Comment by adamrezich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adamrezich | Hacker News Reader

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> 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?"

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.

> 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.

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