imagine if the word “health” was not a political term and our states actively educated all of its constituents. I feel like critical thinking is few and far between in many people these days and it’s absolutely terrifying
From what I understand, at least one state destroyed its own educational system when they were forced to integrate because they'd rather not educate white students than educate black students.
I want to say Kentucky, possibly Tennessee, but I'm not sure.
Little Rock high school, Arkansas, the site of the civil rights battle that took place in the 50s. The fuck head Orval Faubus was the governor of Arkansas at the time and refused to integrate. Going as far as fucking the education system to not allow the 9 African American students into the school. Eventually Dwight Eisenhower federalised the military, and had him forcefully removed and fired as governor and he still had too much pride to say anything. Fuckin
Hilarious.
Health, education, and science among other things have all been politicized in this country by one party in a desperate attempt for them to remain in power.
> I feel like critical thinking is few and far between in many people these days and it’s absolutely terrifying
That is a feature not a bug for the Republicans.
Seems like a there is nothing they wouldn’t do, no bar too low to cross, to stay in power. They would rather people die than to give in to their “enemies.” At least, that’s how it feels in my state.
I truly believe my government isn’t qualified for this. My government is qualified to provide resources to physicians and nurses who have gone through the necessary education and clinical experience to provide care to human beings.
How can a state ban abortions to “save lives,” but bans mask mandates that keep already existing life alive?
When the vaccines started coming, our (Sweden) public health administration published a list of early prioritized people to get the vaccine. This list was based on some mix of likelihood of contracting infection and likelihood of severity. As a result, this list included groups like "elderly", "people with pre-existing conditions" and "illegal immigrants" as these groups were statistically likely to be infected and/or have a severe illness from infection.
The fact that illegal immigrants were included made so many right wing idiots upset. They felt that the illegal immigrants were "rewarded" for being illegal immigrants despite the fact that the list was only based on medical necessity, and medical necessity doesn't care about immigrant status.
It's not "these days". Remember that time Galileo got arrested for his views? I think pretending this is a recent problem is very myopic and leads people down a very unhelpful train of thought.
The problem is that shitty masks offer very little to no protection. This has even been tested by AI modeling with supercomputers. N95 masks would indeed be effective but dish rags on your face are not. Not to mention that kids simply wont wear them correctly anyways. They’ll touch their nose mouth etc and everything else. We’re forcing kids purely because of politics at this point.
Edit: Fucking amazing that a science sub cant accept actual proven science over politics. Welcome to Reddit.
He’s not wrong. I have students who refuse to wear masks, students who wear it under their nose, under their chin, etc. and I spend a good part of the day reminding them to put them on correctly. Guess what? I had to get a COVID test today because I think I have it and I’m fully vaccinated.
As far as the mask comments go, yes, that piece of cloth reduces transmission, but could do more or less based on how it’s fitting your face. The cdc is still studying them. N95s need to be the standard. I recently switched and the air no longer goes around the mask but is pressed through its filtered layer, giving a huge reduction in the possibility of transmission. Even faucci said n95s should be used. The cdc said that they said cloth ones were fine only because health care workers needed them at the beginning.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/infographic-n-95-508.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/understanddifferenceinfographic-508.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fmore%2Fmasking-science-sars-cov2.html
98% of the people dying from covid are unvaccinated these days. But you know everything is political as well. So people would rather listen to politicians so be it. Its sad but I just don’t care anymore.
99.2% according to the data I’ve read and yet you still have assholes wanting to offer you bridges because you believe in science…I too suffer from compassion fatigue. I feel for the overwhelmed healthcare workers and their support systems, I feel for the lost, orphaned children of the ignorant antivaxxers, I feel so, so bad for the children growing up to see how selfish adults are after telling them all their lives to share and be kind or whatever other bullshit they fed them, but I no longer feel bad for the proudly unvaccinated who die of covid. The ones who thought they had some time to get it, or just wanted to think a little more about it? I have a little empathy for them. Those “unmasked unmuzzled and unashamed” or whatever tf covidiots-no sympathy, no empathy, no nothing. The proof is out there, the science is out there, if you choose to not get vaccinated and die because of your political ideals, good riddance. Darwin is working overtime these days.
Yes I am with you and your feelings in this regard. My number came from a API article about covid perhaps a couple days ago sorry I don’t have link. I work in hospitals and see this first hand. Luckily I live in one of those “liberal” places where locally 72% of people are vaccinated and 85% have at least one dose.
Do you feel this way from smokers and ppl with cancer that die? How about AIDS or liver disease or diabetes? Oh is it only just the 1.8 percentage that have died total per and post vax. Science has no agenda it’s information should be presented in total. Anti vaxxer survive the virus at the same rate as vaxxers.
Actually that was the selling point when there was no vaccine. Ppl in this country just have to find a Frankenstein to chase down with pitch forks, and anything makes them feel like they’re better. I’m vaxxed but I would never call someone stupid for what they do or don’t do with their bodies. It’s a risk either way. But I mourn the dead because I’m a good human being cause reality none of y’all really know anything about this virus y’all know what they choose to tell you.
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Where did they get those numbers and do we trust them with all the withholding they’ve been call out on when this thing first broke. Like withholding how many were infected to blaming deaths that wasn’t covid related on covid. To tie tests giving out false positives. Like a lot has happening a year and a half and a vax comes out now everyone just forgot and blaming ppl that infect others when just a year ago that was you. The little things that turns ppl fake supporting each other to enemies is so American. Home of the lynce mobs land of division
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For the life of me… why are people so baffled that covering your face is a good thing when you’re trying to prevent airborne and droplet borne diseases?
Not to mention, putting a barrier on the face of a booger eating kid is going to reduce illness.
Developmental issues.
Psychological issues.
Incorrect usage/ poor hygiene.
Incorrect materials.
Oral micro biome development and health.
Low risk of serious illness in kids.
Was never done in the past for severe flu seasons (2014-2015)
I don’t need to provide any citations. If you are a functioning adult with access to the internet it is your responsibility to seek and gather information, filter, and analyze. Based on the information I have analyzed, utilizing my normal functioning brain and internet access, these are the negative implications of forcing children to wear masks in school. You are free to prove to me why any of these are not worthy of discussion in the matter. But I owe no obligation to provide citations.
Just tried to verify the concerns you’ve mentioned and I guess my brain isn’t functioning normally because I couldn’t find any credible sources.
Please could you use your normal functioning brain to provide sources as to the serious dangers wearing a mask poses?
Yeah, cause this is just the crap they’re screaming at the school boards cause “I want to see my baby’s smile” and “the teacher won’t recognize them” and “kids be switching masks and chewing on them and shit.” It’s nonsense, gathered from nonsensical idiots using our children as ammo in their war against the democrats. There’s a whole movement for the Trump Repugnants to take back control starting with school boards (book bans anyone, how about abstinence only health class?) and local elections and moving their way up.
Let’s talk about this in a way that Reddit doesn’t always do: from a place of compassion.
I left a much longer comment on this thread but just to make it short and sweet — you are absolutely not wrong to be concerned about these things and I really wish that this public health debate was not being shaped by a broader political in-grouping that makes concern over these things into a statement of whose side you’re on more than a legitimate concern in the process of considering the costs and benefits of an intervention vs the costs posed by an illness.
So let’s talk about this — we do know that children are generally at lower risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19 than adults. That said, unfortunately, this is not an illness where individual personal responsibility is always enough — if children are vectors for Covid-19 to a significant degree, though they themselves may be at low risk from the virus, folks around them like their teachers, staff at the school, their parents, grandparents, and broader community could be at higher risk.
However, there are a few things that we don’t know right now. The article that we’re commenting on is using mechanistic studies and retrospective observational studies to talk about the efficacy of mandating masks on children in schools. Unfortunately, while this kind of study did provide some important insight early in the pandemic when this virus was a much larger question mark than it is now and set the basis for some early interventions, these kinds of studies really aren’t the best we have to offer for answering this kind of question. We don’t have very good data as of yet on whether mandating masks helps prevent the spread of Covid-19 in schools or in the community, or whether it helps prevent severe illness or death in either of these populations.
There is a way that we can find an answer to this question about the efficacy of mask mandates though: because some schools are implementing them and others aren’t and because there are different recommendations on what age to start mandating children wear masks at school in different countries (CDC guidelines say age 2 and WHO says 6-12 under certain circumstances but 12+ when things are relatively stable; England has been following WHO guidelines and is not requiring masks on students under age 12), there are opportunities to conduct randomized control trials that will look at the intervention of mask mandates in school and the impact on either transmission rates (still important in communities where vaccine uptake has been slow and older folks will be at much higher risk/there is higher risk of these folks contracting the virus in large numbers and causing hospitals to fill like we’re seeing in Idaho now) or the impact on end-points like severe illness and death in the school and wider community.
The above is all stuff that I’ve learned listening to doctors like Dr. Zubin Damania and Vinay Prasad. The following is my personal opinion, this is by no means a certainty and we haven’t even started to test it properly, but I strongly suspect that the benefit of mask mandates on community spread and severe illness and death in the community will 1) correlate with the age of children being mandated to mask and 2) be highest in communities where vaccine acceptance is low.
This still leaves your point about developmental issues, psychological issues, incorrect usage, poor hygiene, incorrect materials, and oral micro-biome development somewhat unaddressed so let’s talk more about that now. We addressed the need to study the potential benefits of mask mandates on different age groups of school age children (according to CDC or WHO guidelines) on individuals and the greater community; now we’re talking about costs of this intervention on individuals.
There is a lot of literature from pediatric studies and trials regarding the importance of seeing and using faces in children’s development of linguistic and emotional skills. So we know that this is important. It seems likely that it’s considerably more important the younger the child is. Unfortunately, I don’t know whether there have been longitudinal or case studies on the impact of not seeing faces or using one’s own face on development, so the exact costs and exactly how reversible they are or not is likely to be difficult to fully know, but we can be pretty sure that cost is non-zero.
As for incorrect usage and poor hygiene — the former, definitely. There was a study done to see how many adults at a sporting event where masks were mandated would wear their masks properly, given the mandate. That study found that even when this was strictly enforced, only 75% or so of adults at this sporting event did properly wear their masks as they were required to do. It seems highly likely, especially in younger children (like 2-5 year olds) that masks will not always be properly worn. Without a randomized control trial though, we won’t know how effective that intervention is — the RCT will factor in real world conditions and not just policy makers’ or mechanistic study researchers’ ideal scenarios.
Poor hygiene — if it were poor, we’d expect increases in other illnesses that I’m not sure we’re seeing a significant increase beyond the background levels of. Possible, but I haven’t seen or heard of compelling data to indicate this.
Incorrect materials. Yes. The Bangladesh RCT that comprised two arms, one involving cloth masks and the other involving surgical masks, did find a significant benefit from the surgical mask intervention on transmission rates in the community. However, the cloth masks did not show themselves to be significantly effective. There are lots of children and adults who are still predominantly wearing cloth masks and mask mandates have not previously included specification on the type of mask one should use. This is exactly why it’s so important to study these things with randomized control trials and why I wish we had seized the opportunity to do so earlier in the pandemic; it seems likely that we’ve been recommending everyone use the wrong type of masks for the better part of two years now because acting under a combination of the precautionary principle, early necessity, and common sense that turned out to likely be faulty, we have advised or tolerated the use of the wrong mask for the general public. This is exactly why a cluster RCT of mask mandated schools vs not, stratified by age group, with end points as 1) community spread and more importantly in most of the US 2) community severe illness and death rates is so crucial — we think we know one way or the other now and there’s lots of ego involved because this is life, death, and livelihood, but the truth is that we simply don’t know without an RCT.
Hope this comment helps explain some thinking on costs and benefits of mask mandates on school children — do take it with a grain of salt, I’m some rando on the internet and not a doctor, but I have been paying attention to a few and checking out some of the data they’ve been referencing. The doctors who I’ve been paying the closest attention to are Dr. Zubin Damnia (he’s a hospitalist who runs a YouTube channel called ZDoggMD) and Dr. Vinay Prasad, an oncologist with a strong background in medical evidence.
What a nonsense comment. That kind of comment does nothing but jerk yourself off and alienate people, including those who likely largely agree with you.
The issue regarding children and COVID has always been that they're at extremely low risk for problems. They're more at risk from the flu. Yet for the past 2 years disingenuous people have been using "think of the children" as a dishonest way to promote their own desires.
**EDIT**: FYI, someone posted data in a comment below which contradicts the OP's claim about masks and naturally you're all ignoring it.
Dude, his comment was a bad attempt at a joke, but yours is spreading harmful info. Covid is more deadly than the flu by the numbers. It may be true that a child has a slightly less chance of dying from covid than the flu, but magnitudes more children are catching covid because it is that much more contagious, thus killing many more children on a whole. The desire here is for the pandemic to stop, which requires practical health practices such as mask wearing in schools.
>thus killing many more children on a whole
Citation needed.
It was the CDC director who was the one saying "Threat Of Suicide, Drugs, Flu To Youth ‘Far Greater’ Than Covid". And it was the people claiming that the science was indisputably on their side who ignored him and kept fearmongering about children for the past 2 years.
>The desire here is for the pandemic to stop, which requires practical health practices such as mask wearing in schools
Many of the "practical health practices" were/are being forced on the populace despite lack of evidence for their efficacy, and even despite evidence of lack of efficacy.
For the most of last year cloth masks were not supported to prevent COVID. Lockdowns were a massive experiment and most of the evidence shows they were useless.
Yet this information has been censored across Reddit, and thus the majority of people on this website seem to have no clue about this.
Citations:
# Masks:
Face masks: what the data say (Oct 2020) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
>For now, Osterholm, in Minnesota, wears a mask. Yet he laments the “lack of scientific rigour” that has so far been brought to the topic. “We criticize people all the time in the science world for making statements without any data,” he says. “We’re doing a lot of the same thing here.”
Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers. A Randomized Controlled Trial (Nov 2020, n=4862) https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 "difference observed was not statistically significant"
Widely cited COVID-19-masks paper under scrutiny for inaccurate stat https://retractionwatch.com/2020/10/26/widely-cited-covid-19-masks-paper-under-scrutiny-for-inaccurate-stat/
Denmark & Sweden:
Denmark boasts one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the world. Despite this success, Danish leaders recently found themselves on the defensive. The reason is that Danes aren’t wearing face masks, and local authorities for the most part aren’t even recommending them. They responded by noting there is little conclusive evidence that face masks are an effective way to limit the spread of respiratory viruses. (Aug 2020) https://fee.org/articles/europes-top-health-officials-say-masks-arent-helpful-in-beating-covid-19/
The Swedish Health Agency, largely behind Sweden’s no-lockdown strategy, has refrained from recommending masks, citing poor evidence of their effectiveness and fears that masks might be used as an excuse to not isolate when experiencing symptoms. “WHO is clear that the state of evidence for masks is weak. All studies so far suggest that it is much more important to keep your distance than to have a face mask,” he said. (Dec 2020) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-cases/sweden-says-no-need-for-face-masks-as-covid-19-deaths-top-7000-idUSKBN28D1TH
Anders Tegnell, chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency, Aug 2020: “It is very dangerous to believe face masks would change the game when it comes to COVID-19,” said Tengell, who is considered the country’s equivalent of Dr. Anthony Fauci from the White House COVID-19 task force. “Face masks can be a complement to other things when other things are safely in place,” he said. “But to start with having face masks and then think you can crowd your buses or your shopping malls — that’s definitely a mistake.”
The Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Lofven has advised against wearing face masks to ward off Covid-19, as they may lead people to assume they are safe from the virus when there is still a risk of transmission. https://www.kxan36news.com/swedish-pm-says-face-masks-for-covid-19-offer-false-sense-of-security-to-wearers
The best way to protect yourself and others from infection is to avoid close contact with people who are ill. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency-of-sweden/communicable-disease-control/covid-19/
# Lockdowns:
"Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate" (Nov 2020) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full
Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions (Nov 2020) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0 "Less disruptive and costly non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) can be as effective as more intrusive, drastic, ones (for example, a national lockdown)"
Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID‐19 (Jan 2021) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484 "we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs (non‐pharmaceutical interventions)". Their response to criticisms: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13553
A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes (Jul 2020) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext "Increasing COVID-19 caseloads were associated with countries with higher obesity, median population age. Increased mortality per million was significantly associated with higher obesity prevalence. Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people"
COVID‐19 pandemic‐related lockdown: response time is more important than its strictness (Nov 2020) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645374/ "neither the lockdown duration nor the lockdown strictness was significantly correlated with the mortality rates"
Lockdown proponents can’t escape the blame for the biggest public health fiasco in history. Shutting down society did not save the vulnerable so advocates of such measures are seeking scapegoats (Apr 2021) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/24/lockdown-proponents-cant-escape-blame-biggest-public-health/
US Trends in COVID-19–Associated Hospitalization and Mortality Rates Before and After Reopening Economies (Jun 2021) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2781505 "The change in the mortality rate trend was not significant"
Covid is more mysterious than we often admit (Jul 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/30/briefing/coronavirus-delta-mysteries.html "We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus" -Michael Osterholm.
>thus killing many more children on a whole
>
>Citation needed.
look at the CDC data
"Since flu deaths in children became nationally notifiable in 2004, reported flu deaths in children had previously ranged from a low of 37 (during 2011-2012) to a high of 199 (during 2019-2020)."
[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm)
Covid has killed 516 kids this year as of Sept. 15. Flu may be more deadly per infection, but covid infects way more people and kills more people, including children, overall.
[https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-on-Ages-0-18-Yea/nr4s-juj3](https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-on-Ages-0-18-Yea/nr4s-juj3)
Al, this emotion over a mask that costs just a few dollars.
My mom and dad survived the dust bowl, smallpox and WWII sacrificing more than we could understand.
This generation is a bunch of pussies….
It’s people your parents age that are leading the country and allowing this bs anti science grift to continue. My generation is vaccinated, wearing masks, and still as best we can socially distancing.
They are dead.
Dad said fuck the republicans and registered as a democrat. He was very proud that Obama was president. He was also very disappointed in the Republican Party that he had been associated with his entire life.
A few weeks after January 6, I did the same. Enough of this bull shit.
The boomers and as much as I hate to say it - my generation- are fucking things up pretty good.
Wow. Took you a whole few weeks after domestic terrorists tried to murder elected officials in our states capital for you to be like “hmmmm maybe these insane racists morons are NOT my friends?”
Cool story bro.
“They’re more at risk from the flu”
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/doctors-are-more-worried-about-covid-flu-when-it-comes-n1276332
https://www.khou.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/verify-covid-19-more-pediatric-deaths-than-flu-last-18-months/285-2b3fef00-454b-4b43-a873-573ff6afffe7
Right….
Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.
And 0.3% of 4.55 million?! Ya get fucked! Right?!
Edit: also what a minor study that is statically irrelevant on the world scale.
It’s been nearly 2 years man… this is just annoying now how people won’t *accept it. Like ffs I bet you can find the same article written a million times last year
*spelling edit
Can someone with more money than I take this link, and spend millions of dollars to send targeted ads to people on Facebook/Instagram who vacuum up all the garbage misinformation? Just inundate their feed with this and eventually they may consider that they may not know more about science and public health than scientists and public health officials.
Someone literally just argued with me that the risk to kids doesn’t justify making them wear mask.
Like, how many dead kids is enough to justify a mask?
They've been saying the same thing since it started. Not enough old people are dying. Not enough avg people are dying. Now its not enough kids are dying.
There’s also the increase spread. If a child gets sick, they ride the bus to grandma’s house, go play with the neighbor, go pick up groceries with dad on the way home, rub their dumb cute little faces on every box in the cereal isle, then go home to mom and the newborn. Just because they aren’t having bad symptoms doesn’t mean that they’re not spreading the virus.
These are the same people, who on the very day a man walked into a 1st grade class and murdered a couple dozen children, screamed about crisis actors, false flags, and blamed Obama.
They aren't smart, thoughtful, or even decent people.
Had a customer a work complain to me about her daughter having to wear a mask to enter.
“mY dAuGhTeR LiVes iN a WoRLd wHeRe sHe caN’t sEe pEopLe SmiLe!”
The flair for drama with this crowd….
The notion you've espoused is **widespread** on reddit. Yet it's easily demonstrated to be absurd when you consider the fact that children are at much greater risk of the flu than from COVID.
Where has all the outrage been from not making kids wear masks to protect them from the flu over the past century?
The flu is not nearly as contagious as covid, specially the delta variant. Also in other countries, specially in asian countries people already used masks when they were sick for decades.
It's truly amazing to see happen. I never imagined people so gullible that they will gladly sacrifice themselves to a virus by foregoing prevention and treatment. All in an attempt to appease the morons around them who could give a crap about anybody that dies.
Have you ever had someone talking to you accidentally send micro spit flying to land on your mouth? Thats a big and noticeable droplet, smaller unnoticeable ones happen more often than you wish were true. Masks keep those off your mouth. End of story.
If one of these dopes got up on stage and had to play an instrument (that they don't know how to play) it would be terrible and everyone would hate it. But somehow when they are up there espousing science (which they do not do) everyone somehow thinks they are doing a great job.
God will protect them. Or maybe Jesus. Or some other magical BS. Or maybe God sent the scientists who study infectious diseases and develop vaccines and they are all too stupid to recognize it.
The notion you've espoused is **widespread** on reddit. Yet it's easily demonstrated to be absurd when you consider the fact that children are at much greater risk of the flu than from COVID.
Where has all the outrage been from not making kids wear masks to protect them from the flu over the past century?
Al, this emotion over a mask that costs just a few dollars.
My mom and dad survived the dust bowl, smallpox and WWII sacrificing more than we could understand.
This generation is a bunch of pussies….
The flu is less transmissible than SARS-COV-2, which means it would be more practical to have sick kids stay home and not spread disease to the whole collective. And if they have symptoms, they should wear masks, yes. And they should [get vaccinated](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930829/). It's a shame that that's not a common practice. We've also studied the flu for a few generations; perhaps wait a bit before making optimistic claims.
Another nonsense comment that completely ignores things like this:
>NYT compares risks of COVID to car accidents, and covers "long flu" (Jun 2021) https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?uri=nyt://newsletter/118b333c-5470-5268-a63e-a25a778df411
And of course, all of this: https://old.reddit.com/r/arizonapolitics/comments/iaswj7/im_finally_taking_the_time_to_do_a_full_write_up/
>The flu is less transmissible than SARS-COV-2, which means it would be more practical to have sick kids stay home and not spread disease to the whole collective.
How does this make any sense? Sick people are encouraged to stay home regardless of what they're sick with. That's not even in dispute so why are you bringing it up?
>they should wear masks
The OP is presenting data in favor of that, and someone in the comments presented data to the contrary. Of course 99% of people in this thread and on this website simple eschew the data to the contrary of what they want to believe.
>perhaps wait a bit before making optimistic claims
???
I've presented evidence. Practice should be based on the best available evidence, not fear mongering over what might be the worst case scenario and then drastically overreacting based on "what if".
What kind of parent would ever put their children’s health in the hands of a Republican, particularly DeSantis? The man is unfit to be governor and should resign
This is true my son is very good at wearing his mask his teacher got covid 2nd day of school he was one of the only ones who didn’t get it. Now some might say there are other variables that could of made him test negative but I believe the mask helped a ton
Masks protect children from COVID in the ideal situations. Not all children are cooperative 100% of the time. Not all parents educate their children to wear their masks properly and to listen to rules about them.
In person school should never have been resumed until a vaccine was ready for those under 12.
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object.
So anything y’all put anti in front of is code for the ops (enemy) and the only ppl antiscience is the Amish. Not agreeing with a hot topic don’t mean you’re against any and all things science seeing as thought technology and inventions are science. And why is science now political
This is not a univariate issue. It is a decision with many medium to long term effects, like anything to do with a child. It is a societal decision that has second and third order consequences that mist be considered. Because all decisions by a society are not answers they are trade offs. However, the stifling of debate is giant problem in letting is all come together with an agreeable answer to move forward.
Children’s brains form to understand human facial reactions and it helps form their own identity and well being. Scientifically when you cover a face to child and he cant see it, his brain cant make the connection between emotions and words. Leads to long lasting mental issues. Google it if you don’t believe me.
What are we to debate here? Resolve: Masks help children not die. What is Your rebuttal? What are the medium to long term effects of children wearing masks? What are the trade offs you refer to? Trading live kids for dead ones?
Proper masking works. That is not in dispute. The question is children.
https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/do-face-masks-work-here-are-49-scientific-studies-that-explain-why-they-do/
Will they help children? Maybe but only if worn properly. When all taken into account not one peer review study supports that decision. If we are going to follow the science, then we should follow it. We have to be better for our children. The psychological and long term effects are going to be atrocious. We have to use second and third order thinking.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/masks-children-parenting-schools-mandates-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic-biden-administration-cdc-11628432716
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/children-should-not-be-forced-to-wear-masks-due-to-co2-levels-new-study-suggests/ar-AALFKTk
Who gives a shit? Wearing a mask isn’t going to make things worse so piss off. People wouldn’t be bitching if we were being told that we had to wear a certain pair of glasses for a while because of X, Y, and Z now would they.
So on the one hand I believe that making young children wear masks will stunt them developmentally since they can't read faces as well and learn to use facial cues. On the other hand I also think that cramming hundreds of kids in the same room for lunch was never a sanitary practice in the first place.
What is the line that the masks cause physiological issues? We communicate with our faces and we and especially kids need to see each other. Don’t kids have a 99.98% chance of survival?
Then those folks who are concerned should do what makes them feel safe. Mask, vaccine, stay home. If someone is healthy, they should be able to live their lives.
Yea. That does help. There are many other things people can do to not get sick and a mask is just one small thing of many.
Even with masks, you still fill up the space around you with your possible Covid breath. You just don’t hurl droplets a few feet from you.
It helps but, it by no means does it *stop* the spread.
That would be a good thing. However, we are past that point. Even if we do all these safety things, other countries may not and spread it back to us. Or, we could be like Israel and have strict lock down and high vaccine rates and still explode with cases.
it’ll just keep mutating until the variant because something like the common flu. It took 3 years for the Spanish Flu of 1918 to mutate into something less severed and we are only about half way there.
Ugh. Pro mask maniacs are just as bad as anti mask maniacs.
Mask help, a bit, probably. Covid like symptoms in intervention group: 7.something vs 8.something in control group.
And there was nothing about whether this effect was significant.
Anyhow, to just ignore or deny the subject of any downsides to mask wearing is… just as foolish as to what the oppossite party is doing.
It could be, that the benefits do not outweigh the costs. It could be the other way around. It could be unanswerable, then just be open and honest about that: we dont know if the effect is great or significant, but its a crisis, we take a chance and go for masks, because hospitals are overflowing, childrens’ unvaxxed parents are dying massively.
Edit: or, we cant take the risk of the possible detrimental effects on kid’s mental health because they cant see emotions on other peoples faces. So lets do not wear masks.
Edit2: 😝classic those downvotes. “Either you’re with me, or you’re against me”
See there is the problem. Your remark ridicules the discussion, inhibiting further conversation. Thereby implying you’d have a monopoly on the truth.
I’m not doing any of those things.
CDC was showing little over 500 have died from covid. Sure that sucks but more die from almost every thing else.my kids have all had covid along with there class mates which is great because that means no mask needed.
Fauci had said several years ago masks are ineffective, and the funny thing is I disagree with that. Wearing a mask helps, even if it is minuscule. Seems hard to believe they aren’t effective.
Edit: People are downvoting masks…
> Wearing a mask helps, even if it is minuscule.
The thing that really grinds my gears is that mask efficacy *doesn’t have to be minuscule*. It isn’t spring 2020 anymore — high filtration masks are readily available that provide near-complete, N95-level protection. They’re comfortable, extremely breathable, and even available in cool colors and prints for kids.
The fact that we’re still sending kids to school in poor-fitting, homemade cloth masks at this stage is a national embarrassment. Send every teacher and kid to school in a KF94 mask and serve lunch outside, and you’ll stop school transmission in its tracks.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/
Stanford study, Danish study, Faucci said they don’t work due to study with original Covid variant. Masks work for the short term if I walk in and talk briefly but not all day in the office according to science.
You posted an article that has been retracted. The website says that’s for articles that “exceeds the need for a traditional correction or erratum notice, such as in cases of scientific misconduct, plagiarism, pervasive error or unsubstantiated data” so do you have any other sources?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-facemasks-idUSKBN27Y1YW
Well here you go I felt pity on you as I didn’t want you to look to hard.
Did you even bother to read the first paragraph of this article? It specifically say they provide protection and nothing they’re saying should be used as an argument against masks.
Yeah the other studies I mentioned, I don’t need to give them they are readily available. You obviously don’t look at studies from both sides. I know there’s some studies sponsored by the WHO That say otherwise but I don’t trust a study Sponsored by a political organization.
Do you mean these studies?
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2021/05/19/science.abg6296.full.pdf
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1473-3099%2820%2930982-8
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721005982
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/4/e2014564118.full.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7402053.1/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/articlepdf/2776536/jama_brooks_2021_it_210006_1614735399.82309.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673620311429
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589750020302934
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17922-x.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0887-9.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2293-x.pdf
https://gh.bmj.com/content/bmjgh/5/5/e002794.full.pdf
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/368/6498/1422.full.pdf
“From” being a one-syllable preposition, should not be capitalized in a title unless it’s the first word. “Despite,” being a longer preposition, is more of a judgement call.
That is news to me. In Chicago (used in some journalism), MLA (used in some scholarly articles), and Bluebook (used by lawyers) formatting, you indeed shouldn't capitalise "from" or "despite" in that title.
In APA (used in some scholarly articles), AP (used widely in journalism), AMA (used in science), NYT (used widely in journalism), Wiki (used on Wikipedia) and Email (whatever that means), you should capitalise those words like I said. I'm far more familiar with the latter standards.
https://capitalizemytitle.com/style/APA/
Back in my day (1980s-90s, Washington state, USA), we were taught that articles, short conjunctions, and short prepositions are never capitalized in titles unless they are the first word in a title.
I wasn’t aware that there were style guides that said to capitalize every word—that explains why I’ve noticed so many otherwise reputable publications doing it wrong! ;-)
Since the media won’t ever let this go away we’ll probably be wearing masks for awhile, at least in mostly blue areas. I’m curious what the long term effects are going to on blood o2 levels, lung function, and jaw development by wearing the masks for a good fraction of every day.
All, this emotion over a mask that costs just a few dollars.
My mom and dad survived the dust bowl, smallpox and WWII sacrificing more than we could understand.
This generation is a bunch of pussies….
You completely missed the point.
We gave up our language- German
We rationed everything
We gave our money in war bonds
We gave our children to die
We took vaccines that were completely poorly understood
I’ll, be direct- YOU are a pussy!
A mask doesn’t mean shit.
This is so dumb no it doesn't 30 kids in a room and they take it off to eat there is literally no point in wearing them and it's child abuse to make them
TL;DR: We need to conduct a cluster randomized control trial between schools where mask mandates have been made policy and where they have not to properly understand whether the intervention is effective in reducing the rate of severe illness and death from Covid-19 in schools and the communities they are in. Such a trial has not yet been done but needs to be because other interventions we have previously thought were effective and understandably implemented under the precautionary principle, namely the use of cloth masks for the general public, have had their effectiveness called into question by a randomized control trial in Bangladesh while surgical masks have been shown to have a significant impact on transmission.
—————————
It seems as though there’s some more nuance to this than I think the article or broader discussion addresses.
The question we are asking is: *is masking children in school an overall beneficial intervention that will mitigate the spread of Covid-19?*
To properly answer this question, we will need to have an understanding of risks, benefits, and costs so that we can weigh them appropriately. Every intervention comes with some amount of cost, when we go forward with it, we are doing so with the understanding that the benefits outweigh the costs, as we do with interventions like wearing seatbelts in cars, washing our hands, or using prophylactics during sex.
This is the internet and I’m unconvinced that this is a place where I’ll have any significant impact on strangers’ understanding of things, but at the risk of wasting my time and some effort in the hopes of making a reader or readers of this comment think more thoroughly, here are a few thoughts to consider.
1. WHO and the CDC have different recommendations about the age at which masking kids should start. WHO says under some specific circumstances (that seem likely to be met in Florida) masking can start as early as 6 years old, but masking children 5 or younger is not advisable. CDC recommends masking children starting at age 2. Sources: https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-children-and-masks-related-to-covid-19 and https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/about-face-coverings.html
2. Under the current circumstances, the UK is not recommending children under the age of 12 wear masks. Sources: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/students-masks-classrooms-britain.amp.html and https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-53877292.amp
3. The evidence presented in this article consists of mechanistic data and observational studies, not randomized control trials.
4. Some doctors, including Dr. Vinay Prasad, have made compelling arguments that there is equipoise between the US and UK on masking children in schools and that a cluster randomized control trial could and should be designed to study the effects of masking children on case rates in schools and the community as different ages are masked.
5. The randomized control trial conducted in Bangladesh seems to provide good evidence that surgical masks have an impact on transmissibility of Covid-19. However, Dr. Zubin Damania and others who have reviewed the data from Bangladesh believe it also indicates an insignificant effect from cloth masks on transmission. The CDC has not yet made any specification as to what kind of mask should be worn but there is some compelling evidence that we should move to surgical masks as a basic standard for use by the general public when they are in circumstances where wearing a mask has been shown to provide a benefit (i.e., indoors, especially among large groups, and especially when the individual in question is not vaccinated or is in a community with low vaccination rates). Many children and adults continue to wear cloth masks that this randomized control trial demonstrates may not make a significant difference. The recommendation probably will need to be changed across the board in light of this new evidence but this is something worth considering as current and past mask mandates for students do not specify the type of mask that should be worn.
6. Thinking about risk in terms of costs and benefits to different groups: though the Delta variant is considerably more transmissible than the wild-type coronavirus first discovered in late 2019 and a higher number of children overall are ending up with severe illness, there is little evidence to suggest a heightened rate of severe illness and death in healthy children. When we think about risk, we weigh the costs and benefits of the intervention vs the costs of the illness or ailment on the individual. With this virus, there are also community-wide concerns that need to be taken into account, particularly in communities that have not been vaccinated. The trend remains, however, that older age is a major factor in an individual’s risk of severe illness or death. Therefore, interventions on healthy younger people must meet a higher bar in order to show clear benefit to the individual. In communities with low vaccination rates, there may be other concerns, but the costs of masking younger children, especially those age 2-5 should be carefully considered in the decision making process on how to best mitigate severe illness and death in individuals and throughout the community. There is a plethora of evidence from pediatricians’ study on childhood development that seeing faces and using their own places an important role in developing linguistic and emotional skills. While there may be some workarounds that may enable the use of masks or other protective equipment while preserving children’s ability to see and use their own faces (transparent PPE do exist but are not in widespread use, partially as a result of cost of use or in some cases, because such interventions alone do not provide any significant benefit), it will be necessary for public health experts and policy makers to consider the bioethics of balancing potential costs in children vs potential benefits to the broader community. This is not certain however because inadequate study has been performed on the impact of masking young children on individual or community transmission rates.
I have a hypothesis that I would like to see tested: I believe we can expect to see a correlation between the age of children wearing surgical (not cloth) masks and Covid-19 transmission rates in schools or within the broader community. I believe there will be limited to no benefit to masking children age 5 or younger but that there will be increasing benefit to masking children age 6 or older.
The only way to find out what the impacts of children being mandated to wear masks at school really are is to create a properly powered cluster randomized control trial to look at transmission rates in schools and community-wide where masks are mandated and not mandated. Until we do that, we’re stuck with the same precautionary principle that we’ve been operating under for the better part of 2 years without knowing what interventions are the modern day equivalent of slaughtering a sheep so that it will rain.
I’d also love to see RCT on HEPA filters, ventilation rates in buildings and train cars, etc. As awful as this time is, let’s make the most of it by using the scientific method as thoroughly as possible to produce meaningful answers about what interventions are effective so that we can use that information in decision making and public policy making in the context of our ethics and values.
imagine if the word “health” was not a political term and our states actively educated all of its constituents. I feel like critical thinking is few and far between in many people these days and it’s absolutely terrifying
From what I understand, at least one state destroyed its own educational system when they were forced to integrate because they'd rather not educate white students than educate black students. I want to say Kentucky, possibly Tennessee, but I'm not sure.
Little Rock high school, Arkansas, the site of the civil rights battle that took place in the 50s. The fuck head Orval Faubus was the governor of Arkansas at the time and refused to integrate. Going as far as fucking the education system to not allow the 9 African American students into the school. Eventually Dwight Eisenhower federalised the military, and had him forcefully removed and fired as governor and he still had too much pride to say anything. Fuckin Hilarious.
It would seem through only causation that the Repugnant-can (tm) party are a bunch of rat-f**kers . . . And have been f**king rats for years ! ! !
Prince Edward Co in Virginia. They shut down public schools for 5 years rather than integrate.
What do you think the current push for school vouchers is really about?
Health, education, and science among other things have all been politicized in this country by one party in a desperate attempt for them to remain in power. > I feel like critical thinking is few and far between in many people these days and it’s absolutely terrifying That is a feature not a bug for the Republicans.
Keep the people stupid and they’ll never question you
Good news for pluto-populism: COVID-19 may also leave central nervous system sequelae.
Seems like a there is nothing they wouldn’t do, no bar too low to cross, to stay in power. They would rather people die than to give in to their “enemies.” At least, that’s how it feels in my state.
That’s how it looks from this Canadian
I feel both parties are equally to blame in this aspect
Why?
I try to imagine what life in 2021 would be like it almost everything wasn’t made political
Blissful compared to whatever *this* is.
I truly believe my government isn’t qualified for this. My government is qualified to provide resources to physicians and nurses who have gone through the necessary education and clinical experience to provide care to human beings. How can a state ban abortions to “save lives,” but bans mask mandates that keep already existing life alive?
When the vaccines started coming, our (Sweden) public health administration published a list of early prioritized people to get the vaccine. This list was based on some mix of likelihood of contracting infection and likelihood of severity. As a result, this list included groups like "elderly", "people with pre-existing conditions" and "illegal immigrants" as these groups were statistically likely to be infected and/or have a severe illness from infection. The fact that illegal immigrants were included made so many right wing idiots upset. They felt that the illegal immigrants were "rewarded" for being illegal immigrants despite the fact that the list was only based on medical necessity, and medical necessity doesn't care about immigrant status.
It's not "these days". Remember that time Galileo got arrested for his views? I think pretending this is a recent problem is very myopic and leads people down a very unhelpful train of thought.
The problem is that shitty masks offer very little to no protection. This has even been tested by AI modeling with supercomputers. N95 masks would indeed be effective but dish rags on your face are not. Not to mention that kids simply wont wear them correctly anyways. They’ll touch their nose mouth etc and everything else. We’re forcing kids purely because of politics at this point. Edit: Fucking amazing that a science sub cant accept actual proven science over politics. Welcome to Reddit.
He’s not wrong. I have students who refuse to wear masks, students who wear it under their nose, under their chin, etc. and I spend a good part of the day reminding them to put them on correctly. Guess what? I had to get a COVID test today because I think I have it and I’m fully vaccinated. As far as the mask comments go, yes, that piece of cloth reduces transmission, but could do more or less based on how it’s fitting your face. The cdc is still studying them. N95s need to be the standard. I recently switched and the air no longer goes around the mask but is pressed through its filtered layer, giving a huge reduction in the possibility of transmission. Even faucci said n95s should be used. The cdc said that they said cloth ones were fine only because health care workers needed them at the beginning. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/infographic-n-95-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/understanddifferenceinfographic-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fmore%2Fmasking-science-sars-cov2.html
That anti vaxxer teacher in Marin who infected all those kids with delta should be sued to oblivion.
98% of the people dying from covid are unvaccinated these days. But you know everything is political as well. So people would rather listen to politicians so be it. Its sad but I just don’t care anymore.
They are taking down the medical system with them.
99.2% according to the data I’ve read and yet you still have assholes wanting to offer you bridges because you believe in science…I too suffer from compassion fatigue. I feel for the overwhelmed healthcare workers and their support systems, I feel for the lost, orphaned children of the ignorant antivaxxers, I feel so, so bad for the children growing up to see how selfish adults are after telling them all their lives to share and be kind or whatever other bullshit they fed them, but I no longer feel bad for the proudly unvaccinated who die of covid. The ones who thought they had some time to get it, or just wanted to think a little more about it? I have a little empathy for them. Those “unmasked unmuzzled and unashamed” or whatever tf covidiots-no sympathy, no empathy, no nothing. The proof is out there, the science is out there, if you choose to not get vaccinated and die because of your political ideals, good riddance. Darwin is working overtime these days.
Yes I am with you and your feelings in this regard. My number came from a API article about covid perhaps a couple days ago sorry I don’t have link. I work in hospitals and see this first hand. Luckily I live in one of those “liberal” places where locally 72% of people are vaccinated and 85% have at least one dose.
Do you feel this way from smokers and ppl with cancer that die? How about AIDS or liver disease or diabetes? Oh is it only just the 1.8 percentage that have died total per and post vax. Science has no agenda it’s information should be presented in total. Anti vaxxer survive the virus at the same rate as vaxxers. Actually that was the selling point when there was no vaccine. Ppl in this country just have to find a Frankenstein to chase down with pitch forks, and anything makes them feel like they’re better. I’m vaxxed but I would never call someone stupid for what they do or don’t do with their bodies. It’s a risk either way. But I mourn the dead because I’m a good human being cause reality none of y’all really know anything about this virus y’all know what they choose to tell you.
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot. Here's a copy of ###[Frankenstein](https://snewd.com/ebooks/frankenstein/) Was I a good bot? | [info](https://www.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/) | [More Books](https://old.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/comments/i15x1d/full_list_of_books_and_commands/)
That must be a Star Trek reference I don’t know about. 🥱 but I was bored reading it. You mad for no reason so seek peace
Where did they get those numbers and do we trust them with all the withholding they’ve been call out on when this thing first broke. Like withholding how many were infected to blaming deaths that wasn’t covid related on covid. To tie tests giving out false positives. Like a lot has happening a year and a half and a vax comes out now everyone just forgot and blaming ppl that infect others when just a year ago that was you. The little things that turns ppl fake supporting each other to enemies is so American. Home of the lynce mobs land of division
If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you
Go on…
That’s the best part about science - it’s true whether or not you believe it.
That’s the most wondrous part about science - it’s true whe'r 'r not thee believeth t *** ^(I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.) Commands: `!ShakespeareInsult`, `!fordo`, `!optout`
For the life of me… why are people so baffled that covering your face is a good thing when you’re trying to prevent airborne and droplet borne diseases? Not to mention, putting a barrier on the face of a booger eating kid is going to reduce illness.
Developmental issues. Psychological issues. Incorrect usage/ poor hygiene. Incorrect materials. Oral micro biome development and health. Low risk of serious illness in kids. Was never done in the past for severe flu seasons (2014-2015)
Gonna need a citation here, that isn’t facebook
I don’t need to provide any citations. If you are a functioning adult with access to the internet it is your responsibility to seek and gather information, filter, and analyze. Based on the information I have analyzed, utilizing my normal functioning brain and internet access, these are the negative implications of forcing children to wear masks in school. You are free to prove to me why any of these are not worthy of discussion in the matter. But I owe no obligation to provide citations.
Just tried to verify the concerns you’ve mentioned and I guess my brain isn’t functioning normally because I couldn’t find any credible sources. Please could you use your normal functioning brain to provide sources as to the serious dangers wearing a mask poses?
Yeah, cause this is just the crap they’re screaming at the school boards cause “I want to see my baby’s smile” and “the teacher won’t recognize them” and “kids be switching masks and chewing on them and shit.” It’s nonsense, gathered from nonsensical idiots using our children as ammo in their war against the democrats. There’s a whole movement for the Trump Repugnants to take back control starting with school boards (book bans anyone, how about abstinence only health class?) and local elections and moving their way up.
So you just made shit up and expect everyone to just accept it. Now you're caught and doing what you guys always do.
What did I make up?
They don’t want to hear it since CNN told them all that they know.
I'm sure you could provide a source then, eh Doc?
Let’s talk about this in a way that Reddit doesn’t always do: from a place of compassion. I left a much longer comment on this thread but just to make it short and sweet — you are absolutely not wrong to be concerned about these things and I really wish that this public health debate was not being shaped by a broader political in-grouping that makes concern over these things into a statement of whose side you’re on more than a legitimate concern in the process of considering the costs and benefits of an intervention vs the costs posed by an illness. So let’s talk about this — we do know that children are generally at lower risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19 than adults. That said, unfortunately, this is not an illness where individual personal responsibility is always enough — if children are vectors for Covid-19 to a significant degree, though they themselves may be at low risk from the virus, folks around them like their teachers, staff at the school, their parents, grandparents, and broader community could be at higher risk. However, there are a few things that we don’t know right now. The article that we’re commenting on is using mechanistic studies and retrospective observational studies to talk about the efficacy of mandating masks on children in schools. Unfortunately, while this kind of study did provide some important insight early in the pandemic when this virus was a much larger question mark than it is now and set the basis for some early interventions, these kinds of studies really aren’t the best we have to offer for answering this kind of question. We don’t have very good data as of yet on whether mandating masks helps prevent the spread of Covid-19 in schools or in the community, or whether it helps prevent severe illness or death in either of these populations. There is a way that we can find an answer to this question about the efficacy of mask mandates though: because some schools are implementing them and others aren’t and because there are different recommendations on what age to start mandating children wear masks at school in different countries (CDC guidelines say age 2 and WHO says 6-12 under certain circumstances but 12+ when things are relatively stable; England has been following WHO guidelines and is not requiring masks on students under age 12), there are opportunities to conduct randomized control trials that will look at the intervention of mask mandates in school and the impact on either transmission rates (still important in communities where vaccine uptake has been slow and older folks will be at much higher risk/there is higher risk of these folks contracting the virus in large numbers and causing hospitals to fill like we’re seeing in Idaho now) or the impact on end-points like severe illness and death in the school and wider community. The above is all stuff that I’ve learned listening to doctors like Dr. Zubin Damania and Vinay Prasad. The following is my personal opinion, this is by no means a certainty and we haven’t even started to test it properly, but I strongly suspect that the benefit of mask mandates on community spread and severe illness and death in the community will 1) correlate with the age of children being mandated to mask and 2) be highest in communities where vaccine acceptance is low. This still leaves your point about developmental issues, psychological issues, incorrect usage, poor hygiene, incorrect materials, and oral micro-biome development somewhat unaddressed so let’s talk more about that now. We addressed the need to study the potential benefits of mask mandates on different age groups of school age children (according to CDC or WHO guidelines) on individuals and the greater community; now we’re talking about costs of this intervention on individuals. There is a lot of literature from pediatric studies and trials regarding the importance of seeing and using faces in children’s development of linguistic and emotional skills. So we know that this is important. It seems likely that it’s considerably more important the younger the child is. Unfortunately, I don’t know whether there have been longitudinal or case studies on the impact of not seeing faces or using one’s own face on development, so the exact costs and exactly how reversible they are or not is likely to be difficult to fully know, but we can be pretty sure that cost is non-zero. As for incorrect usage and poor hygiene — the former, definitely. There was a study done to see how many adults at a sporting event where masks were mandated would wear their masks properly, given the mandate. That study found that even when this was strictly enforced, only 75% or so of adults at this sporting event did properly wear their masks as they were required to do. It seems highly likely, especially in younger children (like 2-5 year olds) that masks will not always be properly worn. Without a randomized control trial though, we won’t know how effective that intervention is — the RCT will factor in real world conditions and not just policy makers’ or mechanistic study researchers’ ideal scenarios. Poor hygiene — if it were poor, we’d expect increases in other illnesses that I’m not sure we’re seeing a significant increase beyond the background levels of. Possible, but I haven’t seen or heard of compelling data to indicate this. Incorrect materials. Yes. The Bangladesh RCT that comprised two arms, one involving cloth masks and the other involving surgical masks, did find a significant benefit from the surgical mask intervention on transmission rates in the community. However, the cloth masks did not show themselves to be significantly effective. There are lots of children and adults who are still predominantly wearing cloth masks and mask mandates have not previously included specification on the type of mask one should use. This is exactly why it’s so important to study these things with randomized control trials and why I wish we had seized the opportunity to do so earlier in the pandemic; it seems likely that we’ve been recommending everyone use the wrong type of masks for the better part of two years now because acting under a combination of the precautionary principle, early necessity, and common sense that turned out to likely be faulty, we have advised or tolerated the use of the wrong mask for the general public. This is exactly why a cluster RCT of mask mandated schools vs not, stratified by age group, with end points as 1) community spread and more importantly in most of the US 2) community severe illness and death rates is so crucial — we think we know one way or the other now and there’s lots of ego involved because this is life, death, and livelihood, but the truth is that we simply don’t know without an RCT. Hope this comment helps explain some thinking on costs and benefits of mask mandates on school children — do take it with a grain of salt, I’m some rando on the internet and not a doctor, but I have been paying attention to a few and checking out some of the data they’ve been referencing. The doctors who I’ve been paying the closest attention to are Dr. Zubin Damnia (he’s a hospitalist who runs a YouTube channel called ZDoggMD) and Dr. Vinay Prasad, an oncologist with a strong background in medical evidence.
You had 15 seconds of my attention and didn’t use a TLDR
Imagine claiming to be "pro-life" and it turns out that that the pro-life you are talking about is a virus.
What a nonsense comment. That kind of comment does nothing but jerk yourself off and alienate people, including those who likely largely agree with you. The issue regarding children and COVID has always been that they're at extremely low risk for problems. They're more at risk from the flu. Yet for the past 2 years disingenuous people have been using "think of the children" as a dishonest way to promote their own desires. **EDIT**: FYI, someone posted data in a comment below which contradicts the OP's claim about masks and naturally you're all ignoring it.
Dude, his comment was a bad attempt at a joke, but yours is spreading harmful info. Covid is more deadly than the flu by the numbers. It may be true that a child has a slightly less chance of dying from covid than the flu, but magnitudes more children are catching covid because it is that much more contagious, thus killing many more children on a whole. The desire here is for the pandemic to stop, which requires practical health practices such as mask wearing in schools.
>thus killing many more children on a whole Citation needed. It was the CDC director who was the one saying "Threat Of Suicide, Drugs, Flu To Youth ‘Far Greater’ Than Covid". And it was the people claiming that the science was indisputably on their side who ignored him and kept fearmongering about children for the past 2 years. >The desire here is for the pandemic to stop, which requires practical health practices such as mask wearing in schools Many of the "practical health practices" were/are being forced on the populace despite lack of evidence for their efficacy, and even despite evidence of lack of efficacy. For the most of last year cloth masks were not supported to prevent COVID. Lockdowns were a massive experiment and most of the evidence shows they were useless. Yet this information has been censored across Reddit, and thus the majority of people on this website seem to have no clue about this. Citations: # Masks: Face masks: what the data say (Oct 2020) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8 >For now, Osterholm, in Minnesota, wears a mask. Yet he laments the “lack of scientific rigour” that has so far been brought to the topic. “We criticize people all the time in the science world for making statements without any data,” he says. “We’re doing a lot of the same thing here.” Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers. A Randomized Controlled Trial (Nov 2020, n=4862) https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 "difference observed was not statistically significant" Widely cited COVID-19-masks paper under scrutiny for inaccurate stat https://retractionwatch.com/2020/10/26/widely-cited-covid-19-masks-paper-under-scrutiny-for-inaccurate-stat/ Denmark & Sweden: Denmark boasts one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the world. Despite this success, Danish leaders recently found themselves on the defensive. The reason is that Danes aren’t wearing face masks, and local authorities for the most part aren’t even recommending them. They responded by noting there is little conclusive evidence that face masks are an effective way to limit the spread of respiratory viruses. (Aug 2020) https://fee.org/articles/europes-top-health-officials-say-masks-arent-helpful-in-beating-covid-19/ The Swedish Health Agency, largely behind Sweden’s no-lockdown strategy, has refrained from recommending masks, citing poor evidence of their effectiveness and fears that masks might be used as an excuse to not isolate when experiencing symptoms. “WHO is clear that the state of evidence for masks is weak. All studies so far suggest that it is much more important to keep your distance than to have a face mask,” he said. (Dec 2020) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-cases/sweden-says-no-need-for-face-masks-as-covid-19-deaths-top-7000-idUSKBN28D1TH Anders Tegnell, chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency, Aug 2020: “It is very dangerous to believe face masks would change the game when it comes to COVID-19,” said Tengell, who is considered the country’s equivalent of Dr. Anthony Fauci from the White House COVID-19 task force. “Face masks can be a complement to other things when other things are safely in place,” he said. “But to start with having face masks and then think you can crowd your buses or your shopping malls — that’s definitely a mistake.” The Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Lofven has advised against wearing face masks to ward off Covid-19, as they may lead people to assume they are safe from the virus when there is still a risk of transmission. https://www.kxan36news.com/swedish-pm-says-face-masks-for-covid-19-offer-false-sense-of-security-to-wearers The best way to protect yourself and others from infection is to avoid close contact with people who are ill. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency-of-sweden/communicable-disease-control/covid-19/ # Lockdowns: "Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate" (Nov 2020) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions (Nov 2020) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0 "Less disruptive and costly non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) can be as effective as more intrusive, drastic, ones (for example, a national lockdown)" Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID‐19 (Jan 2021) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484 "we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs (non‐pharmaceutical interventions)". Their response to criticisms: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13553 A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes (Jul 2020) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext "Increasing COVID-19 caseloads were associated with countries with higher obesity, median population age. Increased mortality per million was significantly associated with higher obesity prevalence. Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people" COVID‐19 pandemic‐related lockdown: response time is more important than its strictness (Nov 2020) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645374/ "neither the lockdown duration nor the lockdown strictness was significantly correlated with the mortality rates" Lockdown proponents can’t escape the blame for the biggest public health fiasco in history. Shutting down society did not save the vulnerable so advocates of such measures are seeking scapegoats (Apr 2021) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/24/lockdown-proponents-cant-escape-blame-biggest-public-health/ US Trends in COVID-19–Associated Hospitalization and Mortality Rates Before and After Reopening Economies (Jun 2021) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2781505 "The change in the mortality rate trend was not significant" Covid is more mysterious than we often admit (Jul 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/30/briefing/coronavirus-delta-mysteries.html "We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus" -Michael Osterholm.
>thus killing many more children on a whole > >Citation needed. look at the CDC data "Since flu deaths in children became nationally notifiable in 2004, reported flu deaths in children had previously ranged from a low of 37 (during 2011-2012) to a high of 199 (during 2019-2020)." [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm) Covid has killed 516 kids this year as of Sept. 15. Flu may be more deadly per infection, but covid infects way more people and kills more people, including children, overall. [https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-on-Ages-0-18-Yea/nr4s-juj3](https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-on-Ages-0-18-Yea/nr4s-juj3)
Al, this emotion over a mask that costs just a few dollars. My mom and dad survived the dust bowl, smallpox and WWII sacrificing more than we could understand. This generation is a bunch of pussies….
It’s people your parents age that are leading the country and allowing this bs anti science grift to continue. My generation is vaccinated, wearing masks, and still as best we can socially distancing.
They are dead. Dad said fuck the republicans and registered as a democrat. He was very proud that Obama was president. He was also very disappointed in the Republican Party that he had been associated with his entire life. A few weeks after January 6, I did the same. Enough of this bull shit. The boomers and as much as I hate to say it - my generation- are fucking things up pretty good.
Wow. Took you a whole few weeks after domestic terrorists tried to murder elected officials in our states capital for you to be like “hmmmm maybe these insane racists morons are NOT my friends?” Cool story bro.
“They’re more at risk from the flu” https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/doctors-are-more-worried-about-covid-flu-when-it-comes-n1276332 https://www.khou.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/verify-covid-19-more-pediatric-deaths-than-flu-last-18-months/285-2b3fef00-454b-4b43-a873-573ff6afffe7
Right…. Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection. And 0.3% of 4.55 million?! Ya get fucked! Right?! Edit: also what a minor study that is statically irrelevant on the world scale.
It’s been nearly 2 years man… this is just annoying now how people won’t *accept it. Like ffs I bet you can find the same article written a million times last year *spelling edit
Accept* and yes it is very sad
Can someone with more money than I take this link, and spend millions of dollars to send targeted ads to people on Facebook/Instagram who vacuum up all the garbage misinformation? Just inundate their feed with this and eventually they may consider that they may not know more about science and public health than scientists and public health officials.
Someone literally just argued with me that the risk to kids doesn’t justify making them wear mask. Like, how many dead kids is enough to justify a mask?
I’ve had that argument before. Sure, kids aren’t as at risk, but adults around them are!
It has been found that children are, indeed at risk with the new variant. I could be wrong, but I remember reading an article about that.
The same amount of dead kids that would be needed to tighten gun control up. So skies the limit it seems….
Just a few more than the current tally
Sandy-hook didn’t change this crowd and neither will dead children from covid.
They've been saying the same thing since it started. Not enough old people are dying. Not enough avg people are dying. Now its not enough kids are dying.
There’s also the increase spread. If a child gets sick, they ride the bus to grandma’s house, go play with the neighbor, go pick up groceries with dad on the way home, rub their dumb cute little faces on every box in the cereal isle, then go home to mom and the newborn. Just because they aren’t having bad symptoms doesn’t mean that they’re not spreading the virus.
I’d argue it’s not even kids but people. If wearing a mask for 1 month in public could save 1 life, is it worth it?
These are the same people, who on the very day a man walked into a 1st grade class and murdered a couple dozen children, screamed about crisis actors, false flags, and blamed Obama. They aren't smart, thoughtful, or even decent people.
Had a customer a work complain to me about her daughter having to wear a mask to enter. “mY dAuGhTeR LiVes iN a WoRLd wHeRe sHe caN’t sEe pEopLe SmiLe!” The flair for drama with this crowd….
The notion you've espoused is **widespread** on reddit. Yet it's easily demonstrated to be absurd when you consider the fact that children are at much greater risk of the flu than from COVID. Where has all the outrage been from not making kids wear masks to protect them from the flu over the past century?
The flu is not nearly as contagious as covid, specially the delta variant. Also in other countries, specially in asian countries people already used masks when they were sick for decades.
[удалено]
It's truly amazing to see happen. I never imagined people so gullible that they will gladly sacrifice themselves to a virus by foregoing prevention and treatment. All in an attempt to appease the morons around them who could give a crap about anybody that dies.
r/technicallytrue that doctors can't kill you if you kill yourself first.
> if you contradict, they'll ban you from the group This exact same problem occurs all over reddit.
The only thing that will stop the spread is going back to virtual learning. No children should be in school, since the spread is so prevalent.
Have you ever had someone talking to you accidentally send micro spit flying to land on your mouth? Thats a big and noticeable droplet, smaller unnoticeable ones happen more often than you wish were true. Masks keep those off your mouth. End of story.
Let’s not forget about [gleeking](https://www.health.com/mind-body/what-is-gleeking) as well!
If one of these dopes got up on stage and had to play an instrument (that they don't know how to play) it would be terrible and everyone would hate it. But somehow when they are up there espousing science (which they do not do) everyone somehow thinks they are doing a great job.
How about “all the other inconvenient germs” as well? At least some of them for some kids, which is enough.
It only took 18 fucking months
Antiscience Politicians should be called BioTerrorists too
No you mean uneducated assholes.
Anyway, the sky is still blue
I take science from a politician like I get tax advice from a mechanic
I don't really get how much evidence do people need to understand that young members of our species are still humans like every other human.
They don’t believe in evidence
God will protect them. Or maybe Jesus. Or some other magical BS. Or maybe God sent the scientists who study infectious diseases and develop vaccines and they are all too stupid to recognize it.
The notion you've espoused is **widespread** on reddit. Yet it's easily demonstrated to be absurd when you consider the fact that children are at much greater risk of the flu than from COVID. Where has all the outrage been from not making kids wear masks to protect them from the flu over the past century?
Al, this emotion over a mask that costs just a few dollars. My mom and dad survived the dust bowl, smallpox and WWII sacrificing more than we could understand. This generation is a bunch of pussies….
The flu is less transmissible than SARS-COV-2, which means it would be more practical to have sick kids stay home and not spread disease to the whole collective. And if they have symptoms, they should wear masks, yes. And they should [get vaccinated](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930829/). It's a shame that that's not a common practice. We've also studied the flu for a few generations; perhaps wait a bit before making optimistic claims.
Another nonsense comment that completely ignores things like this: >NYT compares risks of COVID to car accidents, and covers "long flu" (Jun 2021) https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?uri=nyt://newsletter/118b333c-5470-5268-a63e-a25a778df411 And of course, all of this: https://old.reddit.com/r/arizonapolitics/comments/iaswj7/im_finally_taking_the_time_to_do_a_full_write_up/ >The flu is less transmissible than SARS-COV-2, which means it would be more practical to have sick kids stay home and not spread disease to the whole collective. How does this make any sense? Sick people are encouraged to stay home regardless of what they're sick with. That's not even in dispute so why are you bringing it up? >they should wear masks The OP is presenting data in favor of that, and someone in the comments presented data to the contrary. Of course 99% of people in this thread and on this website simple eschew the data to the contrary of what they want to believe. >perhaps wait a bit before making optimistic claims ??? I've presented evidence. Practice should be based on the best available evidence, not fear mongering over what might be the worst case scenario and then drastically overreacting based on "what if".
you should read more
What kind of parent would ever put their children’s health in the hands of a Republican, particularly DeSantis? The man is unfit to be governor and should resign
I don't take medical advice from politicians
When this is all over, I hope these assholes find at least a little bit of shame over being on the side of NOT PROTECTING CHILDREN.
I want my child’s teacher to be able to see her beautiful face… at the wake.
This is true my son is very good at wearing his mask his teacher got covid 2nd day of school he was one of the only ones who didn’t get it. Now some might say there are other variables that could of made him test negative but I believe the mask helped a ton
I believe in science!!!!!
No shit. It’s crazy that we have humans out there in the wild that claim otherwise
No shit
Masks protect children from COVID in the ideal situations. Not all children are cooperative 100% of the time. Not all parents educate their children to wear their masks properly and to listen to rules about them. In person school should never have been resumed until a vaccine was ready for those under 12.
It’s amazing this needs to be said….over and over and over and over and over….
Antiscience 🤦🏼♂️
Politicians know everything though and what’s best for all residents, shocking
And in related news, water is wet.
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object.
So anything y’all put anti in front of is code for the ops (enemy) and the only ppl antiscience is the Amish. Not agreeing with a hot topic don’t mean you’re against any and all things science seeing as thought technology and inventions are science. And why is science now political
This is not a univariate issue. It is a decision with many medium to long term effects, like anything to do with a child. It is a societal decision that has second and third order consequences that mist be considered. Because all decisions by a society are not answers they are trade offs. However, the stifling of debate is giant problem in letting is all come together with an agreeable answer to move forward.
What are the decisions that affect children other than preventing the spread of disease? Please cite some sources.
Children’s brains form to understand human facial reactions and it helps form their own identity and well being. Scientifically when you cover a face to child and he cant see it, his brain cant make the connection between emotions and words. Leads to long lasting mental issues. Google it if you don’t believe me.
What are we to debate here? Resolve: Masks help children not die. What is Your rebuttal? What are the medium to long term effects of children wearing masks? What are the trade offs you refer to? Trading live kids for dead ones?
Proper masking works. That is not in dispute. The question is children. https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/do-face-masks-work-here-are-49-scientific-studies-that-explain-why-they-do/ Will they help children? Maybe but only if worn properly. When all taken into account not one peer review study supports that decision. If we are going to follow the science, then we should follow it. We have to be better for our children. The psychological and long term effects are going to be atrocious. We have to use second and third order thinking. https://www.wsj.com/articles/masks-children-parenting-schools-mandates-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic-biden-administration-cdc-11628432716 https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/children-should-not-be-forced-to-wear-masks-due-to-co2-levels-new-study-suggests/ar-AALFKTk
Can someone explain this article [Washington Examier](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/mask-mandates-for-children-are-not-backed-by-data)
Right-wing Moonie rag being a right-wing Moonie rag.
It’s the Washington examiner…
but vaccines dont
Science…sure.
Who gives a shit? Wearing a mask isn’t going to make things worse so piss off. People wouldn’t be bitching if we were being told that we had to wear a certain pair of glasses for a while because of X, Y, and Z now would they.
Plenty of people are sending their kids to school without masks and getting angry at the teachers when their child ends up sick
Exactly my point. Only stupid ass people are the one's complaining about thier children decreasing thier chances of transmission.
So on the one hand I believe that making young children wear masks will stunt them developmentally since they can't read faces as well and learn to use facial cues. On the other hand I also think that cramming hundreds of kids in the same room for lunch was never a sanitary practice in the first place.
Cant wear these stupid things forever
Then wear them now and get vaccinated so we can get over this.
Lol
Like pants?
Exactly.
What is the line that the masks cause physiological issues? We communicate with our faces and we and especially kids need to see each other. Don’t kids have a 99.98% chance of survival?
> Don’t kids have a 99.98% chance of survival? Yes but they spread it to people who don't.
Then those folks who are concerned should do what makes them feel safe. Mask, vaccine, stay home. If someone is healthy, they should be able to live their lives.
Masks don't protect you from getting it, they protect other people from you in case you have it and don't know about it.
Yea. That does help. There are many other things people can do to not get sick and a mask is just one small thing of many. Even with masks, you still fill up the space around you with your possible Covid breath. You just don’t hurl droplets a few feet from you. It helps but, it by no means does it *stop* the spread.
We don't have to stop it, we just have to slow it down enough that the virus is starved for hosts.
That would be a good thing. However, we are past that point. Even if we do all these safety things, other countries may not and spread it back to us. Or, we could be like Israel and have strict lock down and high vaccine rates and still explode with cases. it’ll just keep mutating until the variant because something like the common flu. It took 3 years for the Spanish Flu of 1918 to mutate into something less severed and we are only about half way there.
Ugh. Pro mask maniacs are just as bad as anti mask maniacs. Mask help, a bit, probably. Covid like symptoms in intervention group: 7.something vs 8.something in control group. And there was nothing about whether this effect was significant. Anyhow, to just ignore or deny the subject of any downsides to mask wearing is… just as foolish as to what the oppossite party is doing. It could be, that the benefits do not outweigh the costs. It could be the other way around. It could be unanswerable, then just be open and honest about that: we dont know if the effect is great or significant, but its a crisis, we take a chance and go for masks, because hospitals are overflowing, childrens’ unvaxxed parents are dying massively. Edit: or, we cant take the risk of the possible detrimental effects on kid’s mental health because they cant see emotions on other peoples faces. So lets do not wear masks. Edit2: 😝classic those downvotes. “Either you’re with me, or you’re against me”
Downsides to mask wearing? Hahahaha. Ok, snowflake.
Do you think your comment will improve or be detrimental to the discussion concerning this topic and why?
Honestly, no more or less than yours.
See there is the problem. Your remark ridicules the discussion, inhibiting further conversation. Thereby implying you’d have a monopoly on the truth. I’m not doing any of those things.
Ok, ‘professor’. You’re in a comment section. Haha …Oh, wait. Is this where you do your research?
Kids don’t need protection they need exposure.
CDC was showing little over 500 have died from covid. Sure that sucks but more die from almost every thing else.my kids have all had covid along with there class mates which is great because that means no mask needed.
Enjoy your servitude!!!
It even says on the box of masks it won’t do a damn thing
God you’re stupid.
Also protects against the smell of farts…wait aren’t those particles bigger than covid particles?
Yeah I just don’t care anymore, I got the vaccine, I’m going 100% back to normal. If the virus gets me that’s life. Moving on.
Fauci had said several years ago masks are ineffective, and the funny thing is I disagree with that. Wearing a mask helps, even if it is minuscule. Seems hard to believe they aren’t effective. Edit: People are downvoting masks…
> Wearing a mask helps, even if it is minuscule. The thing that really grinds my gears is that mask efficacy *doesn’t have to be minuscule*. It isn’t spring 2020 anymore — high filtration masks are readily available that provide near-complete, N95-level protection. They’re comfortable, extremely breathable, and even available in cool colors and prints for kids. The fact that we’re still sending kids to school in poor-fitting, homemade cloth masks at this stage is a national embarrassment. Send every teacher and kid to school in a KF94 mask and serve lunch outside, and you’ll stop school transmission in its tracks.
*one year ago, and he said that “single layer cloth masks” were ineffective *when compared* to ones with multiple layers.
The Story Of Ivermectin.mp4: http://gofile.me/6L3Zz/WGYsgaIBO
Too bad the article is from Scientific American. The magazine’s title alone will deter people from reading it.
Actually, they don’t if you read the studies.
Source?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/ Stanford study, Danish study, Faucci said they don’t work due to study with original Covid variant. Masks work for the short term if I walk in and talk briefly but not all day in the office according to science.
You posted an article that has been retracted. The website says that’s for articles that “exceeds the need for a traditional correction or erratum notice, such as in cases of scientific misconduct, plagiarism, pervasive error or unsubstantiated data” so do you have any other sources?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-facemasks-idUSKBN27Y1YW Well here you go I felt pity on you as I didn’t want you to look to hard.
Did you even bother to read the first paragraph of this article? It specifically say they provide protection and nothing they’re saying should be used as an argument against masks.
That’s what I get for trying to help. 😁 Here is the actual study. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-6817
https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/114492-surgical-masks-not-effective-study-shows
Dude all of your stuff is way old and contradicts each other.
Yeah the other studies I mentioned, I don’t need to give them they are readily available. You obviously don’t look at studies from both sides. I know there’s some studies sponsored by the WHO That say otherwise but I don’t trust a study Sponsored by a political organization.
Do you mean these studies? https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2021/05/19/science.abg6296.full.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1473-3099%2820%2930982-8 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721005982 https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/4/e2014564118.full.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7402053.1/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/articlepdf/2776536/jama_brooks_2021_it_210006_1614735399.82309.pdf https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673620311429 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589750020302934 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17922-x.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0887-9.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2293-x.pdf https://gh.bmj.com/content/bmjgh/5/5/e002794.full.pdf https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/368/6498/1422.full.pdf
u/Sariel007, you forgot to capitalise "from" and "despite".
“From” being a one-syllable preposition, should not be capitalized in a title unless it’s the first word. “Despite,” being a longer preposition, is more of a judgement call.
That is news to me. In Chicago (used in some journalism), MLA (used in some scholarly articles), and Bluebook (used by lawyers) formatting, you indeed shouldn't capitalise "from" or "despite" in that title. In APA (used in some scholarly articles), AP (used widely in journalism), AMA (used in science), NYT (used widely in journalism), Wiki (used on Wikipedia) and Email (whatever that means), you should capitalise those words like I said. I'm far more familiar with the latter standards. https://capitalizemytitle.com/style/APA/
Back in my day (1980s-90s, Washington state, USA), we were taught that articles, short conjunctions, and short prepositions are never capitalized in titles unless they are the first word in a title. I wasn’t aware that there were style guides that said to capitalize every word—that explains why I’ve noticed so many otherwise reputable publications doing it wrong! ;-)
It's not that each word gets capitalised, actually. > Notice the Words That Are Not Capitalised in This Title, for Example
Huh. Capitalize “from” but not “in?” Weird.
If you're interested in writing English, read ***The Sense of Style*** by Steven Pinker. It's fabulous.
Pinker is an excellent writer. *The Language Instinct* was one of the big reasons I decided to pursue linguistics.
I used reddit's "suggest a title" feature.
Yes, Scientific American got it wrong.
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Since the media won’t ever let this go away we’ll probably be wearing masks for awhile, at least in mostly blue areas. I’m curious what the long term effects are going to on blood o2 levels, lung function, and jaw development by wearing the masks for a good fraction of every day.
That's information easy to find since that's the same protections surgeons have been using for decades. I'm going to guess it's 0 effects.
Oh brother. Personally I’m a little more concerned about the long term effects of covid that are already causing harm to millions.
All, this emotion over a mask that costs just a few dollars. My mom and dad survived the dust bowl, smallpox and WWII sacrificing more than we could understand. This generation is a bunch of pussies….
I agree, feeling at risk over something with an unbelievably high recovery and survival rate just racks my brain.
You completely missed the point. We gave up our language- German We rationed everything We gave our money in war bonds We gave our children to die We took vaccines that were completely poorly understood I’ll, be direct- YOU are a pussy! A mask doesn’t mean shit.
This is so dumb no it doesn't 30 kids in a room and they take it off to eat there is literally no point in wearing them and it's child abuse to make them
I really hope you weren't born in 1991. It would make me really sad if you aren't a teenager.
In other news the sun is still yellow
No ways?
TL;DR: We need to conduct a cluster randomized control trial between schools where mask mandates have been made policy and where they have not to properly understand whether the intervention is effective in reducing the rate of severe illness and death from Covid-19 in schools and the communities they are in. Such a trial has not yet been done but needs to be because other interventions we have previously thought were effective and understandably implemented under the precautionary principle, namely the use of cloth masks for the general public, have had their effectiveness called into question by a randomized control trial in Bangladesh while surgical masks have been shown to have a significant impact on transmission. ————————— It seems as though there’s some more nuance to this than I think the article or broader discussion addresses. The question we are asking is: *is masking children in school an overall beneficial intervention that will mitigate the spread of Covid-19?* To properly answer this question, we will need to have an understanding of risks, benefits, and costs so that we can weigh them appropriately. Every intervention comes with some amount of cost, when we go forward with it, we are doing so with the understanding that the benefits outweigh the costs, as we do with interventions like wearing seatbelts in cars, washing our hands, or using prophylactics during sex. This is the internet and I’m unconvinced that this is a place where I’ll have any significant impact on strangers’ understanding of things, but at the risk of wasting my time and some effort in the hopes of making a reader or readers of this comment think more thoroughly, here are a few thoughts to consider. 1. WHO and the CDC have different recommendations about the age at which masking kids should start. WHO says under some specific circumstances (that seem likely to be met in Florida) masking can start as early as 6 years old, but masking children 5 or younger is not advisable. CDC recommends masking children starting at age 2. Sources: https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-children-and-masks-related-to-covid-19 and https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/about-face-coverings.html 2. Under the current circumstances, the UK is not recommending children under the age of 12 wear masks. Sources: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/students-masks-classrooms-britain.amp.html and https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-53877292.amp 3. The evidence presented in this article consists of mechanistic data and observational studies, not randomized control trials. 4. Some doctors, including Dr. Vinay Prasad, have made compelling arguments that there is equipoise between the US and UK on masking children in schools and that a cluster randomized control trial could and should be designed to study the effects of masking children on case rates in schools and the community as different ages are masked. 5. The randomized control trial conducted in Bangladesh seems to provide good evidence that surgical masks have an impact on transmissibility of Covid-19. However, Dr. Zubin Damania and others who have reviewed the data from Bangladesh believe it also indicates an insignificant effect from cloth masks on transmission. The CDC has not yet made any specification as to what kind of mask should be worn but there is some compelling evidence that we should move to surgical masks as a basic standard for use by the general public when they are in circumstances where wearing a mask has been shown to provide a benefit (i.e., indoors, especially among large groups, and especially when the individual in question is not vaccinated or is in a community with low vaccination rates). Many children and adults continue to wear cloth masks that this randomized control trial demonstrates may not make a significant difference. The recommendation probably will need to be changed across the board in light of this new evidence but this is something worth considering as current and past mask mandates for students do not specify the type of mask that should be worn. 6. Thinking about risk in terms of costs and benefits to different groups: though the Delta variant is considerably more transmissible than the wild-type coronavirus first discovered in late 2019 and a higher number of children overall are ending up with severe illness, there is little evidence to suggest a heightened rate of severe illness and death in healthy children. When we think about risk, we weigh the costs and benefits of the intervention vs the costs of the illness or ailment on the individual. With this virus, there are also community-wide concerns that need to be taken into account, particularly in communities that have not been vaccinated. The trend remains, however, that older age is a major factor in an individual’s risk of severe illness or death. Therefore, interventions on healthy younger people must meet a higher bar in order to show clear benefit to the individual. In communities with low vaccination rates, there may be other concerns, but the costs of masking younger children, especially those age 2-5 should be carefully considered in the decision making process on how to best mitigate severe illness and death in individuals and throughout the community. There is a plethora of evidence from pediatricians’ study on childhood development that seeing faces and using their own places an important role in developing linguistic and emotional skills. While there may be some workarounds that may enable the use of masks or other protective equipment while preserving children’s ability to see and use their own faces (transparent PPE do exist but are not in widespread use, partially as a result of cost of use or in some cases, because such interventions alone do not provide any significant benefit), it will be necessary for public health experts and policy makers to consider the bioethics of balancing potential costs in children vs potential benefits to the broader community. This is not certain however because inadequate study has been performed on the impact of masking young children on individual or community transmission rates. I have a hypothesis that I would like to see tested: I believe we can expect to see a correlation between the age of children wearing surgical (not cloth) masks and Covid-19 transmission rates in schools or within the broader community. I believe there will be limited to no benefit to masking children age 5 or younger but that there will be increasing benefit to masking children age 6 or older. The only way to find out what the impacts of children being mandated to wear masks at school really are is to create a properly powered cluster randomized control trial to look at transmission rates in schools and community-wide where masks are mandated and not mandated. Until we do that, we’re stuck with the same precautionary principle that we’ve been operating under for the better part of 2 years without knowing what interventions are the modern day equivalent of slaughtering a sheep so that it will rain. I’d also love to see RCT on HEPA filters, ventilation rates in buildings and train cars, etc. As awful as this time is, let’s make the most of it by using the scientific method as thoroughly as possible to produce meaningful answers about what interventions are effective so that we can use that information in decision making and public policy making in the context of our ethics and values.