Yeah, this.
And start masking again and it becomes a perpetual cycle where kids immune systems aren’t exposed to enough early enough to work as evolved.
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What’s the flip side of that? Advocating for masking in public forever?
In Ontario, COVID is no longer the problem people are being asked to mask for. It very much appears as though people are being asked to mask now as an after effect of masking for two years. So where does that leave the future?
You think a spinal tap on a 6 week old baby should be considered nbd?
Is masking to try to control illness levels to hospital capacity while getting through the backlog, so to speak, unreasonable? Is this not a temporary request?
There’s some speculation that there’s post-covid immunodeficiency making kids who’ve had COVID more susceptible to respiratory illnesses.
You know, maybe it’s time for me to start doing in-person shopping again, if this level of masking is socially acceptable.
LOL this isn’t much different than when we started using more cleaning agents and kids stopped eating as much dirt.
You are significantly over exaggerating the impact of adding one more layer of the bubble we started long ago.
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Should we make policy from data or anecdotes?
Am I? If I’m exaggerating, why is there a mask recommendation? Why wasn’t there ever in the 100 years before COVID, but is now?
Income tax was a temporary measure.
We’re three years into this “temporary” request.
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Your reaction to asking people to mask (the increase in the bubble) is what I’m talking about. It is approximately equal to asking people to use antibacterial soap. It adds one more layer between us and the various bugs in our environment but you act as if it is going to result in significant increases in child deaths when those kids eventually do get infected with a random illness.
It hasn’t happened yet and this shift will probably help long term in how we transmit airborne viruses while having a limited impact on childhood illness.
And that is from someone who lives in the south with extremely limited masking and who has lived through most of COVID in group settings without a mask. I only mention that so you understand this isn’t about a personal preference for masks.
I missed this comment. And my only reaction is seriously?
Why don’t we still recommend blood letting? Because maybe we learn new things and make new recommendations.
Just so you know, if your kid is < 3 mo and has a fever for anything other than a vaccine reaction, a spinal tap is part of the work up. This isn’t pearl clutching anecdote.
I mean, we could go back to ≈ 50% mortality rate for kids under 5. I don’t have any spare kids tho.
If you’re talking numbers, what is hospital capacity and medicine availability like? Isn’t that the point of the masking recommendation?
Surgeons have worn masks for 100 years, we’ve known they’re a way to reduce viral transmission. So, no, masks aren’t new.
What’s new is the political appetite to ask society to mask
That hasn’t happened prior to COVID
Now that we’ve been conditioned to accept it there will be some constituency asking for it to be imposed forever.
Masks were taken seriously in Ontario. That seems to be part of why kids are now getting RSV and flu worse than in the past, the masks interrupted the development of their immune systems.
We’ve had antibacterial soap for a long time, that didn’t lead the government to tell us to mask COVID did.
What have governments done to increase hospital capacity since COVID?
This is endemic. Whatever we accept now we’re accepting forever.
You’re right to some extent
The political failure to ensure appropriate supply of medicine, and hospital capacity, has led them to try this option of perpetual masking leading to immunity gap in kids.
So, masks alone will be the difference?
I wore a mask at a hospital recently. That’s been the only requirement for a mask since around the end of omicron in March. No one else is really asking for this anymore. Sure, there are people who would like to see everyone in masks in all public places all the time because they trade off the minor discomfort of wearing a mask with reduced chance of viral transmission. It’s a minority view on most places at this point and politicians don’t seem to be pushing it.
Kids are getting RSV in large numbers because we skipped two years of it spreading rapidly in schools and now have 2-3x as many kids with low immunity to it. This is only an issue if it causes rationing of healthcare. On an individual basis, i think kids are better off getting RSV for the first time if they are a little bit older. I think influenza is the same. We also have vaccines for both.
Ontario is pushing it.
Masking in health care facilities is reasonable imo.
Ontario is pushing (but not mandating, yet) for masking in all public spaces. If the public supports it a mandate may come.
Ontario was one of the most restricted places in North America including 12+ weeks of stay at home order.
Covid has normalized mask wearing. Some people are now wearing masks in public always. Some people wear masks in certain situations like crowded public transportation. Some people only wear masks if they feel a little under the weather. I’m somewhere between 2 and 3 personally. For everyone else, they pretty much never want to touch a mask again, regardless of the public recommendation.
I’m not certain that this is the case.
There’s a trifecta - covid, because covid. Flu, because flu. and RSV because that’s flared up. The first two aren’t new because of masks, and the rsv I think is just a newish thing, not caused by lowered immunity due to masks.
in other words, it’s not because we’re all getting stuff because we didn’t get it before. We’re getting it because we’ve got three diseases running around right now instead of just the flu, not because of new ‘lack of immunity’. If anything, we’re getting them because people aren’t wearing masks.