oof / womp womp
Bullshit study by an anti-masker cherry picking data to make himself look smart.
I guess the point is the “science” isn’t settled so people should be free to not wear masks; certainly mask mandates are a ridiculous idea, right?
First of all, fuck off with that “science isn’t settled” bullshit. You’re not hiding your agenda at all.
Second, fuck you. People die from COVID. Wearing a mask was the absolute barest minimum of common courtesy, and your lot bitched and moaned like you were being forced to walk on Legos.
Third, go fuck yourself. There were no mask mandates. None. Hospitals, airports, and private businesses required them for obvious reasons but at no point was the government mandating masks. The CDC recommended wearing masks, and the anti-reality crowd flipped their collective shit.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to point our all the reasons your argument is bad and why you should feel bad for making them. You’re a piece of shit, and your stupidity contributed to countless deaths. Your ideas are a virus of stupidity, and the kindest thing anyone thinks about you is that you’re just a moron who has fallen for a grift. Everyone who isn’t a piece of shit hates you.
Go away.
and your stupidity contributed to countless deaths
It’s pretty countable. 1,187,509 deaths at the time of this comment. You made valid points, but were all of the personal attacks necessary? If someone is gullible and duped, it seems to me that we’d have a better chance of reaching them if we communicate without insulting. I guess I get the hostility though, considering the consequences outlined numerically above.
I think our side would deny those deaths could possibly be attributed to covid (how would anyone check these stats?). Contrarily, many would point out the adverse effects from taking the “vax” as reported on VAERS
You seem like you enjoy research, you should go look up how causes of death are determined, and how vaccine efficacy is calculated. We’ve had this stuff figured out for over a hundred years now. Going backwards is not only unnecessary, it’s foolish, and destructive.
Have you done research on this? Sanitation was thought to do more to prevent disease than vaccines:
Vaccines get all the glory, but most plumbers will tell you that it was water infrastructure – sewage systems and clean water – that eradicated disease, and they’re right.
http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/how-plumbing-not-vaccines-eradicated-disease
The questionable experimental “covid vax” fanned the flames of skepticism towards all vaccines
Prior to “covid”, it was reported the flu shot was the least effective in recent years
We could circle back to a lot of proven medical actions. A lot of deaths attributed to “covid” were with people who had additional issues like obesity, were smoking, or elderly, vitamin D deficient. So get people to lose weight and make sure they have vitamin D and quarantine the elderly. Many actionable items that were conveniently ignored, since they could make lots of money pushing a “vaccine” to swindle the population out of money. That is another thing, how the “vaccine” was paid for by tax dollars, rather than the people who wanted them. Problem after problem…
If you knew for certain that you were going to die, but hopping on one foot would give you a 60% chance to live, would you do it? Now what if rubbing your belly gave you a 30% chance to live, and patting your head gave you 10% chance? But if you do all 3 you have a 100% chance to live. Would you only hop on one foot since that’s the most effective? No, you would do all 3, combining the methods for maximum effectiveness. Your argument is no different, except you’re saying in this non-hypothetical situation you’re only going to do one thing.
agenda
I think it’s an equal opportunity, your side doesn’t hesitate to push its agenda. We disagree. Ok. So can we come to agreement on which view is correct? We are about as confident as you are that your view is incorrect. So we would need to do something to come to agreement on the topic.
people die from covid
Honestly neither I nor you can prove this to be the case, but I doubt it, or doubt that it was significant. And here’s why:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flu-has-disappeared-worldwide-during-the-covid-pandemic1/
During “covid”, flu literally disappeared. Using Occam’s Razor, it seems much more easy to conclude that flu cases were misdiagnosed as “covid” cases. Add in the hysteria and fear and stress of conditions, that gives you the extra deaths (which I am not disputing, but am disputing the cause - at least it is open to debate).
there were no mask mandates
There most certainly have been, at certain government facilities for example: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-homeland-security-department-imposes-employee-mask-mandate-2021-07-28/
Private businesses should also be criticized for their wrong and overzealous decision to require masks in our view.
You’re drawing the wrong conclusions from the article you linked. If you actually read it, you will see that they’re stating because masks are so effective at stopping the spread of airborne viruses, they also prevented most cases of the flu. Masks combined with the fact that there were less people going out overall led to a dramatic reduction in the number of flu cases. If you take anything away from that article, it should be that you should wear a mask when you have the flu or a cold too, just out of consideration for your fellow human beings.
Private businesses should be criticized for requiring basic safety measures during a global pandemic that have been widely proven to be effective for over a hundred years? Get off it, mate. All you’re basically saying is that you either wildly misinterpret data, you’ve been conned by people with a political agenda, you don’t care about other people at all, or any combination of those things.
Masks combined with the fact that there were less people going out overall led to a dramatic reduction in the number of flu cases
Is there any way to isolate these variables? Because I’d definitely agree not going out would probably drop flu or any disease cases. So we’d probably just argue that was what caused it rather than masking (if such a thing happened). Actually this is a point we could possibly agree on, that I’d just advocate for people being “remote” and quarantining. Skip the “danger” of going out with (in our view questionable) masks altogether?
over a hundred years
There was an anti-mask league during the Spanish flu: https://www.history.com/news/1918-spanish-flu-mask-wearing-resistance
Also it’s obviously not proven to be useful like it’s common sense or something. Because if it was, people could just adopt the measure without being forced to. Many safety measures are adopted voluntarily. The fact that they tried to mandate the masking was something of an admission their “science” was not proven or thought out much. They were really just trying to make people “feel safe”, but weren’t actually accomplishing that. If we had real problems they could have just advocated for stronger quarantining.
it’s obviously not proven to be useful like it’s common sense or something. Because if it was, people could just adopt the measure without being forced to.
Common sense doesn’t appear to be all that common. There’s no nefarious conspiracy to get you to wear a mask over your face. Its effectiveness has been documented and heavily researched. If you don’t understand the technical documentation outlining the results of those tests then you can and should just defer to the opinions of the experts. People dedicate their entire lives to this sort of stuff. It’s incredibly foolish to come along and think that with a few YouTube videos and some googling that you’re going to arrive at an accurate conclusion that disproves the educated work of thousands of people. What motivation would doctors have to wear a mask during surgery, or when dealing with deadly diseases, if they didn’t provide some measure of protection? Are they all being duped by the big mask lobby? Do you realize how silly that sounds?
Masks are a big deal, because at the same time they’re not that big of a deal. But it never stops there, once one thing is required, they add more things. I think it’s important to understand that compulsion with this concern of further compulsions was what was being opposed, not necessarily the “little mask requirement”. You can say it’s not a “conspiracy”; but the elites made trillions from lockdown measures while the working class lost trillions… it seems like basic math in trying to figure out what financial motives existed for creating all the drama of what “manufactured outrage” existed.
Also, no, we still don’t agree that these masks have been proven to be effective, or at least anywhere near the effectiveness some people act like they have. Certainly I can understand and concede your point about doctors wearing masks (or welders wearing masks to weld, or a bunch of professionals, yes!). I still maintain people who are really concerned should just stay home altogether. Appealing to experts will end a bit in circularity as there are experts who support our views; frequently the experts end up disagreeing on a lot of topics. So you could defer to our experts then instead of forming your views?
You might try to argue a majority of experts agree with your view; I’m sure you would then have supported slavery in the past when “experts” at the time assured us we must support slavery? Surely you know there are problems with these kinds of arguments. But I do want to thank you for actually having a discussion! I’m mostly going to let people wear masks if they want, so I don’t know if I’m really going to cause problems for you honestly. We’ll continue to think it’s ridiculous though privately. But it will also kind of work out because 10/10 masked people I see seem to refuse to interact with the non-masked anyway.
WHERE IS THE FUCKING STUDY
holy shit i hate the “news”
Edit: Oh this is from last year…
It’s mostly just for discussion, most people know the masks were just “security theater” and weren’t really that helpful or necessary, and that if there were real problems much more dramatic measures would have been needed to have been taken
Oh, it’s you again, from the Rowling post. Trying to spark discussion based on shit articles and false premise (“most people know the masks were just “security theater”…”).
Just block and move on.
or we can just talk about it. actual discussions occur some places. sometimes people are able to work things out and come to agreements.
Thank you. ❤️
You’re forgetting they’re not capable of that… emotionally deranged…ahem…
Being civil with you, and actually having a discussion means they have to humanize you, and they don’t want to do that.
To them, humanizing u means treating you with mutual respect, and they don’t believe you deserve that.
Bc You’re a ‘monster’ monsters can be treated like shit, but acknowledging you as a fellow human being and given common curtesy is not something they feel u deserve.
That is the truth and they won’t admit that because the are hypothetical.
It’s nothing if the sort.
People died because of tweaked information like this grandstanding as news and the circle-jerks they spawned. Another one is attempting to spawn here.
Elsewhere, OP pulled the same thing with a trans article.
The debate isn’t happening because it’s a dusted off year-old rigged conversation. Not because people are dehumanizing.
I mean, it would be nice if more people would come to the understanding that there is mutual disagreement: our side believes many people died due to unnecessary stress and fear put on people with overreactions and experimental “vaccines”. So your “misinformation” has killed, and would be something to feel ashamed of, from our perspective, and to feel bad for “your victims”; or at least to acknowledge there’s a lack of consensus and that people are trying to make the best decisions they can under uncertain circumstances.
The debate isn’t happening
I guess, it isn’t really on our side much either, we just know the masks are pretty useless and most people seem to agree by going back to normal without masking in public (in spite of other people sounding the alarm that covid rates and other diseases are still bad and that people should be masking I guess?). So I guess that’s a litmus for how many people actually believe masks work today (doesn’t seem to be much) and how many would have masked without being threatened (probably not as many?).
At least it would be nice if we could “agree to disagree” and don’t require the masks for all places. Just have one place that is mask-free, another that requires them (if desired). I guess I just envisioned this was how both sides could be accommodated. Didn’t totally understand why it had to be one way or the other. I am fine with people wearing masks if they want to; didn’t understand why they also felt the need to force other people to wear masks as well in all spaces. But I guess even this attitude is kind of a concession, and not-masking seems to be more desired by most?
It’s just… we’re used to the old way in the United States. The new zeitgeist is authoritarian and cannot argue, it resorts to censorship, blocking, whatever. The “American way” I’m familiar with believed that disagreement could be overcome with kindness, arguments, and setting good examples, and so on. Today’s crop praised acts of civil disobedience (breaking the law illegally) for racial causes, but do not support it for causes they disagree with. They supported illegal actions against the Nazi regime which was authoritarian, but not their brand of authoritarian measures that others don’t agree with. That raises important questions that should be discussed critically as a philosophy of law: are all people judges of the law? How are legitimate legal wrongs to be made right? Can disagreeing views be accommodated or not?
For example with the masks, a lot of places could have just given people the decision to make if they want them or not. If a person didn’t feel comfortable being around unmasked people, they could not go to that location and attempts could have been made to accommodate them with a separated location. With the mandates at government buildings for example, there was no ability to accommodate people who didn’t want to wear masks, so it was one-sided. The other poster says there were no mandates… I wasn’t aware of that, I thought various federal / government buildings indeed did require masks. Private places certainly did and could be criticized for doing so (they criticize Twitter for its moderation as a private entity, yet do not find the same criticisms we make of private institutions on their mask policies to be acceptable…)
edit: also I guess I am wondering where the non-authoritarian leftists are. I know they’re out there somewhere. The previous anti-authoritarian left was anti-war, but flipped because Trump became anti-war. They were vehemently anti-censorship, quoting Voltaire (which seems to be a misattributed quote allegedly) that they might disagree with what people say, but would “defend their right to say it”. And so on and so forth.
well I mean most people are not masking right now. i do see some people out there with masks though. I think probably most wouldn’t have masked unless it was mandated, and it seems like it shouldn’t have bene
Would you rather me wear a mask, or not wear a mask while I spit in your face? If you’d rather me wear a mask, why?
Ok, so are you making the point that when people talk, they can spit everywhere, so obviously then masks would reduce this? Off topic but this is kind of funny, I was already thinking about masking around car and industrial fumes when in cities before “covid”… unfortunately I feel masks wrongly became politicized (not by our side) and instead of just recommend them and allow people to make adult decisions about them, they were tyrannically imposed upon people, confusing people if they were beneficial or not. But anyway, I think I might frame it in a different way: say I have a super infectious disease, like the plague. Would you feel comfortable simply being around someone with plague with a mask on? Wouldn’t quarantine be much safer? So why not just have us advocate for this much safer option of keeping people instead of 6 feet apart, 600 feet apart (lol)?
Unfortunately an N95 mask wouldn’t be effective for fumes, you would need a vapor mask for that. N95 and similar masks are particulate masks, they filter particles out of the air before it reaches your lungs. Yes, people produce aerosoled particulate when they breathe and talk. The viruses are very small and travel on our breath which can be inhaled by others. Watch someone vaping for example, or smoking. That’s how much air people are circulating through their lungs when they breathe, you just can’t see it.
Of course I’d rather not be exposed to you if you have the plague, but if I had to be around you, I’d want both of us wearing the best masks on the market. Complete isolation would have been great, and it would have stopped the pandemic from developing. Unfortunately that’s not realistic for the majority of people. Even if you stayed at home and ordered your groceries to be delivered, someone still has to go to a warehouse, get their truck, go to the grocery store, buy your food, and bring it to you. They’re going to be exposed to other people who also have to do things along the way. A mask provides an additional layer of security.
You saw yourself why voluntary mask usage isn’t adequate. Some people will never do anything they’re told to do. Some people are malicious. Some politicians wanted to make a health crisis into a political demonstration. There’s a bunch of reasons why it required guidelines. People shouldn’t need to be forced to do a lot of things that are for their good and the good of society, but unfortunately that’s not the reality we live in.
Thanks for the info about the masks; yeah, well we are circling towards some productive discussion. Perhaps some posts could be made prepping for wildfire smoke again for those affected by it and about the masks that would enable people to be outside more (I don’t support a mandate there really but you can taste the smoke in your lungs if you’ve been in those kinds of areas)…
Well I guess with the grocery delivery guy, they could be expected to clean everything as they deliver it. This is probably also worth thinking about because probably pandemics (or faking them) will likely “happen” again.
Ehhh, I don’t think people need to be forced. They can be “free” to become sick (or not, as most people are still alive). Those who don’t want to risk things should be accommodated to isolate from the people willing to risk exposure. I feel like this situation should mostly be able to be “win-win”: maskers mask among maskers, unmasked associate among unmasked.
The problem with your logic is that masks are more effective when the sick people wear them, and most effective when both people wear them. So if I have to be somewhere, and you have to be at the same place, me not wearing a mask despite being sick puts you at risk. If it was 100% effective when only the wearer wore the mask then there wouldn’t be an issue. Put yourself at all the risk you want. But when you put other people at risk and refuse to take simple and easy steps to prevent it, then you’ve shown that you’re not empathetic, caring, or smart enough to make your own decisions. It’s the same reason why you can’t drive 150 miles per hour through a residential neighborhood, even if you think the fun of it is worth the risk.
The metastudy that this (old) article is based on drew widespread criticism from experts and researchers back when it was first published, and its conclusions were widely misinterpreted by antivaxxers and antimaskers such as yourself.
If you’re interested in reading more about its flawed methodology and also some good evidence that masks do indeed help to reduce the spread of airborne pathogens, here’s some homework for you:
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/no-that-new-study-doesnt-show-that-masks-are-useless
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/do-masks-work
Ok, consider a different line of thinking: Did you see that story where the CDC said to treat covid like the flu?
You should now follow the same precautions with Covid as you take with the flu, according to new guidelines from the CDC
https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/covid-guidelines-2024-cdc-symptoms-contagious-cdefb6b8
The simple logic goes: CDC says to treat covid like the flu, we didn’t mask for the flu previously, therefore we shouldn’t have to mask for covid…
(Someone mentioned though this suggests people should get “vaccinated” like for flu… although such “vaccines” are experimental and therefore present unknown danger so that wouldn’t seem like the best idea)
Hence assume that this was always true. Then, by not masking, people were following the CDC’s future guidelines correctly, it’s just the “experts” had the incorrect guidelines issued in the past. Many people were treating “covid” just like the flu since they observed that’s all about what it seemed to be like (majority of people recovered from it without problems, without “vaccines” or masking).
So basically completely ignore the facts that
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the form of coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic was significantly more dangerous than it is now,
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that the population back then didn’t have the degree of immunity it does now thanks to widespread vaccination and previous infection
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we know significantly more about the virus and the ways that it can be treated and prevented now than we did at the beginning of the pandemic
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Many doctors and healthcare workers have criticized the CDC’s recent changes to the guidelines, saying that COVID is still more dangerous than the flu and that this puts many people at risk
Congratulations, your simple logic would have overloaded the healthcare system even more than it did and millions more people would have died. Masterful gambit, sir.
Those are mostly speculations, however I think it’s important to note that the healthcare system is overloaded due to over-regulation. Hence they want things like mask mandates to try to cope with healthcare mandates that already overloaded the system unnecessarily. The solution is to get rid of these mandates, not add more on to them, so that people can open more hospitals and create competitive healthcare offerings that increase the amount of hospitals and lower the amount of disease. So again, let’s assume masks do work: they could simply convince people to wear them, instead of mandating them. The lockdown mandates themselves impoverished the working classes and enriched the elites which would seem to lead to worse health outcomes for hard-working Americans: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/17/world-10-richest-men-see-their-wealth-double-during-covid-pandemic
These are observable facts, not speculation. If you had spent the countless hours following the pandemic over the past three years like I did, you would know this.
Also, trying to convince the American public to do anything mildly inconvenient that goes beyond their immediate self-interest for the sake of the wider community is the most laughably ineffective way of going about a public health crisis.
self-interest
well this might be good to think about. Since 99%+ of people recovered from covid and were ok, people thought it not in their self-interest to mask or “vaccinate”. Hence I do think people were acting with simple self-interest in avoiding these things. People might be more motivated to mask if they thought it in their self-interest, and then this in your view would help the wider community. That’s the ideal of some of “capitalism”, that self-interests can align with interests of the wider community. But a political system isn’t going to be sufficient for helping the wider community. However I do care about people who want to mask, which is why I suggested in a few places we could just go to separate places: people who want to mask can be at spots with other people masked, unmasked can go with unmasked. This would allow for diversity of opinion being accommodated over issues that are not in consensus.
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tHiS pUbLiC sErViCe sCiEnCe ArTicLe BrOuGht To YoU bY…
(drum roll, please)…
tHe NeW yOrK pOsTUnderstood, although we probably feel the same way about posts from wapo, cnn, msnbc, etc.
though the topic of articles could still probably be discussed
Masking and other precautions killed a strain of the flu. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-12/covid-killed-yamagata-type-b-flu-a-second-strain-might-be-up-for-elimination
Imagine, if there weren’t so many anti maskers and vaccine deniers we possibly could have killed covid as well.
Well like the other comment mentioned, this lumps all the things together (masking and quarantining, when maybe it was only one of the variables). Probably quarantining is most effective; it was said sanitation did more to prevent disease spreading than vaccines ever did (which would be a kind of isolation of contaminating things from people, like quarantine). So, by this logic, why not advocate for people who like masks to just straight up be more remote and quarantining all the time? Why “risk” the “danger” of going in to public with a mask unnecessarily? Really, this is probably a more effective tactic people wouldn’t debate on either side. And we’ve seen some of the benefits of remote work. Is this something both sides can agree on then, more of a “remote” society is better?
