[grover35]

The fact that masks aren't mandatory in public in the US is honestly unbelievable to me. Somehow the media has managed to convince the public that Covid is not as big a deal as it was in the beginning, but the research shows the exact opposite. I think we're going to have a day of reckoning when a wave of kids become old enough to work and are completely unproductive due to long haul COVID.

[screye]

> masks aren't mandatory in public

Masks clearly have a measurable impact on mental health. Given what he know about aerosolization and cloth masks, masks are near useless in public spaces.

If we are talking about reducing the populations' micromorts[1] by reducing common freedom, then there are far better things to do. Enforcing helmets for drivers, breathalyzers ($70) as default in cars, banning right-turns on red are all significantly more effective at reducing total deaths than mask enforcement, with much lower costs to a civilization. Similarly, banning certain foods and mandating exercise would massively improve American health outcomes.

I find that 'masks for everyone and everything' have become more of a political rallying call driven by hysteria, than a principled outcome focused measure. It reeks of the same blind faith as those who shout 'trust science' while healthy discourse makes up a fundamental pillar of the process of science.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#:~:text=A%20micromor....

[CharlesW]

> Masks clearly have a measurable impact on mental health.

> Given what he know about aerosolization and cloth masks, masks are near useless in public spaces.

Both of these claims are false.

Masks have had no proven impact on mental health.[2] Masks have proven to be one of the most effective tools we have for preventing the spread of COVID-19 in public places.[2]

Mask use is science-based, as countless studies have proven. Anti-mask rhetoric is politically- and emotionally-driven hysteria.

[1] "The evidence that we have does not point us to any concern that masks affect mental health negatively." — Jeremy Kendrick, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry, Huntsman Mental Health Institute https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2021/08/_mas...

[2] "In settings of very high mask use, in-school transmission of the coronavirus is less than 1%. The best way to protect health and safety—particularly of those that are not vaccinated—is to wear a mask." — Adam Hersh, MD, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at University of Utah Health and Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2021/08/_mas...

[screye]

> Both of these claims are false.

I will concede that there has been no peer reviewed study that explicitly tries to identity an association between mask wearing and mental health. Thus, no impact has been measured. It was not for lack of trying to find a study though. There are literally no good studies (from my cursory google scholar peek) that opined one way or the other.

> There is no evidence that a child wearing a mask causes depression or anxiety

But, saying this is not correct either. [1]

> transmission of the coronavirus is less than 1%.

These studies are strongly confounded with city policy, distancing measures, individual measures and odds of being vaccinated. It is really difficult to get exclusive numbers for mask efficacy using observational or questionnaire based studies of any kind.

As for my second claim, please evaluate it in context. Public spaces is usually taken to mean outdoor spaces or high ventilation large indoor spaces. My comments are also in time where covid's fatality has collapsed and hospitals aren't overwhelmed.

Almost every mask study I read makes assumptions of ideal wearing patterns that do not seem to be match real world observations. Even then, they project modest gains when using the most common forms of cloth masks in perfectly covid-favored situations. Vaccines can't ensure zero-covid. Masks can't ensure zero-covid. The end game is that it can become endemic or we wear masks forever.

Masks are 'useless' in the same way that seat-belts in school buses are useless. The risks for the concerned demographic are orders of magnitude lower. The ideal testing scenario is impossible to recreate in practice. It is impossible to enforce compliance. It has knock-on effects that no one seems keen to study. And lastly, if draconian measure are to be used, there are alternatives with greater effectiveness and lower social cost can should be tried first.

[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

[fnordpiglet]

> Masks clearly have a measurable impact on mental health.

Bullshit. Citation?

[screye]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. /s

Anecdotally, I have yet to meet a single person IRL over 2 years of the pandemic who enjoys wearing masks. It varies from minor inconvenience to a thorn in your side.

For one, uncontrolled observational studies show that there is pretty strong correlation between the pandemic and depression. [1] In narrow studies, masks are shown to reduce interpersonal trust [2] , ability to evaluate emotions. [3] and might accelerate cognitive decline in older populations [4]

There is an alarming lack of studies directly targeting the mental health impact of masks. I couldn't even find a survey. On one hand, I understand that getting any good self-reported data from the hysterically polarized population is probably futile. I tried to find peer reviewed studies, but I am not a public health / psychiatry professional. On the other hand, silence can be deafening.

Tangentially, my trust in peer reviewed medical research has declined sharply over the pandemic. These folks need statistics, a sophisticated understanding of causality, experiment design and variable control. I can see why many of the best healthcare writers exclusively stick to meta-studies instead of individual studies.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-96500-7

[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.5668...

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8418138/

[ornornor]

Wearing a seatbelt is inconvenient and restricts movement, yet anyone I know wears one. Why aren’t masks seen the same way? No one questions seatbelts anymore and they provably and dramatically improve your odds in a crash.

[jessaustin]

I enjoy masking, and many of the people you've met in the last two years do too. Masks are an issue for many children, but for adults complaining about masks is like complaining about the weather: something to talk about that doesn't require thought because lots of people we meet don't like to think.

[svnt]

Then go ahead and mask and enjoy yourself. No one will stop you.

[spoils19]

> No one will stop you.

In direct contradiction to what you say, there are many businesses in red state US who will stop you from wearing a mask if you try to enter.

[jessaustin]

No one will stop me from doing anything I damn well please. GP claimed that not "a single person" enjoys wearing masks.

[simondotau]

N95 masks work. Well designed, well fitted, correctly worn, hygienically cleaned cloth masks probably work okay, though good evidence of this is still limited and based largely upon assumptions. From my own observations, the overwhelming majority of people are wearing a mask of poor quality and/or in a manner which the scientific consensus couldn't possibly agree was effective. And I doubt most people are washing them with soap and water every single day.

If we're not going to mandate an effective mask, I honestly don't see what the point of mandates are. It makes as much sense to me as mandating seatbelts and accepting a knitted scarf as an acceptable form of seatbelt.

[tomxor]

There was a paper posted on HN ages ago now, studying the mechanism by which masks were effective against covid... they argued it was essentially due to maintaining a higher temperature and humidity in the nose and throat. It's well known that rhinovirus for instance, reproduces more efficiently in cooler environments, so this seems plausible.

It's also possible there is more than one mechanism, and that an n95 or equivalent mask with fine enough particulate filter can additionally reduce exposure significantly (initial exposure level also being accepted as having some effect for viruses in general).

So you can look down on people with those fabric masks, but possibly not be completely correct. Honestly though... the whole mask wearing thing is more about trends of what is "socially acceptable" than science. I'm not saying there is no value, but that the forces dictating when most people do or do not wear a mask have very little to do with how well informed they are or on the current accepted understanding having changed, and far more to do with what is considered socially acceptable at the present time... so it's hardly surprising no one particularly cares about the type of mask.

[simondotau]

> So you can look down on people with those fabric masks, but possibly not be completely correct.

And strapping yourself to your car seat with a knitted scarf might reduce injury risk/severity relative to a person with no seatbelt. That doesn’t mean we should expand the seatbelt mandate to include scarves.

[tomxor]

Your comparison suggests a quantitative difference, because seatbelts are effective through only one mechanism; whereas I've highlighted two qualitatively different mechanisms through which masks reduce probability of becoming infected, exploiting completely different properties of the mask. It's not even clear if filtering has more or less of an impact than change in temperature and humidity.

[simondotau]

Your response remains starkly oblique to my point. My point is that people in elevated risk groups (elderly, immunocompromised, etc) should be encouraged to wear an effective mask. We know that N95+ masks have strong supporting evidence of their efficacy. We know that similar evidence is distinctly lacking when it comes to most cloth and surgical masks. The continued social acceptance of sub-standard masks sends (IMHO) a dangerously misleading message which places these people at risk.

[_yoqn]

> "The fact that masks aren't mandatory in public in the US is honestly unbelievable to me"

I'm glad you don't run things here. We have a constitutional republic that makes it impossible for the federal government to unilaterally mandate such things as masks and vaccines. Biden tried to mandate vaccines through OSHA but the Supreme Court determined that was an overreach.

What kind of masks? Cloth masks are proven to be worthless and only well fitting N95 masks may help prevent infection.

I think what's going to happen is COVID will be less and less damaging as time goes on (like all novel diseases) and we will go on to live our lives as free people.

[dylan604]

>We have a constitutional republic that makes it impossible for the federal government to unilaterally mandate

This isn't the only way the Fed can get things done. For example, the drinking restriction for 21+ is a state level issue strongly encouraged by the Fed. Louisiana tried to hold to 18+ for the longest, but the Fed finally won by threatening to withhold federal funding for highways.

[nicoburns]

I mean, it’s not as big of a deal as it was in the beginning. We have vaccines now which we didn’t have back then and these have dramatically reduced the severity.

[dijonman2]

I sincerely hope this is satire.

[nradov]

You've got to be kidding. The virus is here to stay. I am absolutely unwilling to spend the rest of my life wearing a mask, regardless of the consequences. Most Americans feel the same way. There's more to life than avoiding a minor respiratory virus.

[dataflow]

> but the research shows the exact opposite

Links would be appreciated. By all accounts I've heard, for vaccinated people, Omicron (the dominant variant) is like a mild cold.

[simondotau]

> …Omicron (the dominant variant) is like a mild cold.

Omicron appears mild in the statistics because by the time it hit western countries like the US and UK, there was almost nobody left who hasn’t either been vaccinated or exposed to a prior variant, or both.

Countries with low vaccination rates and low prior exposure rates are seeing severity of outcome with Omicron that is comparable to prior variants.

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1503420660869214213?...

[dataflow]

> Countries with low vaccination rates and low prior exposure rates

How is that relevant when the complaint is specifically about how "masks aren't mandatory in public in the US"? Vaccines have been freely available in the US for a year, yet the US should mandate masks because other countries have low vaccination rates?

[simondotau]

I don’t know what point you’re trying to make, but I’m not advocating for mask mandates. In fact I disagree with them. Mask mandates were a highly imperfect but prudent policy measure prior to widespread deployment of effective vaccines. Now they are pointless and arguably counter-productive.

People who have specific concerns about COVID and want to protect themselves (or others) should be encouraged to wear an N95 mask. Cloth and surgical masks should no longer be treated as a valid medical choice.

[jimnotgym]

I have had Covid twice. Omicron was more like severe flu than a cold for me and my wife. In several ways it is quite unlike either a cold or flu. The brainfog, the feeling that one is ok one part of the day followed by a wave of fatigue were both quite dissimilar to cold and flu.

[dataflow]

Can I ask if you ever got vaccinated? (The claim was not about unvaccinated folks.)

[jimnotgym]

I was double vaccinated. My wife was triple vaccinated.

[dataflow]

Wow, interesting. That's the first time I'm hearing about this; it's great to know. Thanks! Hopefully you've been able to recover to normal by now?

[jimnotgym]

Unfortunately not. From my first infection I have fatigue, sleep apneoa, shortness of breath, brain fog and palpitations still. My wife had not had Covid previously is a keen runner and has just cancelled a race 3 months after 'recovery' because she can no longer run those distances.

Yet because 'some guy we know' had it easy, there are a bunch of people hanging around internet forums willing to refute all talk of covid being serious.

[jimnotgym]

I am concerned that you just

a) demanded hard proof b) presented an anecdote as contradictory evidence

I think you should probably hold yourself to the same standards that you hold others

[anonymouswacker]

I didn't sign up to be a lab rat, and it was a 3 day head cold when I caught Omicron on NYE. But I also paid close attention to the independent research and followed the advice of my doctors to improve my health (as measured by Vitamin D in this case).

[horns4lyfe]

That last assertion is beyond hysterical.

[syshum]

The fact that people believe mandates are good public policy is honestly unbelievable to me. To be clear I not debating the effectiveness of mask but the effectiveness of mask mandates which have shown many many many times to be unenforceable and ineffective.

That said even if they were shown to be effective I would still oppose them on basis human rights ground. I do not believe it is the proper role of government in general, and certainly not the US Federal government to mandate what I wear when I leave my home. At most that should be a local matter, but even though I would advocate against it in my local government. However is certainly has no constitutional basis under our system of government for the federal government to impose such a mandate

[dylan604]

>I would still oppose them on basis human rights ground

I hear this as an argument against left and right, but when I ask why it is different from the vaccine requirements for public schools I typically get a "it just is" response. Here's hoping someone might have a better response to why this vaccine is different in that aspect.

[procombo]

> I typically get a "it just is" response.

I doubt that. I couldn't STOP hearing the arguments last year. Not trying to be 'smart', but just believe a minimal effort to understand an opposing view gets you there.

> hoping someone might have a better response

Regarding required vaccines for grade-school kids at public schools in the U.S.:

1. Aren't actually forced. You can opt out in several ways.

2. The diseases they treat have a much higher death/hospitalization and/or transmissibility rate among children.

3. We better understand the diseases they treat.

4. Approvals for vaccines were not given under emergency order.

5. Meet the CDC's pre-2019 definition of 'vaccine'.

6. Side affects are published, well known, and readily available.

That's just off the top of my head. And I assume you and I agree on most things.

[sokoloff]

I'm pretty sure that the school vaccine mandates are state mandates, not federal mandates.

There are many things that I think are a good idea, but that I oppose the Federal government taking the power to do. I don't object to my state or city taking that same power.

[jdminhbg]

Parent is talking about mask mandates, not vaccine mandates.