Do mask mandates work? Bay Area Covid data from June says no | Hacker News Reader

Do mask mandates work? Bay Area Covid data from June says no

sfgate.com

47 pointsscifibestfi36 comments

I wonder how future generations will judge us. These last years have showed how weak little sheep we all are. The US has spent more in the last 2 years than our entire countries history, we are racked with debt and stuck in 30 different wars. & yet we are still discussing covid and abortion.

We stopped working for TWO YEARS, made things that were proven to be false from the start, the norm and have somehow seem to have just moved on.

I was canceled at work, some social & professional cicles for calling out the absolute absurdity of masks in general but especially cloth & bandanas. When i spoke about the absolute onslaught of studies that have showed our data was all f*cked and we couldn't make any logical assumptions out of it. We had plans in place to quarantine the old and sickly and we did the exact opposite.

I've always tried to understand how people could fight in hitlers army, now i have my answer. It's much easier to posture and social gesture your way to hell than it is to stand against the immoral tide.

Except that mask mandates aren't worthless. We have relatively controlled studies in other countries demonstrating where one area got masks and another area didn't that there was a fairly clear difference in transmission rate.

What are useless are mask mandates when you have a large cohort that simply won't comply or will anti-comply. Which is what we had in the US--both from political intransigence (Covid is a hoax) as well as general stupidity (Remember the police in CA having to break up a block party in the middle of Covid?) as well as general intransigence (Remember a handful of illegal gatherings being responsible for 80% of the Covid cases in California at the beginning? I do.).

This shouldn't have even needed to be a mandate. It should have been common sense. It should have been protecting your fellow man.

But, here, we are.

you're right, they weren't worthless. The lockdowns & mask mandates were extremely harmful.

More harm came from/ will come from the economic harships, seclusion, loss of status, community & immunity than covid ever posed.

>This shouldn't have even needed to be a mandate. It should have been common sense. It should have been protecting your fellow man.

You're right - That's what america was built on. We are land of the free & our social structure is created by the people for the people. Let social norms dictate your paternalism, not the government.

>protecting your fellow man

I've been homeless before multiple times. Fellow man does not look out for me.

That's the beauty of FREEDOM. I dont have to protect my fellow man because fellow man is mostly shitty.

My body my choice is my favorite slogan ever.

Going straight to the Godwin point, I see...

Nothing about covid was known from the start besides the structure of the virus. And while we made progress, there is still a lot we don't know, and we expect the unexpected.

Even if based on current research, you are right on some point (speaking generally), saying "I knew it, it was obvious all along" only shows that you don't understand science. You didn't, you took a guess and by chance, it was right. And your "onslaught of studies" is most likely cherry picked. Because mask mandates are a contentious issue, there are many studies going both ways. No matter the facts, it is an attitude worth "cancelling".

You can have opinions, I have my own, some turned out right, others did not, but they are just that.

But one thing to note: there are many countries in the world, all with different cultures, with a wide variety of covid strategies. Though some did better than others, none of them managed to keep covid at bay, all of them suffered in some way. If anything, at least in the beginning, dictatorships did better.

How future generation will judge us? The idiots will look down on us, the smart ones will see what we did right, and what we did wrong, both will be precious knowledge that will help them make better decisions.

Anyone who’s worked professionally with our nation’s healthcare apparatus will have prior opinions about those at the top.

I haven’t had to change my priors. Wouldn’t call that a “guess” by “chance.”

You know what was known? A shortage of N95 masks and zero attempt (at least publicly) to increase production. But we have a surplus of ventilators now!

You can go a down a dark rabbit-hole with this one. We did spend alot of money to increase production. Gavin gavee some chinese electric company $1B, $500m upfront to...shift mask production away from China? Not only did he go against every acquisition regulation written but the company went under and didn't supply any masks.

-Ex Contracting Specialist for Gov

There were tons of studies on mask efficacy showing that it had a very minor benefit at best.

We knew in the first few months who this disease targeted..i.e. the elderly and unhealthy.

Yet we still went super Saiyan on crushing the country and world for years.

> Nothing about covid was known from the start besides the structure of the virus.

We had evidence of airborne spread very soon after the virus broke out of China. Passengers of the cruise ship Diamond Princess were quarantined in their cabins and the virus continued to spread from cabin to cabin.

Cloth face masks are effective when a virus has a droplet based spread, like the flu. They are not effective when a virus is airborne.

Look at how flu cases hit record lows globally, while Covid continued to spread like wildfire.

>CDC says seasonal flu cases hit record lows around the world

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cold-and-flu/cdc-says-seasona...

In a highly globalized economy, containment is impossible, & 'slowing the curve' is folly.

>if anything, at least in the beginning, dictatorships did better.

Based on what info? the data the dictator publishes?

Just a couple things to note, which make this far from being a case against masking, or mask mandates:

- The data is from one county in CA ...

- ... for the time period June 3 - June 25, about 3 weeks

- Neighboring counties did not have mask mandates at the time, meaning that anyone traveling between counties and not wearing their mask would have spread COVID-19 to Alameda County just as well as if no mask mandate existed

- The article notes that the most likely explanation for the lack of a different outcome from neighboring counties is that people either do not follow mask mandates or do not wear effective masks

Pretty much a non-sequitor article AFAICT

>Neighboring counties did not have mask mandates at the time, meaning that anyone traveling between counties and not wearing their mask would have spread COVID-19 to Alameda County just as well as if no mask mandate existed

So masking is not effective unless we also ban travel from non-mask mandated areas? This very point seems to confirm that masking mandates can't work unless implemented in conjunction with a strict travel ban (which is impractical).

Masking might not be effective on a population level, true, but on an individual level it may make a difference (wear N95, proper fit, etc etc ....) Still I agree, this does supply evidence against mandates.

Off topic but reminds me reading about how on a population level humans congregating in towns/cities was great, but terrible at an individual level (more diseases etc...)

Just another example of 'trusting the science' not being as self-evident as commonly assumed. Science is supposed to be tested, not just blindly trusted.

It's worth noting that the story was for mask mandates, not masks in general. I'm reasonably certain that the science still says that masks can be effective in preventing the spread of Covid.

"working" implies that the goal of mask mandates is to reduce covid and not political theatre so some person in charge could say "we managed the situation".

The mandate worked exactly as intended.

Worth pointing out that there is nothing conspiratorial about this. It exactly aligns with the real life decision making process of how things like this get enacted

Yes government bureaucrats got to drag political enemies off planes and kick them out of restaurants on the basis of wrongthink, masquerading dogma as science.

Well, trust the science. If it doesn't work, we shouldn't mandate it.

That's not what "Trust the science" means.

This science isn't "the science" because it doesn't reach the enforced narrative's required conclusion.

I'm a little confused. There are some studies that show wearing a mask on public transit helps:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7976046/ https://npli.sph.harvard.edu/resources-2/aviation-public-hea...

And I'll grant there's some other studies that show individual mask wearing makes no difference on modern airplanes. But a lot of modern life is conducted in environments more similar to buses than to 767s that have HEPA filters and engineered airflows through the cabin.

This suggests that there are other things complicating the situation, doesn't it?

It will help to keep this kind of news in perspective if you remember that mask mandate studies are very blunt instruments. You identify (preferably large) communities experiencing an outbreak, some with and some without mask mandates, then compare contagion rates. We have over a century of this kind research and the results are very consistent that mask mandates make no overall difference. However, more focused research appears to support that masking does have some positive effect in situations of close contact and limited ventilation. This topic has been done to death over the past couple years, and you can find references in previous HN threads.

If mask mandates make no overall difference, but help in some cases, doesn't that imply that they must cause harm in some other cases?

The broad answer is no, first of all because the narrow situations where masks are believed to help would not amount to a significant difference when considering the effect on an entire community. Secondly, I said "believed" because the evidence is actually rather limited and ambiguous, so the promotion of masks is based more on plausibility rather than firm proof. However, there does appear to be slight but consistent evidence for greater contagion rates in the general community when there is a mask mandate.

This post disappeared from the front page pretty darn quick.

Wearing a mask lets everybody know that we are still in the midst of a very dangerous pandemic. It shows me that you take it seriously. It shows me who takes responsibility for the well-being of their fellow citizens and who doesn't.

So even if it serves no practical purpose, it still serves a very important ritualistic purpose.

In all honesty, are you serious?

Surely it's obvious.

I'd rather breathe more easily.

I’m all for caution and taking safety protocol seriously in the midst of such a situation…but jeez, this thing has morphed into a religion for some people.

I’m not sure if it’s sarcasm, so I’ll politely ask…Are you really judging who “takes responsibility for the well-being of their fellow citizens and who doesn't” by mask wearing, at a time when we have widespread availability of Covid vaccines and treatments?

Choosing not to play part in what has become political theater has zero relevance to my civic duty.

A cloth mask for you does the same as a blanket for a child. It provides a false sense of security and is a breeding ground for bacteria.

Wearing a mask lets everyone know what team you're on.

This allows people to disrespect others with an easily visible item.

It also allows the powers that be to think they are in control and doing something useful.

I think that the powers that be are more interested in convincing us that they are in control and doing something useful.

But giving the false impression that we're in the midst of a very dangerous pandemic is a bad thing.

You almost got me, friend, with these platitudes. Almost. First class right here!

perfect bait, well done.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com