dguaraglia

The only people whose mental health I'm really concerned about are those who are obsessed with trying to get rid of masks.

If you are vaccinated and feel comfortable not using a mask, don't wear one. If you don't feel comfortable, then wear one. I literally have yet to hear someone complaining about someone not wearing a mask outside, but all you need to do is read this thread to see tons of comments complaining about people wearing masks.

Let people make their own decisions. They aren't cattle.

I love the magic of Hacker News: posting a reply agreeing with someone describing a problem? WELL, THAT'S A DOWNVOTE FOR YOU!

This place sucks. I wish there was a way to delete my account.

Same

That's an oversimplification. The first thing to consider is that there's two types of masks:

* N95 masks

* Everything else

We knew N95 masks worked because that's what professionals use in hospitals. Unfortunately, there was a shortage of PPE so telling people to buy them would put them in direct competition with professionals treating very sick patients. In April 2020 we were looking at a really bleak scenario so there was a very strong incentive to keep professionals alive even if it came at the expense of some citizens (think: doomsday scenario).

We also had no idea whether 'everything else' helped at all. Recommending non-N95 use might have given people a false sense of security that might have played against more effective measures such as extreme social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms.

As knowledge improved, guidance changed. Nothing crazy to see here.

As I explained in another post, originally the consensus was that only N95 masks were somewhat effective. There were no studies on the effectiveness of other masks.

Recommending people use masks could've given people a false sense of security in people and probably acted against more effective measures such as social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms matching those of Covid-19 ('well, I know I have a cough, but I'll just wear a mask and it'll be fine').

Recommending people use the only masks we knew to somewhat work - N95s - would've created a huge problem for hospitals that already were having issues procuring PPE to protect the professionals who were dealing with Covid-19 patients.

Basically, there was no reason for the CDC to recommend masks. Again, there's no need for some nefarious explanation.

Oh, I knew. I was just pointing out that even in the scenario he described it didn't even approximate to what you describe as happening in Belgium (which to be clear, I completely believe).

So basically what you are saying is that you drew your conclusion back then - who knows based on what data - and you are so set in your ways, there’s nothing that will change your mind.

Sounds like a super healthy way to approach life.

So, nothing like Belgium then, and exactly what I described: people being asked to wear a mask and not doing it.

I don’t know the circumstances of the situation you mention, but it hardly qualifies as security theatre. Also, I doubt they screamed ‘not approved’ but I guess no anti-mask narrative sounds dire enough without a little exaggeration.

It's honestly been fascinating to watch the conspiracy world twist themselves into logical pretzels to fit their narrative to both reality and the political landscape. At some point, Alex Jones - who unfortunately is a weather vane for all the crap circulating in the conspiracy world - claimed the following within the span of a month:

* The virus is lethal and the government is hiding it

* The virus is just the common cold and tests are a conspiracy to make Trump look bad

* The virus is lethal and a conspiracy by dark forces to kill people

* The virus doesn't exist and people wearing masks are idiots

* The virus is lethal (again!) and a conspiracy by the Chinese to destroy the world's economy

It's no surprise that people who are marginally sucked into the conspiracy world have their brains completely fried by the constant narrative shift.

There's almost a year between the time we originally went into lockdown to 'flatten the curve' and the time a significant part of the population got vaccinated. You can't pretend that not using a mask now - once someone is vaccinated - is the same as not using a mask back then.

You are kind of proving my point by reading 'unless absolutely necessary' (meaning: they don't want to use a mask and they don't most of the time, except when there's a rule saying they should) as 'THEY TOTALLY WANT TO KEEP USING A MASK!!!'.

I have no idea what happens in Belgium, but nothing like that happens here in the US. They barely ask people to wear a goddamn mask, and they are all up in arms about it.

So you are salivating at the idea that businesses that cared for their employees' safety go under just because you disagree with them politically.

Very nice.

This is such a bullshit strawman. Most of my friends are family are very liberal. Most of them are already vaccinated. Not a single one of them wants to wear a mask unless absolutely necessary and everyone is ready for this to be over.

You can't flatten the curve and then immediately throw away all caution and go back to the behavior that made the curve a geometric progression.

Meh, I understand your point, but as someone who follows the conspiratorial world passively, I can tell you the whole 'but they told you masks were useless' thing is a post-facto rationalization to gain some common ground with the less conspiratorial people.

In reality, the usual suspects were pushing conspiracy theories about the CDC even before they determined masks were useful. A famous conspiracy peddler famously claimed the CDC was downplaying how bad the virus was and 'it was over for humanity, it'll only be lone survivors' when we only had a handful of cases in the US.

In other words: the CDC could've nailed every single guideline and we'd still have half of the population making up conspiracy theories about it. It's just too politically convenient.

First, this is a straw man. Nobody is saying that the CDC's guidelines are infallible. They've been widely criticized for botching the Covid-19 crisis.

Second, the difference between CIA, FBI and CDC is that usually when the CDC makes a pronouncement, it is linked to some scientific basis. Unlike the CIA that can claim Iraq has 'weapons of mass destruction' based on vague evidence that nobody - except for a handful of legislators and the president - get to see, one can go and track the science behind a CDC's announcement relatively easily.

Would you have rather waited until hospital capacity was overwhelmed? Spikes in hospitalizations follow - like clockwork - spikes in contagion. By the time hospitals were overrun, that'd mean you'd be looking at another two or three weeks of ever-growing number of people who'd need to be hospitalized in a system that is already at capacity.

I remember hating the idea when the PEP was at first accepted. I hated the thought of refactoring tools breaking, typos leading to empty replacements, etc.

In reality, f-strings work really well and are super elegant. I'm a convert now.

Because propaganda works and Hollywood has been America's biggest cultural export?

So what you are against is rich people not paying the taxes they are supposed to be paying, not against 'higher taxes'.

I used to think like you, until I realized that the people sinking millions of dollars in every electoral campaign to push candidates friendly to 'lower taxes' are the ones who are already taking advantage of every loophole.

Yeah, I guess I took it the wrong way. I still feel the OG's point about violence against animal is valid.

But... that’s actually a product of the industrialization of meat production. It’s like justifying climate change because ‘oh well, we’ve done until now so might as well keep going’.

In reality people are OK with violence against animals because when they think about animal products they just picture a slab of meat they pick up from the freezer at the supermarket. If they realized what feeds the process that ends up in that neatly packaged sirloin, I’m pretty sure they’d have a different reaction than ‘meh’.

(And again, I fish and hunt so it’s not like I’m some bleeding-heart hippie who can’t take violence against animals. I just think that we should all be less cavalier about meat intake, which after all is a very recent phenomenon)

That was, indeed, how cattle used to be raised back in the day, with maybe some grain added to their diet to make up for seasonality of plants (after all, cow eating is a year-round business).

Nowadays, most cattle lives confined in a pen, being fed grass and grains depending on the stage of growth. There’s still some very small farmers using the traditional methodology, but the vast majority of the meat you can buy in a supermarket - even fancy ones like Wholefoods - are the product of mass production.

The USDA’s website has a pretty good rundown of the process: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...

What you are missing is that Bison lived off whatever plants naturally grew in the land, and that their numbers declined and increased with the available food supply. The loss of natural habitat and biodiversity alone should be a cause for concern.

Let's not overlook the fact that most cows raised in massive farms are fed a horrible diet and most beef based products - even raw beef - are also processed and have additives.

I'm not saying that Beyond Burger is better or worse, but that pretending all beef is healthy is kind of silly.

The cow that you ate today most likely lived its whole life in a cage no much bigger than its body, inside a huge facility reeking of feces and death and ate an atrocious diet, only to be killed at the perfectly calculated time to maximize profit.

I'm a meat eater. Heck, I hunt (and eat what I hunt) and even I can tell you that your argument is ridiculous.

It all boils down to what benefit you get out of the ecosystem. One could make the same argument about buying a Apple devices or a Tesla, or even Le Creuset pans. And yet, all of those are highly successful businesses that built a loyal consumer base.

Yeah, well, all you need is a single baby to die to get a huge lawsuit so saying 'no one was even hurt' is hugely understating the problem here.

Actually, I was going to point out that growing up I'd eat the nuts extracted from the cone of the Araucaria tree, which - depending on shape and how ripe they are - could look remarkably like a green pineapple [1].

... but that introduces another issue, because I grew up eating those in South America and it turns out the tree originates in Australia. But it's not unthinkable that a similar pine cone could be found in Europe (and the vast Roman Empire of the time).

[1] https://jerry-coleby-williams.net/2015/02/15/bunya-prehistor...