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.
Show me the statistics or studies that show that the mask policy on airplanes in the US as of today (aka hundreds of people in a small, closed environment with no fresh air, where mask are taken off for long periods of time and then put back on again) reduce spread of COVID compared to if there was 100% masking (presumably would reduce the spread) or no masking at all (basically the currently policy)
I understand statistics, you have no statistics to back up your claim. Just so we are clear, I think masks do work if they are used properly - they are not used properly on airplanes in the US, so they are pointless.
It's not a study from the US but it includes enough flights where there were confirmed index cases and there were 4 levels of masking rigidity. The case we're describing, where people only unmask to eat, there were no transmissions.
> On flights N–R with the rigid masking policies (meals served) of Emirates Airlines, no secondary cases were identified on Day 14 screening despite 58 passengers who were PCR+ on a total of 5 flights of 8 hours each with ~1500–2000 passengers.
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.