4 ms·

All of your points are true, and would be brought up by an informed adult or smart kid, but notice how none of them defeat the underlying deductive argument. Si

All of your points are true, and would be brought up by an informed adult or smart kid, but notice how none of them defeat the underlying deductive argument. Simplicity is its strength. If anything, letting them make it complicated by questioning assumptions and revising them will just convince them more, because now it’s sort of their argument, not somebody else’s. 1) It’s not just in our lungs, but in our entire “breathing system”. Still need to control the breath. 2) Masks don’t block oxygen, but they block the wet part of the breath at least somewhat. The wet part is the dangerous part. You could go back and forth with a so-called “anti-masker” and you’d prob be leagues ahead of where you’d be if you shared a masks article.

thu2111 6y ago
That's easy to turn around on you. Here's a simple argument: death rates from COVID are about the same as a regular flu season in places that didn't do dumb things like close hospitals and send sick people into care homes. In many places they're around the level of flu. But flu is always around. If we don't wear masks all the time, then why do we need to wear them now? There is no logical answer to this except "you should wear masks permanently" which many people will never accept, as the benefits are simply too low to justify the consequent problems.
- misanthropian00 6y ago
  Death rates may not be the only problem though. There is evidence that covid damages the heart and sometimes even the brain. This damage might cause many deaths years from now.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    There was also evidence COVID was a terribly deadly disease that would kill at minimum 500,000 healthy people (in the UK), thus requiring urgent and massive shutdowns. Turned out to all be completely false. So my point stands. If you're going to make simple pro-mask arguments, be prepared for equally simple counterarguments. Excess death data says 2020 is for most countries an unremarkable basically normal year. Even in the few where it's not, it's still comparable to prior years when nobody noticed anything at the time, so hardly abnormal. "Long COVID" may be the usual problem of slow recovery from viral infection that occasionally happens, or it may hardly be real given the broad array of vague symptoms that are now allowed to characterise the disease. Everything from a runny nose to a headache to full blown pneumonia is classifiable as COVID these days. That means many people with other issues will end up with spurious correlations of the form, "I had COVID symptoms and now I am fatigued" when the cause may not be "COVID". The apparent lack of consistency in these reports, the wildly varying time between infection and onset, etc, all suggests there's a lot of noise in these reports. Definitely not a part of any simple argument for mask wearing.
misanthropian00 6y ago
None of that is really necessary. You can just explain that the masks have small holes in them that are big enough to allow oxygen in and co2 out but small enough to catch most of the covid droplets. Even a child can understand the basic concept. The problem with cloth masks is that the holes are too big for them to be very effective.

thu2111 6y ago

That's easy to turn around on you. Here's a simple argument: death rates from COVID are about the same as a regular flu season in places that didn't do dumb things like close hospitals and send sick people into care homes. In many places they're around the level of flu. But flu is always around. If we don't wear masks all the time, then why do we need to wear them now? There is no logical answer to this except "you should wear masks permanently" which many people will never accept, as the benefits are simply too low to justify the consequent problems.

misanthropian00 6y ago
Death rates may not be the only problem though. There is evidence that covid damages the heart and sometimes even the brain. This damage might cause many deaths years from now.
- thu2111 6y ago
  There was also evidence COVID was a terribly deadly disease that would kill at minimum 500,000 healthy people (in the UK), thus requiring urgent and massive shutdowns. Turned out to all be completely false. So my point stands. If you're going to make simple pro-mask arguments, be prepared for equally simple counterarguments. Excess death data says 2020 is for most countries an unremarkable basically normal year. Even in the few where it's not, it's still comparable to prior years when nobody noticed anything at the time, so hardly abnormal. "Long COVID" may be the usual problem of slow recovery from viral infection that occasionally happens, or it may hardly be real given the broad array of vague symptoms that are now allowed to characterise the disease. Everything from a runny nose to a headache to full blown pneumonia is classifiable as COVID these days. That means many people with other issues will end up with spurious correlations of the form, "I had COVID symptoms and now I am fatigued" when the cause may not be "COVID". The apparent lack of consistency in these reports, the wildly varying time between infection and onset, etc, all suggests there's a lot of noise in these reports. Definitely not a part of any simple argument for mask wearing.

misanthropian00 6y ago

None of that is really necessary. You can just explain that the masks have small holes in them that are big enough to allow oxygen in and co2 out but small enough to catch most of the covid droplets. Even a child can understand the basic concept. The problem with cloth masks is that the holes are too big for them to be very effective.