[gms7777]

> You wouldn't expect an article that talks about the long-term effects of COVID to also address the downsides of mask and restrictions

The parallel of this example would be an article discussing the evidence for the effectiveness of masking, in which case you would be right -- discussion of long-term effects of COVID wouldn't be necessarily relevant.

But that isn't this article -- this article is discussing policy: should students mask in schools? In which case, weighing the long-term effects of covid is absolutely relevant.

[colechristensen]

The built in assumption is that you can stop it. Yup, masking usually slows down infection rates but when you roll those dice every day with a very infectious variant it doesn’t matter. If the hospitals aren’t full what difference have you made if everybody gets it over the course of two months instead of two weeks? (And hospitals aren’t full of children, the peak is past, so we’re definitely solidly entering “what’s the point” territory)