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Comment by ok_dad | Hacker News Reader

I live in a place where masking isn’t a big deal, people wore masks all the time before covid if they felt sick to prevent transmission. During covid, our rates were quite low, and the rates of countries like Japan where they mask routinely were lower.

How do “anti-maskers” (for lack of a better term) explain this? If masks only work for 5 or 10 percent reduction, then it still helps and with little downside.

I don’t understand what’s so bad about wearing a mask, other than wanting to buck the system trying to tell you what to do.

I don’t understand why you’d look at someone with a mask on and judge them today, even, as you don’t know their story or what their health is like.

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I think the problem with the mask discussion is both sides over represent what the other side is saying. Proponents likely don't view it as a panacea, just as opponents probably could be convinced it is a good idea to try.

To be clear, there were and are people that are in the extremes. People having meltdowns over being asked to wear a mask did happen. And that doesn't make sense.

However, it also takes rather high confidence to think that masks were meaningful impacts on school transmission. And getting either side that is invested in a position here to discuss with the others is difficult. I'm not clear why.

So, people will talk over each other and not actually engage with the discussion, but the weakest form of the discussion that they can dominate.

For myself, I don't understand it, either. Agreed that masking was not a big deal. But, literally everyone I knew that made a big deal of masking all of the time were the most likely people I knew to have covid. Usually several times in the year. It made literally no sense. (My guess is they were the most likely to test all of the time, and odds are high they had a few false positives?)

Now, as indicated by my comment on schools, I also think it was pointless to try and get preschools and such with masking policies. Happy to be shown I'm wrong on that, but the messaging around kids and covid was abysmal.

Preschool’s probably hopeless, but I happened to get to see a somewhat-nice (doctors and fancy lawyers send their kids there) local private elementary and a bunch of local public elementaries handle Covid.

The public schools re-opened later and had terrible transmission rates the whole first year. Kids and teachers were sick constantly. Masking was nominally mandated but compliance in all grades was terrible, mostly due to attitudes from and modeling at home (i.e. their parents were chin-maskers who complained about masking a ton at home in front of their kids) and then social effects of having quite a few like that, causing even more to mask poorly. Kids routinely came to school with fevers and got everyone sick with what always seemed to turn out to be yet more goddamn covid.

The private school opened sooner, but had very-good air purifiers in every room that ran whenever possible (too loud when class actively working) and practically perfect masking. Kids didn’t come to school sick. Despite re-opening sooner, they did a ton better. Any extra costs were more than made up by not having to pay for as many substitute days. Even first graders and kindergarteners masked decently well—because their parents did, and didn’t complain constantly about masking and talk about how it’s pointless and watch media complaining about masking in front of their kids. The parents’ attitudes made most of the difference as far as masking goes.

I'd wager that opening sooner versus later is almost certainly more pertinent than you realize there. It is comical how rapidly families get sick when they first start something like preschool. The longer it has been since they were exposed, the more rapidly they get sick.

That said, I'm happy to see data backing this. Last time I recall the claim getting looked at, it didn't have anything actionable. Private school was something like 1/20th the size of typical public schools and the numbers were inline with what you would expect for such a smaller population.

Our kids in public similarly saw a ton of reported cases. Around here, though, masking compliance was pretty good. I'm still finding stashes of masks we had in convenient locations for when we were out.

>I don’t understand what’s so bad about wearing a mask, other than wanting to buck the system trying to tell you what to do.

Mostly this. I like eating ice cream. If someone told me to eat ice cream or they would shoot me in the face, I would resent it.

I much prefer to be offered ice cream, or asked politely to have some.

What about vaccinations? I’m talking about for mumps and stuff, things we should all agree are necessary. Those are more invasive yet we accept them today as a requirement for most of society.

I just don’t understand (cause I’m autistic I think) that if you think a mask might help, but it was mandatory anyways, why you would get angry then versus if they asked politely and you did it. Is that your ego or something? I totally don’t understand, but like I said, around here it was the exception for someone to not wear a mask, and those who didn’t had good reasons and were very careful to shop when less people were around and stuff like that. We care about each other where I live.

Happy to explain further, but first I need to know more about what you can relate to.

How do you feel about the ice cream analogy? Would you just be happy for the opportunity to eat ice cream and not be bothered by the gun to your head?

I guess maybe I just won’t get it, it seems like nothing, to me, to wear a mask if requested, so I don’t get the push back. Do you feel like it’s being too submissive or something? I prefer explanations of how you feel and what your internal dialogue is when a mask is mandatory at, say, the grocer. Vaccinations are a decent corollary but those are riskier than an N95 by far, so it’s not perfect. Wearing a mask basically costs nothing, IMO, unless you’re a very specific case where it’s harmful.

I would say this is false analogy fallacy.

You might be surprised at how many Americans feel the analogy is quite accurate.

Is this person a lawful agent of a legitimate government? Is the ice cream policy reasonably connected to some compelling government interest, like public health?

The degree to which people think these factors matter is likely a deciding characteristic in their response.

How do those people feel about wearing pants at the point of a gun?

It makes them see red.

If that's true, they're uncharacteristically quiet about it!

Do you expect anyone to follow any rules?

what do you mean.

Exactly what I asked.

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