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Comment by zzzbra | Hacker News Reader

So little substance to this argument. And he cherry picks various points?

> Medical experts admitted that, once the hyper-infectious Omicron became the dominant variant of COVID, cloth masks were perhaps better than nothing, but not by much.

Yes, "cloth" masks. Do not wear cloth masks. K95 and other medical grade masks that actually work as a barrier? Yea those are effective.

Rest of the argument seems to boil down to people not actually following the mandate consistently, which is not actually any argument against the effectiveness of mask wearing per se.

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> Rest of the argument seems to boil down to people not actually following the mandate consistently, which is not actually any argument against the effectiveness of mask wearing per se.

I disagree. Any strategy that fails to account for actual human nature, is flawed. You can't just say, "it'd work if we were different than the way we actually are".

Just because people aren't wearing them consistently doesn't mean more people aren't wearing them more as a result of the mandate. This has a net positive effect. Human nature accounted for.

That seems sad. Suppose some group, intentionally or accidentally, decides to agitate against something that's obviously for the good of us all. Say, traffic laws. Do we, like for masking, teaching history, or the theory of evolution, just decide to give up on traffic laws?

Also, rubbish. There have been many, many successful public health campaigns in the USA that have succeeded: hardly anybody chews tobacco (anti-tuberculosis), lots fewer people smoke (anti-pulmonary and cardiac diseases), virtually 100% of the population defecates in toilets (anti-hookworm). This is just The Atlantic coddling their conservative writers.

> There have been many, many successful public health campaigns in the USA

Of course. Who suggested otherwise?

The point is, when a campaign fails you can't claim it would be a success if only people did it properly. You have to admit that your policy failed, explain why it failed to get the compliance you hoped, and look for other ways that actually produce the desired results, without excuses.

65% of Americans are Obese or Overweight, despite all the warnings about it.

I think that masks _might_ work, but proper compliance was so low, it just wasn't worth torturing the public with mandates.

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