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Comment by ghoward | Hacker News Reader

And people are far too quick to think that masks do work and/or are not harmful.

What happened to the Precautionary Principle?

Sorry, the entire medical field exists as a counterpoint to the idea that masks are harmful.

The medical field uses masks in the environment they were made for. And they are changed regularly. In the non-medical world, people don't do that.

If people used masks properly, I wouldn't have much of an argument, but they don't, so I do.

A mask isn’t going to hurt you if it doesn’t work. Honestly my 3 year old displays more logic in his thought than this. And before you say it no the virus won’t appear on the mask anymore more so than it would enter your mouth and lungs if the mask wasn’t on.

Does heightened levels of carbon dioxide hurt? Everything we know about heightened levels of carbon dioxide in buildings says, "Yes." Why would masks be any different?

It wrinkles my brain that someone would believe this. Surgeons wear masks for hours, sometimes dozens, while performing operations that require an insane level of concentration and dexterity. They are not harmed because of this.

You have just chosen to believe some idiotic conspiracy theory and are grasping at some vaguely plausible objection to continue holding that belief.

They do that in the environment that the masks are designed for.

So masks somehow magically concentrate CO2 more than any other gas only outside of operating theaters? Or is this selective gas concentration perfectly normal, and the magic is that it doesn't happen in operating theaters?

The "environment that the masks are designed for" is the same Euclidean 3D space containing the same air as all other environments.

How is this a conspiracy theory? Why jump to that conclusion about this person's perfectly reasonable statement and hypothesis?

Stories of children either passing out or dying because they were required to wear masks during track outdoors. Or hell, walking my normal pace (quite fast), I breathe pretty heavily and the amount of oxygen my body takes in with a mask is markedly reduced versus when I'm not wearing one. It is a stark difference, and one I hope I never have to experience again due to disproportionate government and private business mandates rooted in paranoia around the most absurdly low risk levels for the majority of age groups.

> Stories about children either passing out or dying because they were required to wear masks.

Do you have any citations for these events, because they seem to be absurd misinformation.

The country I'm in (Singapore) has legally required masks in public since last year (as have many other countries) so everyone is wearing masks, and so far, I have not heard of a single case of people suffering due to wearing masks.

In fact, I even wear my mask when I go running and I have never felt any significant issues with breathing, even after hours of vigorous exercise.

If masks could reliably cause breathing issues in any significant way, given the number of people in the world who are wearing masks every day, we should expect a statistically significant number of such cases, not just a few cherry-picked anecdotes.

(1) Two Chinese Boys Die Wearing Face Masks During Gym Class https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-two-c...

(2) After Multiple Deaths, Officials Call for No Masks in Gym Class https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005609/after-multiple-deaths...

(3) Oregon high school junior breaks 800-meter school record and falls face-first at finish line as mask restricts breathing https://twitter.com/covid_clarity/status/1387212971399540737

(4) New Jersey driver crashes car after passing out from wearing N95 mask https://nypost.com/2020/04/24/driver-crashes-car-after-passi...

(5) Medical Doctor Warns that “Bacterial Pneumonias Are on the Rise” from Mask Wearing https://www.globalresearch.ca/medical-doctor-warns-bacterial...

Enjoy! :)

Heightened levels of CO2 are negligible in a mask. You aren't supposed to wear a mask 24/7. You wear a mask a strategic times like when you are inside, shopping or in a crowd. If you are outside away from people or crowds you don't need to wear a mask. Besides it's obvious that wearing a mask protects others. All you need to do is watch a video of a sneeze with and without a mask on to figure that out.

There's a lot of evidence that masks protect against bacteria, but the jury's still out for viruses. Also, you are correct that people should be strategic, but a lot of people aren't, and they are not changing their masks regularly as they should be.

I'm sorry but you're not making any sense defending your straw man. You're flip flopping your arguments so I can just recursively revert you to my initial answer.

Why not respond to the new information they presented instead of attacking by claiming "muh logical fallacy"?

Your initial answer does not disprove or refute their more nuanced response, which very much does matter on this subject.

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