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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

By and large, by now, mask mandates were dropped everywhere.

There never was a reason to do this. Aside from politics, of course.

This, as this study shows has massive costs in the quality of life for many and affects the economy but no. We can't have mask mandates.

I am now wearing a Cleanspace Halo when on public transit or indoors. If y'all can't be bothered to keep the air clean I will make my own. fine But what of the many who can't afford one or find it ridiculous to wear one? Because it is ridiculous to basically constantly cosplay as Darth Vader (badly), no question about that. But what can one do?

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You're protecting yourself, so where's the problem? Proposing government mandated mask wearing for everyone for the rest of our lives is absolutely insane.

No more so than any other item of clothing, the rules on which vary wildly by era and culture.

Why are women's, and only women's, nipples banned on Facebook and in many cases in public? Usual answer is to protect minors, but the biological purpose of the milk-producing glands they're attached to and after which the taxonomic class of "mammal" is named… is to feed infants. Banning male nipples would be less weird.

When the first Labour MP went to Westminster, he was criticised for the wrong kind of hat.

Used to be illegal for women to wear men's clothes in France (until 2013 technically if not in practice); and Florida is apparently considering treating the opposite as an inherently sexual act.

While face masks do have non-zero impact in some cases, that impact is much rarer and smaller than the discourse around it would imply — fursuiters can dance in much more restricted facewear.

> Proposing government mandated mask wearing for everyone for the rest of our lives is absolutely insane.

why? We have gotten accustomed to seatbelts despite cries about restricting freedoms, wrinkling clothes etc. "no shirt, no shoes, no service" is also common and extremely few people rally against it. At airports we absolutely debase ourselves despite it is known the current security measures are just security theatre. (Boycotting this would be trivial: if everyone opted out of full body scanners the entire system would collapse in hours.) Meanwhile N95 masks are proven to be effective against infecting others. In other words, you need to give some reason to this besides the emotional absolutely insane.

Agree about the effects on health and the economy, but I think there's more to consider than that.

The health stuff isn't even so clear cut. Consider the psychological and social effects of mandating that people cover their faces. It's very valuable to be able to connect on the human level and to do so with a sense of freedom.

o_O

People should become disabled and some even die just so you can see the other person's mug on the bus? Is this what you are saying?

What about every single other risk we accept as humans alive on earth. This is just a kinda new one, why do you draw the line specifically at the airborne virus?

Because this one is novel, we do not yet know how to cure the severe disability it causes and the disease is currently very widespread. And we have a really simple way to severely restricts its spread: wear an N95/FFP2 mask. That simple?

So what. Every virus was "novel" at some point. This one is nothing special. Most any severe infection can potentially cause post-viral fatigue syndrome in susceptible patients. That is hardly a valid reason for turning yourself into a paranoid germaphobe.

You are missing on the current rate of covid infections which is very hard to know because there's no systemic testing any more and many people are asymptomatic. Last time the UK published this data in March, approximately 1 in 40 in the population tested positive and so the number of infected must be significantly higher. No other airborne pathogen is present in multiple percentages of the population.

Also, the problem here is the generalization "any severe infection" -- many otherwise healthy, young people with a reasonably mild acute phase have developed debilitating long Covid symptoms.

No, I'm not missing anything. I am aware of the data (questionable as it may be). There is no valid justification for your proposals. Time to move on.

Time to die.

I'm saying that covering our faces is also a health risk with long term effects in an already increasingly alienated society, and that we should weigh up the risks of long term regulations which diminish the most basic aspects of human contact.

> sense of freedom

Western people are tbe most propagandised people on earth, they attach sence of freedom to inanimate objects like cars and someone's hairy beard

In my experience not wanting to mask unless there is a meaningful sense of risk is a phenomenon equally strong in India (for example) and so I do not believe it has to do with the western propaganda.

If you visited India after the first wave, most people masked, enforced by the police - as they should have. Soon after the 2nd wave (which was bad but resulted in near-endemicity(?)) - after vaccines where widely available and well accepted in India -and to this day, you will see a vast vast majority in India don't mask. A visible minority mask everywhere and are not looked down upon or derided because of it. There is no meaningful propaganda either way right now.

> There is no meaningful propaganda either way right now.

In Europe, in some places, there is and it's sometimes more or less subtle. Local supermarket I go to has a sign "masking is no longer mandatory but it's okay to wear a mask if it makes you feel safer". Which is not how masks are supposed to work (we were told to mask to protect others) and it shouldn't be about feelings.

Meanwhile the cleaning cart station (that sprinkles cart bars with soap/disinfectant) is collecting dust in a corner. I think it would have been nice to keep that from the covid period. But no, we have to erase memories of it.

I think the "mask to protect others" message was a mistake. If you mask to protect yourself you can use a mask with an exhalation value, which is more comfortable. I suspect a lot of opposition to masks is from people who only tried valveless masks. And protecting yourself still indirectly protects others, because you can't infect others unless you are infected.

> Which is not how masks are supposed to work (we were told to mask to protect others)

A well fitting N95 / FFP2, or better, respirator mask protects the wearer to a large extent, even if others don't mask. The "protect the others" message was in 2020, when mostly only surgical masks were available.

I know. But we are talking about mandatory masks here and it only ever was about surgical masks in my country and bordering countries (except Hamburg at some point apparently). The sign is referring to those masks as well, which were the most common ones in circulation. The people who wrote the sign didn't have N95/FFP2 in mind when they wrote it.

And are you making an argument against that sense of freedom?

You've got to be kidding. The virus is now endemic worldwide and will never go away. I'm certainly not willing to wear a mask for the rest of my life regardless of the consequences. Time to get over the irrational germaphobia.

Endemic doesn't mean harmless. Also: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9616156/ Endemic, not over: looking ahead to a new COVID era

The wider public doesn't see the need for them and won't wear them even if the law states they should.

That is up to leadership and media. Both of which, needless to say, have by and large failed the more vulnerable members of our society. Not for the first time. Today we consider what happened around AIDS in the 80s shameful and wasteful. Does another thirty years need to pass for this to be recognized the same?

You're not going to convince the wider public to wear masks forever. They're too annoying and they curtail too much of societal activity to be feasible.

That's why even the country most dead set on their usage (China) is now giving up mask mandates.

I agree with the other comments, you sound mentally unwell.

Strong disagree; they sound risk adverse, which is fine.

I was fully expecting and not at all surprised that the mask mandate ended, as the same happened too soon a century ago with influenza.

I recognise my own near total comfort with masks is unusual.

But, despite recognising that other people don't find them entirely comfortable, I find that discomfort surprising and confusing — to me, masks are literally just a piece of clothing, no more of an issue than a hat or a shirt or trousers, and I've had more discomfort from ties and the necks of button-up shirts they go with.

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