outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Like I think I just don't really believe that there exists a demographic in which 99% of people are vaccinated

Miami!

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-vaccines.page

High 90s for kids seems prima facie fishy to me and the caveats here suggests there may be some multiracial double counting and tourists screwing up numerators and old population numbers screwing up denominators.

I’d be surprised if these numbers were correct for kids yet. NYC will get 90s when they require it for school attendance and not before.

my understanding is that the FDA approval means that they likely can and will require it for attendance

My son has been sick a lot less than usual this past year, but I'm not sure how much of that should be attributed to masking or other safety measures like plexiglass in school itself and how much is related to all the other changes in people's behavior outside of school: working from home, decreased travel, decreased social gatherings and other activities, reduced social interaction in general.. If the other kids in his class aren't catching colds and flus as much, they won't be spreading them as much.

I have a five year old who is 2vaxxed as of three weeks ago and a 1 year old who as of this most recent development will be eligible hopefully in a few weeks…and yet reading about children as small as my 1 year old participating in trials makes me sick to my stomach… the ethics of having toddlers subjected to trials as such is confusing to me…does anyone know of any shit to read as to how they are conducted, various pros and cons?

xp masking works is the thing, both in clinical tests and in real world situations
it seems weird to argue about that

No doubt they have some effect. My question was just how much of an effect relative to other factors.

since masks are obviously beneficial, is it necessary to know exactly what percentage of benefit it provides compared to the other factors you named? or are you just idly wondering aloud, because you find it an interesting question to ponder?

I assumed that was more in response to the specific poster who keeps insisting that masks are nearly useless in a school setting.

I mean I'm assuming at some point the masks in school are going to come off. Just wondering how that will correlate with the return of the usual seasonal cycle of colds and flus known to all parents of school-age children.

We'll see more of them, I imagine.

We had no flu season in fall '20 because masking/home work was still a thing

Yes, but will they come back immediately to pre-pandemic level when the mask requirement goes away, or will it be a more gradual return as people start to travel more, attend large public gatherings, etc.?

travel is already at levels sufficient to spread flu virus easily from region to region, so I don't think any further increase in travel will make much difference. large public gatherings will only spread the virus in a limited circumference around each infected person, so they are not much distinguishable from smaller gatherings, like an office or a classroom. the lack of flu season last year (and substantially reduced season this year) has enlarged the pool of potential hosts.

if I had to bet, I'd say when the masks come off across society the flu will return to 'normal' levels very swiftly.

this will surprise no one, but i don't think flu is down solely because of masks or that flu will abruptly return to normal specifically when masking stops. for one, a every significant fraction of the northern hemisphere, including a lot of the the US, is already not wearing masks, and yet flu down globally. and seasonal flu was a thing in countries where mask wearing was common even before covid.

masks certainly play a part in its reduction in 2020 and 2021. but so does restricted travel, drop in economic activity, physical social distancing, and probably even things like handwashing being up (which makes no difference with covid, but is a big deal for cold and flus).

I'm sorry if I didn't make clear that restricted travel, etc. I compressed into "masking."

right. NPI generally.

although this point:

"for one, a every significant fraction of the northern hemisphere, including a lot of the the US, is already not wearing masks, and yet flu is down globally"

could be restated as:

"for one, a every significant fraction of the northern hemisphere, including a lot of the the US, is already *not doing any NPIs*, and yet flu is down globally"

By way of contrast, the percentage of residents of the northern hemisphere, especially in the USA, who are masking in public, restricting their social and economic contacts, and practicing NPIs in general is many thousand percent higher than in pre-pandemic years.

Flu is down to approximately zero and maybe half the population of the world is behaving exactly as they did pre pandemic, except for travel.

one flu strain, influenza B/Yamagata, may have actually gone extinct during the pandemic:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00642-4

Without trying to open up any can of worms here, is there a reason for the absolute explosion of "CDC admitted masks don't work at all" posts and tweets I'm seeing all over the place within the last week or two? I'm assuming this is tied to the CDC thing about cloth masks, but that talking point is seemingly everywhere recently.

it's 'all over the place' because twitter and other social media are very effective echo chambers

Maybe, and I know it's always been there in some respect, but it seems even more omnipresent all of the sudden.

More reasons to go outside:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0263069

Patients with vitamin D deficiency (<20 ng/mL) were 14 times more likely to have severe or critical disease than patients with 25(OH)D ≥40 ng/mL

During the heights of Omicron a month ago, I ate vitamin D gummies like they were Dots.

Without trying to open up any can of worms here, is there a reason for the absolute explosion of "CDC admitted masks don't work at all" posts and tweets I'm seeing all over the place within the last week or two? I'm assuming this is tied to the CDC thing about cloth masks, but that talking point is seemingly everywhere recently.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, February 7, 2022 1:23 PM bookmarkflaglink

an article just came out where the CDC publicly said wearing N95s/KN95s made you 83% less likely to catch COVID, which I'm guessing is it. people can't stand the idea that a bunch of plandemic sheep are healthier than they are because they listened to the government.

one thing about people who say "masks don't work" is:

1) they will say "studies prove masks don't work"
2) they won't be able to point you to any
3) if you get beyond two responses, the remaining responses will all be meme responses, at least one will be an alt-right meme, and the person's username will be their first name followed by a series of numbers

people who say "masks don't work" are wrong.

but i don't think i linked the study i've mentioned a few times, so here goes: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evidence-summary-covid-19-children-young-people-and-education-settings

this is the closest (and only!) thing i've seen to a controlled apples and apples study of reasonable size, where schools in similar communities at similar stages of the pandemic were selected to randomly mask/not mask. it found masks have an effect on school transmission that is statistically indistinguishable from zero.

since masks do work (we know this) the implied conclusion to me is "kids don't wear masks properly for 8 hours (no kidding!), and the main thing that determines whether schools are safe is the community in which they are embedded".

p.s.

daycare/school mask mandate ends in e.g. NJ next month, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-jersey-governor-end-school-mask-mandate-rcna15168.

likely just in time for under fives to get their first shot

FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee will meet on February 15 to review data on Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine for children 6 months through 4 years of age. https://t.co/8G2dxKU8aQ

— James E.K. Hildreth (@JamesEKHildreth) February 7, 2022

since masks do work (we know this) the implied conclusion to me is "kids don't wear masks properly for 8 hours (no kidding!), and the main thing that determines whether schools are safe is the community in which they are embedded".

That's a much better conclusion than the one I see all the time: "schools should have never closed."

Caek, I clicked on the most recent of the links you posted, and it says that schools that masked had a 43% decrease in Covid absences over a 2-3 week period, as opposed to a 32% decrease for schools that did not mask. If that difference is statistically insignificant, the authors of the study do not say so.

This is how it summarizes previous studies: "The results were mixed but taken together support the conclusion that the use of face coverings in schools can contribute to reducing COVID-19 transmission."

I realize this isn't a clear-cut "masks are a magic bullet," but it also doesn't seem like it's saying "masks don't make a difference in schools." Is there something I missed?

granted it's an extremely weirdly written document because it's written for a non-technical audience, but this paragraph is saying that the difference between the two samples is below the 95% CI conventionally required in the medical (and other scientific) literature to reject the null hypothesis that an intervention has no effect. this is what i mean by "statistically indistinguishable from zero".

At surface level, this suggests that COVID-19 absence fell by 0.6 percentage points more
(an 11% relative difference) in secondary schools that used face masks compared to
similar schools that did not over a 2–3-week period.

There is a level of statistical uncertainty around the result. The analysis is non-peer
reviewed and with the current sample size, shows a non-statistical and unknown clinical
significant reduction in infection in a short follow up period, including that a ‘false positive’
(i.e. finding that face coverings saw reduced absence when the finding is actually by
chance) would emerge around 15% of the time; a 5% threshold is widely used to declare
statistical significance in academic literature.

fwiw iiuc this review was used to justify the temporary reinstatement of school masking in the UK in january but also used to justify that reinstatement being only temporary for the month of january (i think masks are off again?)

drawing the line at 95% CI (i.e. "two standard deviations") is a convention that has been in place for like 200 years. i can see the case for being looser with "proof" in a pandemic. but i can also see the case for being stricter when kids are involved.

i'll also grant that the vaccination rate among kids is lower in the US, which makes the argument for masking stronger (it's the best we've got, given people are unwilling to give there kids an incredibly effective zero risk injection).

people who say "masks don't work" are wrong.

but i don't think i linked the study i've mentioned a few times, so here goes: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evidence-summary-covid-19-children-young-people-and-education-settings

this is the closest (and only!) thing i've seen to a controlled apples and apples study of reasonable size, where schools in similar communities at similar stages of the pandemic were selected to randomly mask/not mask. it found masks have an effect on school transmission that is statistically indistinguishable from zero.

since masks do work (we know this) the implied conclusion to me is "kids don't wear masks properly for 8 hours (no kidding!), and the main thing that determines whether schools are safe is the community in which they are embedded".

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 7 February 2022 22:41 (yesterday) link

FTR, this is all I ever suggested. I never said "masks don't work," I said that when you consider the fact that kids (1) can't be expected to wear actual N95s, let alone properly fitting ones, (2) many don't even wear KF94 or equivalent (in some cases even surgical masks), and (3) even if they do, there's no way they're going to be properly fitted for 6-8 hours, it's unilkely that they're going to make much difference in school transmission. Add in the fact that there are drawbacks to them (harder to hear, harder to see facial expressions, impediment to socializing, etc.), I thought they should stop requiring masks in school, even moreso once vaccination was widespread among kids, and I still do.

And whatever, we didn't have the data to back that up before and "erred on the side of caution," ok, but what is the argument for continuing masking in schools now?

Assholes not vaccinating their kids.

If you have a bunch of kids who aren't vaxxed in a community of people with low vaccination rates, then asking teachers to risk their lives every day so little Bronx or Ava can chit chat with their friends is idiotic.

Tbh, man alive, if you don't like it, send your kids to a private school where they don't require masks, or gtfoh.

FTR, this is all I ever suggested.

to be fair it's not _all_ you've ever suggested ITT.

table, if the argument is people not vaccinating their kids: vaccination is required in LAUSD schools. the compliance rate for this among kids 12+ is 90% and rising (and will be 100% modulo medical exemptions by the summer). among staff the vaccination rate it is literally 100.0%. do you think masks should be required here?

lol caek

Perhaps you didn't read the first sentence of my post, caek.

And part of the problem is that in places with high vax rates of students and teachers, getting rid of mask requirements makes people in places with low vax rates of students and teachers think that they can get rid of mask requirements, too.

Perhaps you didn't read the first sentence of my post, caek.

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Tuesday, February 8, 2022 12:15 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i read your post. i'm genuinely asking if the only reason you're in favor of masking in schools is low vaccination rates. man alive will likely post soon if you want someone to fight with.

Very cool to see ILX follow every other board down the path of people shouting past each other about kids and masks.

caek, as far as I'm concerned, yes—

As in, if certain percentage thresholds are reached for both teachers, school workers, and students, then I don't see why masks are necessary.

But because of people not vaccinating themselves or their kids, the situation becomes tricky very quickly— people who are doing the right thing in low-vax areas want what those high-vax areas have, and are becoming frustrated. I get that.

But that doesn't mean that masks should be abandoned—

then asking teachers to risk their lives every day

No one is asking the teachers to risk their lives. They have access to the vaccine and the booster. A boosted person who is not SEVERELY immunocompromised has basically zero risk of death.

And part of the problem is that in places with high vax rates of students and teachers, getting rid of mask requirements makes people in places with low vax rates of students and teachers think that they can get rid of mask requirements, too.

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Tuesday, February 8, 2022 12:17 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also, I'm not going to accept "we need to set a good example for the anti-maskers in other districts" as a basis for public policy affecting children, and I really doubt it makes a difference in that regard.

I truly don't give a shit about your kids, man alive.