearly described in previous literature.
As I pointed out in another comment, the lack of testing in Japan keeps its number of confirmed cases low (which has seemed convenient given the government's clear desire for the Olympics to proceed), but the country is experiencing a huge uptick in cases right now - is this because of people suddenly dispensing with masks? I haven't noticed it, it's close ...
Because they are little more than theater. They are mainly a social signal at this point. If you:
- fervently wear a mask
it is a social signal that you are 100% on board with any/all government public health mandates.
- fervently don't wear a mask
it is a social signal that you are 100% NOT on board with any/all government public health mandates
- wear a mask depending on if the people around you are wearing a mask
it is a social signal that you don't have strong opinions either way and that you don't want to offend anyone or get called out so you just follow the crowd to blend in
I can deduce whether someone thinks like me based on if they use a mask like me.
Even if they literally, provably did nothing, I'd still wear one out of courtesy to others if it would make them feel more secure. We're still talking about a small piece of cloth, right? It's practically zero cost, and there are no down sides. It's about as much of a hassle as putting on underwear or wearing a seat belt. It's sad that basic courtesy, decency, and the sense of doing something (if only a shibboleth) for your community, have become politicized. Toxic Orthodox Individualism has become a religion.
I felt this exact sentiment for awhile but I've changed my stance. The reason is because for a lot of them they feel secure because everyone is doing it, so this is a real social fear that they have, rather than from the virus itself. People act on groupthink very easily and if masks does not work or work minimally and people stop wearing them, more and more people will stop wearing them as well when they see that it's not a big deal.
I do not wear them outside but I do wear them indoors at grocery stores or small spaces that are poorly ventilated.
Then please also wear a tinfoil hat, that would make me feel more secure, too. I think it reflects the sunlight and thereby prevents global warming, that will otherwise kill us all.
Where do I fit if I wear a mask when I'm indoors because I feel compelled to try to prevent my children, who are ineligible for the vaccine, from catching COVID-19 due to any failure on my part?
Very little, probably, but I don't think anyone can say. I've read the same statistics as you. But our understanding is immature, no?
For example, we're seeing now that young people, who were infected with COVID-19 but who had extremely mild cases / symptoms, are now experiencing / developing so-called long COVID. Here's a piece in the NY Times from yesterday [0] and similarly in Yahoo! News (not behind the paywall) [1] . In addition, pediatric cases of COVID-19 are currently on the rise.
Here's an excerpt:
> An April study by the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics found that 9.8% of 2-11-year-olds and 13% of 12-16-year-olds infected with the coronavirus reported continuing symptoms five weeks later. After 12 weeks, rates remained significant: 7.4% in the younger group and 8.2% in the older group.
That sounds much worse than the flu:
> In another U.K. study, 4.4% of 1,734 children had symptoms more than four weeks post-COVID, over four times as high as the percentage with symptoms four weeks after non-COVID illnesses like flu.
So, this aspect of the pandemic actually is much worse than the flu.
NYT is paywalled, but all articles about it that I have read are a mix of scary anecdotes without statistics ("Johnny was unable to remember his biology lessons" - how often does that happen" and statistics about "x% experience 'such' ongoing symptoms", where "such" is sneakily a mix of severe and non severe symptoms that can be lumped together under "long covid" to make it sound scarier.
Not saying there is no risk, but I wish there were some clearer statistics about it. There should be enough data by now.
I personally think that if there really was a significant risk for kids, it would have been clearly communicated by now.
In my opinion you fall under the first group of fervent mask wearers. The key words being "feel compelled". Group 2 certainly doesn't feel compelled, and group 3 only wears masks around kids if the other adults are also wearing masks around kids, but not because they feel compelled to by some internal source.
But I'm not a "fervent mask wearer." It covers my mouth and nose for 10 minutes while I grocery shop once or twice a week. Because that's basically the only indoor exposure I routinely have to the crowd of people who are both unvaccinated and "fervently don't wear a mask." I don't wear it when I'm with friends or family who are like-minded. I don't wear it when I'm outdoors, including places with medium-sized crowds like the beach this past weekend. Etc.
fair enough, the 3 groups I summarized cover the most general cases I've seen. There is certainly more nuance in real life than can be captured in a HN's comment's worth of categorization.
These categories don't reflect any kind of reality other than maybe at the margins.
Most people follow basic public health policy guidelines, almost everyone begrudgingly so on some level, as nobody actually wants to wear a mask obviously.
Outside of required guidelines, some may wear a little more often than others, surely older people might be more likely, and those who are vaccinate less likely.
That's it.
It's not a social signal or an indicator of anything.
You can't deduce anything from someone's mask unless they are doing something truly awkward like literally not wearing a mask when they are clearly supposed to, or over protecting such as wearing an N100 while alone in a public space. Otherwise, it's just a normal thing we are resigned to doing in certain situations.
I think people are choosing this hill to die on because give an inch, take a mile. I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with a group of people feels like they can force another group to do as they are told, specifically to wear a certain item, or have a certain label. Masks have not been shown to be useful, yet there is a Cabal of people who are absolutely devoted to the idea. I think they have internalized masks as their badge of honor, and get upset that others don’t agree with them.
In short, I think the push to require the wearing of masks is rooted more in personal ego than it is in actual health benefits.
They have been shown to disrupt key aspects of human communication. Personally, I've had friends tell me how much they like that everyone is in masks because they no longer strike up conversations during random encounters, say in the grocery store.
It contributes to a sense of permanent emergency which should be gone by now given that the vast majority of the at-risk population is vaccinated. At this point I don't see the purpose of attempting to stop or slow the spread of an endemic respiratory virus, that is just a fool's errand at this point.
They also probably don't work, or at least not very well. People used to point to the Asian countries that hadn't had big outbreaks as evidence that population-wide mask compliance could work to prevent transmission, but that is no longer the case as they have all had big outbreaks. Even China had to halt traffic in and out of Wuhan recently.
On one hand masks are an easy way to reduce the transmission of pathogens.
On the other hand there are legitimate scientific & public health concerns regarding mass enforcement of nonpharmaceutical interventions such as lockdowns, masks, etc [1].
It's really not clear that mask mandates will be a net win for society if we begin to see the predictions in [1] play out - we'll just have to see how bad the flu season is in the coming winters.
> I still fail to see why people are so vehemently opposed to masks. Yes, they are annoying but is it really that big of a deal?
Because they want to prove that America is weak, because it cannot deal with any serious problem that requires a small personal sacrifice.
Alternatively, they want to prove America is weak, because they want to prove that a bunch of partisan shit-stirrers can turn any issue into a culture-war debacle and that the marketplace of ideas doesn't work.
It's one thing to have to wear masks everywhere before the vaccines became widely available. That was a necessary annoyance to stem the tide, which shouldn't have been politicized. It's another thing after mandates went away for several months because in the US at least, since most adults can easily be fully vaccinated.
Now it feels like a temporary annoyance is being turned into a long term one even after many of us wore masks, social distanced and got vaccinated.
Do you fail to see why, or do you fail to agree? There are many people out there who would be happy to tell you their reasons before you even ask.
> why is this the hill so many people are determined to die on?
As someone who hates emoting facially, I love the mask norm. However it's also important to remember the popular phrase "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." This phrase is popular because it expresses the way many Americans, including myself, treasure freedom above all else, so any sacrifices of freedom should be done slowly or not at all if possible. Compulsory mask-wearing is as anti-freedom as compulsory haircuts (Chinese queue, Russian beard tax). Your argument is insincere or uninformed because it can be used to justify huge changes in society by singling out a minor facet of a larger issue, calling it a tiny hill that's not worth dying on, then moving on to another minor facet, until the whole landscape has been traversed.
> However it's also important to remember the popular phrase "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." This phrase is popular because it expresses the way many Americans, including myself, treasure freedom above all else, so any sacrifices of freedom should be done slowly or not at all if possible.
That's a bad quote to reason from. The key word there is actually "essential" and is left totally undefined. This also demonstrates America's Achilles' heel, because that sentiment can easily be twisted into an argument against any kind of responsibility or sacrifice.
I know many non-Americans, and the pandemic has disillusioned them towards America. They used to admire it a lot, but now they've seen so many Americans use liberty-rhetoric to justify acting in stupid and selfish ways that they think much less highly of it and those so-called ideals. America was supposed to prove the value of its ideals by being better at handling the pandemic than other countries, instead it's used those ideals as a justification for its failure, which is not a good look from any angle.
I work in an office with a 100% vaccination rate, and yet we've recently been instructed to wear masks at all times. Wearing a mask 8 hours a day is very uncomfortable, the benefit is likely extremely marginal at best, and the policymaking class pushing this nonsense is off partying maskless at Obama's birthday party, because they're "sophisticated" enough to make their own decisions. The whole situation is just very frustrating.
Masks suck, but they are necessary, I get why people would complain about them. Vaccines, on the other hand, are super easy to get, just a couple of pricks. I really don't get the people who don't do that!
I personally wish cars could be factory-optioned with 5points as I don’t find them uncomfortable, prefer to be held into the seat as it feels more secure for fun recreational driving, and the extra safety is nice.
I’d have one in my sports car but unfortunately the factory hasn’t made it easy to fit. Doing it properly requires new racing seats and a full custom roll cage. It’s easily >$10k worth of work.
> I still fail to see why people are so vehemently opposed to masks.
Masks are a proxy, standing in for all the other ways non-pharmaceutical interventions are disrupting our lives.
After all, it'd be absurd for me to wear a mask while sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers in a packed theatre. A world in which I must wear a mask is a world in which I must not go to the theatre.
It's understandable that people are salty about the loss of concerts and music festivals and exercise classes and knitting groups and nightclubs and mass transit and dating and fine dining and protests and tourism and visiting friends and gyms and casual sex and theatre and nonessential flights and the entire college experience.
im opposed because as a parent of young kids i feel the risks to them from covid are much lower than the risks to their mental health growing up in this dystopian mask world. children need to see other human faces as part of their normal development, mandatory masks in schools seems cruel to me. it makes me really sad when i see parents making their kids wear masks at the beach and other pointless displays, or even worse the parent with no mask but forcing their kids to wear them. how are these kids going to turn out in 20 years?
Because (at least in the US) leaders and experts waffled on the efficacy and necessity and in some bizzaro world logic decided to make masking a political virtue which polluted all hope of it being taken seriously by many as a scientifically feasible method for combating the pandemic.
That's not for the wearer's benefit, in this case, the wearer being the vaccinated. The article even states that. This is to stop community transmission for those who remain unvaccinated.
I don't like that as much as the next person, but if I'm visiting a hospital or a nursing home anytime soon, i'll mask up.
At least one of those vaccines are reportedly around 80% effective, so if you got 100 vaccinated people in the party then its about as bad as 20 unvaccinated people partying.
If a celebrity many different people per week, 20% vulnerability is still a lot. Its better than no protection, but still put the person at a pretty high risk.
High risk of what? We all know you can get covid if you are vaccinated, it's a matter or the impact to you. If you are vaccinated, your odds of not getting severely ill and/or dying is significantly reduced.
A primary reason why covid restrictions exist around large gatherings is the threat of overloading the health care system.
Parties like the above can be problematic in a time of an pandemic even if one disregard covid. Any illness that can spread has the risk of causing additional stress on the health care system. I know for example some sport activities which has decided to reduce activity on the ground that the sport has the potential of accidents which would then put unnecessary pressure on an already heavily pressured health care system.
I'd say, anyone who doesn't want to catch and/or spread COVID. The delta variant is infecting people who have the vaccine. They have an easier time with it thanks the vaccine, but like a condom, it's not 100% effective at preventing transmission.
Data point: I'm fully vaccinated, and I'm wearing a mask out in public.
A 3M silicone half-face respirator and P100 filters costs a mere $50 even with pandemic pricing. It fits much more comfortably, has no leaks, and doesn't fog glasses. We're 18 months into this pandemic. It boggles my mind that ersatz cloth masks are still the baseline, and annoyingly-tight N95s are seen as the nicer option. Upgrade your EQ.
Because half-face respirators make it you look like you are in a chemical weapon warzone? Also why pay $50 for something a free vaccine protects you from 100x better?
Masks and vaccines are orthogonal. Staying at home protects me infinitely times better than masks or vaccines, but yet I can't rely on that completely either. I stopped mask usage with friends and family, but see absolutely no downside of continuing to wear a mask in stores.
Others' perceptions of me are arbitrary and socially defined, and who is so worried about fitting in at the grocery store? If people were grounded in any type of reality, they'd realize that a chemical warzone requires, at minimum, a full face respirator and chemical cartridges.
> If people were grounded in any type of reality, they'd realize that a chemical warzone requires, at minimum, a full face respirator and chemical cartridges.
This gave me a chuckle. I don't think that is common knowledge in this day and age. Does make me wonder if covid can infect through the eyes. Ill make sure to engage my safety squints.
It was never common knowledge. It's a little anti-social to suggest that it's 'common sense' in any way that people would know how to react in a chemical warfare situation.
Anti-social in the sense that implies a lack of understanding of common social knowledge and behaviour.
Staying at home doesn't protect you unless you live in total isolation, and most people don't. 'Family' is in fact a primary vector of spread.
Wearing N100's is also not remotely feasible all of the time, nor will it entirely protect you.
The vaccine gives you almost 100% prevention against death and is by far the best protective measure and it largely frees you from worry, concerns over unwittingly infecting others, and reduces the need to do things like 'total isolation' and 'wear n100 all of the time'.
"If people were grounded in any type of reality" ... there's no reason for anyone to have a realistic understanding of what living in a 'chemical warzone' would be.
Get a vaccine, keep some degree of social distancing, be prepared to wear an n95 sometimes, don't go inside to events with large numbers of people ... if everyone does 'mostly' that we'll be 'mostly fine' over the coming months and can 'mostly' get on with our lives.
Why the heck is this comment getting grayed out? Are people down voting it?! Like literally same. I'm fully vaccinated. I don't want to get sick. I don't want a tiny bit of getting sick. I don't want to be possibly asymptomatic and spread it to people I care about or literally anyone.
Prior to covid, it was estimated that 3% of the population were immunocompromised.
Genuinely curious - Did you wear a mask prior? Would you continue to wear a mask past the epidemic, even for the rest of your life, to protect the 3% vulnerable?
COVID is dangerous to more than just the immunocompromised. It's more dangerous than the flu. This has been documented repeatedly by the scientific and medical community.
Reacting to COVID differently than you react to the flu, or a cold, is a wholly reasonable response.
Not only that but there's the phenomenon of long haul COVID which we don't know much about. Loss of smell, everything literally tasting like shit and making you sick whenever you eat, brain fog - some people have been battling this for months. We don't know enough to know if it'll ever go away. For some people it has, for others it hasn't. We don't know if the vaccinated who get infected will still suffer from long haul COVID. We just don't know.
All I know is brain fog is a career killer and my quality of life would decrease significantly if everything I ate tasted absolutely foul and disgusting. Seems a reasonable precaution to continue wearing a mask when out in public even though I'm completely vaccinated. Note that's a purely selfish argument for the vaccinated to continue mask wearing. The fact I may be saving someone else's life is additional incentive.
They should be worn by people who are symptomatic or have tested positive, to reduce transmission of the virus.
Beyond that, it's not clear that mass enforcement of nonpharmaceutical interventions - ie masks, lockdowns, etc - will be a net win for public health. For example, the next winter or two could present a very bad flu season, all due to the mass isolation and hyper-sanitizatoin we've come to be familiar with through the pandemic [1].
The flu has been nearly absent in 2020/2021 exactly due to nonpharmaceutical interventions. There's no reason to think other viruses aren't similarily impacted.
There are various studies demonstrating the effectiveness of masks even for those not infected.
Actually thats inaccurate but wholly inline with the media BS. Schools cannot impose mask mandates without funding risk. You are allowed to wear a mask.
I am pretty sure even with a mask mandate, you are not going to get a snotty elementary school kid to wear a mask in a way that provides any protection to those around them.
So even a school mask mandate is entirely useless.
I'm vaccinated. I social distance. I have good personal hygiene. I've made efforts to mitigate the risks to my family and others we might encounter.
I respect your right to decide for yourself. I respect a brick-and-mortar business deciding it would only prefer to serve people who wear masks. I respect a workplace defining whether its employees should wear a mask (while providing reasonable accommodations to those would prefer otherwise).
But I have genuine doubts about the efficacy of the masks that are widely sold, used, and accepted. When I see selective enforcement and selective outrage, it's hard not to see so many of our government leaders as blatant hypocrites. When I see absolutely no sense of humility from our policy makers on what they actually know and don't know, it's hard not to completely lose trust in their leadership. And then, when so many peer appeals to mask or vaccinate don't come from a place of genuine concern or care but of a "you are irresponsible and brought this on yourself" or "you deserve to be punished", it's as if many are desperate to confirm the worst stereotypes that they are just authoritarian nannies.
And as a result of all that, it's difficult not to have an impulsive response of 'mind your own business'. I'm open to data. I'm open to discussion. But those who only bring condescension can go **** themselves.
Vaccines drive the evolution of more virulent covid strains. Vaccinated people infected with delta have measurable viral loads similar to those who are unvaccinated and infected with the variant. They don't get as sick but spread the virus nearly as well as unvaccinated folks. The spreading rate is correlated with the mutation rate.
A good mask, N95 or above, can prevent covid transmission and contraction. Cloth and surgical masks on the other hand are like trying to stop mosquitos with a chain link fence.
People that have the vaccine and walk around indoor spaces without a mask are actually causing their own eventual demise, as they will be giving the virus hosts (themselves included), allowing the virus to mutate to its next more virulent form that vaccines have no chance against.
I know it's painful to wear a good mask as you cannot show off your pretty face. Do it for your country, for Biden and for our hero Fauci. :-)
Vaccinated people must be required to wear masks to prevent the transmission of more virulent strains.
Unvaccinated people, because they would be homebound (or killed) by the more virulent strains, must be allowed to go about their business maskless. This way, we'll achieve herd immunity by spreading less virulent strains around. Sort of like an airborne live attenuated vaccine.
Question out of genuine curiosity - would you be willing to wear a mask if you happened to be infected again (ie wear a mask for some time after you were symptomatic and/or had a positive test)?
IMO that's a situation that deserves masking, but perhaps the other rational you mentioned is a stronger factor in your decision.
I wouldn't mask in that situation, I'd quarantine. If I were knowingly exposed to Covid I'd quarantine until both time and testing determined I was not sick.
Covid is undoubtedly serious and responsible people should take measures in cases where they are a genuine risk to others. But it is unscientific, immature, and stupid to simply assume people are a risk despite any evidence to the contrary.
These statements sure seem to be in conflict, so I'm genuinely curious: Are you, though? Open to discussion?
You seem to have made up your mind. You've decided you won't believe "government leaders". You won't believe "policy makers".
I'm going go ahead and guess, based on the tone of your comment, that you are similarly distrusting of information from the medical community.
That would seem to rule out any and all potential sources of data that might demonstrate "the efficacy of the masks that are widely sold, used, and accepted" (e.g. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 - "The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce Re to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained.").
So... are you really open to data and discussion? Or are you just saying that because it seems like the right thing to say?
And no, I'm not trying to be a snide smart-ass. I'm trying to reveal what you're actually thinking and feeling. Because I'll be honest, I don't think what you've written here reflects your actual, deep-down feelings on the topic.
I'm going go ahead and guess, based on the tone of your comment, that you are similarly distrusting of information from the medical community.
Tone? Your Hacker News clearly works in ways mine does not.
I socialize with a number of physicians, surgeons, and medical professionals. I seek medical help and advice when I'm sick. I seek medical help and advice when my kids are sick. I pursued a vaccine expressly because those same medical professionals were vaccinated themselves. But I also don't believe a physician has some magical ability to discern truth that other intelligent people cannot.
I also trust the science of the efficacy of masks people are wearing. I trust the science that examines how the way they wear their masks sabotages any utility they might provide. I trust the science that suggests there are negative psychological and sociological consequences to an entire society not able to see the faces of their peers.
I trust the science that suggests, despite breakthrough cases, the vaccines don't have unmanageable side effects and work as intended. I trust the data that has revealed of 100 "breakthrough" Covid deaths in Massachusetts, the median age of those who died is 82.5 and ~75% had underlying issues. I trust the data that has revealed of the ~9000 who have died of Covid here in Texas since February, only 43 were vaccinated.
I trust that masks and distancing have clearly had positive side effects to limit the spread of other illnesses, such as the flu. My children have all had RSV since society mostly opened back up but not before (talk to a pediatrician - it's particularly nasty this year and is spreading in the summer months unlike it has in memory).
But I also trust my eyes that have seen states and communities with draconian lockdowns faring no better (or worse!) than states and communities that are largely open. Here in my community some schools required everyone to mask. Others, not at all. And neither fared measurably better or worse than the other. And given all that (and more), I've come to the conclusion that it is unlikely that masks make much of a difference.
And above all else, I trust that you know better how to keep yourself and your family safe than I do. And vice-versa.
Because I'll be honest, I don't think what you've written here reflects your actual, deep-down feelings on the topic.
Careful everyone! We've got a mind reader, here!
Seriously though, I know it's tough to resist the arrogant urge to compartmentalize all the wrongthinkers into stereotypes. But resist anyway, because it makes you seem like a condescending, dishonest, disingenuous investigator who is just building a strawman.
Or are you just saying that because it seems like the right thing to say?
Right thing to say? I don't even know what that means. I said what I genuinely believe. I've even attached my name to it. I've changed my mind on many subjects when presented evidence to the contrary - it's a useful skill when you solve problems for a living.
It's a shame, because masks are so much less effective than vaccination. Last I saw, vaccination was 70% effective against the Delta variant. Masks reduce transmission by a paltry 10-20% or something even less. If we could just get everyone vaccinated it would make R much less than 1.0. But getting anti-vaxxers to wear a mask when vaccinated people don't have to is going to be impossible...
As it is, with vaccination rates so low, I expect COVID is going to be forever. I don't mind wearing a mask to protect unvaccinated people and help out our medical professionals keep numbers down. But, it's going to be rough. I was so happy, I thought we were done.
If we could just get everyone vaccinated it would make R much less than 1.0.
I'm curious if we know this for a fact. We started out with attainable numbers for herd immunity (which I think is pretty much equivalent to R<1). But that was based on an apparent overestimation of the sterilizing immunity of the vaccines. The alternative appears to be an endemic virus with occasional booster vaccinations for certain populations.
We require about 80% vaccination or recovered from COVID to achieve herd immunity. Right now we have 50% vaccinated and 10% confirmed cases. The more infectious Delta variant has skewed it more towards a 90-95% requirement. This means that before we reach herd immunity we need to either vaccinate or infect an additional 20% of the population at least.
I think a big factor was July 4th. Summer vacation kept cases low until now. Then the big family gatherings really ramped things up. Now we're going back to school soon.
Vaccination reduces transmission but not 100%. Notice I said 70-80% and not 100%. I don't think anyone expected it to be 100% effective at preventing breakthrough infections.
I'm hoping we don't have to eat that additional 20% with regular infection. Delta is NASTY.
I mean, if the numbers are right (they match what I'm reading here in Europe), I suppose we're lucky, because it's totally possible that given a slightly more contagious virus or a slightly higher rate of vaccine breakthrough that even at 100% vaccination/infection rate there is no herd immunity.
On the other hand, if immunity decreases over time, we might need something like 90-95% vaccinated or infected during the past 3 months (just as an example).
I'm not sure that we know where along those dimensions we are.
Also, the more infected we have, the more likely another new strain will come up that is even worse than Delta. Unfortunately with the current international COVID numbers this is almost inevitable. Hopefully we can delay it in time to create boosters. However Delta hit us so fast there was no chance. Luckily the current vaccine is still pretty effective against Delta, even if it is a bit limited.
What i’m worried about is social distancing. Online school. Making it harder to meet people. Cancelling and postponing events. Even large gatherings of vaxxed individuals. And honestly, needing to wear masks at said gatherings.
Correct me if i’m wrong, but the chance of a large vaxxed party causing someone serious illness or significantly spreading the virus to the unvaxxed is still very low. From what i’ve heard, Delta does infect vaccinated people but it’s usually mild.
Moreover, if you ban these sorts of events you’re probably banning them long-term. Humans are social creatures, and it’s one thing to minimize social interaction for a year to save lives, it’s another to minimize for years (someone’s entire adolescence), especially when you’re not saving many lives anyways.
Honestly, i’m an introverted person, i don’t even like crowded parties. But i feel for people who do. Moreover, if schools / colleges stay online or even hybrid it’s going to hurt students’ education and social development. If jobs are online and vacations are cancelled it’s going to make finding and maintaining friends as an adult harder, and afaik that’s already hard. Some things really are better virtual (e.g. virtual meetings), but some are effectively useless.
It looks like right now this isn’t an issue, since i see events like lollapalooza and cruises which require proof of vaccination. And schools are starting in-person (although i’m worried for those under 12, the FDA should really approve the vaccine asap). But yeah, masks aren’t much of an issue, this is much more concerning.
off topic: This post seems like an inappropriate one for HN. Scanning through the comments here, it seems like some kind of downvote brigading is happening on this thread. Comments, replies to comments and their replies are all being downvoted.
It's a very controversial topic, and downvoting to indicate disagreement is allowed. Seeing so many downvotes under these circumstances is not that surprising, is it?
I was under the perception (new to HN) that downvotes are for when someone's comment does not add value to the conversation (eg. memes and name calling). Downvoting something you disagree is dangerous because it'll feed those that truly believe that to believe it even more (being silenced). Instead of downvoting we need to dedicate time to reason through why x is misinformation and walk through how you get to your conclusion. Sure not everyone has the time for that but also because no one is willing to dedicate time for that, we have this quick easy divisions with no explanation.
Your perception is incorrect. You are certainly not alone in wanting downvotes to be different, but the current policy is that downvotes for disagreement are allowed.
I see, thank you for clarifying. That's kind of unfortunate because I feel that just because everyone feels one way doesn't mean that it is the truth. Sometimes when I don't have an opinion yet on a certain controversial topic and I go to a forum with no upvote/downvote system (very rare it exists), it lets me start with a un-biased ground and read critically into each person's pov.
I think it's time to seriously think about putting the same amount of effort into non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) development as we put into the vaccines. As inspiration, note that parts of the US are have environments that can support malaria; malaria can spread very aggressively when conditions are favorable [1]; and that malaria used to be a major public health threat in the US. It is not anymore, despite the fact that there is no vaccine, because of NPI's. It was initially beaten back using NPI's and has been controlled using NPI's ever since [2].
What if we had an affordable, comfortable mask that worked so well that you have no practical chance of contracting an airborne virus while wearing it? I get that current N95 and surgical masks are not that, but I don't see why it would be impossible to create one within the physical laws of the universe, especially if you put power and air supplies on the table. Scuba gear and air-supplied biohazard suits seem to be existence proofs, the question is whether they can be made practical.
If everyone had such a mask, we would have a new strategy available for controlling delta and any other variant that emerges in the future: everyone could mask up full-time when outside the house _for a limited amount of time_ until transmission drops to a low level. From that point, local outbreaks could be controlled by local bouts of masking, plus aggressive testing and contact tracing.
I get that anti-masking would be an obstacle, but part of the difficulty has been messaging risk and uncertainty to people who start from a skeptical place. A mask that _positively_ protects the wearer, and that can remove the need for restrictions within a finite, predictable time, would be an easier sell, especially after the strategy is seen to work once or twice.
An interesting idea but this is a massive PR battle you'd have to win. At least 50% of the poplulation will scream at the idea of mandatory government-issued masks (even if they were billed as "super masks that protect you from all harm"). I suspect if you put it to a vote right now, more than 50% of the population would agree with the following phrase:
"I feel that being vaccinated is good enough criteria to stop wearing a mask or social distance"
The problem is that the goalposts keep shifting with this pandemic. Biden said earlier that if you got vaccinated you wouldn't need a mask any more. That was true for maybe 1 month here in Maryland. Goalposts have since shifted. What is the endgame? Nobody seems to know. It's just a nebulous incoherent mixture of random arguments involving protecting the unvaccinated, preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed, protecting children and immunocompromised, preventing covid from mutating, etc. Heavy handed public health policies aren't free. You might accomplish some public health goal, but at the cost of increased social discord, decreased citizen morale, increased mistrust of the government, increased illwill toward the government, or other factors which could have far worse long term consequences.
This is an interesting idea but the mass enforcement of NPI's is likely to have second and third order consequences for public health that may actually weaken our collective immune system [1].
So while the masks will reduce transmission of COVID-19, it will also reduce the transmission of other endemic illnesses like the seasonal flu. And while you might think that's a good thing, it's likely to backfire as we set the stage for massive outbreaks during the flu season, which puts further pressure on limited healthcare resources, and so on.
The same patterns can be seen in forest management, where by constantly putting out all the small natural forest fires, we set the stage for record breaking wildfires that cannot be contained.
228 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 233 ms ] threadEdit: This is clearly an unpopular view, which is sad for a community that seems to like science so much.
Edit x2: Yikes. It's shocking to see the lack of reason and science on HN these days.
Edit x3: What a bizarre world we're living in. Truly depressing to see this kind of anti-science insanity in this community. It's disgusting. Done wasting my time here with this kind of userbase.
Edit x4: primarily for the mods - and frankly - if you want to ban me, go right ahead. You are allowing an unscientific cancer to spread through HN. You should be ashamed.
The guidelines for the unvaccinated (that is, keep masking) haven’t changed, while the immunized are once again being called upon to act. “Asking people to mask up again is triggering a lot of emotional stuff,” Lindsey Leininger, a public-health-policy expert at Dartmouth, told me. “You can’t tell people that those feelings are invalid.”
Had we not ended up in a situation where we're nowhere close to herd immunity because of the anti-vax sentiment through so much of the US population, the Delta variant might never have taken hold like it has. So I stand by my original statement.
can you provide a reference for this?
https://www.google.com/search?q=delta+1000x+viral+load
Also, from the very beginning it has been stated that, like almost all respiratory illnesses, covid will become more contagious and less severe over time. Now that it has happened, everyone is pointing fingers.
The reactions to those feelings ARE harmful to children, disabled people, and (yes) the unvaccinated. Even if you don't care about the last group, the first two groups don't deserve to get long COVID, or die, because you had a hard feel about having to wear something over your mouth.
The pandemic is over for people that got vaccinated. For those that can't, they should evaluate their risks and act accordingly.
It's well known most people judge risk emotionally rather that rationally. We still need to get out of bed in the morning however.
In a world where vaccines are widely available, there is little value in forcing the vaccinated to collectively protect people from their decisions to remain unvaccinated. If anything, it just sows more social discord and ill will in the population that is doing the most good from a public health perspective. If some parent doesn't want their kids to get chicken pox vaccination and their kid gets chicken pox and dies, so be it. They made their choice, I made mine to vaccinate my kids against varicella.
Given that reality, the only responsible choice is for everyone to suck it up and wear a mask.
Now had the unvaccinated in the US bothered to get vaccinated, the Delta variant might never have taken hold.
Oi vei.
You will pay the price along with them.
So long as the pandemic persists, any number of our systems are compromised, especially our healthcare system.
You still have a decent chance of getting COVID even with the vaccine, though it'll likely be mild, you can still be hospitalized and face consequences.
The vaccine is not a 'seat belt' i.e. just an individual action resulting in some individual consequence, it affects everyone.
That's conjecture. A conclusion from this study[1] is that vaccines correlate with dominance of fitter variants, including Delta. That suggests that it's possible that vaccines allow them to propagate.
"the decline in lineage diversity was indeed correlated with increased rates of mass vaccination. Furthermore, the decline in lineage diversity was coupled with increased dominance of the B.1.1.7 (alpha), B.1.1.617 (delta) and P.1 (gamma) variants of concern, suggesting that these variants may be “fitter” SARS-CoV-2 lineages.”
[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v...
On top of that though, this doesn't seem like a long term concern. Eventually enough people will have natural immunity or vaccinated immunity that it's not really possible to overwhelm hospitals like it was when the virus was totally novel.
It would be nice if Covid was a slow-moving target like smallpox. It isn't.
Eventually, a mutation may allow partial or large bypass against current vaccines -- then it is everyone's problem.
In the short term, increasing ICU loads result in less ICU space for others (e.g., those in a car accident). They also drive up group insurance costs, which we'll end up seeing in our premiums in coming years.
Because they won't reap it alone, everyone else will.
COVID is not 'bad' because of the case fatality rate - it's dangerous, but if just a few people had it, it wouldn't be huge cause for alarm.
What makes COVID evil is it's virality.
The contagion means a lot of people get it, a lot of people suffer, and systematically it causes all sorts of lingering problems.
For example - as long as it lingers, pretty much all of Healthcare System is seriously hampered and compromised.
Every person who gets sick or who undergoes some kind of serious thing (i.e. surgery after accident) is going to be 'much more vulnerable to COVID' etc..
COVID is not an individual problem, it's a systematic problem.
That clashes with notions of choice, freedom, and individuality etc. - which makes it a particularly pernicious issue from a Public Safety perspective.
Edit: It's usually evident to me why my comments are downvoted, I should say in this case, especially without any reasonable retort ... I'm at a loss, but I'll triple down on my comment: until smart people get it in their heads that the issue is systematic and mostly not individual - then we're not going to be make progress. It's not a question of 'I Am Vaccinated' - it's a question of getting to 'Effective Herd Immunity' and suppressing the net virality / R0 of the virus. It's an issue that exposes the material fact that we live in communities whether we like it or not, and that this may challenge some of our assumptions about 'liberty' - then take it as an opportunity for a little bit of personal development, but in the meantime, reality is not waiting up, so we have to get with the program together, or face the consequences, together.
Would you believe there’s literally an entire field of study about this called “Public Health”? You can do a Masters in it and everything
Would you believe that that's _exactly_ the kind of things that Public Health professionals and academics _do_ debate and try and explain?
Not everyone benefits equally from vaccination. The elderly, sick, or immunocompromised especially.
Not everyone who's unvaccinated is making the decision themselves. Infants, children, the disabled, and elderly may not be competent (or allowed) to make the decision, and if denied vaccination by an antivaxxer, are put at risk without informed consent.
Vaccines aren't an absolute protection. They seem to reduce rates of infection about 8-fold, and hospitalisation and death by about 25-fold. But illness, hospitalisation, long-term health impacts, and death, can still result.
The longer the disease is around and spreading actively, and the more different individuals it spreads amongst, the more it mutates. Delta is already more effective at breaking through vaccinations than the original Covid virus, and the likelihood of more infectious or more severe mutations persists.
Much of the world cannot yet get vaccinated, and is at greater risk of transmission by Covid spreading elsewhere.
Covid patients use resources and staffing of healthcare workers, first responders, and caregivers which are already overtaxed and which will result in undertreatment of other medical conditions.
The most powerful argument though was made to me elsewhere:
But of course these people weren’t fully informed; they were misinformed. They chose to believe people who lie to them. They trust people who betray them and are willing to sacrifice your lives to score some political points. They are the victims of a massive misinformation campaign that didn’t just start with the pandemic, but started way back in the 1980s. All of America is the victim of that, and much of the rest of the world too, but these people in particular. They are the dupes mobilised and sacrificed as part of the murderous political game that the Republicans and conservative media have been playing for decades now.
<https://joindiaspora.com/posts/aa6b8d80d96e0139c1dd002590d8e...>
Three reasons unvaccinated-by-choice individuals continue to pose a public health burden:
1. Vaccines not yet available for children under 12
2. Economic costs of covid treatment for unvaccinated (including long covid) passed on to taxpayers / insurance groups
3. Increased risks of even more deadly / infectious / vaccine-resistant virus mutations emerging from ongoing spread
2. Same could be said about Cancer, the Flu, or obesity
3. Same could be said specifically about over-vaccinating. High levels of vaccinations have been known to cause super-bugs.
1. Some people aren't vaccinated because they're too young, they have some medical condition, or they had the misfortune to be born to anti-vaxxer parents.
There are also other downsides, like people in need of non-urgent treatment getting turned away from packed hospitals, and medical staff who are pushed to the point of exhaustion.
2. This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans.
A lot of Democrats are squeamish about people's deaths, even when it's a result of the person's own informed choices.
If I killed myself juggling chainsaws, many people would say "ha, what a dumbass" - but if somehow Biden came to comment on it, he wouldn't say that - he'd say every death is tragic and his thoughts are with my family.
That, alongside the fact they've spent a lot of time telling their supporters how very important it is to wear masks, means it's unlikely you'll find any Democrats politicians agreeing with you publicly.
And as for Republicans politicians? Well first of all it's their supporters who are dying, they're not going to come out in support of that; and second of all, by maintaining the stance that these deaths are avoidable and a result of the crisis being mishandled, they can use that against Biden at the midterms.
Kids being unvaccinated strikes me as a weak argument because they are the least vulnerable demographic on average. Rare medical conditions is also a weak argument because those types of people are exceedingly rare.
> This stance isn't compatible with the current position/branding of either the Democrats or the Republicans.
Ouch, this really strikes at one of the core issues. In a very real sense, covid could be re-framed as a proxy war for political control, a crisis that has (and continues to be) artificially hyped and prolonged for political advantage.
I have heard that, yes.
But I've also heard [1] saying when a Houston 11-month-old presented with Covid, five "major pediatric hospital groups" said they had no beds available, and she ended up at a hospital 150 miles away.
I can understand why a politician might not give two thumbs up to such a state of affairs.
[1] https://abc7chicago.com/baby-with-covid-treated-at-hospital-...
some people cannot get vaccinated
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/01/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/...
Triage has lots of ethical questions, this doesn’t seem to be among the most controversial to me. There are patients haranguing doctors for daring to tell them they are dying of COVID. We are exhausting our medical system to care for the uncaring.
Obviously triage is more complicated than that, and acuity is always going to be the dominant factor. But if you have limited resources and have to make hard choices about who gets treatment, I don't see why vaccination status shouldn't be considered.
Every single American adult has had the opportunity to get the vaccine. Any who don't have made a personal decision and there should be no reason to continue mandated masks or lockdowns for any group (vaccinated or unvaccinated).
Children are not contracting the virus in meaningful numbers, and in even fewer numbers are having serious side effects.
The biggest pushers of mask mandates for the vaccinated are other vaccinated individuals. No unvaccinated individual I have encountered has pushed for everyone else to mask up at their behest.
19% of new US COVID cases the week of July 29 were in children [0]. Deaths and hospitalizations in children are extremely rare but medium-term side effects, including cognitive effects, appear to be relatively common [1]. It's unclear how long those effects will last and whether they'll be permanent, but the societal impact of a double-digit percentage of children experiencing noticeable long-term cognitive declines would be absolutely devastating.
[0] https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-cov...
[1] https://www.hackensackmeridianhealth.org/HealthU/2021/05/19/...
The delta variant has changed that and Louisiana had 3,000 child cases in just 4 days. The child death rate from COVID is higher than the child death rate from the flu AND many many more kids will be exposed to COVID than will be exposed to influenza.
For example long term respiratory system damage. People with long COVID have had diabetes diagnoses at a high rate. This hasn’t had the side effects of a typical respiratory virus.
Or elderly people under guardianship of antivax - like my grandma being cared for by my aunt (though I doubt my grandma would have received the vaccine even if she was fully capable of making decisions, from past comments).
There’s also the fact that every cell producing the virus has the chance of making a mutation that will ravage the global poor who cannot receive vaccines because production is limited and the rich are hoarding them.
I am sympathetic to your viewpoint though. If I had a magic wand and could ensure the immunocompromised and others wouldn’t be harmed I’m OK with letting the willingly non vaccinated reap their own consequences.
Even if it's a country were rules and laws are rarely followed.
Saying this in a place were buses don't stop at bus stops, while they consistently stop in front "no bus stop" signs.
If the Covid situation were transposed onto drugs, it's as if hard drugs were legal but still discouraged, and we had an entire political movement turning themselves and their kids into junkies just to spite public health.
And to make it worse - these mask mandates are preventing a lot of social venues from happening because very few people want to go to some of these social venues with a mask on.
It’ll likely be two years since I’ve been able to go to a social dance by the time we are getting back to “normal”. Tons of events people were planning for September are now back to cancelled indefinitely. People aren’t able to commit to big events anymore because now the government is acting unpredictably and causing a lot of panic among people.
Dancing is a super high risk venue. And btw - people are cancelling these events when they required all attendees to be vaccinated. So, it’s fucking over people who are 100% vaccinated and take plenty of precautions.
We're all just trying to get through our days and be friendly.
I want to see smiles. I can't even tell if someone is laughing at my jokes. Tones are muffled.
They're awful.
And eventually I will just stop.
My time is finite. Eventually I will just experience life how I want to, and stop living indefinitely for some other vague, "we're all in this together" goal.
It's not 'vague' - it's completely stark - it's a pandemic and it affects us all, systematically.
It's more 'math' than 'vague'.
The question posed was 'why are people vehemently opposed' and the context is 'a pandemic'.
It would be 'vehemently ridiculous' for people to arbitrarily wear masks, but missing your swimming instructors smile is a relatively small price to pay for controlling a pandemic which is still unfortunately ongoing, and which has major consequences.
If wearing masks for 6 more months can materially push COVID out of business, then the trade off is a 'no brainer'.
The arguments made here seem to really lack context, it doesn't give confidence. We already know wearing masks sucks, that's not the point. The point is wearing them in the context of a deflating but nevertheless persisting public health crisis.
I’ve been in countries with outdoor mask mandates almost since the start of this thing, and I don’t really understand this. How has it become a chore? Don’t you just pick up a mask from a pack or a reusable one as you leave your home? I haven’t noticed any difference in sense of smell, albeit my sense of smell is very keen.
But again, what’s the chore here? It just feels like habit
That's as close to the meaning of chore as one could expect in a comment, and why are you extending your own experience to others who are explicitly telling you that they find it uncomfortable and a nuisance? I can't imagine that kind of thing working with any other article of clothing but masks seem to have their own special status, even though they affect breathing.
It's not a serious position to take.
Especially if you have young kids. Airports are an absolute nightmare now with a 2-year-old that doesn't like wearing a mask.
My nephew also goes nuts when he is strapped into a car seat, but sometimes you just need to deal with meltdowns and teach kids that they can't always get their way.
We're already at a point in terms of wealth and technology that Amazon could deliver all of our durable goods and nonperishables, Instacart could deliver all of our groceries, and schooling and most jobs can be completed online.
Every family of average or greater means can already afford to buy everything from these two companies.
Every family of below-average means could be supported by a government stipend to enable them to receive goods this way.
We have the ability to build a society where most people leave their homes only a few times per year.
Surely this is just a small price to pay in the fight against a virus that could leave vulnerable people on a ventilator or worse, right?
It was a small price to pay in 2020 before there was a vaccine, and I paid it. Now that the vaccine is available I wonder why said vulnerable people are choosing to not get the vaccine and putting undue burden on me and my family and so I tend to think it is is not worth paying that price anymore. If said vulnerable person is unable to get the vaccine for medical reasons... those types of people are exceedingly rare and have always had to be super careful. For them I recommend just sheltering in place indefinitely or something like https://microclimate.com/ in public.
But I'm glad the unprecedented nature of this event has given you the opportunity to regurgitate low level quips.
The vaccination campaign was always going to be a failure.
> My guess is that you couldn't be less qualified to make such an evaluation.
I'm as qualified as the president or any governor. I'm capable of understanding facts and making a decision like any other person on the planet.
The vaccinated half of the population is faring much better than the unvaccinated half. How can you call that a failure?
Getting to that state was the goal of the earlier protection measures.
Basically the US gov made it easy for a couple of groups that were already distrustful of the government to justify their distrust.
You say this based on what, exactly?
On the contrary, if the general public had more broadly acceded to these mandates they would simply have been cemented in place, and more aggressive ones would have been rolled out already. We'd already have the no-fly lists and hospital bans for the unvaccinated, instead they're having to manufacture the consent for this stuff with a big propaganda campaign.
This isn't an anti-vaccination comment. The vaccines are showing great results at what they were intended to do, reducing hospitalizations and deaths.
I guess most people who complain do it "out of principle" because they want to see themselves as the type of person who cannot be forced to do anything by authorities. Weirdly other believes are really authotarian.
Are you really free when you don't use your own head but reflexively do/don't do something just because you like/dislike the person which says it?
Not quite sure what is the point you are trying to make. If you ask somebody why they don't want to do something for you and one replies "Fuck you, that's why!" do you imply that this person is not free because he or she denied your request based on personal animosity and not "using own head"? Or is it something else you wanted to say?
That is a valid question in this day and age, with a death toll attached.
Sure they will not always do the opposite of what their opposition party says, but the constructive "we don't care what the libs say, we do it because it is the right thing"-topics are kinda rare these days.
As for masking, I for one don't wear a mask because I read the studies [1], I have not heard the "authoritative leader" advertising them one way or another and certainly not because I think they are beneficial for me but I want to own the libs. Can't say for everyone but I suspect a lot of people are like me, not necessarily reading studies but do what they think benefits them.
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/
2. https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/16/politics/donald-trump-covid-1...
Also: the consequence of your study shouldn't be not to wear masks, but to wear masks that work (the study just shows evidence for plain cloth masks, which at least everybody on central europe stopped wearing in the second wave).
Also: there are manyfold reason to do something of course. I'd be highly interested in the rational explaination of the GOP policy on all things covid tho (first the virus didn't exist and simulataneously was just like the flu for example). This might not have been the common joes opinion, but watching capa it certainly painted a clear picture
> the consequence of your study shouldn't be
Well, you are free to make your own conclusions and I am free to make mine. I repeat myself, but this is an example of people actually "using their head" as you suggested instead of doing the opposite just to piss you off.
>I'd be highly interested in the rational explaination of the GOP policy
Sure, direct me (e.g. provide with a link or some other reference) to the points of the GOP policy you are interested in. Ones that you mentioned do not seem to appear in any GOP policy I could find, to the contrary, "the virus does not exist" had been the topic of the Left in November 19-February 20 e.g. https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/079-20/mayor-d... or is this the old HN's trope "Ah, I am an European so all Americans are GOP to me, that's how far to the left we are in Europe!"?.
For me the sense of suffocation is strong and despite dozens of hours in one I have not grown accustomed to it, or even more tolerant of it. It's bad enough that while I'm willing to mask up for an emergency, as a permanent thing I would rather accept a bit more risk of a terrible disease or death. The size of the acceptable risk for me has only grown over time.
Given the number of people who insist on wearing a mask in a way that gives nobody any protection, I'm not alone in this.
Do you have a source?
That's a weak reason. Only 349 people below 18 have died of corona in the US since the start of the pandemic.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/2019-2020/2019-20-pediatr...
(Not to say that each of the 349 isn't a tragedy, only that the coronavirus is unequivocally not dangerous to children without preexisting conditions.)
Also - if you're considering it, please save the "long covid" histrionics. We used to call that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and there's no reason to believe "long covid" is different, scarier, or more prevalent than CFS. I have a strong suspicion that the patient's psychological suggestibility and media consumption are greater predictors of "long covid" than infection.
Also, doctors? Nurses? Different types of contractors? They've been doing this a while.
Kids generally have higher metabolisms than adults, which made me feel particularly horrified about the mask mandates in schools. The sad thing is kids don't know any better, and trust older people who are telling them what to do, so there's probably many who feel noticeably worse and don't know why.
When you inhale, your diaphragm contracts and creates a negative pressure inside your thoracic cavity (relative to the outside atmosphere's 101.3 kPa). This pressure, ordinarily, is proportional to the force with which your diaphragm contracts. Adding a layer of fabric restricts the outside air's ability to flow into your thoracic cavity and equalize the pressure. It's like having a congested nose but being unable to open your mouth to bypass the congestion.
There's also the problem of carbon dioxide buildup within the mask. Your unconscious breathing effort is ordinarily controlled by the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in your blood. Carbon dioxide levels, not oxygen levels, are what make you feel "out of breath". The lungs may hold almost a liter of air, but an ordinary unconscious breath exchanges only a tiny fraction of this. That unconscious breath is so small that a large percentage of it may come from air trapped inside your mask, and your alveoli end up being faced with a much higher percentage of carbon dioxide in the air into which they are trying to exhaust carbon dioxide from your blood.
Problems all around.
[edit] I'm not sure what people are opposed to here. I am as I said happy to comply with public health measures that work and are supported by evidence.
The gist of it is the stigma.
People feel marked. Dehumanized. Forced to wear the stuff by people that they don't respect or trust.
COVID is as much a health crisis as it's a trust crisis: people in charge have exhausted their credibility during the last decades of misbehavior, and citizens don't want to wear a mask because the message comes from those they have nothing but disrespect for.
The condescending tone of the citizens than are actually defending masking and vaccinating doesn't help either. I'm vaccinated, but if you call anti-vax names, you are part of the problem.
People have been screwed over for years, covid communication has been fubar, and we are all under a lot of pressure, so be compassionate. They have more chance to join the team if you understand their grudge than if you insult them.
Given that context it’s pretty easy to see that this debate about visible public rituals is a proxy fight about other things, for both sides.
Someone wearing a bandana loosely over his face is conforming to the social norms. That it does nothing for preventing covid 19 isn’t the point.
In my case it's driven because of a) evidence for their being effective at all is lacking[1], and b) as you rightly put it “they are annoying”.
I'm not sure why I wouldn't be against that. Additionally, I live in Japan where the kind of mask-adherence those back in the west can only have wet dreams about is the norm here, and there's no evidence it's helped here either. You may have noticed the lack of crowds at the Olympics as Tokyo is under a state of emergency due to a wave of cases. Masks just don't seem to have any effect against the delta variant. I'm not surprised.
[1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...
Per https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-cases.h...:
Japan: 818 all time cases per 100k capita.
US: 10,793 all time cases per 100k capita.
I don't think that's "no evidence it's helped here either." It's is evidence that masks didn't completely solve the problem. But mitigations aren't bad.
You have to keep in mind that different places have different ideas of what "failure looks like." Many Americans seem to think failure is only when they, as an individual, are personally dying of COVID right now.
I support wearing a mask for individuals who are symptomatic or have a positive test result.
Beyond that, it's likely that mandatory nonpharmaceutical interventions such as masks and lockdowns will be bad for public health in the long run.
Consider the possibility that all the masking and isolation we've done is setting us up for an extremely bad flu season in the coming year or two [1]. We see the same pattern in forest management, where by constantly preventing the small natural forest fires, we unintentionally set the stage for massive record breaking wildfires.
[1] The impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on the future dynamics of endemic infections https://www.pnas.org/content/117/48/30547
> Consider the possibility that all the masking and isolation we've done is setting us up for an extremely bad flu season in the coming year or two [1].
That logic is frankly messed up. That's like saying better die now, because if don't you're just setting yourself up to die later. In most situations, that extra span of life is worth it.
Even if that's true about the next flu season, it's not an argument against masks. It's a warning not to declare premature victory.
If anything, this is a better argument for continuing the mitigations and slowly removing them over time rather than going all in on removing all restrictions like some jurisdictions are doing.
But you do accumulate protection against pathogens by being exposed to them.
> as long as we continue social distancing and masking
The source I cited mentions that one of the primary risks is overwhelming medical facilities with huge waves of people who are all sick at the same time with endemic illnesses like the flu, RSV, etc.
> this is a better argument for continuing the mitigations and slowly removing them over time
An idea worth exploring for sure, but I think it will be difficult to achieve practically. At some point in that process there is going to be a majority of people out living their lives and not adhering to the mitigations, which is when the aforementioned consequences of these NPI's will become relevant.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
If you don't like the fact that the studies show no evidence that masks are of benefit, that's your problem, but don't try and attribute any fallacy to me without providing a damn sight more reasoning and evidence as it gives the appearance of you wishing to smear me to cover up what you lack, a valid, considered, and persuasive argument.
* or worse, being used to mislead, which I don't think was happening from @tablespoon but I wouldn't put it past those who'd jump in with ad hominem and think it was a worthy contribution to the debate.
On the other hand, we have good evidence[1] that obesity levels have a huge impact on cases:
> Professor Rachel Batterham, Royal College of Physicians' lead adviser on obesity, said:
> “The link between high levels of obesity and deaths from COVID-19 in the UK is indisputable, as is the urgent need to address the factors that lead so many people to be living with obesity.
> “With 30% of COVID-19 hospitalisations in the UK directly attributed to overweight and obesity, and three quarters of all critically ill patients having overweight or obesity, the human and financial costs are high.
From just the opening page of the report[2] itself:
> We show that in those countries where overweight affects only a minority of the adult population, the rates of death from COVID-19 are typically less than one tenth the levels found in countries where overweight affects the majority of adults.
> We also show that the drivers of overweight – especially high levels of consumption of processed foods – are associated with mortality from COVID-19.
From the report's country profiles:
Adult overweight BMI >25kg/m2 (2016) US : 67.9 UK : 63.7 Japan : 27.2
Adult obesity BMI >30kg/m2 (2016) US : 36.2 UK : 27.8 Japan : 4.3
Insufficient physical activity % adults (2016) US : 40.0 UK : 35.9 Japan : 35.5
Pulses per capita kg/pa (2014-2017) US : 3.6 UK : 3.7 Japan : 1.5
Root vegetables per capita kg/pa (2014-2017) US : 55.5 UK : 88.5 Japan : 24.9
Vegetable oil per capita kg/pa (2014-2017) US : 19.5 UK : 13.1 Japan : 15.5
Animal fat per capita kg/pa (2014-2017) US : 3.3 UK : 5.6 Japan : 1.0
Sugar per capita kg/pa (2014-2017) US : 66.2 UK : 37.8 Japan : 26.9
Sugar energy per capita kcal/pd (2014-2017) US : 607 UK : 342 Japan : 252
Sugar-sweetened beverage per capita l/pa (2015) US : 236.6 UK : 124.0 Japan : 144.3
There is much more in that report, it's well worth a read.
This CDC report[3] states:
> Among 4,899,447 hospitalized adults in PHD-SR, 540,667 (11.0%) were patients with COVID-19, of whom 94.9% had at least 1 underlying medical condition
> Certain underlying conditions and the number of conditions were associated with severe COVID-19 illness. Hypertension and disorders of lipid metabolism were the most frequent, whereas obesity, diabetes with complication, and anxiety disorders were the strongest risk factors for severe COVID-19 illness.
Cases are most frequently discovered due to severity of symptoms as being symptomatic will lead to testing. Thus the link between confirmed cases and underlying health conditions is easy to see. It goes on to state:
> The analysis also shows that the total number of underlying conditions is strongly associated with severe COVID-19 illness.
> The percentage of the US adult population known to have 2 or more underlying medical conditions ranges from approximately 38% to 64% by state (12). Previous studies demonstrated that patients with medically attended COVID-19 often had multiple underlying medical conditions (6). However, studies have rarely focused on the effect of the number of conditions on severe COVID-19 illness. We found that the risk of death, IMV, and ICU admission was often incrementally higher with a higher number of underlying medical conditions. Our finding that the number of underlying medical conditions is itself a risk factor for severe disease from COVID-19 identifies a population that has not been clearly described in previous literature.
As I pointed out in another comment, the lack of testing in Japan keeps its number of confirmed cases low (which has seemed convenient given the government's clear desire for the Olympics to proceed), but the country is experiencing a huge uptick in cases right now - is this because of people suddenly dispensing with masks? I haven't noticed it, it's close ...
- fervently wear a mask
it is a social signal that you are 100% on board with any/all government public health mandates.
- fervently don't wear a mask
it is a social signal that you are 100% NOT on board with any/all government public health mandates
- wear a mask depending on if the people around you are wearing a mask
it is a social signal that you don't have strong opinions either way and that you don't want to offend anyone or get called out so you just follow the crowd to blend in
I can deduce whether someone thinks like me based on if they use a mask like me.
I do not wear them outside but I do wear them indoors at grocery stores or small spaces that are poorly ventilated.
Very little, probably, but I don't think anyone can say. I've read the same statistics as you. But our understanding is immature, no?
For example, we're seeing now that young people, who were infected with COVID-19 but who had extremely mild cases / symptoms, are now experiencing / developing so-called long COVID. Here's a piece in the NY Times from yesterday [0] and similarly in Yahoo! News (not behind the paywall) [1] . In addition, pediatric cases of COVID-19 are currently on the rise.
Here's an excerpt:
> An April study by the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics found that 9.8% of 2-11-year-olds and 13% of 12-16-year-olds infected with the coronavirus reported continuing symptoms five weeks later. After 12 weeks, rates remained significant: 7.4% in the younger group and 8.2% in the older group.
That sounds much worse than the flu:
> In another U.K. study, 4.4% of 1,734 children had symptoms more than four weeks post-COVID, over four times as high as the percentage with symptoms four weeks after non-COVID illnesses like flu.
So, this aspect of the pandemic actually is much worse than the flu.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/08/world/covid-delta-va...
[1]: https://news.yahoo.com/really-scary-kids-struggle-long-11541...
edit/ Typos and words.
Not saying there is no risk, but I wish there were some clearer statistics about it. There should be enough data by now.
I personally think that if there really was a significant risk for kids, it would have been clearly communicated by now.
I sure don't have a high degree of trust in our officials to communicate clearly. Not after the last 19 months.
edit/ Words.
Most people follow basic public health policy guidelines, almost everyone begrudgingly so on some level, as nobody actually wants to wear a mask obviously.
Outside of required guidelines, some may wear a little more often than others, surely older people might be more likely, and those who are vaccinate less likely.
That's it.
It's not a social signal or an indicator of anything.
You can't deduce anything from someone's mask unless they are doing something truly awkward like literally not wearing a mask when they are clearly supposed to, or over protecting such as wearing an N100 while alone in a public space. Otherwise, it's just a normal thing we are resigned to doing in certain situations.
In short, I think the push to require the wearing of masks is rooted more in personal ego than it is in actual health benefits.
It contributes to a sense of permanent emergency which should be gone by now given that the vast majority of the at-risk population is vaccinated. At this point I don't see the purpose of attempting to stop or slow the spread of an endemic respiratory virus, that is just a fool's errand at this point.
They also probably don't work, or at least not very well. People used to point to the Asian countries that hadn't had big outbreaks as evidence that population-wide mask compliance could work to prevent transmission, but that is no longer the case as they have all had big outbreaks. Even China had to halt traffic in and out of Wuhan recently.
Even if the hoop you're told to jump through is low and large, you still feel like a caged animal forced to do tricks.
Rage Against the Machine explains the mindset in a more emotional way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ
On the other hand there are legitimate scientific & public health concerns regarding mass enforcement of nonpharmaceutical interventions such as lockdowns, masks, etc [1].
It's really not clear that mask mandates will be a net win for society if we begin to see the predictions in [1] play out - we'll just have to see how bad the flu season is in the coming winters.
[1] The impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on the future dynamics of endemic infections https://www.pnas.org/content/117/48/30547
Because they want to prove that America is weak, because it cannot deal with any serious problem that requires a small personal sacrifice.
Alternatively, they want to prove America is weak, because they want to prove that a bunch of partisan shit-stirrers can turn any issue into a culture-war debacle and that the marketplace of ideas doesn't work.
Now it feels like a temporary annoyance is being turned into a long term one even after many of us wore masks, social distanced and got vaccinated.
> why is this the hill so many people are determined to die on?
As someone who hates emoting facially, I love the mask norm. However it's also important to remember the popular phrase "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." This phrase is popular because it expresses the way many Americans, including myself, treasure freedom above all else, so any sacrifices of freedom should be done slowly or not at all if possible. Compulsory mask-wearing is as anti-freedom as compulsory haircuts (Chinese queue, Russian beard tax). Your argument is insincere or uninformed because it can be used to justify huge changes in society by singling out a minor facet of a larger issue, calling it a tiny hill that's not worth dying on, then moving on to another minor facet, until the whole landscape has been traversed.
That's a bad quote to reason from. The key word there is actually "essential" and is left totally undefined. This also demonstrates America's Achilles' heel, because that sentiment can easily be twisted into an argument against any kind of responsibility or sacrifice.
I know many non-Americans, and the pandemic has disillusioned them towards America. They used to admire it a lot, but now they've seen so many Americans use liberty-rhetoric to justify acting in stupid and selfish ways that they think much less highly of it and those so-called ideals. America was supposed to prove the value of its ideals by being better at handling the pandemic than other countries, instead it's used those ideals as a justification for its failure, which is not a good look from any angle.
Wearing a helmet when riding in a car is likely safer, with appropriate seat belts, but we don't wear helmets and 5-point harnesses in passenger cars.
To turn around your question: Why do so many people insist on turning masks into a hill?
Masks are just one of many ways humanity can be marginally safer in an incredibly annoying fashion. Like wearing helmets in every passenger car.
I’d have one in my sports car but unfortunately the factory hasn’t made it easy to fit. Doing it properly requires new racing seats and a full custom roll cage. It’s easily >$10k worth of work.
Masks are a proxy, standing in for all the other ways non-pharmaceutical interventions are disrupting our lives.
After all, it'd be absurd for me to wear a mask while sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers in a packed theatre. A world in which I must wear a mask is a world in which I must not go to the theatre.
It's understandable that people are salty about the loss of concerts and music festivals and exercise classes and knitting groups and nightclubs and mass transit and dating and fine dining and protests and tourism and visiting friends and gyms and casual sex and theatre and nonessential flights and the entire college experience.
I don't like that as much as the next person, but if I'm visiting a hospital or a nursing home anytime soon, i'll mask up.
If a celebrity many different people per week, 20% vulnerability is still a lot. Its better than no protection, but still put the person at a pretty high risk.
Parties like the above can be problematic in a time of an pandemic even if one disregard covid. Any illness that can spread has the risk of causing additional stress on the health care system. I know for example some sport activities which has decided to reduce activity on the ground that the sport has the potential of accidents which would then put unnecessary pressure on an already heavily pressured health care system.
Data point: I'm fully vaccinated, and I'm wearing a mask out in public.
Also, big-box hardware stories (at least) have real N95s back in stock (not KN95 substitutes), as of a couple months ago.
Others' perceptions of me are arbitrary and socially defined, and who is so worried about fitting in at the grocery store? If people were grounded in any type of reality, they'd realize that a chemical warzone requires, at minimum, a full face respirator and chemical cartridges.
This gave me a chuckle. I don't think that is common knowledge in this day and age. Does make me wonder if covid can infect through the eyes. Ill make sure to engage my safety squints.
It was never common knowledge. It's a little anti-social to suggest that it's 'common sense' in any way that people would know how to react in a chemical warfare situation.
Anti-social in the sense that implies a lack of understanding of common social knowledge and behaviour.
Staying at home doesn't protect you unless you live in total isolation, and most people don't. 'Family' is in fact a primary vector of spread.
Wearing N100's is also not remotely feasible all of the time, nor will it entirely protect you.
The vaccine gives you almost 100% prevention against death and is by far the best protective measure and it largely frees you from worry, concerns over unwittingly infecting others, and reduces the need to do things like 'total isolation' and 'wear n100 all of the time'.
"If people were grounded in any type of reality" ... there's no reason for anyone to have a realistic understanding of what living in a 'chemical warzone' would be.
Get a vaccine, keep some degree of social distancing, be prepared to wear an n95 sometimes, don't go inside to events with large numbers of people ... if everyone does 'mostly' that we'll be 'mostly fine' over the coming months and can 'mostly' get on with our lives.
Genuinely curious - Did you wear a mask prior? Would you continue to wear a mask past the epidemic, even for the rest of your life, to protect the 3% vulnerable?
Reacting to COVID differently than you react to the flu, or a cold, is a wholly reasonable response.
All I know is brain fog is a career killer and my quality of life would decrease significantly if everything I ate tasted absolutely foul and disgusting. Seems a reasonable precaution to continue wearing a mask when out in public even though I'm completely vaccinated. Note that's a purely selfish argument for the vaccinated to continue mask wearing. The fact I may be saving someone else's life is additional incentive.
It was directed at those that wear a mask because they're helping to save lives.
Did you wore a mask prior to COVID? Will you continue to wear a mask, post COVID, to help save lives?
Beyond that, it's not clear that mass enforcement of nonpharmaceutical interventions - ie masks, lockdowns, etc - will be a net win for public health. For example, the next winter or two could present a very bad flu season, all due to the mass isolation and hyper-sanitizatoin we've come to be familiar with through the pandemic [1].
[1] The impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on the future dynamics of endemic infections https://www.pnas.org/content/117/48/30547
There are various studies demonstrating the effectiveness of masks even for those not infected.
So even a school mask mandate is entirely useless.
I'm vaccinated. I social distance. I have good personal hygiene. I've made efforts to mitigate the risks to my family and others we might encounter.
I respect your right to decide for yourself. I respect a brick-and-mortar business deciding it would only prefer to serve people who wear masks. I respect a workplace defining whether its employees should wear a mask (while providing reasonable accommodations to those would prefer otherwise).
But I have genuine doubts about the efficacy of the masks that are widely sold, used, and accepted. When I see selective enforcement and selective outrage, it's hard not to see so many of our government leaders as blatant hypocrites. When I see absolutely no sense of humility from our policy makers on what they actually know and don't know, it's hard not to completely lose trust in their leadership. And then, when so many peer appeals to mask or vaccinate don't come from a place of genuine concern or care but of a "you are irresponsible and brought this on yourself" or "you deserve to be punished", it's as if many are desperate to confirm the worst stereotypes that they are just authoritarian nannies.
And as a result of all that, it's difficult not to have an impulsive response of 'mind your own business'. I'm open to data. I'm open to discussion. But those who only bring condescension can go **** themselves.
A good mask, N95 or above, can prevent covid transmission and contraction. Cloth and surgical masks on the other hand are like trying to stop mosquitos with a chain link fence.
People that have the vaccine and walk around indoor spaces without a mask are actually causing their own eventual demise, as they will be giving the virus hosts (themselves included), allowing the virus to mutate to its next more virulent form that vaccines have no chance against.
I know it's painful to wear a good mask as you cannot show off your pretty face. Do it for your country, for Biden and for our hero Fauci. :-)
Unvaccinated people, because they would be homebound (or killed) by the more virulent strains, must be allowed to go about their business maskless. This way, we'll achieve herd immunity by spreading less virulent strains around. Sort of like an airborne live attenuated vaccine.
IMO that's a situation that deserves masking, but perhaps the other rational you mentioned is a stronger factor in your decision.
Covid is undoubtedly serious and responsible people should take measures in cases where they are a genuine risk to others. But it is unscientific, immature, and stupid to simply assume people are a risk despite any evidence to the contrary.
...
> I'm open to data. I'm open to discussion.
These statements sure seem to be in conflict, so I'm genuinely curious: Are you, though? Open to discussion?
You seem to have made up your mind. You've decided you won't believe "government leaders". You won't believe "policy makers".
I'm going go ahead and guess, based on the tone of your comment, that you are similarly distrusting of information from the medical community.
That would seem to rule out any and all potential sources of data that might demonstrate "the efficacy of the masks that are widely sold, used, and accepted" (e.g. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 - "The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce Re to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained.").
So... are you really open to data and discussion? Or are you just saying that because it seems like the right thing to say?
And no, I'm not trying to be a snide smart-ass. I'm trying to reveal what you're actually thinking and feeling. Because I'll be honest, I don't think what you've written here reflects your actual, deep-down feelings on the topic.
Tone? Your Hacker News clearly works in ways mine does not.
I socialize with a number of physicians, surgeons, and medical professionals. I seek medical help and advice when I'm sick. I seek medical help and advice when my kids are sick. I pursued a vaccine expressly because those same medical professionals were vaccinated themselves. But I also don't believe a physician has some magical ability to discern truth that other intelligent people cannot.
I also trust the science of the efficacy of masks people are wearing. I trust the science that examines how the way they wear their masks sabotages any utility they might provide. I trust the science that suggests there are negative psychological and sociological consequences to an entire society not able to see the faces of their peers.
I trust the science that suggests, despite breakthrough cases, the vaccines don't have unmanageable side effects and work as intended. I trust the data that has revealed of 100 "breakthrough" Covid deaths in Massachusetts, the median age of those who died is 82.5 and ~75% had underlying issues. I trust the data that has revealed of the ~9000 who have died of Covid here in Texas since February, only 43 were vaccinated.
I trust that masks and distancing have clearly had positive side effects to limit the spread of other illnesses, such as the flu. My children have all had RSV since society mostly opened back up but not before (talk to a pediatrician - it's particularly nasty this year and is spreading in the summer months unlike it has in memory).
But I also trust my eyes that have seen states and communities with draconian lockdowns faring no better (or worse!) than states and communities that are largely open. Here in my community some schools required everyone to mask. Others, not at all. And neither fared measurably better or worse than the other. And given all that (and more), I've come to the conclusion that it is unlikely that masks make much of a difference.
And above all else, I trust that you know better how to keep yourself and your family safe than I do. And vice-versa.
Because I'll be honest, I don't think what you've written here reflects your actual, deep-down feelings on the topic.
Careful everyone! We've got a mind reader, here!
Seriously though, I know it's tough to resist the arrogant urge to compartmentalize all the wrongthinkers into stereotypes. But resist anyway, because it makes you seem like a condescending, dishonest, disingenuous investigator who is just building a strawman.
Or are you just saying that because it seems like the right thing to say?
Right thing to say? I don't even know what that means. I said what I genuinely believe. I've even attached my name to it. I've changed my mind on many subjects when presented evidence to the contrary - it's a useful skill when you solve problems for a living.
nearly every state https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
struggling to get more shots into arms https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/unvaccina...
once again mask in public indoor spaces https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/cdc-coron...
in places where the virus is surging https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/delta-tra...
controversially dispensed with in May https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/cdc-guidel...
a scientifically powerful pairing https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/cdc-coron...
Nearly 60 percent https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
holding their own https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/anatomy-...
all known forms https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-vaccine-compariso...
contract the pathogen https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/90800/2/reac...
pass it on https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v...
come down with disease https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2108891
the wiliest version of the virus to date https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/202...
As it is, with vaccination rates so low, I expect COVID is going to be forever. I don't mind wearing a mask to protect unvaccinated people and help out our medical professionals keep numbers down. But, it's going to be rough. I was so happy, I thought we were done.
I'm curious if we know this for a fact. We started out with attainable numbers for herd immunity (which I think is pretty much equivalent to R<1). But that was based on an apparent overestimation of the sterilizing immunity of the vaccines. The alternative appears to be an endemic virus with occasional booster vaccinations for certain populations.
I think a big factor was July 4th. Summer vacation kept cases low until now. Then the big family gatherings really ramped things up. Now we're going back to school soon.
Vaccination reduces transmission but not 100%. Notice I said 70-80% and not 100%. I don't think anyone expected it to be 100% effective at preventing breakthrough infections.
I'm hoping we don't have to eat that additional 20% with regular infection. Delta is NASTY.
On the other hand, if immunity decreases over time, we might need something like 90-95% vaccinated or infected during the past 3 months (just as an example).
I'm not sure that we know where along those dimensions we are.
What i’m worried about is social distancing. Online school. Making it harder to meet people. Cancelling and postponing events. Even large gatherings of vaxxed individuals. And honestly, needing to wear masks at said gatherings.
Correct me if i’m wrong, but the chance of a large vaxxed party causing someone serious illness or significantly spreading the virus to the unvaxxed is still very low. From what i’ve heard, Delta does infect vaccinated people but it’s usually mild.
Moreover, if you ban these sorts of events you’re probably banning them long-term. Humans are social creatures, and it’s one thing to minimize social interaction for a year to save lives, it’s another to minimize for years (someone’s entire adolescence), especially when you’re not saving many lives anyways.
Honestly, i’m an introverted person, i don’t even like crowded parties. But i feel for people who do. Moreover, if schools / colleges stay online or even hybrid it’s going to hurt students’ education and social development. If jobs are online and vacations are cancelled it’s going to make finding and maintaining friends as an adult harder, and afaik that’s already hard. Some things really are better virtual (e.g. virtual meetings), but some are effectively useless.
It looks like right now this isn’t an issue, since i see events like lollapalooza and cruises which require proof of vaccination. And schools are starting in-person (although i’m worried for those under 12, the FDA should really approve the vaccine asap). But yeah, masks aren’t much of an issue, this is much more concerning.
Edit: I’ve now flagged it.
It's pretty easy to find more of such comments by typing some keywords in Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=hackernews+downvote+disagree...
What if we had an affordable, comfortable mask that worked so well that you have no practical chance of contracting an airborne virus while wearing it? I get that current N95 and surgical masks are not that, but I don't see why it would be impossible to create one within the physical laws of the universe, especially if you put power and air supplies on the table. Scuba gear and air-supplied biohazard suits seem to be existence proofs, the question is whether they can be made practical.
If everyone had such a mask, we would have a new strategy available for controlling delta and any other variant that emerges in the future: everyone could mask up full-time when outside the house _for a limited amount of time_ until transmission drops to a low level. From that point, local outbreaks could be controlled by local bouts of masking, plus aggressive testing and contact tracing.
I get that anti-masking would be an obstacle, but part of the difficulty has been messaging risk and uncertainty to people who start from a skeptical place. A mask that _positively_ protects the wearer, and that can remove the need for restrictions within a finite, predictable time, would be an easier sell, especially after the strategy is seen to work once or twice.
1: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
2: https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...
"I feel that being vaccinated is good enough criteria to stop wearing a mask or social distance"
The problem is that the goalposts keep shifting with this pandemic. Biden said earlier that if you got vaccinated you wouldn't need a mask any more. That was true for maybe 1 month here in Maryland. Goalposts have since shifted. What is the endgame? Nobody seems to know. It's just a nebulous incoherent mixture of random arguments involving protecting the unvaccinated, preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed, protecting children and immunocompromised, preventing covid from mutating, etc. Heavy handed public health policies aren't free. You might accomplish some public health goal, but at the cost of increased social discord, decreased citizen morale, increased mistrust of the government, increased illwill toward the government, or other factors which could have far worse long term consequences.
So while the masks will reduce transmission of COVID-19, it will also reduce the transmission of other endemic illnesses like the seasonal flu. And while you might think that's a good thing, it's likely to backfire as we set the stage for massive outbreaks during the flu season, which puts further pressure on limited healthcare resources, and so on.
The same patterns can be seen in forest management, where by constantly putting out all the small natural forest fires, we set the stage for record breaking wildfires that cannot be contained.
[1] The impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on the future dynamics of endemic infections https://www.pnas.org/content/117/48/30547
I like the idea of air systems and UV light that I see in some of these indoor play places.