NSR: Corona Virus - You Can Start Panicking Now

[throbster]

The children are being hurt most by the mask mandate, but she doesn't give a sh*t.

[Bubba]

From "The Morning" e-mail from the New York Times


Good morning. Why “follow the science” fails to answer many questions.

Put down that burger

The C.D.C. describes medium-rare hamburgers as “undercooked” and dangerous. The agency also directs Americans to avoid raw cookie dough and not to eat more than a teaspoon or so of salt every day. And the C.D.C. tells sexually active women of childbearing age not to drink alcohol unless they are on birth control.

If you happen to be somebody who engages in any of these risky activities, I have some bad news for you this morning: You apparently do not believe in following the science.

The misery of the Covid-19 pandemic — with its death, illness, isolation and frustration — has left many Americans desperate for clear guidance on how to live safely. People want to protect themselves, their family and their communities, especially the most medically vulnerable members of it. This instinct is both understandable and profoundly decent.

But it has led to a widespread misunderstanding. Many people have come to believe that expert opinion is a unitary, omniscient force. That’s the assumption behind the phrases “follow the science” and “what the science says.” It imagines science almost as a god — Science — who could solve our dilemmas if we only listened.

When Donald Trump was president and making false statements to downplay Covid, “follow the science” began to gain popularity. Now, it also serves as a response to the many incorrect statements that vaccine opponents make. President Biden likes to promise that he will follow the science, to signal his difference from Trump and deference to the C.D.C.

The phrase does have its uses. It’s a rejection of myth and a recognition that some aspects of the pandemic are unambiguous: Covid is more deadly for the unvaccinated than almost any virus in decades, and the vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness.

Many other Covid questions, however, are complicated. What does the science say about them? It says many things. Above all, science makes clear that public health, like the rest of life, usually involves trade-offs.

Hard choices

If you want to minimize your risk of getting sick from food, you probably need to eat less tasty food than you now do. If you want to minimize your chance of dying today, you should not get inside a vehicle. If you want to minimize your children’s chance of going to an emergency room, don’t allow them to ride a bike or play sports.

Unfortunately, none of these statements provide answers about what to do. People have to weigh the risks and benefits. They let their kids play sports, but maybe not violent ones. They don’t drive in a snowstorm. They ignore the C.D.C.’s advice about medium-rare burgers and heed its warnings about medium-rare chicken.

The current stage of the pandemic presents its own set of hard choices and trade-offs. If you wade into the angry, polarized Covid debates on social media and cable television, you will find people who try to wish away these trade-offs. They pretend that science offers an unambiguous answer, and it happens to be the answer they favor.

Proponents of an immediate return to normalcy claim, implausibly, that masks and social distancing do nothing to reduce the spread of Covid and that anyone who says otherwise doesn’t care about schoolchildren. Proponents of rigorous Covid mitigation claim, just as implausibly, that isolation and masking have no real downsides and that anyone who says otherwise doesn’t care about the immunocompromised.

The truth is that Covid restrictions — mask mandates, extended quarantines, restrictions on gatherings, school closures during outbreaks — can both slow the virus’s spread and have harmful side effects. These restrictions can reduce serious Covid illness and death among the immunocompromised, elderly and unvaccinated. They can also lead to mental-health problems, lost learning for children, child-care hardships for lower-income families, and isolation and frustration that have fueled suicides, drug overdoses and violent crime.

Balancing the two is unavoidably vexing. “We need to be better at quantifying risk, and not discussing it in a binary way,” Dr. Aaron Carroll, the chief health officer at Indiana University, told me.

As you think about your own Covid views, I encourage you to remember that C.D.C. officials and other scientists cannot make these dilemmas go away. They can provide deep expertise and vital perspective. They are also fallible and have their own biases.

C.D.C. officials tend to react slowly to changing conditions and to view questions narrowly rather than holistically. They often urge caution in the service of reducing a specific risk — be it food-borne illness, fetal alcohol syndrome or the Covid virus — and sometimes miss the big picture. The C.D.C. was initially too slow to urge mask use — and then too slow to admit that outdoor masking has little benefit.

As Matt Glassman, a political scientist at Georgetown University, wrote this week, “Don’t trust substantive experts to make policy decisions that balance competing values or stakeholder interests.”

When facts change

There is no one correct answer to our Covid dilemmas. People are going to disagree passionately, and that’s frequently how it should be. Most policy options have both benefits and drawbacks. The same applies to other areas of public health: We could also reduce flu deaths with permanent mask mandates, but this fact doesn’t mean that mandates would be wise.

One of the few Covid truisms is that policies should change as reality changes. A world without vaccines calls for more restrictions than a world with vaccines. When cases are surging and hospitals are overwhelmed, as was the case last month, more restrictions make sense. If hospitalizations and deaths keep falling, continued steps toward normalcy will make sense.

“We have to be able to act differently when the situation changes,” Carroll said. Or as Janet Baseman, a University of Washington epidemiologist, told me, “We need to be having this conversation.”

It really is a conversation. The answer will not spring forth from Science.

[XtremeJibber2001]

The children are being hurt most by the mask mandate, but she doesn't give a sh*t.

Do you have children? I have 4. They haven't said anything about them since they started wearing them.

I'm not sure how you can assess whether the Governor does or doesn't care? If she didn't care, one might think she would have got rid of masks when she took over for Cuomo. I think leaving the mask mandate in place for schools is born out of fear of the unknown (w/out merit in my opinion) and politics/optics.

[deadheadskier]

The children are being hurt most by the mask mandate, but she doesn't give a sh*t.

Do you have children? I have 4. They haven't said anything about them since they started wearing them.

I'm not sure how you can assess whether the Governor does or doesn't care? If she didn't care, one might think she would have got rid of masks when she took over for Cuomo. I think leaving the mask mandate in place for schools is born out of fear of the unknown (w/out merit in my opinion) and politics/optics.

Our son has never complained once about wearing his mask. Same with all of the other kids I see at the bus stop a few mornings each week.

Our daughter protests wearing hers a bit, but she's 3. That's to be expected

[XtremeJibber2001]

Our daughter protests wearing hers a bit, but she's 3. That's to be expected

I'll admit sometimes my 3 year old wears her mask like a hat

[daytripper]

If you wear glasses, masks are a large pain in the ass. I'd assume the same for children.

[Killington_Lover]

Supposedly kids need to see mouths moving to help develop speaking skills, and normal socialization. I guess the kids development doesn’t matter to you lefty’s.

[XtremeJibber2001]

Supposedly kids need to see mouths moving to help develop speaking skills, and normal socialization. I guess the kids development doesn’t matter to you lefty’s.

Do you have children in school? Do you have any with speaking issues? My eldest daughter (5) goes to speaking development twice a week at the local school. The speech therapists use a special mask so my daughter can see how their mouths move.

[easyrider16]

If you wear glasses, masks are a large pain in the ass. I'd assume the same for children.

Wife has to wear masks and goggles at work. Fogging is a serious issue.

Seriously though this BS about masks being harmful to kids is such a stretch it's ridiculous. Maybe, maybe you'd have an ounce of a point if masks were going to be a permanent feature in schools for the foreseeable future. But come on, the mandates are all coming to an end, and they lasted what, a year, two? I can't imagine a year or two of mask wearing by kids in grade school is going to stunt their development. I mean that's kind of an absurd claim.

Why are masks even a left vs right issue? I mean really, the politicization of this thing got way out of hand.

[Killington_Lover]

They aren’t coming off in Boston thanks to Prog nut jobs like Wu

[XtremeJibber2001]

They aren’t coming off in Boston thanks to Prog nut jobs like Wu

Leave Wu-Tang and their 36 chambers out of this

[boston_e]

Why are masks even a left vs right issue? I mean really, the politicization of this thing got way out of hand.

Because republicans politicized masks as a "gubment taking away my freedums" thing

[Killington_Lover]

I do not have kids yet. I do question the mixed messaging throughout the pandemic regarding the efficacy of various masks. Made an admittedly infrequent trip to Boston for a birthday dinner, about half the people we saw wearing masks outside at night, check into the restaurant with a mandatory vax paper check, get to the table and everyone is unmasked and shoulder to shoulder with other tables. 3 in our party have German passports and vax cards, the host could not make sense of it, shrugged and waived us through. At this point it is a joke. Are cloth masks effective? I see few wearing N95s. If the vaccine is truly effective, why are you forcing it on others? Their body their choice.

[throbster]

There are several studies showing psychological harm to children, while also showing no benefit in curbing virus spread. Science. Also, f*** common sense if you don't have your liberal head up your ass.

[Bubba]

There are several studies showing psychological harm to children, while also showing no benefit in curbing virus spread. Science. Also, f*** common sense if you don't have your liberal head up your ass.

There are also studies that show differently. Perhaps you should read the article I posted above and not be so absolutely sure you're right and others are wrong? There are clearly supportable opinions on both sides of the question.