Comment by drekk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drekk | Hacker News Reader

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Oh, the pandemic is over? Well I'm glad I heard it here on HN first. The 7-day average for COVID deaths is over 1,000, and nearly a million Americans have died (how many 9/11s is that?) but the pandemic is over because nearly 60% of our population took a free vaccine!

Vaccines rapidly lose efficacy when the virus they target has free real estate (vectors) in which to mutate. The laughably slow vaccine uptake in the US (while the rest of the world couldn't secure doses) is to blame there, not anything else.

Americans having to wear a cloth covering to keep their neighbors from catching something almost as contagious as measles is not a large ask, but here we are. It also protects against the flu and RSV since you're concerned about those—which is why the US didn't really have a flu season. Guess those couple hundred thousand deaths a year are preferable to masks when public outbreaks occur though.

What I don't understand is the rest of the world has figured this out? Go ride the subway in Japan and no one struggles with this, just westerners who think thatdoing the bare minimum to prevent illness, hospitalizations, and even death impede on their manifest destiny / freedom / constitutional rights / etc

>Vaccines rapidly lose efficacy when the virus they target has free real estate (vectors) in which to mutate.

The finger pointing game really has to stop considering anyone vaccinated can contract, get sick from, act as a vector/petri dish, and consequently spread the mutated virus. Unvaccinated as well.

>The laughably slow vaccine uptake in the US (while the rest of the world couldn't secure doses) is to blame there, not anything else.

Instead of attempting to blame unvaccinated vectors for the poor vaccine performance, why not blame the actual culprit - the barely tested (with only ~200 clinical trial participants), rushed (sorry, expedited) vaccines?

> Americans having to wear a cloth covering to keep their neighbors from catching something almost as contagious as measles is not a large ask

Cloth masks are so ineffective their effect is statistically invisible.

Demanding others take ineffective measures because you find them a great token of virtue is in fact a large ask.

From what I've read widespread mask wearing would greatly reduce transmission [1]. Where are you hearing that it doesn't?

> Our review of the literature offers evidence in favor of widespread mask use as source control to reduce community transmission: Nonmedical masks use materials that obstruct particles of the necessary size; people are most infectious in the initial period postinfection, where it is common to have few or no symptoms (45, 46, 141); nonmedical masks have been effective in reducing transmission of respiratory viruses; and places and time periods where mask usage is required or widespread have shown substantially lower community transmission.

> The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce Re

to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained. Economic analysis suggests that mask wearing mandates could add 1 trillion dollars to the US GDP (32, 34).

> Models suggest that public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high (39).

1. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7497125/

There’s plenty of articles to be found that say whatever you want. Broadly, you’ll find articles that state that models or theories suggest that wearing masks will probably work great and articles that say that in practice it turns out cloth masks are at most of very limited value, because you can’t say what they filter and they never fit well.

> The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, […] could successfully reduce R to below 1

The very clear fact that no country actually succeeded in doing this, even the countries like Japan where mask wearing is as normal as it gets, should be a hint.

All countries did not perform equally, and we all took very different measures of varying degress. Japan didn't really do any official lockdown, for example, while other countries did. The fact that you can't point to a country that already wears masks as a custom (Japan) and see the obvious benefits means exactly nothing because of that. Now hey, if we had two Japans that behaved identically in every way besides mask usage then that would really be something. Instead, we have a bunch of data being collected on what amount to uncontrolled experiments and we won't really know for a while, if ever.

What I do know is most of the time it's very, very easy to wear a mask. So maybe, if you have good reason to believe it helps, just do the easy thing even if you can't know for sure.

So, that’s what I said. It’s very apparent that the masks should work and it’s very easy. But there’s little actual data and the data there is shows it doesn’t work.

Plus the old story about how Schrödinger’s Japan that is the big example of masks working, also isn’t the example when it turns out they don’t work. Of course.

That's the opposite of what you said. The data there doesn't show it doesn't work, because they didn't take other measures that other countries did take, and the variables are all intermixing their effects.

So the no true masked Scotsman, if the masks don’t work it’s because of the other measures.

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