[TaylorAlexander]

I am continually surprised at how many people don’t wear masks at places like the grocery store even as cases are rising. I got covid over the summer and it was horrible! I lost two weeks of work which was a lot of money to lose, missed multiple dates with my partner I would have really enjoyed and felt totally isolated. Then I felt fatigue and brain fog for months afterwards. Afterwards I got the bivalent vaccine so I do feel more protected now, but there’s still a risk.

Wear a mask and wash your hands folks!

[kitsunesoba]

I hear you. Having seen family who's suffered from brain fog and greatly reduced stamina ever since getting over covid, I want absolutely nothing to do with it. The fact that it has the potential to so negatively impact my means of earning a living as a developer (my mental faculties) makes it terrifying. If I lose that, I have nothing. It'd be like a carpenter losing dexterity in their hands.

Anything that can reduce my chances of a severe outcome or even coming down with it in the first place is worth it in my book.

[fullmoon]

We Europeans are continually surprised that talking about masks is still a thing.*

Except for 1 or 2 outlier countries masking is over.

* Unless they are familiar with U.S. politics

[rconti]

Wait, are you saying Europeans are surprised talking about it is still a thing, because everyone wears them? Or because nobody wears them?

Just got back from Germany yesterday, and while masks are required on most public transport (but not airplanes), you'll see a decent amount of compliance (50%?) but not anywhere else indoors.

Minimal masking in public spaces on public transport, stores, airplanes, etc in my experience in Germany/France/UK. There's absolutely more masking going on here in the Bay Area.

[amilios]

Unfortunately I'm quite sure it's the latter. Even in Canada, in MTL where I live, on public transit it's maybe 5-6% that is masking. For most people the pandemic is simply "over", regardless of what the data says or how overwhelmed hospitals are.

[TurkishPoptart]

To be clear, hospitals being "overwhelmed", i.e. their capacity, is a function related to personnel. When our state (WA) fired thousands of healthcare workers for not getting an experimental vaccine that few of them needed (natural immunity is a thing, as much as Big Pharma would like to suppress it), our capacity decreased because we lost nurses. It doesn't necessarily mean that _no beds are available_.

[anon_coward_ghk]

I am a medical resident working in WA state, just spent a month in the ICU, can confirm the shortages are primarily nurse based, not bed based.

Also note that while I saw several influenza cases in the icu, I didn't see any covid.

[fnordpiglet]

Btw masks work for influenza too! I plan to keep wearing masks during viral outbreaks. Why not? Beats the hell out of being sick.

[morsch]

Small outlier countries like Germany, where I still see masks regularly in various settings, and where FFP2 masks are either still mandatory in public transport or just stopped being mandatory a few days ago. Also mandatory in doctor's offices, hospitals.

[akavi]

When I was in Germany at the end of this September, there were certainly plenty of signs saying masks were mandatory on public transport. Compliance with said signs, however, was well south of 50%.

[morsch]

I ride the subway almost every day and that's not been my experience. I guess it varies by region.

[rayiner]

To be fair, Germans are famously paranoid about health. Are you keeping your kidneys covered so you don’t catch a cold?

[fnordpiglet]

I know plenty of people who bundle up warm against the cold but refuse to wear a mask to prevent the cold. Convenience over effectiveness.

[morsch]

Germans are famously paranoid about health?

[fullmoon]

Yes, Germany is one of those few outliers in the 27 EU countries / Europe 44.

Land mass or self-perceived importance from within notwithstanding.

The result of Germany’s remarkable interventions is remarkable in its mediocrity.

[howinteresting]

Indoor masking is quite common in the SF Bay Area.

[TurkishPoptart]

It's a cult over there. They get guilted into feeling like bioterrorists if they don't.

[howinteresting]

Many people are prosocial and don't need to be guilted into things, unlike what conservatives think.

[jacobjjacob]

This is not true. Most people I know and I don’t wear masks regularly anymore, except for special cases. And no one has ever guilted me for it.

There are certain places where many people are masked, so I might wear one to be polite.

[slaw]

I would rather call it religion, they really believe in masks.

[TaylorAlexander]

I live in the SF Bay Area. Yes you will always see masks but I’m surprised how many people you see who don’t wear them.

[howinteresting]

Yeah, that's definitely true. At the grocery store near me (bougie area, a lot of older people) I see maybe 50-60% of people masked.

On the other hand, now that I'm quadruple vaccinated and use an N95 I'm not overly bothered by people not wearing masks around me.

[ghaff]

And that's shockingly high for Massachusetts where it's probably less than 1% in general--outside of healthcare settings and probably a few percent higher on public transit.

[mistrial9]

yes and, you see "social signal" surgical masks and also clinical N-95 variations.. personally I do wear the N-95 at the grocery store at this time. I throw them out after a few weeks of use and use a new one. A box of ten is about $15 at a local hardware store near me.

[rayiner]

For vaccinated individuals, being sick for two weeks is unusual. When I got covid the first time, before vaccines were available, I was sick less than a week. I had a few weeks of brain fog after that but it cleared up. I got it again last week and I was sick for only a day. Not any worse than any cold I’ve had before. Indeed I’ve had fewer sick days the last couple of years than I did the year my daughter started daycare.

I’m not going to go around wearing a mask all the time to avoid a couple of days of cold symptoms every other year. Getting colds is part of the human condition.

[dxhdr]

I'd rather be sick for 2 weeks than wear a mask every day. Surveying those around me I'd say 98% came to the same conclusion.

[Diederich]

Being sick two weeks is a very clear cost. Less clear are the long-term costs associated with long-covid.

How would you characterize the costs associated with wearing a mask most of the time when in public?

[kjksf]

Being killed by a falling brick is a very clear cost.

How would you characterize the costs associated with wearing a hard hat most of the time when in public?

Talking about cost without normalizing for probability of prevention is meaningless yet you want to frame the discussion to be purely about (low) cost of wearing masks.

We had a year of a pretty tough lockdown, most people wearing masks, distancing in grocery shops, restaurants and "non-essential" shops and companies closed, no public events, work from home, most people staying at home etc.

And yet people were getting sick with covid, even those wearing masks.

Masks alone won't protect you from covid. Even pretty hard core isolation might not protect you.

We basically have no idea how effective just wearing masks is. It surely reduces the probability but by how much?

Feel free to wear masks and hard hats but don't pretend you know for sure it's a rational choice.

[TaylorAlexander]

If I was surrounded by falling bricks I’d definitely consider it!

For me the costs aren’t just wearing a mask or getting sick. I also have vulnerable people in my life. My partner, their partners, my elderly parents, friends with unknown connections.

If I walked around the grocery store without a mask I could at any time pick up the virus and even if I don’t get very sick I could give it to friends or loved ones. So then there is a mental load of worrying if I’m feeling fatigue due to poor sleep or onset of the virus (which is how it happened when I actually had it), and wondering if I should cancel social plans when I’m not feeling 100% normal.

If I am always wearing masks in public I can relax about it more when seeing friends. I’m being responsible and while accidents do happen I’m at least not being negligent.

I notice a lot of people not masking are only talking about themselves. It’s like they don’t think about how transmitting the illness affects others.

[blockwriter]

You can relax in public without the mask as well. There are more pressing moral and social concerns in our day to day lives.

[tshaddox]

> Being killed by a falling brick is a very clear cost.

> How would you characterize the costs associated with wearing a hard hat most of the time when in public?

But wait, that's a very different question. The original comment was "I'd rather be sick for 2 weeks than wear a mask every day." You're not saying that you'd rather be killed by a falling brick than wear a hardhat every day, surely.

[asiachick]

Not to defend the op. I wear a mask. But, people do make this choice all the time. They take a car instead of walk (AFAIK that means they're more likely to die). They don't wear a helmet when walking (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/falls). People make choices all the time to be less safe in a way that would have prevented deaths.

[2-718-281-828]

he'd rather _risk_ being killed by a brick than wear a hard hat everywhere. same as me. you should definitely wear one and a mask and also other safety devices like a kevlar west, hard tip shoes etc

[jandrewrogers]

Interestingly, traumatic brain injury is responsible for more deaths than influenza. If we all wore helmets it would save a lot of lives.

[8note]

Traumatic brain injury is much easier to attribute to a death, rather than viruses that are more likely to be involved in some other cause of death, like a bacterial pneumonia.

If I learned anything from COVID times, it's that attributing deaths is complex, and roughly up to whoever writes the death certificate

[micromacrofoot]

falling bricks didn't kill 1 million americans over the past 2 years

[anon_coward_ghk]

Generally everyone is vulnerable to falling bricks, whereas the evidence shows that those who will die from covid are most likely obese / elderly / smokers / diabetics / etc.

[micromacrofoot]

this doesn't really influence my comment, if 1 million people over the past 2 years died of falling bricks I'd wear a helmet

[gjsman-1000]

Also, imagine if said hard hat caused unknown long-term effects by itself. We know, for a fact, that some plastic fibers from masks end up in the lungs permanently. What happens when they go there? Nobody knows. How many of them are there in the average person? Nobody knows. What are the long term effects? Nobody knows. How does it affect lung development in both short-term and long-term, particularly in young people? Nobody knows. We just hope it's fine.

[Diederich]

How would you compare these cited risks associated with mask wear with the risks associated with more likely C19 infections, and perhaps more important with the emergent recognition of risks associated with long covid?

My wife works with long covid people most of the day every day. Included are young, healthy, active, fully vaccinated people who can hardly walk up a flight of stairs...six months after a very mild C19 infection. Or senior technical members of silicon valley companies you've heard of that are so brain fogged that they are incapable of doing anything like the work they did previously.

Yes, the prior paragraph is anecdotal, strong as it may be. Fortunately scientific studies are starting to gain some understanding of long covid.

Compare all this to the risks associated with wearing masks.

There have been cohorts of people wearing masks all day every day for many decades now. Has there been any evidence of the effects you outlined?

[gjsman-1000]

In which case, get vaccinated, and wear a mask yourself, if that concerns you. For those of us who have had COVID and recovered quickly (like myself, in ~2 days), you need to convince me that my mask-wearing protects anyone else, when they can wear masks themselves if they are so inclined. Even then, with 58% of COVID hospitalizations being vaccinated, and over 82% of the nation having had COVID at some point (according to IMHE), mask wearing and vaccination appears to be a deferment on the inevitable.

> There have been cohorts of people wearing masks all day every day for many decades now. Has there been any evidence of the effects you outlined?

Said masks were generally worn temporarily, not all day, every day, for a job. When worn for long periods of time, before COVID, OSHA actually had forbade it unless there was air filtering and frequent replacement (minimum daily). The way we wear masks, without filtering and with (in practice) no frequent replacement, would have been illegal to compel any person to do a few years ago, let alone study the safety of.

Edit: Also, on that note, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072811/. It's a long-study on the actual, real-world risks of mask-wearing. It's not concerned with risk/benefit, only the risk side of it, but it shows that masks are far from the risk-free preventative measure we pretend they are. If you already had COVID, looking at what they document (and this is the NIH, remember), it may be worse for your health to continue masking.

[jltsiren]

Disposable masks have been routinely used in healthcare since at least the 1960s. I would be extremely surprised if there are no studies of the long-term health effects of mask use. Especially since the people who could do such research are the ones who would suffer most from any adverse effects.

[gjsman-1000]

There are some, even from this pandemic. They aren't great.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072811/

[Erikun]

I've never heard of that, if that is a fact it would be nice to include a reference.

[dxhdr]

> How would you characterize the costs associated with wearing a mask most of the time when in public?

I tried it for a year and it's dehumanizing. Not sure how you'd rate that vs the unknown chance of long covid but I've made my choice.

[Diederich]

I suppose it's a matter of perspective. My wife, son and I have been masking with 100% consistency since April 2020 (in indoor/crowded outdoor places) and we haven't felt 'dehumanized' to the slightest degree.

It's not quite free; the bridge of my nose sometimes experiences some irritation, and we've had to deal with more than a hand full of hateful/snarky in person comments, but that's no biggie.

[rajup]

Great and if it makes you comfortable by all means keep masking. Just keep folks who do find it annoying and dehumanizing out of it. Thanks.

[blockwriter]

Does your son do it freely of his own accord, or only at the behest of one or both of his parents? I would check in with him in ten years as to how sanguine he feels about a rather uncommon rite of hygiene being imposed, or simply encouraged, during his childhood or adolescence for 2+ years.

[tshaddox]

Why do you describe it as dehumanizing? Would you also describe mask-wearing among dentists, surgeons, painters, etc. as dehumanizing?

[rayiner]

It’s literally dehumanizing. Humans rely on being able to see each other’s faces for a wide range of non-verbal communications reasons. Learning to recognize faces and facial expressions is one of the first skills baby humans learn how to do.

Being from the south, we smile when we pass each other on the street. You can’t do that in a mask. Maybe you folks from NYC and SF don’t miss that—after all you can still glare at people with hostility wearing a mask—but it’s a major loss in quality of life for the rest of us.

Professionals wearing masks in specific contexts is different than advocating for ordinary people to wear masks in public settings.

[Rebelgecko]

Dehumanized by strangers isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've talked to multiple women who prefer to wear masks on public transit because they're less likely to get catcalled or harassed

[asiachick]

> dehumanizing

So you effectively just insulted like 1.5 billion asians who've been wearing masks for years?

I'd call it humanizing. I care for others so I put on the mask.

[tonetheman]

Yes make sure to tell your doctor you think wearing a mask is before they work on you or you mother or your child. Tell them you think masks are dehuminizing.

Or just skip to what you really mean, tell your doctor who is going to operate on your or your child that you do not think they work.

Moron.

[dang]

You can't attack others like that here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. Since you've mostly been posting flamewar comments and ideological battle comments (all of which is against HN's guidelines), I've banned this account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [e-mail] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[spookthesunset]

It’s sad you get downvoted. Mask wearing is incredibly dehumanizing in my opinion. It is a symbol of fear and control. It never ever should never have been mandated, only recommended.

[Diederich]

> It is a symbol of fear and control.

Perhaps to some. That feeling is probably largely driven by one's overall outlook.

We started masking before any of the mandates because it just made sense to do so, to us at least.

> It never ever should never have been mandated, only recommended.

That's a hard question in my opinion. I naturally tend toward letting people do what they want unless they're clearly hurting others. Others have argued that masking does unambiguously reduce harm to others, but I don't find it so clear cut.

I'm personally less uncomfortable with mask mandates than the widespread shutdowns. Those shutdowns caused massive harm to people. Masking? Not so much.

Note I'm not quite willing, even now, to fully support mask mandates, now or previously. I see both sides of the issue.

> It’s sad you get downvoted.

Agreed, it is sad that opposing, perhaps uncomfortable viewpoints get pushed down.

[dfxm12]

It is a symbol of fear and control.

Why do you think this? I see someone wearing a mask and I see someone with enough respect for their fellow man that they don't want to get them sick. That's not fear or control, that's compassion. I don't think compassion is uniquely human, but it still is humanizing.

[eloff]

Medical masks are not a symbol of anything. They’re a legitimate way to lower the risk of spreading germs from your own mouth and nose. They’re also marginally useful at keeping germs out. The fact that they got politicized in the USA is more a symbol of the problems with the USA than anything else.

[diag]

How is it a symbol of fear? Masks for infection control have been used since the late 1800s. It's purely practical.

Maybe a little fear would be healthy for some people if it makes them act in a socially integrated manner. Anybody who's had covid probably doesn't want to get it again.

[ipaddr]

Mask wearing is wonderful and freeing. More privacy in public is a great side effect.

[throwaway290]

Yes, once you get used to it it's dehumanizing having to take it off. 100% it's someone wants to ID you for the camera.

[throwaway290]

Think about it. It's only a symbol of control and dehumanizing if you don't want to do it. Is waiting at a red light or wearing clothes in public dehumanizing or a symbol of control? If not then what makes masks different?

And you don't want to do it because you can't see every X person who caught the virus dropping dead in front of you, since all negative consequences happen out of sight and come back at you with statistics months later you simply can't bring yourself to care, that's all.

[aakresearch]

Of course I don't want it. Why would I? It is like demands for intercourse from random strangers, claiming you're immoral for not caring about "benefits" for THEM. Mask IS dehumanizing, and IS a symbol of control, just like any forced sexual activity. Why breathing and face are suddenly considered less sacred than nether zone? "What makes it different", from masks, or pants, or waiting the red light? If consensual sex between lovers is a wonderful and most natural experience ever, with all soothing and healing aspects, why it is not appropriate to make it mandatory under some circumstances? Even more, why breaching sexual consent even in minor way is considered worse-than-murder in some cultures?

Wearing mask is as revolting as sex against one's natural "orientation". If someone thinks this is unreasonable and one should "get help" to "fix" it, I remind them that they may be fighting against strongly held "identity" belief. "Conversion therapy" is being declared evil, for some valid reasons. And I won't even say how I feel about forced, mandatory mask wearing.

[fullmoon]

Culturally? That would be interesting to think through.

I can be sold on the idea that covering one face (by any means) removes a lot of communication and social clues that are inherently human.

But control?

[D13Fd]

How do you feel about having to wear a seatbelt?

[jeffbee]

Are pants and shirts also symbols of fear and control?

[timr]

If you're forced to wear them on your face, yes.

Covering your face, as a primate, is not a natural thing to do. Our brains have huge areas dedicated to recognition of subtle differences in facial features. We're literally wired for facial recognition. More than almost any other feature of our bodies, our faces define us as individuals.

Assuming that obscuring the face has zero cost is clearly wrong. I honestly can't believe I have to say this out loud.

[ajkjk]

Not generally opposed to masking, but the answer is "up to the individual" and "clearly indicated by their choices".

[listless]

Same. And I’m just getting over the flu, which was rough. A world where we constantly mask to avoid any illness at all holds 0 interest for me. I’ll take the COVID.

[meroes]

Good for you for having the choice. I can't make the choice for my immunocompromised roommate.

[TaylorAlexander]

There’s a lot of people in my life that don’t want to get sick. And I don’t want to have to cancel plans with them every time I feel a little fatigue, because 99% of the time that’s just due to weird sleep. But if I wasn’t masked I would be constantly wondering if I was getting sick and if I should cancel plans. My parents are elderly, my partners partner is vulnerable. There’s a lot of people in my life that can’t afford to get sick because they would infect their entire household.

I guess it’s fine if no one you hang out with cares, but that’s not the case for me.

I should also note that I don’t work with other people. I might feel differently if I had to mask at work all the time. I do keep a mask for the 2% of the time at work I interact with others. But the biggest thing is grocery stores. Not masking there you’re just asking to elevate community transmission. You’re increasing the risks for others. I’d love it if the virus was gone, but it just isn’t.

[potatochup]

It doesn't have to be that dichotomous though. I don't wear a mask at work (which is well ventilated and people are pretty responsible about staying home when sick) but I do in higher risk situations (E.g. a plane flight)

[FullStackAda]

Especially considering I can mask all the way in all public spaces, my kid will bring all the viruses from public schools all the same.

[xkbarkar]

The only people I see wearing masks are American tourists in the airports ( last 6 weeks Gardemoen, Kastrup , Keflavik, Arlanda )

Duck bill mask clad Germans generally stay in Germany. And they look insane. Like warning signs of nature insane.

Public announcements in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, from epidemiologists and ICU doctors recently is to stay the <f**> home if you are sick. If sick dont go out wearing a mask since it protects no one and, even if immuno compromized, live like you did in 2019 you are not protected wearing a flimsy surgical facemask and you need to socialize and not lock yourself up for the rest of your days.

And once you are not sick anymore, go back to work. Don't bother the currently overloaded hospitals unless something is very wrong, you know when your cold/flu is over.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/overlakaren-restriktioner.... https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vasterbotten/smittskyddsla....

Use common sense.

So no , presumably democrat american internet stranger. Dont wear a mask, If sick stay at home. Dont go out, face covered, and think you have saved a life. Mask is pointless.

Hand washing still applies though.

Don't think handwashing has been controversial since dr. Ignaz Semmelweis in 1865 was declared insane and put in an asylum by the medical establishment for suggesting that hand washing prevented doctors from spreading disease between their patients.

[TaylorAlexander]

If the other people around me actually followed that guidance you might have a point… except that covid is transmissible even before you get sick and even when you never do get sick. So people can’t stay home if they don’t know they’re contagious. And again, people don’t follow the guidance either.

I also don’t wear a surgical mask, I wear a KN95 because I’m not a fool.

[quarterdime]

Your suggestion of staying home if sick is one I agree with. Unfortunately I cannot make others do this. In fact, where I live in the USA I come across people who are visibly/audibly ill in my daily life: air travel, public transport, grocery store, and so on. I would prefer if these people stayed home, but can I make them? I can wear a mask, and I do (typically N95 in public places). If others think I look crazy, that is a small price to pay to avoid a few weeks of being sick or infecting someone else. Particularly my vulnerable family members.

[spookthesunset]

There is more to life than a myopic focus on avoiding one specific illness. I’ve got a million other problems in my life to worry about. Catching Covid isn’t anywhere near the top of that list.

This applies to society as a whole as well. The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself.

[haswell]

> The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself.

This seems much easier to say if you haven't been impacted by a serious case. I have friends who were similarly unconcerned, and who felt very differently after a month long battle with COVID, and as they continue to struggle with the after effects.

So yes, there's more to life than a myopic focus on avoiding one specific illness, but the actual impact of that statement and a closer look at the actual risk tradeoffs makes things a bit less obvious, and I'm not convinced that most of the behavior people are exhibiting is myopic.

> The damage caused by our incredibly myopic focus on Covid is far, far greater than the damage actually caused by the virus itself

This is a statement that needs quite a bit of evidence to back it up. I think it's safe to say that no one knew what the 2nd and 3rd order effects of trying to avoid COVID itself would be, and those effects are indeed significant. But neither can we say that we should have gone back and let the first rounds overwhelm and collapse hospital systems, the impact of which is something we can't even begin to understand right now.

[diag]

The things we do to avoid covid also help with avoiding other respiratory infections as well, all of which are pretty terrible to get in case anybody forgot about them.

But saying that covid isn't causing damage is itself highly myopic.

[ipaddr]

Wear a mask and stop getting other viral illnesses. We should have been doing this before covid.

[jeffbee]

I haven't even had a cold in years. Masks are brilliant. I even prefer to wear one now while bicycling, even though there is no health reason to wear one outdoors, just because it keeps my nose warm.

[gernb]

On the one side we have 20 million people dead. What's the counter factual of how many people would be dead if we'd been less myopic

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-...

[tmaly]

I think washing hands and not touching your face are something that is very underrated.

[gumby]

Yes, though those don't help so much with illnesses transmitted through breathing

[rajup]

Masks are unlikely to have protected you much unless it’s a tight fitting n95 mask worn around the clock. This topic has been beaten to death on here, not sure why people continue to cling on to masks as anything other than security theater.

[basch]

The primary mechanism these things are spread by is water droplets in the air expelled from the nose and mouth. A sick person wearing a mask will expel more moisture into the mask, and less into the air.

None of this is binary. It's not sick or not sick. There is a viral load component, where a persons body can fight off a certain amount of virus.

[ch4s3]

I was under the impression that droplets are only part of the picture and that sick people are in fact spraying tons of much small particles into the air as they breathe.

[basch]

droplets and airborne is a somewhat arbitrary distinction pulled out of .. thin air.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...

Whether the droplet/aerosol float through the air has to do with much more than particle size.

"There was just one literally tiny problem: “The physics of it is all wrong,” Marr says. That much seemed obvious to her from everything she knew about how things move through air. Reality is far messier, with particles much larger than 5 microns staying afloat and behaving like aerosols, depending on heat, humidity, and airspeed."

[ch4s3]

That's not my point at all. I didn't make the droplet vs airborne distinction.

I mean that the masks can and do stop some droplets and larger particles, but smaller particles pass through and around them readily. It seems like really small particles might be causing infections with newer variants. But I'm also not sure what we even know for sure about this at the moment. A lot of mask research has been don with modeling or lab setups to spray liquids through them. The narrower set of real world studies cast a lot of doubt on anything but N95s worn properly. So I'm not sure where that leaves us.

[basch]

That goes back to its not binary. Less viral load is less viral load. Masks are not a complete solution.

At the end of the day the goal appears to be to reduce spread and reinfection to minimize the load on the hospital system.

[endisneigh]

Someone sick should be staying home, not going into grocery stores with a mask on.

[basch]

I am not disagreeing. However, the premise of normal masks is primarily for sick people to not spread disease.

"It is important to wear a mask or respirator when you are sick or caring for someone who is sick with COVID-19."

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

"Wear a high-quality and well-fitting mask if you must be around others (for example: going to get tested), even in your home."

https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/sick.htm...

Framing masking as protecting the wearer was done to psychologically make people care. People are more likely to care about themselves, than others.

[sn0wf1re]

How else would they get food? Not everyone can afford to order in. Is your opinion that these people should just starve?

[haswell]

While I agree that the parent comment is making huge assumptions about delivery options people have access to (both for geographical and for cost reasons), there are options in the middle.

The majority of stores (grocery and otherwise) introduced curbside pickup options early in the pandemic, which at least provides more options for someone who doesn't have access to or can't afford delivery, while removing or minimizing the time they need to spend in-store.

Not a perfect solution, but the options are not "delivery or starve".

[sn0wf1re]

Can you provide a reference to a discount grocer (since you are replying to a comment about affordability) that offers curb-side or delivery without fee? I am not aware of any.

[endisneigh]

Ideally you have enough food in your fridge to last without daily trips to the grocery store, so no, not starving.

[sn0wf1re]

COVID symptoms (coughing in particular, which is a big spreader of particles) can last weeks. I don't know many people with multiple weeks worth of food in their fridge unless they have a deepfreeze (large chest freezer).

[acheron]

That's hardly a good faith interpretation of the post you're responding to. Do you actually want to discuss something or are you just looking to insult people?

[dietr1ch]

Most could ask friend or family for help. Not wanting to bother someone else is silly, since it results in bothering way more than one person.

[sn0wf1re]

> Not wanting to bother someone else is silly, since it results in bothering way more than one person

I agree with you.

> Most could ask friend or family for help

Most but not all. An alternative is asking a stranger (government programs where I am ended almost a year ago), strangers are kinder than people realize. But asking for help is challenging for many people.

[jonahhorowitz]

You're contagious for 2 days before you have symptoms. You should wear a mask if you're around other people.

[basch]

Not disagreeing. I am pointing out the mask is to block the spreader, moreso than shield the recipient.

[endisneigh]

People should wear a mask if they’d like, yes. But ultimately social distancing and getting vaccinated is the best strategy.

[roflyear]

Sure, if you KNOW you're sick. Often you are contagious without feeling sick. Or maybe you just feel a LITTLE sick but still go to the store.

[farnsworth]

Can't believe we're still arguing about whether pErSoNaL rEsPoNsIbIlItY will save us

[VirusNewbie]

I guess I’m skeptical, isn’t the majority of covid spread through prolonged close contact? Running into a grocery store without a mask for fifteen minutes seems extremely low risk compared to other activities.

[basch]

Is 1000 people expelling one breath, the same as one person expelling 1000 breaths?

It has to do with ventilation too. Taller ceilings probably help. Lower humidity.

Choir is probably a great example of something where closeness isnt the only factor.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...

[gernb]

I recently got it via short contact (3 weeks ago, was positive until yesterday, still have a cough).

I went to an amusement park. None of the people I was hanging out with had it nor tested positive before or after (they were all testing regularly) so the only other explanations are random people I passed at the park, food that was contaminated, or random covid virus in the air.

Of course my getting it via short contact does not invalidate the idea that most of it is spread via prolonged contact. But, given I just caught it via short contact I'm not going to stop taking prevenative measures in situations with only short contacts.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Protection isn't binary. At society scale these small changes add up.

[aaroninsf]

Because it's not security theater, as has been demonstrated time and again FFS

It's trivially easy to acquire authentic N95s today.

People just won't wear them, so, we all suffer.

[adamsb6]

The evidence is pretty mixed, and even the studies showing the strongest effects have mask wearing yielding something like a 50% reduction in transmission.

I haven't seen anyone model what this looks like on longer timescales. Does this mean that you're just delaying the inevitable? If so, and the disease is mild and we're not going to overwhelm hospitals with the infected, what's the benefit?

[fullmoon]

Austria has mandated N95s for months.

No improvement in comparison to neighboring countries could be demonstrated.

Mostly because it was pure theater and no attempt at proof was even made.

[jeffbee]

You can't do a study that way. People do or do not wear masks based on emergent social acceptance, regardless of government actions. If you want to do a discontinuity study you have to evaluate actual mask usage in the real world and discover a boundary discontinuity. You can't just do it by jurisdiction and assume that the government proclamations work. People wear masks when they aren't required, and they may not wear them when they are required.

[fullmoon]

I’m well aware.

Yet we’ve been hearing since the beginning of 2021 that they’ve been proven to have been much more efficient by the coalition parliament which has come up with this idea.

[jonahhorowitz]

I wear a flomask every day when I'm out and about and it works great. You don't need to wear it "around the clock." You just need to wear it when you're inside and there are people around you who might be infected.

[uhtred]

Masks are primarily for protecting other people, you cough and sneeze and breathe out infected water droplets into the mask- not other people's faces.

Why do people like you have such anger about mask wearing?

[gjsman-1000]

> not other people's faces

Well, in that case, it's easy. Other people who are concerned can wear a mask, and said water droplets will land on their mask instead of their face. Problem solved, we have no conflict.

As for why we hate it, here's a good reason for me personally. I have to wear glasses, as I have an extreme prescription coupled with astigmatism. It's so bad LASIK is (or at least, was) high-risk. Wearing a mask with glasses is a miserable experience - you can't stop fogging them up without touching your mask every several minutes to adjust it, defeating the point because you're not supposed to touch it. In which case, wearing a mask (for me) is a self-defeating exercise. There are other reasons but that's my personal biggest one.

[justin66]

> worn around the clock

I'm reluctantly curious what your thinking is on that.

[deanc]

At this point, I’d tend to agree. However, this is a bit of a broad and inaccurate statement. Wearing masks gave society time to catch up in terms of vaccinations and other measures.

[orblivion]

Are cases really rising? It looks maybe a little higher than the summer right now, maybe depends on the area. Nothing like the last two autumns, thankfully. We'll see about winter. They keep saying some new variant is going to break through but I don't see it yet.

[ABCLAW]

In my area, cases are rising fairly rapidly and certain hospitals have begun to rescheduling electives on the basis that they're overstressed. This is concerning because winter is just getting started and transmission rates when people are indoors are higher.

That said, I think the seasonal wave we're anticipating is a product of when our winter hits and how hard our winter hits - other areas might have very different experiences overall.

[asiachick]

looks like they were highest ever in the SF Bay area just 1 week after Thanksgiving but they've fallen quickly

https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboard-wastewater

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I hear you but I'm only going to mask up if required. I've gotten 4 COVID vaccines, caught COVID, and I've never missed a flu vaccine.

[gjsman-1000]

Never again. Caught COVID, vaccinated friends also caught COVID, vaccinated individuals are now 58% of hospitalizations, and long term effects of both long COVID and having microplastics embedded in your lungs are both unknown. However, long COVID is just long, but microplastics are forever. I've chosen to be mask-free and anyone who doesn't like that can mask themselves.

[landemva]

You got actual covid and recovered, then did you get blood test to check for development of antibodies? Then you later got the shot for what purpose?

[amalter]

Caught a medium severity case of omicron almost exactly a year ago when I was triple vax'd.

Took the bivalent booster about 2 months ago then went on a cruise and directly after to re:invent.

Since then had multiple exposures with people around me getting week long fevers. So far I had something in my system that made me feel "slightly off" - but nothing worse.

Yay antibodies.

I'm a big believer in "more antibodies the better" - but I am also on the side of "COVID amnesty". The pandemic was an immensely scary time for everyone, and got co-opted by politics of all stripes. We need to forgive each other and move on.

I now support everyone's choice - with the standard exceptions (Childhood vaccines, don't go out when sick, respect others).

[landemva]

> The pandemic was an immensely scary time for everyone

I was in a truck fixing heavy equipment at mines, construction sites, oil & gas pads, and the only thing that changed was I could calculate drive time based on mileage because most everyone was at home. I didn't get fake safety gear or a big bonus check for sitting at home.

Not everyone was scared. Mine sites were great because behind the gate everyone was normal. Unlike the OSHA scaremongers, MSHA eventually released guidance which said roughly, "Policies to stay home when sick are always in effect and miners are always safe and keep being safe. And safety."

One mine site had their yearly pig roast with tables under a tent that Spring, and everyone was shoulder to shoulder, no masks, no gloves, no gel stations. It was awesome.

[neilv]

I think an additional benefit of the masks is that they signal something about the person's Covid conscientiousness -- which I suspect affects how likely they are to be a carrier, and how likely they are to be careful about spreading it if they are.

(Though that signal didn't help me in Trader Joe's the other day, when one of the few employees wearing a mask (only surgical), turned out to have a phlegmy cough. In that case, I imagine the logic might've been, "You're obviously sick and probably spreading something, maybe Covid? We don't pay you to stay home. Strap on the least effective mask you can find, which suddenly we believe in, and get out there and superspread among shoppers!" :( )

[rajup]

An additional way to virtue signal is a benefit? Weird world we live in…

[neilv]

Signalling as communication of information (e.g., "I'm following these practices, which tells you something about what to expect about things that might be important to you"). Not the "virtue signalling" meme talking point to dismiss.