This is an odd reply - you're claiming someone is wrong by showing them that someone else on this website was also wrong. The commenter specifically mentioned the silly way we have to wear masks while being seated but can then take them off, even if we are less than six feet from the nearest table with other unmasked people. A LOT of people have this exact same complaint, and to write it off because those people are not "experts" is just ridiculous. How does it make any sense??
Okay, I'll bite. Is there any basis in scientific reality? Where is the science that says the six foot rule is not necessary for humans eating and drinking in restaurants?
Even better, the six foot rule itself was always a rough approximation of a best guess to reduce really dumb behavior (like getting within inches of each other at a bar and yelling all night type stuff, or huddling around each other), not based off any rigorous analysis of any kind I could find.
Risk decreases significantly with distance, but I’ve found zero scientific evidence that 6 feet is somehow better or fits some set of trade offs better than other numbers (10? 4? 30?).
There has been a lot of cargo cultish behavior, and just dumbness too - like how we got stuck on cloth masks when we could all just be sent properly rated respirators at this point for less (that would be more comfortable AND actually work!) is beyond my ability to comprehend.
I mean this is a forum on the internet, it's not a peer reviewed medical journal. People come here to talk about stuff. Sure, there are guidelines that encourage thoughtful, well written comments to foster an actual discussion, but there's no requirement of being an expert in anything.
I don't think you should be "exhausted" by people making claims on the internet. Just insert the words "I think" in front of any comment that does not already include that, because that is what every comment already means.
>Making claims without evidence, especially pretending you have expertise when you do so, decreases the signal to noise ratio on HN.
>And yes, it's exhausting to watch. I wish we would hold each other to a higher standard.
Fair enough; I guess I'm just not as bothered by the misinformation (which seems to be synonymous with "information that's inconvenient to some authority") boogeyman as you are. When I see a claim online that I find interesting I will usually do a bit of research into the topic on my own. If I discover that the comment was incorrect, I may go back and downvote it, but I've still learned something, even though the original claim was wrong. If we had it your way, and no one without a PhD in a field was allowed to talk about things in that field, or every reply to every comment was "do you have a source for that?" with nothing else, this would be a pretty boring place!
Don't you ever see a comment that you just know is wrong but wonder "how could anyone believe this?" I watched a couple flat earth videos once because I just didn't get it. Of course, it becomes pretty obvious it's complete nonsense after just a few minutes, but at least now I have the ability to say "you are wrong, and here's why" in my own words.
I think a big issue with public discourse is that so many people never ever even try to imagine the reasoning behind a viewpoint with which they disagree. Without that understanding, I don't believe you can really convince anyone of anything, because all you can do is tell them they're wrong and point to some authority, which doesn't seem to work.
> If we had it your way, and no one without a PhD in a field was allowed to talk about things in that field
Please try to understand me when I say, if someone says "I don't think X is true," that's very different to me than saying "There's no scientific basis for X to be true."
I'm not saying people shouldn't talk about their beliefs.
I'm sick of people pretending they know what they're talking about, donning the mantle of an expert, and making a proclamation about whether something is even possible.
> people never ever even try to imagine
I'm complaining about people who are trying to shut down all conversation. Not "I don't believe in X," but rather "there's no scientific basis for X."
They're saying, "If you claim X, I know for certain you did not follow any scientific process to make that claim."
They're saying, "Every reasonable person should reject any evidence of X, because it cannot be a scientific claim."
How cute - you think that "long covid" is something specific to covid-19.
One thing that covid-19 has shown is that the public health community hasn't bothered to work on flu since the 1940s, even though it kills 35-75k Americans a year and has so for decades if not longer.
You remember the flu. It's an essential part of the "you have to give us lots of money so we're ready for something like the Spanish flu" and yet, when covid-19/sars2 came long (a couple of years after sars1), "we" didn't know anything useful about coronavirus transmission.
One of the "Spanish Flu" stories told by the public health community is that one of the major outbreaks happened when a city had a parade to celebrate "beating" the flu. So, guess what the public health community said was a good thing during height of the pandemic. (To be fair, only the parades and demonstrations that the PHC liked were safe.)
Of course, the public health community's first instinct is to lie. They started with "masks aren't necessary for ordinary people" and then pivoted even though there was no new data either way. (And there's also the whole "vaccines can't be delivered in a year" thing.)
Note that the pre-Covid recommendation from WHO was no masks and no general lockdowns, but instead, "protect vulnerable subpopulations", which we knew at the beginning. Contrast that with what the public health community talked about. And no, there wasn't new data.
I firmly believe that the whole "masks aren't necessary for ordinary people" was not based in any science at all, but because they were next to impossible to find, and they didn't want a panic.
In my midsize town, with a 600 bed hospital, people (staff, patients, etc) were walking through the ER, and stealing whole boxes of N95 masks off of shelves. The hospital had to move them all to locked cabinets along with the addictive painkillers. They were almost completely out, and not able to get any more.
There were literally states/hospitals organizing a purchase (at insane prices) only to have the feds come and seize the masks and end up with nothing.
Yes, medical folk wanted to get masks for medical folk (some of whom even know how to wear them) but "they didn't want a panic" is self-deception. They may have wanted that effect but that was not the likely result of such an announcement.
That's because the public health community has been incompetent at best and typically self-defeating at messaging for decades.
Unfortunately, pretty much everything other than self-evident statements out of the public health community has been good reason to think that the exact opposite is the right response. In this case, "don't panic" was best interpreted as "things are likely to go south, so urgent action is probably a good idea".
"hey, don't hoard masks, we don't have enough for medical personnel" would have been more effective.
As to the feds seizing masks, that was mostly the public health community doing the seizing.
You’re not reading what 0xy wrote, so you’re just arguing against yourself. An appeal to authority isn’t convincing when the authorities themselves have been utterly clueless and entirely politicized.
0xy say many measures were essentially nonsensical and non-scientific, and then gave a perfect example of restaurant masking which is perhaps the pinnacle of COVID absurdity.
Wearing masks outdoors is another great example of something where the science was unequivocal, and yet the politicians persisted.
Non-N95 masks being worn improperly (which is essentially all of non-professional masking) was even declared by the CDC as ineffective so I think it’s safe to say the mitigations were not only deeply unpopular but also unscientific.
"authorities themselves have been... entirely politicized"
I'm honestly curious what you think the word "politicized" means.
Politicized: "(of an activity or event) made political in character."
Political: "relating to the government or the public affairs of a country."
So, to be clear, you think it's a problem that "authorities" have made assertions about the public affairs of a country?
I get that you think they've been utterly clueless, and if that's true, of course I think that's a problem.
But I'm focusing on the second part of what seemed to bother you. That, people with authority, have made assertions about how public affairs should be handled? That's a problem, to you?
>"So, now I see your comment, and I get to try to evaluate it. Are you a virologist? "
You come into restaurant and wear that mask for 10 min and then you sit for an hour without mask. Sorry one does not have to be an "expert in the field" to see through this bullshit.
>"And now here we are, learning more about Long Covid every day."
Or, maybe, there could be trials where we experiment and find out?
Or we could analyze past data, to see if counties where people worse masks in the lobby of restaurants had lower transmission of Covid than counties where they didn't?
If I go into a crowded restaurant and wait for 30 minutes for my table, I come within about 6 feet of about 30 people. When I sit at my table for an hour, I come within about 6 feet of about 3 people (server, and the person who brings drinks, and the person who brings food.) Especially if there are dividers between tables.
I'm not claiming wearing a mask in the lobby reduces transmission to zero. But I can easily imagine how it reduces transmission some.
And yet, others are claiming that no one could possibly imagine how wearing masks in the lobby of a restaurant could possibly reduce transmission.
You and I can talk about whether we believe wearing masks in the lobby reduces transmission.
I'm tired of people claiming there's "no scientific basis" (or something similar) for masks helping, or for there to be long-term implications of Covid, or anything else, really - especially when they're not an expert.
