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Comment by gnusty_gnurc | Hacker News Reader

I feel like there’s a weird god of the gaps element to covid harm. Instead of recognizing that seemingly an overwhelming majority of people are fine and don’t suffer much adverse effects if any, there’s this automatic dwelling on extremely low probability extreme “invisible damage”. I’m increasingly convinced people are unsettled by the possibility that this could be anything other than civilization ending and the mask averse amongst us aren’t murderers. The desire for moral condemnation is too strong.

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> the mask averse amongst us

"mask averse"? Really? We're talking about people who knowingly risk the lives of others; that's not their risk to take. Even without all the potential complications we're still discovering in survivors, we already know it kills people at a high rate.

I wouldn't go as far as "murder" unless someone actually knowingly had the disease and spread it to others, but "criminally negligent" would not be even slightly unwarranted. You don't point a gun at other people and pull the trigger just because you don't think there's a bullet in it.

It's not always easy to visualize "small probability of large harm", but the longer people keep fighting against steps like wearing a mask or not going out, the longer and more serious this will become, and the more people will die. "mask averse" is one of the major differences between places that have this more-or-less under control for the moment and places that don't.

There is no valid excuse to be anywhere around other people without some form of mask right now. None whatsoever. (Better yet, keep staying home if you possibly can, but that there are certainly some legitimate reasons to not do.)

Arguing against mask is like arguing you should be able to go without vaccination (which people do, but that is rightfully treated as conspiracy-theory-level harmful misinformation) or blow secondhand smoke in people's faces (except with a higher degree of potential harm from short-term exposure).

> I’m increasingly convinced people are unsettled by the possibility that this could be anything other than civilization ending and the mask averse amongst us aren’t murderers.

In just the past couple of months, COVID-19 has racked up a body count of 130,000 dead Americans. For perspective, that's forty-five 9/11s worth of dead people. Asking people to wear a mask in public to curtail the spread saves lives. This has nothing to do with "desiring moral condemnation." The "mask adverse" can likely bear the burden of at least 1/45 of the deaths America has had compared to it's less "mask adverse" peers.

I absolutely hate wearing a mask, I'm "mask adverse" like yourself, but I wear one since this is a trolley problem where pulling the lever means I have to be uncomfortable for a few hours.

So, roughly twice as bad as a normal year flu/pneumonia count?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pn...

  CDC #'s 2015-2016
  Flu: 7,961
  Pneumonia: 131,858 
  All: 1,769,940

And, the death stats are inflated, it's official: http://v6y.net/1541e03e6cfd1442590bc7b5476f88c30a29a0d881bdb...

The only real measure is excess deaths.

"The state of Florida has had 82,397 people 34 & under test positive for the coronavirus. Of that number, 28 have died. That’s a coronavirus death rate of .00034. They’ve had 144,210 54 and under test positive. That’s a .0016 death rate." [1]

1. https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1280250042603929604

That is some seriously disingenuous math. Whoever came up with that calculation is deliberately trying to mislead (aka lying) or is utterly incapable of grasping the concept of time.

A month ago, Florida had 66,000 confirmed cases. Now it has over 200,000. With a virus take takes two to eight weeks (or more) to kill, we haven't even begun to see the real death rate.

Yep. Even without accounting for the lagging death metric, the present mortality rate in FL, all ages, is around 1.7% (3.8k deaths/213.8k confirmed)[1].

.. side note, 20452 confirmed cases per million residents of Miami-Dade. 2% of the population, geez.

[1] https://covid-19.direct/county/FL/

Where are the FL excess death stats?

> I absolutely hate wearing a mask, I'm "mask adverse" like yourself

I'm actually not mask averse! I wear a mask all the time. I'm just interested and unsettled by what seems to be a pervasive, immediate, visceral moral reaction that fits all to well into the moral superiority and virtue signalling zeitgeist.

That reaction to seeing someone without a mask is not an analytical judgement based in evidence - almost no one who feels this way is reading the literature or following the inconsistent scientific position of the effectiveness of mask wearing that's changed 180deg seemingly overnight. They're making moral judgments.

I've seen enough people saying frankly "it's about showing you care."

I can see someone being lockdown averse. Having to stay home all the time is a real drag. IMO it was (and is in many places) necessary, but what's the big deal with wearing a mask? Suppose COVID turns out to be nothing, what have you really lost by wearing a mask for a few months? Heck, if you have some phobia, wear a face shield.

if you do physical work in heat wearing a mask, you won't be asking how soneone could be mask averse.

An N95 mask doesn't meet OSHA's deadspace oxygen and carbon dioxide level requirements:

"The FFR dead-space oxygen and carbon dioxide levels did not meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s ambient workplace standards. CONCLUSIONS: In healthy healthcare workers, FFR did not impose any important physiological burden during 1 hour of use, at realistic clinical work rates, but the FFR dead-space carbon dioxide and oxygen levels were significantly above and below, respectively, the ambient workplace standards, and elevated PCO2 is a possibility." [1]

1. http://www.rcjournal.com/contents/05.10/05.10.0569.pdf

You could probably file an OSHA complaint if you were required by your employer to wear an N95 mask.

Yes, the mask's dead space has CO2 above OSHA ambient workplace standards. To wit, they were about 3000 ppm. That's because the mask dead space contains your exhaled breath.

However, an N95 mask's dead space is 100-150ml. The tidal volumes they measured were about 1000ml. That means that only 10-15% of the air you're breathing in is from inside the mask. So, for example, if you're outside at 400ppm, you'd see an increase of net CO2 to 660ppm. If you're indoors at say 800ppm, you'd see an increase to 1020ppm.

This is well within OSHA limits and is very unlikely to be noticeable. Crucially, the study did not see a significant increase in blood CO2.

i'm not worried about suffocating, that doesn't mean it doesn't suck-- which is all i was pointing out. mow your lawn in a mask, it sucks. when something sucks you don't want to do it, you resent having to do it.

but i'm not against wearing masks in principal. i do my civic duty. but my civil society isn't doing shit. in washington you now have to wear a mask in public, (well, not really, cops don't want to enforce that, but nonetheless...) this was done by the governor, which is possible because he has special powers because of the state of emergency. what prompted the mask requirement is a hospital in eastern washington was running low on beds. so why not use those special powers to make more beds in yakima? why am i not being pestered to get tested on an ongoing basis? why aren't people being put to work helping those who can't leave the house because they're infected or at higher risk of complications? why aren't masks being mailed out to people and handed out to homeless people?

because that sort of thing requires a government that can do something useful for people, and that's not what we have. it can impose upon people, but it can't do anything good. so we'll all wear masks and it will help with the plague as much as banning plastic straws will help the ocean.

(yes, i know your comment is about n95 masks and osha requirements and maybe i should put this somewhere else, but here we are.)

You're not going to get me to defend the government response to COVID in the U.S. All of those measures sound very reasonable. You're not getting pestered to be tested on an ongoing basis because the U.S. lacks the testing capacity. Even if we did, we're not turning samples around fast enough for them to be as useful as they should be in tracing cases.

I have no idea why the government isn't handing out masks to everyone. That's essentially what Taiwan did and they have approximately zero cases.

That said, wearing masks is a lot more useful than banning plastic straws. If you could get a large fraction of the population to consistently wear masks, and impose comparatively light restrictions (no big gatherings, no bars, no indoor restaurants), I think you could eradicate the virus.

> This is well within OSHA limits and is very unlikely to be noticeable.

Why does the study state, "The FFR dead-space oxygen and carbon dioxide levels did not meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s ambient workplace standards."

Do you have a source that counters this study, or are you just throwing some armchair mathematics out there?

> the mask averse amongst us

Oh can we coin a term like this for drunk driving? You know, when it’s more convenient to drive home drunk than leave your car out? That’s just being taxi-averse

The pandemic could be over if 100% of the population wears them for just 2 months. That's a way better deal than what the mask averse are going to give us which is 12-15months and probably a few million more US lives over that timespan.

No way. Sure you could get it down to a few cases, but compliance is never 100% and it would flare up very quickly.

The only things masks do is slow the spread (which is obviously a good thing for hospitals). If we don't get a vaccine we'll be maintaining some sort of protection (masks, distancing) but every single person will be infected eventually.

Other countries have managed to get it under control by testing and contact tracing. If we could "get it down to a few cases", as you say, we could do the same thing. In the current environment in the US, that seems impossible.

Sure and those countries have effectively closed their borders. How long can they keep that up for?

If you're willing to let tourism die, near indefinitely?

I'm not fully up to date on the US situation but haven't they effectively shut down all borders as well, or at least have had their borders closed on them?

The US has restricted travel from certain countries (not all), but there are several exceptions for US citizens, permanent residents and their family.

So there is still a decent amount of air travel happening into and out of the US.

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