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Honestly, why do people care so much about wearing masks?
Good thing we don’t have a national campaign to wear pants, otherwise, 20% of the country would be going on and on and on about now pants restrict their movements, make their crotch hurt, make them trip and infringe on their freedom to go pantless.
Or good thing we don’t have a national campaign to make people go to the bathroom in actual bathrooms instead of just randomly in nature. If we did, we’d hear all kinds of complaints about how bathrooms smell horrible and it’s gross to have to use a toilet that other people used or that it costs a lot of money to install a bathroom in your house or that it restricts the places you can poop and it physically hurts to hold it in while you find a spot to go and above all it infringes on people’s freedom poop where they GD please!
You might think that these analogies are ridiculous, but they are not. Did you know that until a few years about 50% of the population of India did not have access to a bathroom. They just went and defecated in nature (or on the train tracks or some body of water or in some corner of their slum). Aid organizations have tried to solve the problems by installing lots of toilets. But surprise, surprise, the populace for the most part didn’t use them. They actually preferred pooping in the open and thought toilets were gross and bothersome. See: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/05/asia/...cli/index.html
So, really, stop the ridiculous excuses and debates and just start wearing masks. Who cares if mask-wearing goes on forever? We’ll just get used to it, like our ancestors got used to wearing pants and not pooping anywhere they felt like.
People care because at this time a year ago the argument was to ban mask because we were dehumanizing half of the local population by taking away their face and expressions by forcing them in a mask.
It is just as dehumanizing when we force everybody behind a mask and not just post pubescent females.
That the biggest one - "When does this end?" - still has received zero numerical (goal-based) answers in here certainly justifies the "forever?" in the thread title.
Why do people keep asking for this 'hard numbers' answer to a question that can't possibly have that sort of an answer at this point? What do you want said? Do you want to hear that it ends when we have fewer than X number of deaths per day, fewer than x number of hospitalizations per month, when we have fewer than x number of new cases reported for x number of days? All of the above? That we don't know much about this virus still suggest to me that the best course of action right now is to take a wait and see approach, learn more about it until we have a better idea of how to fight it, and in the meantime we go about our daily lives with caution. But no, some people want hard answers right now.
What I think is there is massive fear among a segment of the population that the answer will be that we will be required to wear masks until the virus is eradicated (in other words, forever) or made as 'harmless' as the common cold. And I think that fear is totally baseless and a gross exaggeration of what will happen.
There's no "game" that I'm trying to play at here. A mask covered on the inside with snot from dozens of sneezes and left that way for hours certainly causes more problems that it solves. That's an obvious extreme case (although you'd be surprised how many people I see no longer covering up their mouth when they cough or sneeze because they're wearing a mask) but surely we ought to work backward from it, investigate the facts, and establish a groundwork for how frequently they need to be changed under varying circumstances before they start harming more than they help. Your response asserts that these are basically magical talismans which will never harm more than they help, and I'd be fascinated to see what backs this up.
This might be gross, but you can’t infect yourself with something that came from you. It’s not going to make you sick ... or any sicker, if you are already sick. That’s just the way the immune system works. It’s not a debate point.
Ok, to be more precise: You aren’t going to infect yourself by contact with something that came out of your own nose or mouth. I am not talking about other orifices here ...
Also, if grossness is a problem, get yourself another mask.
Masks simply do not make the infection worse. Sorry. And I don’t have to provide proof. Any one who has any knowledge of how the immune system works would say the same things. Burden of proof is on you.
Similarly, the earth turning around the sun is not open to debate. Or, to take an example closer to my heart, giving someone a massage is not going to spread their cancer. Just because we don’t know everything about the universe or about cancer or about Covid and other infections, doesn’t mean we don’t know some things for sure.
Why do people keep asking for this 'hard numbers' answer to a question that can't possibly have that sort of an answer at this point? What do you want said? Do you want to hear that it ends when we have fewer than X number of deaths per day, fewer than x number of hospitalizations per month, when we have fewer than x number of new cases reported for x number of days? All of the above? That we don't know much about this virus still suggest to me that the best course of action right now is to take a wait and see approach, learn more about it until we have a better idea of how to fight it, and in the meantime we go about our daily lives with caution. But no, some people want hard answers right now.
What I think is there is massive fear among a segment of the population that the answer will be that we will be required to wear masks until the virus is eradicated (in other words, forever) or made as 'harmless' as the common cold. And I think that fear is totally baseless and a gross exaggeration of what will happen.
I'm underwhelmed with your impatience towards the very idea of asking for exit criteria (did we learn nothing from the Iraq war?) but, let's just suppose we yield to it.
What, specifically, is it that we're "waiting and seeing" to find? What does it mean to "have a better idea of how to fight it"? If, as it sounds, you're talking about better treatments, what specifically is it that we need to hold out for? Even though we're accepting your premise that daily death/case goals aren't the right way, there's no reason why we can't attach a numeric goal to "fighting it". Are we holding out for a certain reduction in the death rate, the hospitalization rate, the duration of hospitalization? Economic affordability of treatments?
Asking for an answer to this stuff isn't a feeble, pointless exercise I'm tossing out like some embittered old gym coach. You're talking about imposing a sweeping change upon all of society with an expected 100% compliance rate. If you can't delineate that change with a tangible threshold, then what you're really saying is "do this because it feels unsafe otherwise". And governing by the whims of "it feels" is exactly how we get unending quagmires... which is precisely why, in the absence of tangible goals, fearing this will be an unending "new normal" is the only rational response.
This might be gross, but you can’t infect yourself with something that came from you. It’s not going to make you sick ... or any sicker, if you are already sick. That’s just the way the immune system works. It’s not a debate point.
Ok, to be more precise: You aren’t going to infect yourself by contact with something that came out of your own nose or mouth. I am not talking about other orifices here ...
Also, if grossness is a problem, get yourself another mask.
Masks simply do not make the infection worse. Sorry. And I don’t have to provide proof. Any one who has any knowledge of how the immune system works would say the same things. Burden of proof is on you.
Similarly, the earth turning around the sun is not open to debate. Or, to take an example closer to my heart, giving someone a massage is not going to spread their cancer. Just because we don’t know everything about the universe or about cancer or about Covid and other infections, doesn’t mean we don’t know some things for sure.
Remember that we got here in the first place because of my question about whether there's a certain threshold of use past which masks can harm more than they help. You're defining "harm" exclusively as "you can't double-catch COVID" which is as narrow as it is uselessly tautological. Let the mask turn into enough of a petri dish and it's just as self-evident that it'll become a problem.
You've got a snappy one-size-fits-all solution - "just change it when it gets gross" - but think carefully about that. You're trusting that everyone will be responsible and will be hygienic. Recall what I just mentioned about people thinking they don't need to cover up when they sneeze or cough because they're wearing a mask. Are you sure that "people will always handle them properly" is the right laurel to rest your blind faith on?
The rational way to approach this would be to quantify what masks do to help, quantify to what degree could they make things worse due to error and human folly (it's not zero), and how heavy the lift would be to get our naturally sloppier comrades to course-correct. If we establish that masks do very little to help - or that they do very little to help at certain times (e.g. if you're not symptomatic, if you're not in a very crowded place) - then we could conclude that there are times they're not worth the effort.
We can't and won't quantify that because, according to you, wanting to debate this at all is the equivalent of defecating in the streets and rejecting pants.
I'm underwhelmed with your impatience towards the very idea of asking for exit criteria (did we learn nothing from the Iraq war?) but, let's just suppose we yield to it.
What, specifically, is it that we're "waiting and seeing" to find? What does it mean to "have a better idea of how to fight it"? If, as it sounds, you're talking about better treatments, what specifically is it that we need to hold out for? Even though we're accepting your premise that daily death/case goals aren't the right way, there's no reason why we can't attach a numeric goal to "fighting it". Are we holding out for a certain reduction in the death rate, the hospitalization rate, the duration of hospitalization? Economic affordability of treatments?
Asking for an answer to this stuff isn't a feeble, pointless exercise I'm tossing out like some embittered old gym coach. You're talking about imposing a sweeping change upon all of society with an expected 100% compliance rate. If you can't delineate that change with a tangible threshold, then what you're really saying is "do this because it feels unsafe otherwise". And governing by the whims of "it feels" is exactly how we get unending quagmires... which is precisely why, in the absence of tangible goals, fearing this will be an unending "new normal" is the only rational response.
My goodness, MY impatience? Yes, I am talking about why don't we wait to see if we come up with an effective affordable treatment for those who catch it, a possible vaccine, maybe even a better idea of the reinfection rate, what affect if any winter will have on the rate or severity of infection. I don't see the point of blindly rushing about a mere four months after the virus appears and start carrying on that the sky is falling, and that we need concrete answers about the solution NOW. Masks are a precaution we take while we strive to find a better answer, they aren't an end in themselves. People need to stop acting as if they are.
My goodness, MY impatience? Yes, I am talking about why don't we wait to see if we come up with an effective affordable treatment for those who catch it, a possible vaccine, maybe even a better idea of the reinfection rate, what affect if any winter will have on the rate or severity of infection. I don't see the point of blindly rushing about a mere four months after the virus appears and start carrying on that the sky is falling, and that we need concrete answers about the solution NOW. Masks are a precaution we take while we strive to find a better answer, they aren't an end in themselves. People need to stop acting as if they are.
"Wait for a better answer" is the kind of thing that will always sound virtuous and, also, is always the stuff of knee-wobbling marshmallow fluff.
Just look at the criteria you've listed: one of them - the "reinfection rate" - is something we already know quite a lot about. Tens of millions of known cases have come and gone worldwide, with several times that in undetected asymptomatic infections, and the only "reinfections" have been very rare aberrational headlines - many of which were false positives stemming from the overly sensitive nature of the PCR test. (For further assurance, you may want to check out what the NYT recently published about T-cell protection, a rare case of the media spanking its own propensity for apocalyptic headlines.) If you believe that masks need to linger because of the shadow of reinfection, what you're really saying is "regardless of the facts today, we must wait until my fears go away".
On paper, your other criteria - an affordable treatment, a vaccine, stall for the winter to study its effects - are well and good. But so long as your central fulcrum is "we need to wait for a better answer", what's to stop a year from passing, good news happening on all three of those fronts, and still maintaining masks because we "feel" like a better answer still eludes us?
There's no reason to be flustered when faced with people asking for concrete answers given the scope of change related to a masking mandate. It's a good thing that this isn't accommodated unquestioningly. We have brains, and it's our prerogative use them to come up with thresholds. Timing has nothing to do with that whether we're talking about the day after, a "mere" four months after, or two years after.
What Governor Kelly said when she "tried" to mandate masks for all Kansans: "The marked escalation in Kansas’ strategy to slow the spread of COVID-19 came after the state confirmed over 900 new cases of the respiratory virus over the past weekend. Repeatedly on Monday, Kelly stressed that mask wearing is currently the only method available to slow the virus spread in any meaningful way until a vaccine is readily available." per this article: https://www2.ljworld.com/news/state-...-trend-upward/ Because of an agreement that Gov Kelly made with the legislature after her power overreach, the decision belongs with the individual counties of which 90 of the 105 opted out. So maybe the answer to how long you will be wearing a mask is that you will wear them until there is a vaccine that you are willing to submit to, not one that is known to be effective or safe, just until they roll some out for the government to purchase.
Timing has nothing to do with that whether we're talking about the day after, a "mere" four months after, or two years after.
IMO timing has everything to do with it when you are proposing that a few months of mask wearing is a precursor to the government turning this into a permanent law, as a way to oppress people. I call it jumping the gun, or maybe paranoia.
IMO timing has everything to do with it when you are proposing that a few months of mask wearing is a precursor to the government turning this into a permanent law, as a way to oppress people. I call it jumping the gun, or maybe paranoia.
Asking questions about tangible boundaries is hardly synonymous with believing visions of nefarious governmental sneaky Petes plotting oppression in smokey warehouses. It's not conspirators one needs to keep at bay: it's unchecked fear. People respond to incentives, and unchecked fear tends to throw that equation into an unpredictable frenzy. (The fears that the media has stoked around "reinfection" is a great example of irrationality run amok.)
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