Comment on Face masks made ‘little to no difference’ in preventing spread of COVID: study
Anticorp@lemmy.world 7 months agoYou’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.
airrow@hilariouschaos.com 7 months ago
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?
There was an anti-mask league during the Spanish flu: history.com/…/1918-spanish-flu-mask-wearing-resis…
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.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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?
airrow@hilariouschaos.com 7 months ago
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.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I feel like you’re the kind of person who’d argue against seat belts and airbags because they sometimes kill people instead of help. And against helmets when riding bicycles.
I’d be more willing to have that argument than this because those are mostly too protect oneself rather than others, like masks do.