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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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
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.
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.
taking off your mask to eat does not negate the rest of the time you wore the mask.
how the hell do people not understand why masks work? I do not understand this.
an analogy:
let's say I am at work, and I fart, but oops, it's poo instead, and now it's all over this side of the conference room floor, even in places you can't see with the naked eye. should I have worn clothes? clothes are so intrusive and restrict my ability to move and express myself, and it's immoral that you create a rule that keeps me caged when I only crap in the conference room three times a year.
the poo in that analogy represents the aerosol saliva and mucus of someone that is contagious with anything, which is stuff that is regularly produced when people talk or breathe. the clothes are a facemask.
how do people not understand why facemasks are effective? I don't want to step in anyone's crap that they left behind wherever they coughed or sneezed or touched the break room chair. wash your damned hands and wear a facemask if you're sick, dammit.
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.
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.