| All due respect but this comment demonstrates a naive understanding of COVID and mask mandates. It's possible this comment is just trolling as it's the only comment your account has made but I'll attempt to address the issues with it regardless. First, calculating a theoretical number of deaths through end result statistics does not result in a number that can be used to support a logical argument. When approximating deaths for something like COVID, the things that matter are: 1. The fatality rate of COVID, assuming the hospital you're treated at has sufficient means to treat you. 2. The fatality rate of COVID, assuming the hospital you're treated at does NOT have sufficient means to treat you. 3. The contagiousness/ability of the virus and likelihood that you'll spread the virus to someone else once you've contracted it (R naught). Basically, think of this as the number of people you'll infect if you get the virus. 4. The number of people in a population who can be infected by an individual at any specific time (effective reproduction number) You can't just take a slice of time and say "6" people will die, and remove mask mandates, as COVID spreads through exponential growth. The benefits of wearing a mask compound, just like not wearing mask compounds in a worse way. Think of it this way. If the R naught of a virus is above 1, (say 1.1) then the virus will continue to spread. If it continues to infect more and more people, unchecked, it will eventually infect almost everyone. If it infects everyone, with a fatality rate of 1.6% in Missouri, it will kill thousands, not 6. The ways available to us to stop COVID are to attack all facets mentioned above. I won't go into all of them, as mask mandates solely aim to curb 3. The goal of mask mandates is to make it so if you have the virus, you infect less than 1 person, so that the virus stops spreading.[1] But the benefits affect all the above, such as, if the virus continues to spread (R naught above 1), then eventually we run out of hospital capacity. If we run out of hospital capacity, the death rate skyrockets, as many preventable deaths are no longer preventable. So, mask mandates now also potentially benefit healthcare capacity (flatten the curve, remember?). So, to specifically isolate the issue with your argument, the number of cases per 100k with and without masks doesn't matter if the virus is still spreading. If it's still spreading, it will still infect everyone eventually, and take its 1.6% of the population at the end of the day. Mask mandates are one component (on top of vaccines, social distancing, hygiene, etc) to lowering the R naught below 1. So, is it reasonable, to impose a mandate such as this that negatively alters people daily life to this extent, in order to prevent tens of thousands of deaths in the all-state from dying? The answer is yes. [0] Good introduction to R naught and R_e https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7751056/
[1] Thorough review of mask wearing statistics and benefits https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/4/e2014564118.full.pdf
[2] A better introduction to modeling COVID 19 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1132-9 |