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Comment by AndrewBissell | Hacker News Reader

This article relies on certain assumptions without even interrogating, much less supporting, them -- namely, that flu and colds are down because of the same measures which have failed to eliminate Covid, and that it's an unalloyed good thing for people not to be getting sick. To say nothing of its extremely circumscribed acknowledgement of the harms these measures are causing.

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Exactly what harm does wearing a mask cause and exactly who is acknowledging that???

Masks conceal facial nuances which are very important to young children developing ability to recognize social cues. The article makes it sound like this is only a problem for people with language difficulties but it is obviously much broader than that: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-face-masks-are-disrupting...

The article also touches on distancing as one of the key measures helping reduce flu and colds, and this is probably the one most responsible for the huge surge in children's psychiatric visits and suicide attempts over the past year, which somehow didn't rate a mention in NPR's discussion of the cons.

There is something inbetween 0% and 100% mask use.

Other cultures and countries have adopted mask fairly common mask usage and their children are not suffering. If anything there children are scoring much better in academics then most us states. There are more nuances then that.

Mask when crammed together in public transit? Mask when walking around crowded stores?

Pre Covid, the only real expectation around mask use in "other cultures" was that people wear one in public while experiencing symptoms of illness like cough or fever. It's an entirely different thing from the post Covid state of affairs, where 100% mask use is absolutely the expectation in any kind of mixed public setting.

Humans, who are social animals, not being able to see/read each other's faces in person...forever?

You are talking in absolutes, there is something inbetween 0% mask use, and 100% mask use.

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