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Comment by nfoz | Hacker News Reader

> 1. Are you suggesting masks as a cultural norm for all eternity? I hope not.

Well in some Asian cultures it was already normalized to wear a mask when you have any kind of symptoms of anything contagious. I was hoping that convention would move west even before this pandemic happened -- so I hope it stays with us.

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I think we are already far too accepting of the idea that it's just normal to be germy and ill. I wish that expectation would change. I don't think it has to be that way.

I've been less sick this year than most. I'll probably continue wearing a mask on public transit at the very least. I'm not quite clear what your hope is about the normalcy of being germy and ill, but I think that statistically, we must accept that any group of 1000 people will certainly have somebody asymptomatic but shedding some virus or another. Just as the younger generation is more accepting of wearing gloves/condoms during sex where they receive proper sex ed, wearing masks may continue to be seen as a common sense measure for the foreseeable future.

I was sick in March for two weeks with some kind of Bronchitis. I don't think it was Covid based on the description of the symptoms.

But since working form home, neither me, my wife, or any of my kids have gotten a cold which is kind of amazing.

I haven't had a cold in years. I still have issues because of my genetic disorder, but, yeah. Colds can be avoided and it's wonderful.

There is a war between your immune system and your environment, with constant escalation. Every time people meet they exchange germs. Most often it's something your immune system has already seen, but sometimes you're tired or it's something that's mutated or that's brand new.

Unless we live in a literal bubble with filtered air, we're going to be germy.

The safest way to not be germy is likely to live in a sunny dry place away from people but then it's usually hot and maybe amazon doesn't deliver.

Sure. We are always germy. But if you feel explicitly under the weather and you have to go out to the store to pick up something, it would be great if you wore a mask - even if it isn't covid times.

I've never done that. I've always just gone to the store. I didn't even really think about it, like of course I'm not going to be wiping my nose and touching things, but I'm also not sanitizing my hands the instant I walk into a grocery story - something I now do every single time.

I do wonder what the effect would be of just having sick people wear masks when they go out?

True eradication of most germs is probably impossible, given how hard it was for smallpox and how hard it currently is for polio. But I don't think there's any inherent reason why all remotely serious diseases couldn't be driven to the level of tuberculosis - something that exists, endemic in every country, but at such a low level that most people have no real expectation they might catch it.

We can treat tuberculosis with antibiotics. Do you think we can just do the same thing with e.g. malaria? The only diseases we've eliminated have been from vaccines, and the diseases we control tend to be from either relatively easy behavioural changes or medicine.

I have a permanently compromised immune system. I don't live in a bubble. The degree to which my life revolves around germ control is not immediately apparent to most people.

Suffice it say that I don't agree with you. At all.

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