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Forcing children to wear a mask is child abuse. The Left failed children.

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by AroundTheWorld, Jan 31, 2022.

  1. DonnyMost

    DonnyMost Member
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    People have been posting things like this for a long time, and while there is an obvious point, it cleaves off way too much of the details and nuance around the topic.

    Does a mask stop aerosol transmission? Nope. Not even N95s do that 100%. To that end, the virus is basically unavoidable for those whom have to spend extended periods of time around other humans indoors.

    Does a mask stop the insane amount of non-aerosolized covid-carrying particles that come flying out of your face every time you talk, cough, etc? Yes. Quite well.

    So, are masks a panacea? Not even close. Are they a common sense preventative measure and courtesy to use when interacting with other people within spitting distance? Yes.

    Granted, now that the pandemic has basically ripped through the population entirely and vaccine distribution has reached its saturation point, masks are close to pointless. But during the last wave and especially during pre-vaxx it was a much different story.
     
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  2. Amiga

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    For most, I would think but they aren't pointless to those that don't want to get infected or don't mind being infected but don't want to spread to vulnerable families. It's not a small segment either, ~10m.
     
  3. DonnyMost

    DonnyMost Member
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    I don't think masks stop you from getting infected (unless it's N95 even though I've yet to see the evidence broken down about that), but they help prevent you from spreading your own infection (in certain capacities/situations).

    As always, I support anyone's right or decision to wear a mask forever if they want. I'm lucky enough to not have anyone in my inner circle whom I have to worry about their health.

    Everyone should do whatever they can to protect themselves however they see fit, but, for the rest of society, it's mask off time baby.
     
  4. AroundTheWorld

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    Fair enough, so let's get rid of them now.
     
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  5. AroundTheWorld

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  6. Amiga

    Amiga Member

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    Nothing stops infection because of human behaviors. Lab testing showed even surgical masks greatly help reduce inhaling sars-cov2 aerosols. Of course, that's a lab environment and doesn't capture human behaviors and thus there need to be studies in real-world environments. There is no double-blinded gold standard study on masking but there are some that came close to that and there are plenty of correlation studies that show masking work.

    From what we know, masking helps reduce the chance of both infection and transmission. I do advocate that if you are vulnerable or try to prevent spread, you do want to go with the better mask and fitting (KN94, N95). But that doesn't mean that lower-quality masks or fitting are useless. And you don't need to mask every time for every event. The simple formula is effectiveness is proportional to wearing duration and mask quality. Up to each individual to decide how long and what quality based on their risk tolerance, where they are, and what they are doing.
     
  7. AroundTheWorld

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    So you are in favour of ditching all mask mandates everywhere and making masks optional?
     
  8. Amiga

    Amiga Member

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    There is no mask mandate at my school and my state. I'm fine with that. Other close by school districts still have mask mandates and of course, other locals still do. I'm fine with that too. At this point, where there is still major spread in some places and almost nothing in other places, I think it should be based on local conditions. But in general, yes, I think mask mandate is no longer needed... for now. The next big wave could just be around the corner, and we need to be ready to change course nimbly. I do hate legal ban on public health policy as it stupidly ties the hand of health officials.
     
  9. AroundTheWorld

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    Thanks.

    As to "I do hate legal ban on public health policy as it stupidly ties the hand of health officials.", just one comment: I understand your reasoning behind saying "it should be based on local conditions". But I can tell you that in a relatively small country like Germany with 16 federal states and countless cities and municipalities and a relatively complicated system, this leads to total chaos. Every state, every city makes up their own rules.

    Sorry, this is in German, but just an example:



    These are the rules to enter a mall.

    Some shops you can enter without limitation
    For some, you need a test
    For some, you need to be vaccinated
    For some, you need to be vaccinated and boostered
    For some, you need to be vaccinated and boostered and tested

    Etc. etc. etc.
     
  10. AroundTheWorld

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  11. DonnyMost

    DonnyMost Member
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    If you have sources/links for anything relevant please post. I've been really disappointed trying to find reliable info on this.
     
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  12. AroundTheWorld

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    How do you explain that rates of infection during Omicron are exactly the same in California and Florida, although one state had strict mask mandates and the other one didn't?
     
  13. Amiga

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    Are they the same? I haven't dug into the data, but that wouldn't surprise me. This has been well known for a while:

    1- mandate doesn't mean 100% compliance
    2- not mandate doesn't mean 100% compliance
    3- some cities ignore state mandate (either mandate to mask or mandate to ban mask)
    4- some schools ignore cities or state mandate
    5- businesses ignore cities or state mandate

    Why - pretty much no one enforces mandate (either version). It's the wild west of masking.

    With that said, Omicron is extremely contagious, and masking likely isn't as effective as the previous variants.

    The other thing to note in all of this is Children in the US have a major issue with masking. There is no US-approved surgical or higher-grade masking for kids - all maskings are for adult size which makes pretty much every type of masking from the US, in general, a bad fit for young kids (pretty much useless and pointless when it's a bad fit). Asian countries solved this issue years ago due to their scare with Sars1 with KF94/KN95 mask designed specifically for kids' smaller face. I have mentioned this before - one of my kids uses KF94 and he sometimes forgets to take them off - he's just used to it and said it's more comfortable than the surgical mask (kid side also) that we were using before. I bought these directly from Korean stores months ago.
     
  14. Amiga

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    Don't remember the old ones. I'll try to remember next time I run into a relevant one. I think the CDC does have a list of studies on masks. Some of them are observational studies and some are much better. All are peer reviewed I believe.
     
  15. Amiga

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    It's a freaking mess and it's a bad way to manage a pandemic. I made this argument may be more than a year ago in the other thread...

    In the US, it's mostly all local - each state and even each city decide for themselves. Heck, it's now even each school district. When it comes to NPI, the federal response is limited to recommendations, us borders, federal workforce, interstate and international travels, and federal funding.

    My basic argument was that a virus doesn't care about borders. The spread and infection rate will eventually be the same everywhere given enough time without a coherent national response, which we can't have in the US.

    It's all local and since it's that, then you must then enable locals to do what's best for them.
     
  16. rocketsjudoka

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    The problem with a pandemic is that it tends not to stay local. Not unless you do like the PRC and actually close down the locality and prevent movement in or out.

    That is very difficult to do in the US.

    The problem with the US is that there was no national strategy to deal with this. Pandemic in the early days. There wasn't a national standard to get PPE and states ended up fighting with each other and the Federal government. There was no national standard on restrictions. While Minnesota might've had restrictions it was impossible to keep those going as long as ND, SD and IA had little to none and people moved easily and frequently across those states.
     
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  17. Amiga

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    Well, I'm not even going back to how horrible the US started... if we had a good start and nailed it early (see Taiwan for a great example), we would be in a much better situation but that's long gone.

    I would say the expected national strategy was for states to follow federal leadership and CDC guidelines. That went down the toilet pretty quickly.
     
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  18. bobrek

    bobrek Politics belong in the D & D

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    Just saw this. Once again, you are full of ****.
     
  19. AroundTheWorld

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    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/relaxing-covid-restrictions-kids/622857/

    Kids-Last COVID Policy Makes No Sense
    Kids should face fewer restrictions than their parents, not more.

    By Emily Oster


    About the author: Emily Oster is an economist at Brown University. She is the author of The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years and Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong—and What You Really Need to Know.

    Local governments are relaxing pandemic restrictions at a dizzying pace, removing mask requirements and vaccine entry rules for businesses. Politicians are generally pushing for a return to normalcy. But for one group, change is not forthcoming: children. The removal of mask mandates in schools is likely weeks, if not months, away in some parts of the country. Quarantine and testing requirements remain in many child-care and school settings, even as they disappear from adult life. My burning question is simply: Why? I can imagine three arguments in favor of a kids-last approach, none of which I find convincing.

    First, one could argue that ongoing child-specific restrictions are warranted because children need more protection. This is a hard case to make. Throughout the pandemic, children have been at lower risk of serious illness than adults. In the latest CDC numbers, hospitalization rates for children 0–4 with COVID are estimated at 3.8 per 100,000 and for the 5–11 group at 1 per 100,000. By comparison, the rates in the 18–49, 50–64, and over 65 groups are 3.7, 8.5, and 22, respectively. (The very youngest kids and the 18-49 set have about the same risk, despite only the latter having access to highly effective vaccines.) Long COVID also seems less prevalent among children than adults. Some children are more vulnerable than others, of course, and society owes special attention to high-risk kids. But it doesn’t follow that COVID restrictions for children ought to stay uniformly in place after they’ve been removed for their parents.

    A second possible argument in favor of a kids-last policy is that COVID mitigations work better in child settings than in others. The data don’t support this argument, either. Evidence from test-to-stay programs, for example, suggests that more than 97 percent of kids who are exposed to the coronavirus at school and are then required to stay home never end up testing positive. Keeping these kids out of school, then, isn’t meaningfully halting community spread. As for masking, others have made the point that, after two years, we still have paltry proof that face coverings significantly lower case counts at school. Even if you are skeptical of these arguments, masking in school (as practiced) is certainly not more effective than masking in other settings. The largest masking randomized trial, in Bangladesh, found the highest efficacy among older individuals.

    Vinay Prasad: The downsides of masking young students are real

    A final argument is that, because vaccination rates among children are low, and children under 5 are still not eligible for vaccines, they may have higher case rates, and lowering case rates in this group is important to protect the vulnerable, especially the unvaccinated. Over the past several weeks, however, case rates have been fairly similar across all age groups. Moreover, and I think this is perhaps the more important point, this argument is geographically mismatched. Areas with a high proportion of unvaccinated individuals tend to have limited restrictions on children; areas with high vaccination rates tend to have strict rules. Three-year-old kids in the Northeast wearing KN95 masks outdoors at recess (yes, there are places where this is still required) do not protect unvaccinated adults in the South.

    Given the above, I’m back to asking why. Perhaps others do not agree with my interpretation of the data. A more cynical possibility is that restrictions on children are entirely politically motivated, with governors prioritizing the demands of (say) teachers’ unions over children. I don’t think either of these is the main reason. Instead, the most likely explanation is that politicians are responding to parental fear.

    The fact is that a lot of parents want restrictions for kids to stay in place, or at least express caution about removing them. Quarantines aren’t popular, but some parents and teachers see these as an important tool to stay safe. And polling data from as late as January show that a majority of Americans support continued mask mandates in schools.

    As mask-optional policies gain currency, I receive more and more anguished messages from parents about how to keep their kids safe in this new environment. This fear is a result, at least in part, of alarmist messaging. The CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics have chosen to emphasize risks to children in a way that is at odds with the choices made by their European counterparts. We could debate whether this was the right choice, but the result is a fear of removing pandemic restrictions for children, even among adults who are not worried about their own health.

    Based on the science, the kids-last approach makes no sense. Kids should face fewer restrictions than their parents, not more. But after two years of telling parents to be afraid for their children, policy makers can’t simply turn around and tell them that kids are low risk and everything’s fine. Policy makers need to carefully and patiently explain why and when the masks will come off and the quarantine rules will end, while making clear that parents can still choose additional precautions no matter what local governments mandate. One way or another—and sooner rather than later—we need to let children return to normalcy.
     

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