4 ms·

So let me ask you: with such well-ventilated facilities, what is the marginal benefit of masking? And is this benefit worth the difficult-to-quantify but very r

So let me ask you: with such well-ventilated facilities, what is the marginal benefit of masking? And is this benefit worth the difficult-to-quantify but very real cost of students being unable to see the faces of their classmates?

c0nducktr 5y ago
> And is this benefit worth the difficult-to-quantify but very real cost of students being unable to see the faces of their classmates? I would figure the first thing needed to answer that question is defining the "difficult-to-quantify" cost, right?
mlyle 5y ago
> So let me ask you: with such well-ventilated facilities, what is the marginal benefit of masking? It's difficult to estimate. Of course, even with all this care, not everywhere is equally well ventilated. My room is wide open to the outside, but there are other rooms depending on central air and the room filter which may not be as well off. Trying to form policy on a room by room basis would be nutty. > And is this benefit worth the difficult-to-quantify but very real cost of students being unable to see the faces of their classmates? We do go outside quite a bit, and most students choose to not mask outside and thus see their classmates then. There's also the very real benefit of making many students-- and me, their teacher-- feel safer. IMO the biggest cost is it's slightly harder to understand each other and we have a few more misunderstandings per day.
- anthonypasq 5y ago
  yikes, you think "feeling" safer is an adequate reason to mask?
  - mlyle 5y ago
    Yes, I do. My dad has SLL, with a ridiculous risk of mortality should he be exposed. Yes, he's fully vaccinated, but the amount of protection he can expect from the vaccine is dubious. Further bounding the risk of me getting exposed by a student (ventilation + masking) lets me both see my elderly father and continue to teach. I don't financially need to teach, and as much as I find it rewarding, I'm not willing to take a large risk of killing family members to do it.
sharken 5y ago
There is no real benefit to masks for many countries with high degree of vaccination. The hospitalizations tell the story, ie. we are doing better than under the big flu seasons from the past. It's more that the majority thinks that masks work, so it won't change anytime soon.
neilwilson 5y ago
Masking is a psychological process designed to install compliance. If it was designed to prevent illness you would insist on using the correct sort of mask that filters inbound - since that protects you from failures elsewhere. I would hope that nobody here would ever design a process that requires 100% compliance to very strict criteria before it has a chance of doing what it is supposed to do. Particularly when there is an obvious and clearly superior alternative that works regardless of what others do. The whole process we have in place at moment is backwards from a physics point of view - filters under pressure leak, and don't under suction. Ask yourself why massive studies didn't happen with tightly controlled experiments in normal real world situations where changing masks was the only variable altered. We've had eighteen months to do such work and yet apparently we can't organise it in an unequivocal fashion. Instead we get people trying to use statistical methods to stitch together alleged proof. Which then leads to reporting bias as cognitive dissonance kicks in. It's like watching the diet-heart hypothesis again in real time. That took 40 years before it was abandoned.

c0nducktr 5y ago

> And is this benefit worth the difficult-to-quantify but very real cost of students being unable to see the faces of their classmates? I would figure the first thing needed to answer that question is defining the "difficult-to-quantify" cost, right?

mlyle 5y ago

> So let me ask you: with such well-ventilated facilities, what is the marginal benefit of masking? It's difficult to estimate. Of course, even with all this care, not everywhere is equally well ventilated. My room is wide open to the outside, but there are other rooms depending on central air and the room filter which may not be as well off. Trying to form policy on a room by room basis would be nutty. > And is this benefit worth the difficult-to-quantify but very real cost of students being unable to see the faces of their classmates? We do go outside quite a bit, and most students choose to not mask outside and thus see their classmates then. There's also the very real benefit of making many students-- and me, their teacher-- feel safer. IMO the biggest cost is it's slightly harder to understand each other and we have a few more misunderstandings per day.

anthonypasq 5y ago
yikes, you think "feeling" safer is an adequate reason to mask?
- mlyle 5y ago
  Yes, I do. My dad has SLL, with a ridiculous risk of mortality should he be exposed. Yes, he's fully vaccinated, but the amount of protection he can expect from the vaccine is dubious. Further bounding the risk of me getting exposed by a student (ventilation + masking) lets me both see my elderly father and continue to teach. I don't financially need to teach, and as much as I find it rewarding, I'm not willing to take a large risk of killing family members to do it.

sharken 5y ago

There is no real benefit to masks for many countries with high degree of vaccination. The hospitalizations tell the story, ie. we are doing better than under the big flu seasons from the past. It's more that the majority thinks that masks work, so it won't change anytime soon.

neilwilson 5y ago

Masking is a psychological process designed to install compliance. If it was designed to prevent illness you would insist on using the correct sort of mask that filters inbound - since that protects you from failures elsewhere. I would hope that nobody here would ever design a process that requires 100% compliance to very strict criteria before it has a chance of doing what it is supposed to do. Particularly when there is an obvious and clearly superior alternative that works regardless of what others do. The whole process we have in place at moment is backwards from a physics point of view - filters under pressure leak, and don't under suction. Ask yourself why massive studies didn't happen with tightly controlled experiments in normal real world situations where changing masks was the only variable altered. We've had eighteen months to do such work and yet apparently we can't organise it in an unequivocal fashion. Instead we get people trying to use statistical methods to stitch together alleged proof. Which then leads to reporting bias as cognitive dissonance kicks in. It's like watching the diet-heart hypothesis again in real time. That took 40 years before it was abandoned.