3 ms·

Wearing masks in an airplane makes sense to the point where service starts and people are taking their masks off in order to eat and drink. If there is a testi

by ls15 5y ago

Wearing masks in an airplane makes sense to the point where service starts and people are taking their masks off in order to eat and drink. If there is a testing mandate, then nobody without a negative test enters an airplane. Airlines do not allow social distancing. Getting vaccinated does not prevent the spread of the virus, but staying at home does. How many steps (that are actually effective) can an airline passenger really take in order to prevent the spread of the virus?

michaelmrose 5y ago
If it is sufficiently necessary for people to wear a mask then it makes absolutely zero sense to make an exception for eating. Most flights are short enough that you do not actually need to eat during the flight unless for example you have a medical reason for which obviously an exception ought to be made. The obvious example being diabetes.
isomel 5y ago
Firewall are useless if you don't run badly coded daemons? And no need to put a strong password on a database if there is a firewall anyway? Security measures are not all or nothing. It's about reducing the risk. Even with a testing mandate some infections might not be detected. And wearing the mask, even 50% of the time, might reduce the risk of contracting or transmitting germs during the flight. It's a minor inconvenience that helps keeping the risks somehow under control
- nawitus 5y ago
  You need actual cost and benefit analysis. The situation can actually be different if some measures prevent spread by 1%, 10%, 50% etc. Cost and benefit analysis can be ineffective or unwanted in beginning stages of a pandemic.. but for COVID-19 it's been few years already and we can do such analysis.
- native_samples 5y ago
  They don't reduce the risk at all, so the benefit is zero. Do you engage in pointless security theatre when running your servers and say "job done"?
  - Daneel_ 5y ago
    Multiple studies agree that mask wearing is highly effective, and even moreso in confined spaces/close quarters. In a study done onboard Navy ships it reduced transmission by 70%. See below for many studies: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
    - kortilla 5y ago
      Do these studies replicate the idiotic process of giving everyone a drink so 90% of the people in the confined space take of their mask to snack and drink?
    - native_samples 5y ago
      And many studies say the opposite, unfortunately studies are more or less junk. Non-profit research just isn't usefully reliable. Fortunately we don't really need studies here. A study is an attempt to figure out what would happen if everyone were forced to wear masks, but we did that already. Mask mandates get added, removed and changed at different times even in places that are physically next to each other, allowing us to see what it means in reality - which is nothing. States, counties, cities next to each other that differed only in mask mandates have identical case curves. This guy makes tons of graphs showing this: https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-are https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-a... If masks actually worked, this data shouldn't be possible. There'd have to be a clear difference in outcomes. For instance this debate doesn't come up with vaccines except in the form "the real world stats appear to show some effectiveness against hospitalization and death, but are they reliable/interprted correctly?". Whereas here there are no real world stats showing effectiveness, only a handful of worthless studies that invariably seem to have major methodological errors when examined.
  - ls15 5y ago
    Although they do reduce the risk if they are worn consistently with a very tight fit. Almost nobody does that.
- dorfsmay 5y ago
  A better analogy of letting people eat and drink on a flight, so not wearing a mask at all time, would be to completely disable filtering on the firewall for a few minutes every hour. Some people do dry fast, neither drink nor eat, for 24 hours straight with no negative effect. Can people who care so much about COVID they are ready to ban people from flying for the rest of their life, BUT they cannot not bear the inconvenience of not eat nor drink for a few hours?

by ls15 5y ago

michaelmrose 5y ago

If it is sufficiently necessary for people to wear a mask then it makes absolutely zero sense to make an exception for eating. Most flights are short enough that you do not actually need to eat during the flight unless for example you have a medical reason for which obviously an exception ought to be made. The obvious example being diabetes.

isomel 5y ago

Firewall are useless if you don't run badly coded daemons? And no need to put a strong password on a database if there is a firewall anyway? Security measures are not all or nothing. It's about reducing the risk. Even with a testing mandate some infections might not be detected. And wearing the mask, even 50% of the time, might reduce the risk of contracting or transmitting germs during the flight. It's a minor inconvenience that helps keeping the risks somehow under control

nawitus 5y ago
You need actual cost and benefit analysis. The situation can actually be different if some measures prevent spread by 1%, 10%, 50% etc. Cost and benefit analysis can be ineffective or unwanted in beginning stages of a pandemic.. but for COVID-19 it's been few years already and we can do such analysis.
native_samples 5y ago
They don't reduce the risk at all, so the benefit is zero. Do you engage in pointless security theatre when running your servers and say "job done"?
- Daneel_ 5y ago
  Multiple studies agree that mask wearing is highly effective, and even moreso in confined spaces/close quarters. In a study done onboard Navy ships it reduced transmission by 70%. See below for many studies: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Do these studies replicate the idiotic process of giving everyone a drink so 90% of the people in the confined space take of their mask to snack and drink?
  - native_samples 5y ago
    And many studies say the opposite, unfortunately studies are more or less junk. Non-profit research just isn't usefully reliable. Fortunately we don't really need studies here. A study is an attempt to figure out what would happen if everyone were forced to wear masks, but we did that already. Mask mandates get added, removed and changed at different times even in places that are physically next to each other, allowing us to see what it means in reality - which is nothing. States, counties, cities next to each other that differed only in mask mandates have identical case curves. This guy makes tons of graphs showing this: https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-are https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-a... If masks actually worked, this data shouldn't be possible. There'd have to be a clear difference in outcomes. For instance this debate doesn't come up with vaccines except in the form "the real world stats appear to show some effectiveness against hospitalization and death, but are they reliable/interprted correctly?". Whereas here there are no real world stats showing effectiveness, only a handful of worthless studies that invariably seem to have major methodological errors when examined.
- ls15 5y ago
  Although they do reduce the risk if they are worn consistently with a very tight fit. Almost nobody does that.
dorfsmay 5y ago
A better analogy of letting people eat and drink on a flight, so not wearing a mask at all time, would be to completely disable filtering on the firewall for a few minutes every hour. Some people do dry fast, neither drink nor eat, for 24 hours straight with no negative effect. Can people who care so much about COVID they are ready to ban people from flying for the rest of their life, BUT they cannot not bear the inconvenience of not eat nor drink for a few hours?