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Apropos of other comments. What do we think about the mask “issue”? Some people vehemently refuse to wear them, others take “just go with flow” attitude, yet ot

by DenisM 6y ago

Apropos of other comments. What do we think about the mask “issue”? Some people vehemently refuse to wear them, others take “just go with flow” attitude, yet others approach it with outsized religious zeal, hounding the heretics or at least giving them the stink eye. It also seems some people take great comfort on the mask, wearing it even inside their cars or waaay out in the open. Are we witnessing a religious schism in the making? Is it with us to stay, post-covid?

addicted 6y ago
The mask issue is a non issue. There are a few possibilities: 1) Masks work in preventing the spread of the virus. 2) Masks don’t work in preventing the spread of the virus. If we don’t wear masks, then: under (1) we have hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of sickness instances, and hundreds of billions of lost dollars due to reduced economic activity and sickness, compared to the wearing mask scenario. (2) There’s very little difference. Some may say we unnecessarily spend money on masks, but considering that the making of masks can employ otherwise unused resources, especially in the clothing manufacturing and distribution economy, it may actually be a positive to make and distribute masks even if they don’t work, comparable to a stimulus, but more effective because all of the money is immediately deployed, and not just saved, and there are far fewer ideological issues with giving money away for nothing, and it does not require any deficit spending. Further, even if masks don’t help with COVID, they will help reduce chances of spreading other diseases and therefore reduce the strain on hospitals. Now if you further consider that there is a lot of evidence to indicate that masks do have an effect, and the countries that have handled COVID best by and large swear by them, it’s an absolute no brained to mandate them.
zepearl 6y ago
> It also seems some people take great comfort on the mask, wearing it even inside their cars or waaay out in the open. Initially, in March, I had similar thoughts - in my case it's currently like this: - with the temperature being 0-5 Celsius throughout the day the mask keeps my face a bit warmer than when not wearing it. I do like it in this context :) - as I have to get off&on the bus and 2 trains, I just keep it on all the time while commuting. The recommendations are not to touch the mask's external surface (and not to indirectly get in contact with it), keeping it on all the time seems to be the least dangerous option. - wearing glasses while wearing as well a mask can be very challenging (fogging); once I finally manage to make everything work (dozens of tiny adjustments) I "freeze" my setup and keep it like that until I know that I won't need the mask anymore. Therefore, nothing extreme going on if you see me driving or walking alone with the mask on - just being practical :)
bjourne 6y ago
There is still no evidence showing that mask usage reduces spread. Worse, people think that mask usage entails fail-safe protection. Like condoms against pregnancy. I know of IT-companies that enforces mask usage in their offices but still does not allow employees to work from home.
- addicted 6y ago
  This is false. There’s a lot of evidence that mask usage reduces spread. The evidence ranges from the fact that masks almost certainly capture water droplets which are supposed to be major carriers of the virus to the fact that there is correlation between countries that wear masks having reduced spreads compare to ones that don’t. In fact, a recent study compared districts in the same state, grouping them by whether the district implemented mask mandates or not, and found that the ones that had mask mandates had significantly lower levels of COVID hospitalizations vs the ones that didn’t. There’s a LOT of evidence that masks reduce COVID spread. What there isn’t, is conclusive evidence that lets us say with a 95% degree of probability that masks work. Or carefully designed scientific studies that prove this. But evidence doesn’t just mean a double blind scientific study, and if we waited for that degree of confidence to make decisions in everyday life, or even in very significant arenas like business and politics, we would be making no decisions at all. The entire IT industry, a massive trillions of dollar industry, for example, has switched from waterfall to agile development on the basis of far less and weaker evidence that agile works better than waterfall than we have for whether or not masks work.
  - DenisM 6y ago
    > evidence ranges from the fact that masks almost certainly capture water droplets That’s not evidence, that’s a hypothesis. And in its current form it can be empirically disproved: Some masks allow droplets through and others don’t. Most people have no idea which one they are wearing. https://youtu.be/Py6SCZHAUgQ https://youtu.be/Py6SCZHAUgQ Of those which don’t allow passage, many will simply redirect the exhaled air from going forward to going sideways with same number of droplets left in the air. For example a surgical mask does just that - my glasses fog up at every exhale.
  - 6y ago

by DenisM 6y ago

addicted 6y ago

The mask issue is a non issue. There are a few possibilities: 1) Masks work in preventing the spread of the virus. 2) Masks don’t work in preventing the spread of the virus. If we don’t wear masks, then: under (1) we have hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of sickness instances, and hundreds of billions of lost dollars due to reduced economic activity and sickness, compared to the wearing mask scenario. (2) There’s very little difference. Some may say we unnecessarily spend money on masks, but considering that the making of masks can employ otherwise unused resources, especially in the clothing manufacturing and distribution economy, it may actually be a positive to make and distribute masks even if they don’t work, comparable to a stimulus, but more effective because all of the money is immediately deployed, and not just saved, and there are far fewer ideological issues with giving money away for nothing, and it does not require any deficit spending. Further, even if masks don’t help with COVID, they will help reduce chances of spreading other diseases and therefore reduce the strain on hospitals. Now if you further consider that there is a lot of evidence to indicate that masks do have an effect, and the countries that have handled COVID best by and large swear by them, it’s an absolute no brained to mandate them.

zepearl 6y ago

> It also seems some people take great comfort on the mask, wearing it even inside their cars or waaay out in the open. Initially, in March, I had similar thoughts - in my case it's currently like this: - with the temperature being 0-5 Celsius throughout the day the mask keeps my face a bit warmer than when not wearing it. I do like it in this context :) - as I have to get off&on the bus and 2 trains, I just keep it on all the time while commuting. The recommendations are not to touch the mask's external surface (and not to indirectly get in contact with it), keeping it on all the time seems to be the least dangerous option. - wearing glasses while wearing as well a mask can be very challenging (fogging); once I finally manage to make everything work (dozens of tiny adjustments) I "freeze" my setup and keep it like that until I know that I won't need the mask anymore. Therefore, nothing extreme going on if you see me driving or walking alone with the mask on - just being practical :)

bjourne 6y ago

There is still no evidence showing that mask usage reduces spread. Worse, people think that mask usage entails fail-safe protection. Like condoms against pregnancy. I know of IT-companies that enforces mask usage in their offices but still does not allow employees to work from home.

addicted 6y ago
This is false. There’s a lot of evidence that mask usage reduces spread. The evidence ranges from the fact that masks almost certainly capture water droplets which are supposed to be major carriers of the virus to the fact that there is correlation between countries that wear masks having reduced spreads compare to ones that don’t. In fact, a recent study compared districts in the same state, grouping them by whether the district implemented mask mandates or not, and found that the ones that had mask mandates had significantly lower levels of COVID hospitalizations vs the ones that didn’t. There’s a LOT of evidence that masks reduce COVID spread. What there isn’t, is conclusive evidence that lets us say with a 95% degree of probability that masks work. Or carefully designed scientific studies that prove this. But evidence doesn’t just mean a double blind scientific study, and if we waited for that degree of confidence to make decisions in everyday life, or even in very significant arenas like business and politics, we would be making no decisions at all. The entire IT industry, a massive trillions of dollar industry, for example, has switched from waterfall to agile development on the basis of far less and weaker evidence that agile works better than waterfall than we have for whether or not masks work.
- DenisM 6y ago
  > evidence ranges from the fact that masks almost certainly capture water droplets That’s not evidence, that’s a hypothesis. And in its current form it can be empirically disproved: Some masks allow droplets through and others don’t. Most people have no idea which one they are wearing. https://youtu.be/Py6SCZHAUgQ https://youtu.be/Py6SCZHAUgQ Of those which don’t allow passage, many will simply redirect the exhaled air from going forward to going sideways with same number of droplets left in the air. For example a surgical mask does just that - my glasses fog up at every exhale.
- 6y ago