Because a large percentage of our adult population is determined to prolong the pandemic as long as possible? Hey, when school let out this spring I thought they could go back without masks. Then the rural corner of my state along with a few other low Vax areas of the country seeded most of the nation with the delta variant.
Other parts of the world have better adults than we have here.
@SpaceLobster: does this forum software have a reminder feature? Iād like to be reminded of this in about 2 months.
No reminder necessary. 10/13. Iāll remember.
Also I forgot to say, tourists are definitely outdoors in Florida in the summer: theme parks, beaches, St. Augustineā¦
It seems like large outbreaks create negative forces that slow down the spread, even without mask mandates.
People gain some immunity. People become scared and change their behavior for a while voluntarily. People quarantine.
So i would think, and hope, that even areas that are not requiring masking would see peaks and decreases.
Instead I think mask mandates would be more likely to change the size of these curves, not their fundamental shape. And measuring the change is size is tricky, and probably requires something like that comparison study of counties with and without mask mandates (that the cdc did?), which did find mask mandates to be effective.
I think this contributes to masking being such a public policy difficulty, frankly. You still get peaks and dips without mask mandates, which makes it harder for people to understand their efficacy.
And mask mandates only cover public spaces, not private get togethers, which makes the efficacy more difficult to determine.
You would think, but they donāt. For example:
https://twitter.com/ianmSC/status/1400566296761098245?s=20
That āstudyā was complete garbage.
Here is the study i was remembering:
Here are more reviewed articles summarizing the issue:
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M20-6625
Iām not sure if others have posted them already to the site.
Hereās the tl;dr version of the acpjournals link:
The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high.
Thatās not the one I was thinking of, but this one is garbage, too.
Both the PNAS & acp journal articles are based on mathematical models using faulty assumptions, often based on mechanistic studies on respiratory droplets, not aerosols. None of that has held up in real world data.
I donāt think it is possible to look at any single study by itself.
And those other two papers incorporate many different results. The phrase āmodelsā, even, is kind of meaningless. Do you mean models of spread in the population? Models of spread through the air between people? Models trying to correct between differences between populations in observational studies?
And what do you mean it hasnāt held up in real world data? No model ever holds up completely in real world data; this is not the right question to be asking.
You have to consider the totality of the evidence, in what sense the model does and does not match the real world, etc. It cannot be done in a series of tweets or blog posts or posts here.
This is why amateurs really cannot credibly challenge the experts, unfortunately. I am in less of a position to judge this on masks, but i definitely have seen it in climate science.
It would be better if it could be less technocratic. And there is the danger that bureaucrats take control using their expert knowledge as a shield. But I do not believe that is what is happening here.
I have not spent a lot of time looking into the effectiveness of masks. I am more concerned with trying to understand the risk of bad consequences given that one has gotten covid, so that i can apply my own risk tolerance. But nothing I have seen challenging the efficacy of masks has struck me as remotely serious. Instead it has been empty skepticism that doesnāt really challenge the best arguments.
So, the great clips data then?
Still trotting out Stylist A? Is that the best argument you have?
You posted a link to an article that linked to a study showing that fewer teachers caught covid in schools where the kids had to wear masks. Ironically, the article was an anti-mask screed, apparently put together by someone who didnāt read his own links. It included a lot of real world data.
Seems like better real world data than āmy friend canāt teach her 9 year old how to wear a mask after over a year of trying.ā
Stepson has a fever and a headache. So we have to cancel sonās birthday party. We are trying to make his birthday as special as possible, and heās taking it all in stride.
School opening next week is going to be a clusterā¦
Ugh. Best wishes, and I hope everyone feels well soon.
Iām sorry NA. I agree.
So, you donāt like lockdowns. You donāt believe in masks. You are ambivalent on vaccination.
I observe that the COVID numbers for Canada ā both case counts and death counts per capita ā are much less than half of those in the US. In fact, theyāre just a little more than one-third of the per-million counts in the US. What do you think explains this? It aināt the weather, most of the population of Canada lives very close to the US, in the same climate as our northern states.
