5 ms·

How about we try to encourage people who are feeling sick to wear a mask and leave it at that. Making everyone do it outside of a pandemic is absurd.

pmoriarty 6y ago
The problem is that if you're infected you can spread the disease before you start feeling sick. And, again, how does it hurt you to wear a mask? If it can lower the chance of some people dying isn't it worth it?
- JerryBstein 6y ago
  Wearing a mask is disgusting. Make a suggestion if you like but god help the politician who pushes for permanent compulsion.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    So, wait, your offended sense of fashion is worth killing people over?
    - neither_color 6y ago
      Telling people theyre killing others is manipulative. Are you ok with banning all cars because you might accidentally run someone over? Every single time you go to the grocery store, school, work, etc you might hit someone. You might hit a tree and only hurt yourself, or you could cause a pileup that takes several others and disrupts the whole city.
      - pmoriarty 6y ago
        That's a strawman, because no one is seriously proposing getting rid of all cars, and there's just no possibility of it happening any time in the foreseeable future. Wearing masks is a real, tangible possibility, and has already been accomplished on a very wide scale, though not everyone has been convinced yet. We are close, though, and the more people get on board, the more lives will be saved. Also, getting rid of cars has many actual practical negative consequences, particularly in places with poor public transportation (much of the US). People without cars in such places can't get to work or shop, not to mention all the deliveries that need to be made by truck. By contrast, there are absolutely no practical negative consequences of wearing a mask. It's a purely cosmetic choice. Why some people value how they look more than another human's life is simply beyond me.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
        I'd be perfectly OK with banning all private cars. At least in cities. They make no sense there.
    - JerryBstein 6y ago
      Like everyone else on this site, I don't pride myself on my fashion. It's uncomfortable. It gets hot, sweaty, and stuffy under there. It's inconvenient. The other day, I parked my car and got halfway to the supermarket entrance before realizing I left the damn thing in the car. I was the guy mumbling expletives in the carpark as I backtracked. And, most importantly, it doesn't make sense to me. Nobody in my small city cares. It warms my heart when I see a family or a group of kids playing in public without their bloody masks. If I lived in a more 'multicultural' area where people are flying in from all corners every day, then maybe we'd be more anxious about it, but in our case the general mood is one of bitterness and resentment that we're paying the toll for the city-dwellers crammed into high rise apartments surrounded by sniffling strangers. Forcing the entire population to wear masks to save a few 87 year olds from catching the flu every year is absurd.
- neither_color 6y ago
  Society has functioned for thousands of years without banning exposed faces/mouths. Perhaps we can focus on balancing risk-reward vs some utilitarian-authoritarian ideal that completely neglects people's individual freedoms in exchange for an unrealistic and unreasonable pursuit of a statistically aesthetic(zero deaths) outcome? These kind of well intentioned platitudes like "if we can prevent one death, one single death then any and all measures are worth it without consideration of cost+freedom" wouldnt make sense if you were talking about, for example, banning all driving to prevent millions of deaths every year.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    "Society has functioned for thousands of years without banning exposed faces/mouths" Yes, at the cost of tens if not hundreds of millions of deaths during the 1918 flu pandemic, for instance. Do we really want to repeat that mistake so that some people can have the "freedom" of not wearing masks (and not social distancing either, because apparently many people think that infringes on their freedom too). "Perhaps we can focus on balancing risk-reward vs some utilitarian-authoritarian ideal ... if we can prevent one death, one single death then any and all measures are worth it" Authoritarian ideal? Any and all measures? Really? Can we please get some perspective here? We're not talking about some extreme measures like those truly authoritarian societies are infamous for, like making people slaves and working them to death, exterminating entire populations and political opponents, depriving minorities of all rights and property and then throwing them in to ghettoes, or completely (and I mean completely) making everyone subservient to their leaders. Let's not trivialize the horrors of true authoritarianism by conflating them with people covering their faces to save thousands of lives.
    - DougN7 6y ago
      I bet we could save even more lives by banning tobacco and alcohol.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        I remember circa 1985 I said the solution to smoking was to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes by 5% a year.
- MrRiddle 6y ago
  It might not be worth it. We don’t know what effects to mental health mask wearing has, it’s certainly isn’t something natural. And rule of thumb is, if something is not natural, it has some adverse effects.
  - mvid 6y ago
    We seem to be getting by with shoes, coats, gloves, hats, sunglasses, and sunscreen just fine

pmoriarty 6y ago

The problem is that if you're infected you can spread the disease before you start feeling sick. And, again, how does it hurt you to wear a mask? If it can lower the chance of some people dying isn't it worth it?

JerryBstein 6y ago
Wearing a mask is disgusting. Make a suggestion if you like but god help the politician who pushes for permanent compulsion.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  So, wait, your offended sense of fashion is worth killing people over?
  - neither_color 6y ago
    Telling people theyre killing others is manipulative. Are you ok with banning all cars because you might accidentally run someone over? Every single time you go to the grocery store, school, work, etc you might hit someone. You might hit a tree and only hurt yourself, or you could cause a pileup that takes several others and disrupts the whole city.
    - pmoriarty 6y ago
      That's a strawman, because no one is seriously proposing getting rid of all cars, and there's just no possibility of it happening any time in the foreseeable future. Wearing masks is a real, tangible possibility, and has already been accomplished on a very wide scale, though not everyone has been convinced yet. We are close, though, and the more people get on board, the more lives will be saved. Also, getting rid of cars has many actual practical negative consequences, particularly in places with poor public transportation (much of the US). People without cars in such places can't get to work or shop, not to mention all the deliveries that need to be made by truck. By contrast, there are absolutely no practical negative consequences of wearing a mask. It's a purely cosmetic choice. Why some people value how they look more than another human's life is simply beyond me.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      I'd be perfectly OK with banning all private cars. At least in cities. They make no sense there.
  - JerryBstein 6y ago
    Like everyone else on this site, I don't pride myself on my fashion. It's uncomfortable. It gets hot, sweaty, and stuffy under there. It's inconvenient. The other day, I parked my car and got halfway to the supermarket entrance before realizing I left the damn thing in the car. I was the guy mumbling expletives in the carpark as I backtracked. And, most importantly, it doesn't make sense to me. Nobody in my small city cares. It warms my heart when I see a family or a group of kids playing in public without their bloody masks. If I lived in a more 'multicultural' area where people are flying in from all corners every day, then maybe we'd be more anxious about it, but in our case the general mood is one of bitterness and resentment that we're paying the toll for the city-dwellers crammed into high rise apartments surrounded by sniffling strangers. Forcing the entire population to wear masks to save a few 87 year olds from catching the flu every year is absurd.
neither_color 6y ago
Society has functioned for thousands of years without banning exposed faces/mouths. Perhaps we can focus on balancing risk-reward vs some utilitarian-authoritarian ideal that completely neglects people's individual freedoms in exchange for an unrealistic and unreasonable pursuit of a statistically aesthetic(zero deaths) outcome? These kind of well intentioned platitudes like "if we can prevent one death, one single death then any and all measures are worth it without consideration of cost+freedom" wouldnt make sense if you were talking about, for example, banning all driving to prevent millions of deaths every year.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "Society has functioned for thousands of years without banning exposed faces/mouths" Yes, at the cost of tens if not hundreds of millions of deaths during the 1918 flu pandemic, for instance. Do we really want to repeat that mistake so that some people can have the "freedom" of not wearing masks (and not social distancing either, because apparently many people think that infringes on their freedom too). "Perhaps we can focus on balancing risk-reward vs some utilitarian-authoritarian ideal ... if we can prevent one death, one single death then any and all measures are worth it" Authoritarian ideal? Any and all measures? Really? Can we please get some perspective here? We're not talking about some extreme measures like those truly authoritarian societies are infamous for, like making people slaves and working them to death, exterminating entire populations and political opponents, depriving minorities of all rights and property and then throwing them in to ghettoes, or completely (and I mean completely) making everyone subservient to their leaders. Let's not trivialize the horrors of true authoritarianism by conflating them with people covering their faces to save thousands of lives.
  - DougN7 6y ago
    I bet we could save even more lives by banning tobacco and alcohol.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      I remember circa 1985 I said the solution to smoking was to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes by 5% a year.
MrRiddle 6y ago
It might not be worth it. We don’t know what effects to mental health mask wearing has, it’s certainly isn’t something natural. And rule of thumb is, if something is not natural, it has some adverse effects.
- mvid 6y ago
  We seem to be getting by with shoes, coats, gloves, hats, sunglasses, and sunscreen just fine