[nradov]

Masks may "work" to a limited extent to reduce the risk of transmission in any single interaction, but in the long run that won't save anyone. The virus is now endemic and almost everyone will eventually be exposed regardless of public health measures. You can't seriously expect asymptomatic people to wear masks in public forever.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

So what are the exit criteria?

[Angostura]

> You can't seriously expect asymptomatic people to wear masks in public forever.

Before we catastrophise, how about we start with the pragmatic - ask people to wear masks while infection rates are high. Which is unlikely to be forever

There's a big difference between 'Covid is going to be with us forever' and 'Covid infection rates will threaten to overwhelm health services forever'.

[marcan_42]

FWIW, case rates in Japan are near nil (~15 people daily in Tokyo), the vaccination rate is closing in on 80%, and everyone still wears a mask.

I don't know about "forever", but people in Japan have no problem wearing masks in public while asymptomatic with low case rates because we know it's a public health issue, and it's working. That's why we keep wearing them.

I wasn't used to masking up pre-pandemic. I got used to it within the first month. Now I can't leave the house without a mask on. It feels wrong. (This doesn't mean I'm deathly afraid to remove/lower it, e.g. while eating at restaurants or when I'm outside with nobody around and I feel like a bit of a break).

[syshum]

You clearly then do not suffer from poor eye-sight that requires you to where a mechanical device on your face (i.e glasses) to correct for this

How every abelist of you.

My experience with masks, and glasses is very poor, specifically the more common cloth masks that go over the ears. Something like a Gaiter mask is slightly better but many say these are less effective

[throwaway946513]

I too wear glasses. It depends on the kind of mask.

Disposable surgical masks with the "metal-bendy-bit" for the bridge of your nose has worked great for me.

I also use cloth masks all the time due to the ease of keeping one on me, and washing it with the whites and bleach at the end of the date. Cloth masks definitely fog up my glasses more, but I find that adjusting them and not breathing through my mask help me.

[jmopp]

I'm the exaxt opposite. Before wearing a mask I would routinely have trouble keeping my glasses on. When I wear a mask it's actually easier to wear glasses because I can hook the sides into the ear loops and they won't fall off when I look down.

[marcan_42]

Japan has plenty of people with poor eyesight who wear glasses, including several friends of mine, and nobody has a problem with masks.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I agree with this, but in many places in the US health authorities have kept mask mandates indefinitely, regardless of current hospital capacity.

[Griffinsauce]

> in the long run that won't save anyone

> eventually

I don't know exactly about the US but in NL that is precisely the sticking point. It doesn't matter that everyone will get it, it matters when everybody gets it because we don't have the ICU capacity to treat everyone at the same time (+ regular ICU patients and overhead for scheduled surgeries)

[hef19898]

In Germany, a country with among the highest rate of ICU beds per capita, we reached a point where scheduled surgeries for cancer patient are delayed because of this. Yet alone to speak about emergencies, in some regions it really is a bad time to have a heart attack or a stroke. Or a serious accident.

Which is why I am so frustrated with people refusing to be vaccinated and with our politicians that ignored all warning over a calm summer, again after they did the same ting in 2020. Because reasonable, innocent people are suffering now. Sometimes I wished voluntarily unvaccinated people would be consequent enough to refuse treatment.

[galaxyLogic]

Very good point. Slow the spread. If you slow it to near zero we are well off.

This reminds me of someone telling me "If even vaccinated people can get Covid what's the point of me getting vaccinated?"

The answer is simple but perhaps subtle and may be hard for some people to understand and accept: To lower the risk.

You can't fully eliminate the risk but you can and should lower the risk as much as is easily possible.

There are 777k Covid deaths in the US now and I wonder why media doesn't tell us that number every day. I guess many people don't want to hear it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+have+died+fr...

[revax]

Don't forget that the vaccine also lower the risk of severe form of Covid.

[afavour]

> So what are the exit criteria?

Vaccination. Which is one of the reasons it’s especially infuriating when anti-maskers are also anti-vaccine. By far and away the easiest way to do away with masks is for everyone to just get the vaccine.

For myself, I have two small children that are currently not eligible to be vaccinated. So I will be continuing to wear a mask indoors until they can be.

> You can't seriously expect asymptomatic people to wear masks in public forever.

Another shame this has become such a culture war topic because there’s nothing wrong with the idea of wearing masks when appropriate, indefinitely. As the OP said, in Japan people wear them during flu season and when they feel themselves coming down with a cold. There’s nothing wrong with that, nor is it a particular burden on the vast majority of the population.

I live in NYC and might continue to wear a mask when I’m on the subway during flu season, it feels like common sense. But I know if I try to do that in other cities in the country I’ll be looked upon as if I’m a leper.

[galaxyLogic]

It's a bit counter-intuitive that it is precisely in the presence of people who don't wear a mask that YOU should be wearing one.

Our intuitive understanding, inclination is "do as others do". "Oh, nobody's wearing a mask, must mean there is no virus around here". No. Not. If people are not wearing masks it is more likely that there's a lot of virus going on.

People who don't wear a mask in your presence are likely to be careless about protecting them against the virus in other ways, and therefore are more likely to have it already.

[belorn]

Vaccinations has to a degree the same issue as masks. The question isn't if they work, but rather how effective they are in different contexts. It seems we are now at three vaccinations for just 2021, and multiple different mutations of the virus. I hope strongly this third dose will be it and this latest mutation will be the final one, however listening to researchers that discuss the subject makes me less hopeful.

The exit criteria is that the general population get enough protection that covid outcomes behave similar to other seasonal flu viruses. The hope is that this will be achieved through a combination of vaccinations and time, but we won't know until the data is in. What is known in many countries is that transmission of covid by vaccinated people has surpassed greatly those of unvaccinated (by simple quantity of people who are vaccinated), which is why masks in high risk areas is still recommended for tipple vaccinated people. I would recommend a mask in NYC subway to combat Covid regardless of how much vaccine you have taken.

[SpicyLemonZest]

It seems to me that it’s become a culture war topic because people are advocating for something stronger than that. I also plan to wear a mask on public transit for the long term (I kinda wanted to before), but I don’t want to have to wear a mask grocery shopping, or do the thing where you wear it for five seconds while walking from a restaurant door to your table.

[syshum]

The CDC disagree with you as they now say everyone should wear a mask regardless of vaccination status because we now know that even vaccinated people spread the virus you just do not get as sick

>infuriating when anti-maskers are also anti-vaccine

I am anti-mandates, so would you count me as an anti-masker and anti-vaxer?

>>and when they feel themselves coming down with a cold

This is the key point that betrays your statement, They wear them to prevent spreading sickness to others, your statement imply you will wear them prevent getting sick. Non-n95 masks are not effective at preventing you from becoming sick, and infact in some ways should concentrate a flu virus and make you sick where you would not have otherwise gotten ill.

Masks are good for already sick people to use to prevent further spread that is the correct use for normal non-n95 masks

[afavour]

> This is the key point that betrays your statement

Why do these conversations always devolve into people trying to make “gotcha” points?

I was pointing out reasons why wearing a mask could be sensible. Those reasons aren’t necessarily anything to do with COVID. But there’s now such a cultural issue around it that the reasons won’t even matter. You’re a “masker” or an “anti-masker”.

[TheBlight]

Do you not pay attention? Have you not seen case numbers in Gibraltar? Fully vaxed Lebron James caught it. In what world do you live in such that you can ignore the vaccines are obviously not preventing transmission?

[afavour]

Vaccines dramatically reduce the danger of the virus. I have friends who caught COVID pre-vaccine and it was horrendous. Some are still dealing with the effects today. I have other friends that caught it while vaccinated. They felt rough for a few days.

The public health argument is very clear: vaccines reduce transmission. No, they don’t stop it. But they also reduce the strain on ICUs and other healthcare facilities needed to treat people with extreme cases.

In what world do you live in such that you can ignore that?

[helge9210]

> Vaccines dramatically reduce the danger of the virus

Obviously, if you take the same COVID-naive person and subject this person to a virus both in vaccinated and unvaccinated state (repeatedly), you can derive a conclusion. This is a simple and easy to understand impossible experiment.

How your conclusion was derived? (I'm not arguing with it, I just don't understand the method.)

[throwaway946513]

Reminds me of the vaccine for the flu - where time and time again, I'm told by anti-vaxers that the flu vaccine doesn't work, they got the flu, and were fine.

Lest we forget that the flu killed millions of people a century ago, the vaccine likely reduced the chance you caught it, but still managed to catch the disease, and the reduction in severe symptoms when you get it.

I remember reading every year about someone who refused to vaccinate their kids, and one of the kids died from the flu.

Vaccines don't 100% prevent catching any virus. Especially fast mutating viruses.

[galaxyLogic]

Have you not seen the case-numbers in USA: 777,000 people dead from Covid. https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+have+died+fr...

[helge9210]

I wonder, how many of those people didn't have easy regular access to medical services.

[twox2]

I live in NYC and can't imagine not wearing a mask in the subway ever again... it smells rank enough to begin with.

[blindmute]

There is nothing wrong with wearing a mask however long you want. There is however something very wrong with being forced to wear a mask against your will however long someone else wants.

[naikrovek]

> You can't seriously expect asymptomatic people to wear masks in public forever.

why not? I enjoy foiling facial recognition efforts, and those efforts are everywhere. I probably won't ever stop wearing a mask in public.

[fimdomeio]

For social reasons. There's so much information you get from one person face that keep using the mask forever would have very negative social effects that are probably almost impossible to measure.

[JKCalhoun]

This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the “vox populi” now vacant, vanished.

[NoGravitas]

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate.

[gherkinnn]

Gait recognition doesn't care about masks. I don't know how far the technology got, but as a human I find recognising humans by their gait trivial enough.

[AutumnCurtain]

I once recognized a former football teammate from the stands years later when he was in full pads and helmet just from how he ran onto the field. No doubt an AI could be even more accurate, which is why I recommend wearing a mask and riding a hoverboard everywhere.

[geoduck14]

Thanks for reminding us that there are A LOT of different ways to recognize people! I had never considered looking at their gait, that sounds like cool research

[naikrovek]

that is a non-statement somehow; you aren't responding to anything I actually said, but what you imagined that I said, and then you came up with a counter argument to the imaginary statement...

the things people do really confuse me, sometimes. I .. I am just not capable of understanding why people do most of what they do.

I didn't say I wanted to defeat gait recognition, did I? No, I did not.

my turn to imagine something you'll say: "oh well you can also be recognized by your voice"

I didn't say I wanted to defeat voice recognition, either.

etc

[wowokay]

Actually there's a simple reason. If I have to wear a mask and social distance, I see no value in a vaccine. The point behind the "political" position isn't that masking is bad, the main position is that a mandate requiring it is bad. In a country where "My body, my choice" this is clearly a contradiction.

[bikingbismuth]

Significantly reducing my risk of dying intubated and in agony is a fairly compelling vaccine use case for me.

[downWidOutaFite]

My body my choice is about to be ruled illegal by the conservative court.

[misiti3780]

because there are a lot of people that feel the exact opposite of you - i dont ever want to wear one again!

[formerly_proven]

> i dont ever want to wear one again!

Why do you feel so strongly about this? Masks of a few kinds are standard PPE in many fields, it's not like they're particularly restrictive or anything.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I have a family member who is a surgeon who is obviously accustomed to wearing a mask frequently in her job, but now that she has to wear it 100% of the time at work she finds it particularly exhausting and rips it off as soon as she is done.

[jaywalk]

Nobody should have to justify why they don't want to wear a mask, the same way nobody should have to justify why they do. Justification is needed when you want to force your opinion on others.

[geoduck14]

>Nobody should have to justify why they don't want to wear a mask, the same way nobody should have to justify why they do.

Consider you are doing UX design. You wrote some software that helps your customer, but they won't use it. Why won't they use it? How can you improve it? What alternatives can you implement to keep the benefits that you are trying to give to your customers while also making the product "acceptable"?

Short questions like "why won't you use masks?" Can come off as antagonistic (e.g. shame on you! Just use the Fing mask), but they may also be inquisitive (e.g. what concerns do YOU have with masks). This being HN, I prefer to assume the intent is the latter.

[jaywalk]

You are correct, of course. And if the parent I replied to was simply being inquisitive, I apologize for my tone. But in the current climate, it's hard for me to read it that way without it being specifically pointed out.

[jatone]

when their refusal to do so in the public sphere endangers others. indeed they do need to justify it.

[wowokay]

Those fields people choose to join, they made the decision to accept that requirement. Plus as others have said in the grand scheme it's not the most effective Solution. Remote work, contactless services and other similar initiatives would yield a higher success and would reduce other things like crime and environmental impacts, why not pursue that or a contactless society instead if the goal is to prevent transmission

[Geezus-42]

Why not both?

[misiti3780]

I live in a warm/hot climate and they are very uncomfortable when it's 90F+ outside. Vaccines are available to everyone in the US, and I'm double vaxxed, everyone I know is double vaxxed, and I'm not afraid of getting COVID -- why should I wear one?

If people want to wear one for the rest of their lives (I doubt they will), have at it. If it is to avoid facial recognition, I guess I get that but have to understand that in that situation you are in a tiny minority of people willing to cover your face in defense of your digital privacy. (Look around you, 90% of the people are uploading themselves to TikToc without a care in the world)

At this point, the masking mandates in the US makes absolutely no sense either. If you fly on a plane, you are allowed to take your mask off to eat or drink but then have to put it back on when your not doing either, as if COVID disappears when you're eating. You can cross state boarders without being tested, etc.

We need to start learning how to live with COVID, because zero COVID is no longer an option. That ship has sailed.

[dkonofalski]

> as if COVID disappears when you're eating

No, but you can't really eat with a mask on so keeping it on for the entire rest of the time minimizes the risk of spreading and transmitting it. Even if it's not 100% perfect, it still has a significant positive benefit.

[misiti3780]

> it still has a significant positive benefit.

can you provide some links to the evidence of this?

[misiti3780]

I disagree.

[BoxOfRain]

>Why do you feel so strongly about this?

From a practical point of view I think that the plastic ones are probably going to be horrible from an environmental perspective - especially to the marine environment which is where a lot of plastic litter ultimately ends up. I'll admit there's also an element of iconoclasm involved in why I'll be keen to see the back of them when their times comes. From a purely symbolic point of view (ie regardless of their effectiveness) they're quite a dystopian thing in my opinion, it's a signal of "be afraid of disease" or worse still "my fellow human beings are disgusting plague vectors". I can't help that feel that making hiding our faces a permanent social norm would lead to society becoming even more atomised than it already is which is also fairly dystopian.

On a purely personal note, I also don't like that they give every moral authoritarian and insufferable busybody yet another thing to harass strangers about, especially when legal penalties for non-compliance exist.

[BoxOfRain]

>why not?

I don't think even the most vocal opponents of masks saying we should ban them, if you want to wear a mask forever that's your business. I'd be monumentally miffed if mandates were in force forever though, especially in the half-arsed way we have them in the UK which is so arbitrary it makes a mockery of the whole concept.

[twox2]

LMAO, you're not foiling anything. They've moved to gait analysis years ago... which you probably can't fake.

[the-dude]

Nobody claims masks need to be worn forever. That is your statement.

We still need to slow down the spread though, as several operations otherwise can't handle the load.

In NL, our undertakers have employed external cooling cells again, just like last winter, to be able to 'service' the dead.

[temp8964]

The top comment uses Japan as the example. They do wear masks forever. So maybe the top comment shouldn't used Japan as the example.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Japan doesn't, and hasn't, had an indefinite mask mandate, like SF has had.

If wearing "forever" means individuals wear masks when they're feeling ill, or when they're in a place with current high transmission of respiratory illness, then I'm all for wearing masks "forever".

[nkrisc]

> You can't seriously expect asymptomatic people to wear masks in public forever.

Why not? Many societies expect that you wear clothes in public, and most people willingly comply every day. In many places it's actually mandated by law! Where are the anti-clothers protesting in state capitals? Oh yeah, they're nudists and most people don't take them seriously.

Why is being required to wear a mask in public any different than being required to wear pants?

[shockeychap]

> Where are the anti-clothers protesting in state capitals?

> Why is being required to wear a mask in public any different than being required to wear pants?

I was one of the people defending the mitigations early on, speaking out against the "conspiracy theorists" - those who said the new controls by those in power would never be given up and that this would be the new normal.

I slowly came to see that they were right. Sentiments like this prove it.

[afavour]

Perspectives like this baffle me. Why would those in power never give up the power to… make people wear masks? It’s a pretty shitty power. It also makes ubiquitous surveillance more difficult because you can’t scan people’s faces reliably.

I also don’t understand why sentiments like this prove anything. Is the OP a person in power? Nothing suggests that. They’re just a person that’s being (overly) cautious. FWIW I don’t agree with them but I also don’t think they’re a lizard person.

[claytongulick]

Because it's an incremental step along the path to reducing or eliminating the right to self-ownership.

If you can normalize something like mask wearing, there's a strong psychological effect. There's a sort of built-in obedience that's a clear signal to those around you. Arm bands also come mind.

Is it then such a leap to grant the power of forced vaccination? I mean, it's all for the public good right?

Flu is a deadly killer. We should probably go ahead and mandate that vaccine too, while we're at it.

Traffic accidents are a leading cause of death in the U.S. - why are we allowing private car ownership? We could save tens of thousands of lives per year if we centralized control of transportation.

Guns? They're right out.

While we're at it, there's no good reason to allow fast food restaurants to continue to exist. Obesity is an epidemic and costs the U.S. billions, if not trillions and is a leading cause of heart disease. Let's get rid of all fast food restaurants.

Since we're doing that, we should also probably mandate that every restaurant remove the deep fried. They can make something more healthy.

And on. And on.

This never ends.

You say that the perspective baffles you. I'm trying to illustrate the perspective that those of us who believe in maximizing personal liberty hold.

Incrementalism is a real thing. An affront to liberty must be stopped at the beginning, if it is to be stopped at all.

Many people reading through what I just wrote actually believe doing all of those things would be a good idea, and they may be right.

I think a better idea is to allow people to live their lives the way they chose.

[nkrisc]

And yet that very liberty that you take for granted today is the result of a continuous slippery slope from hereditary monarchies to a world where you're even allowed to choose who leads you or have a right to be free at all. Incrementalism is what gave us the liberty we have. It wasn't that long ago that women were incrementally given the right to vote. What's next? Allowing dogs and cats to vote too?

> I think a better idea is to allow people to live their lives the way they chose.

I'm not allowed to recklessly speed down any road I please. I'm not allowed to fire guns wherever I please. I'm not allowed to build my house in any way I please. I'm not allowed live in any house I please. I'm not allowed to build bombs in my garage. I'm not allowed to dump waste in the local water system. If I walk around downtown without any clothes I'll almost certainly be arrested. There are countless things we're all forbidden from doing by society. We are not free to live as we please with no regard for anyone else. That is the price of participating in a society.

Liberty is an artificial construct that we, as a society, have agreed upon and set the boundaries for. There is no natural state of liberty that exists, it must be explicitly defined and agreed upon. It's OK to disagree on the boundaries of liberty. We can arbitrarily choose where to draw the line as we please. So we can choose to mandate masks and yet allow fast food to exist.

[shockeychap]

These "I'm not allowed" assertions are all over the map.

You can't "recklessly speed" down a road, but are you not generally allowed to drive along any public road for any reason - or no reason - so long as you're not "reckless"? Should you be made to justify your need to be on the road, or your choice to drive rather than ride a bus? After all, these things impact public safety and the climate.

You're not allowed to fire guns wherever you please, but you're also not allowed to even HAVE a lawfully obtained gun in many settings simply because those in power have deemed it so. Try getting a concealed carry permit in NYC. Should it be that way everywhere?

You can't live in "any house you please" perhaps, but you're certainly allowed to live in any house that you can afford. Are you trying to justify bringing back things like redlining or neighborhood exclusionary rules?

I won't go over every single "I'm not allowed" item. But I'll finish by saying that "recklessly speed" and "drive where I please when I please" are different things. Almost every rule in existence finds SOME degree of justification in necessity, which is why "necessity" has always been the go-to justification for any authoritarian regime or ruler throughout history. And it never stops until people push back.

[afavour]

> Incrementalism is a real thing

And so is the slippery slope fallacy.

If you can normalize something like seatbelt wearing, there's a strong psychological effect. There's a sort of built-in obedience that's a clear signal to those around you. Life jackets also come to mind.

Measles, mumps and rubella are deadly killers. We should probably go ahead and mandate that vaccine too, while we're at it. Oh wait, we already do with school kids. Have done for decades.

And on. And on.

Human beings love to see patterns. In reality A does not necessarily lead to B, and to C. You can evaluate individual decisions according to how beneficial they are and say yes or no.

[claytongulick]

Take a look at the number of comments on HN and elsewhere that use the Jacobson [1] decision in 1918 to justify the current vaccine mandates, even though it was completely different.

Take a look at all of the federal powers that have been seized based on Wickard [2] interpretation of the ICC.

These are just a couple obvious cases of incrementalism.

The entropic state of humanity is to allow power to accumulate and centralize.

It takes active energy to resist this.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

[dageshi]

In England it was optional to wear masks during the summer, I would estimate about 75% of people I saw in places like supermarkets chose not to wear them.

So society, in England at least has already decided that if it's their choice, they'd rather not wear them.

[ericd]

Being able to see each others’ faces is pretty central to communication.

[JoeAltmaier]

Remember when this started, and we wanted to reduce 'R0' to slow the spread so hospitals could manage? Masks help with that, whatever absolutist arguments folks come up with. Sure they're not 100%, won't guarantee anything. But they DO slow transmission. So lets quit with the indignation and blamethrowing, and wear the damn mask, do your part.

[syshum]

When this started it was "2 Week to flatten the curve", and that 2 Weeks was not masking, it was stay at home, do not travel, do not interact, and DO NOT wear a mask. We were told to NOT wear masks, so much so the government was confiscating masks from businesses.

[JoeAltmaier]

That's apocryphal. For instance it didn't happen around here. Sure some folks over-reacted in some places. But in the interest of not spreading more indignation and outrage, it's pointless to go on about that.

[JoachimS]

> Masks may "work" to a limited extent to reduce the risk of transmission in any single interaction, but in the long run that won't save anyone.

Could you elaborate on the statement at the end - "but in the long run that won't save anyone.". Anyone, as in nobody? How come?

[aqme28]

He's saying (approximately correctly) that everyone will get COVID eventually.

Though I'd like to add that you could get a vaccine instead.

[dkonofalski]

Not commenting on the nature of your comment but just wanted to point out that the author of that article was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration that attempted to convince the Trump administration that "herd immunity" was the best solution in dealing with COVID-19 because the people that signed it were losing money.

[noasaservice]

Worst case: what if there isn't exit criteria?

Are you that weak of a human to not wear a mask when you're sick, or during a pandemic? Or is this just a "Lets Go Brandon" (aka: fuck joe biden) dogwhistle?

Cause your "question" isnt certainly about anything scientific.

[claytongulick]

Your comment perfectly illustrates the concerns that those of us who resisted mask mandates from the beginning hold.

From your comment I can infer that when you observe a person not wearing a mask, you make an immediate assumption about their political ideology.

I believe that this was the main purpose of mask mandates, not public health.

[bluecalm]

There might be effective drug treatment in the near future. It would be nice to not get COVID to then.

[nradov]

We already have effective drug treatments. How much more effective do you want?

https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/about-the-gui...

And remember that while the vaccines don't reliably prevent infection, they're pretty good at preventing severe symptoms.

[sharken]

Exactly this. We have to live with the virus same as with the flu.

And I agree that having healthy people wear masks just to be safe is unacceptable.

[dd36]

Is having drunk driving laws just to be safe unacceptable?

[sharken]

I don't think that's entirely the same thing, but let's say it is just for arguments sake.

Without the vaccines you might have a point, except that Corona and the large flu seasons are not that different for most countries if you measure hospitalizations and deaths.

With the vaccine it's two wholly different things as the vaccine is your way to protect yourself.

A SUV driven by a drunk driver can kill a dozen people, that have no way of avoiding that.

[helge9210]

Driving a car is not a right. It is privilege.

Since when breathing open air become a privilege?

[dd36]

Why isn’t it a right?

[micromacrofoot]

I kind of like them so I just might. I haven’t had a single cold for 2 years.