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The mask thing was all theater and political logrolling. Beyond it being anti-science, three other concerning factors: * It decreased trust in government by ba
by sfblah 2y ago
The mask thing was all theater and political logrolling. Beyond it being anti-science, three other concerning factors:
* It decreased trust in government by backing a policy that most now understand wasn't science-based.
* It increased the partisan divide in the country for no benefit by encouraging people on both sides to label those on the other side as "nutters."
* It probably caused some amount of real harm by causing people to think that, if they wore a mask, they were protected. This probably meant some elderly and immunocompromised people put themselves at risk when they could have avoided the risk by staying outdoors.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pessimizer 2y agoThe most embarrassing part is that it started off by declaring that the science was against masks, and silencing all dissenters; then moved to declaring the effectiveness of masks, demanding their universal use, and silencing all dissenters. The problem is with the official silencing, not with masks. You can't even figure out whether masks work when you can't trust any of the sources of information to not be some sort of partisan religious police. The hydroxychloroquine fraud being published in the Lancet is something that political, wedge issue science will never recover from. It was like an awful sequel to the Wakefield incident, and a one-two death blow to the general acceptance of vaccines writ large. Now people will just believe the studies that their political party tells them to believe.
- sfblah 2y agoYes, these are all valid points. One question would be, given that masks likely have little effect, what should governments do? My view would be they should not encourage such an intervention, as it lowers faith in institutions, which is most of what your second paragraph is pointing out.
- leptons 2y agoWhy do you think that suggesting to wear a mask during a global pandemic was "all theater"? If you had to go into an ebola ward, and someone handed you a mask, would you really refuse to wear it?
- sfblah 2y agoWhere I live (Alameda County, California), people were required by law to wear a mask outdoors when within 30 feet of another person. This was not merely a "suggestion" and it was enforced. My decision about ebola would be based on whether masks are effective or not. I haven't researched the topic.
- leptons 2y agoWe're far, far beyond the point where we have to question or wonder if wearing an air filter in an infectious disease ward will decrease your chances of catching the disease. Maybe you personally really don't know, but maybe you're being willfully ignorant, I don't know you. If you refused to wear the mask, the very serious and educated people at the door of the ebola ward would likely refuse you entry to the ebola ward, which is probably all for the better anyway.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nate_meurer 2y agoIn every public place I visited during the pandemic, the official rules stated you could leave your mask down if you were eating or drinking. This included two of the largest hospitals in Colorado. In bars and restaurants you only had to wear a mask if you were standing up, and at all other times you were allowed to eat, drink, laugh and talk unmasked. On airplanes everyone unmasked while eating meals. If masking was truly primarily about stopping the spread of a highly contagious airborne virus, why were the rules designed and applied to allow people to spend so much time in confined spaces unmasked?
- leptons 2y ago
- standardUser 2y agoYou're throwing in a truly decadent load of assumptions in a few short words before you make your points. Just because you can craft rhetoric that is tiring to untangle does not mean it has any merit.
- sfblah 2y agoPeople should try to find interventions that work. If masks worked reliably, and there were evidence behind that, I'd be a big supporter. There is _better_ evidence around N95 masks in hospital settings. But that's not the typical masking situation. At my kids' school, everyone wore surgical masks. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that virons pass through and around those masks with relative ease.
- leptons 2y ago> If masks worked reliably, and there were evidence behind that, I'd be a big supporter. Masks do work reliably, and there is plenty of evidence behind that. Maybe you only trust biased sources that say otherwise, I don't know, but your comment is pretty much calling N95 masks snake oil, and that's nonsense.
- threeseed 2y ago> The mask thing was all theater and political logrolling And yet every government around the world from all political persuasions pushed for mask wearing. Wonder how you reconcile this with your intellectually lazy and factually baseless "this was all for partisan reasons" rhetoric.