Comment by jmull | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmull | Hacker News Reader

Hm... this does not actually make an argument against masks in school.

It's perfectly fair to point out the limitations of the available studies. Of course we want better ones -- that's a good argument for more, better studies. But the lack of absolute proof isn't an argument against masks in school. That's dumb. Until we conduct some well-designed rigorous controlled experiments on human children (which we'll never do, for presumably obvious reasons) we are going to have to make decisions with imperfect knowledge.

There is substantial evidence that a properly worn N95 or KN95 mask reduces the transmission of covid, right?

Can children be swayed/educated/convinced to wear a quality mask often enough to make a difference in the transmission of covid among their teachers or their families? IDK. Good question. We aren't completely sure, but probably.

Maybe we should answer that before killing masks in school. I mean... let's not be dumb, right?

Masks aren't exactly burdensome. We make kids wear shirts and shoes, even when it's unnecessary in summer. Given the current situation, if you could magically set aside politics and the associated mouth-breathers (which of course we can't) wouldn't we actually demand proof that masks are a net negative before we stop mandating them?

To me, this is a question of how much do we allow "dumb" to run the way things are. Apparently, it's quite a lot. I'm curious how far down we'll go before the end?

> Masks aren't exactly burdensome. We make kids wear shirts and shoes, even when it's unnecessary in summer. Given the current situation, if you could magically set aside politics and the associated mouth-breathers (which of course we can't) wouldn't we actually demand proof that masks are a net negative before we stop mandating them?

normally you're supposed to actually demand proof that something is a net positive before you start mandating it, instead of saying "it's not exactly burdensome, why not?", and then going ahead and doing it.

shirts and shoes don't obscure faces, which are used to communicate nonverbally. one of the main advantages of public/private schooling over homeschooling (though there's obviously ways to mitigate this for homeschoolers) is the social interactions between children are valuable in teaching them basic social skills more or less organically.

you have to stop and think about nth-order effects when making broad sweeping authoritarianesque mandates like this, it's never as simple as, "well, they have to wear shirts and shoes to school don't they? how are masks any different?"

> normally you're supposed to actually demand proof that something is a net positive before you start mandating it

Are you unaware of the massive amounts of clear-cut evidence that properly worn quality masks substantially reduce the transmission of covid? Come on.

as other comments have said, why are we so obsessed with minimizing transmission as much as possible, seemingly regardless of cost or any other incidental negative outcomes, at this point in time? these are all things that made sense early on when we didn't know much and everyone was kind of panicky and the death counts were higher and the misinformation from China was prevalent.

but now in twenty twenty two, we can't just mandating things in order to reduce transmission of a respiratory virus, without considering what other nth-order effects said mandates will have. it's pure irresponsibility as the result of prescribed dogma.

I am not aware of "clear-cut" evidence that masking in schools work in fact that's the entire point of the article in question here so if you have some silver bullet that debunks all the authors claims than you should absolutely share it.

In the middle of a global pandemic, is the chance that it could prevent a death or life-long complication for someone not a "net positive"?

If wearing red shirts on Tuesdays gave me a 0.001% improvement in my kid not being infected, sure as shit I'd be wearing red shirts on Tuesdays and convincing everyone I could to do the same.

> But the lack of absolute proof isn't an argument against masks in school. That's dumb.

How so? It seems more ignorant to assume that masks would help more when the data we do have doesn’t show that.

> Can children be swayed/educated/convinced to wear a quality mask often enough to make a difference in the transmission of covid among their teachers or their families? IDK. Good question. We aren't completely sure, but probably.

You call the authors ideas dumb, but then yourself make unfounded inferences as an argument for continuing to require masks in schools.

Come on. The problem is the studies aren't conclusive, not that they show nothing.

Jesus.

Sorry, but yes, arguing that away is dumb. Not just dumb, but it gets people dead. So... good for you?

Look at the way the article hand-waves away the Bangladesh study... that only makes sense if children transmit covid in a substantially different way than adults. What's the justification for that? Our model for covid transmission is by droplets, particularly from the mouth, such as when exclaiming, shouting, etc. and that masks inhibit such transmission by catching the droplets. Without some evidence it's hard to conceive of how children would be less prone to this, making mask-wearing more important for them to reduce transmission.

> unfounded inferences

What's your argument? That children probably cannot be educated to do anything whatsoever? Hey, schools are pointless in their entirety, so we can cancel all that and the mask issue goes away naturally. Dumb.

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