Violet Affleck and mask mandates

It's not poor unless you choose to define 'mask' as a fabric one or a loose blue surgical mask. The evidence is perfectly good for the better quality FFP2 or FFP3 ones, which is why they are standard PPE in many situations. (That doesn't mean I think there should be mandates anywhere other than, say, cancer wards.)

It is a slightly odd preoccupation for a university student, and hard to imagine that she got to speak to the UN just because she is a Yale student, there are thousands of them who never speak to the UN.

Anyway - the evidence that masks work to prevent respiratory diseases is rather poor.

So a risk that is lower for most people than many other normal activities, plus low evidence the intervention even works - does not justify mandating an invasive intervention like masking.

If people want to mask, or wear face shields, or eat a lot of garlic, or wear an amulet, they can go to town, but telling others to do it is out of line.

Do you have a problem with facts or just this specific one?

There are lots of research studies that show although covid is a respiratory disease it does have many effects on the vascular system and vascular function.

You can read the articles and papers quite easily yourself and can also find information given by charities and healthcare institutions.

This is what I mean. You make people taking some precautions out to be mentally ill, but I’d say the mentally ill are those who can see the evidence, experience it and live it, and still deny it exists. Because they’re more scared of admitting to themselves there is a valid risk.

There is so much research.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11122535/

So there wasn't a violent attack??? Misleading thread title then....

This is why I should never go into MN without my reading glasses 😂

But, OP. Wait for it, wait for it.......wait for it!!!!! IT'S VASCULAR!!!!! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!!!!!

I can never hear anything about Vail without hearing Rachel from Friends in my head going 'Shoop, shoop, shoop...'

<end of irrelevant derail> As you were, people.

You mean she maybe doesn’t wear one in low density of people situations when outside, but does wear one in densely populated areas and inside, (like in really busy NYC this week.)

does she wear one to suit the occasion? prob not when holidaying in St.Barts or skiing in Vail

The part you are missing is….

Some people are still shielding, yes, that is because their personal risk from covid or any infection, hasn’t changed, whether it’s been 1 year or 5 years or 10 years, they still are immunocompromised or have something that makes them more vulnerable to infection. The fact that people go around spreading infections means that it is actually more dangerous for these people than at the height of the pandemic because there are no longer safeguards in place (especially in healthcare settings.)

These people can be different from some other people who have decided they are happy to not keep getting ill and continue to live their daily lives whilst taking some precautions. For example, Violet, who is still giving speeches at the UN and attending premieres etc whilst taking these precautions and campaigning for a better future. Many productions and performances are still taking precautions. Taylor Swifts recent tour for example, she had “a bubble” and they used masks and testing to prevent illness. Many movie sets and tv sets still have covid precautions to reduce the risk of infection on the cast and crew. These things aren’t front and centre, so it’s easy to pretend they don’t exist.

I can absolutely understand the psychological aspect of the groups still isolating, but I can also understand that people just telling them it’s all over, when it is still a risk for them, is much more damaging psychologically.
The risk is still there for them. Gaslighting them to thinking it’s not, and calling it their anxiety and OCD is massively missing the point, that the risk hasn’t gone away.

So whilst on a population level, covid may seem mild, on an individual level, for those people any infection could mean weeks of hospital stay, never recovering to baseline or death. And the worst thing is people like you telling them to get over it and making it out to be a personal failure and their own mental health issues.

Without considering that the back to normal crowd also need to deal with their own anxiety.

And the best way isn’t to pretend it didn’t happen or doesn’t still happen.

IMO a big rise in mental health diagnosis is down to there actually being lots of “scary” things happening in the world and the people who should be helping work through these thoughts, actually feed it by not accepting it as a threat, and making it a pathological issue in the person feeling it, rather than acknowledging the actual threat Eg. Climate change, war, health.

People don’t need an ignorant reassurer - they need a competence and understanding of the facts.

I’m sorry.

I think it’s also telling that many countries made sure their ventilation and filtration systems in government were up to scratch in 2020, even if that meant new installations - England, France, Spain, Australia, America, Canada etc.

There are studies galore about the impacts covid is having, long covid has overtaken asthma as most common chronic illness in America, sick days have increased, working when sick has also increased, long term sick has increased, economists have been raising flags over the costs of infections for years. Scientists, doctors, infectious disease specialists, some politicians have been raising flags for years too. Violet didn’t come up with it on her own.

The guidance on acceptable indoor air quality in classrooms in England is at a much more unhealthy level than the EU, Canada, Australia, America - and it’s still not adhered to. Even if you take covid out of the equation and reduce viruses that are ok to be talked about, childrens’ concentration is improved, attendance is improved, it helps children with asthma and allergies - why don’t parents want this for their children? Even when pressure to attend work/school when unwell or contagious is ramped up, teacher absence mirrors pupil absence. It is ok to increase spending on supply staff though. It is ok to sit in a meeting the teacher session, with a teacher barely able to speak, windows closed and high CO2 reading, talking about the importance of attendance.

There will be children getting reinfected today who will never experience a healthy Christmas again. There will be parents who will never be able to work again, or take their children out for the day on a weekend because of their child bringing home covid again. Oh, and long covid clinics are being closed and not due to demand either.

When someone with long covid becomes a high healthcare user, they have to hope that the person they have an appointment with or someone in the waiting room, unventilated rooms, maskless, coughing isn’t going to permanently affect their health even more. They have to put up with a ton of ignorance about what covid can do and pray that someone can help. If they are admitted into hospital and become further unwell and recognise their symptoms as covid, they may not want to spread it to others on their ward. How easy do you think it is to get tested in hospital now? Ten per cent of people who catch covid in hospital die from it.

I think it’s heinous what is being done to children, but for argument’s sake, assume I didn’t give a damn about health, education, pressure on NHS resources, work, quality of life etc and was only concerned about the economic impact. I would love someone to show me why addressing IAQ is cost-effective for governments, but not for children. I would love someone to show me how we can afford the increasing fallout of doing nothing to address this.

It’s not odd.
The research is there to show the effects of infection are cumulative.
If you have already had a post viral illness it puts you are great risk of it happening again.
You seem to have big opinions but few actual facts. (Maybe ones picked up from the daily mail).

Masks work, not 100%, but a well fitting FFP2/3 that she is wearing will significantly reduce both exposure and viral load when worn correctly.

As does cleaning the air and ventilating spaces. (The Houses of Parliament underwent large renovations to their ventilation and filtering of air during 2020, as did lots of theatres in the west end).

Children do suffer with post-viral syndromes. Millions of people in the U.K. alone have Long Covid. We have no long-range data about the safety or danger of repeated infections over decades.
We know that flu can damage the heart, colds can ignite dormant cancer, and many viruses can reactivate (shingles for Chickenpox Pox, ME links to EBV etc).

It is also the UN clean air group meeting. So it’s relevant. She is not the only person wearing and giving evidence in a mask.

If the air was cleaner and better ventilated in shared spaces, then people who are at higher risk, wouldn’t need to take so many precautions to remain healthy.

It’s such a shame you just reduce this down to anxiety and mental health issues. Which is why I do believe you are Max or someone close to or working for him. Getting clicks for your article.

Just because you are unable to think outside your own sphere of ‘knowledge’ and own bias doesn’t mean someone else, who has come to a different conclusion, is mentally ill. Or anxious. Or wrong.

It’s what has happened throughout time. Someone thinks differently to you. So you feel threatened. Something not like you. So to feel safe, due to your own anxiety, you have to pathologise that person, and ostracise them from the rest of the tribe.

Maybe the anxiety and grief is yours to work through. You feel safer if you don’t have a reminder that there was and is the possibility for pandemics. You feel safer if you can compartmentalise the grief or understanding that you continue to put your own health at risk every time you go out. You feel safer if you can whip up enough energy from people “like you” to also ostracise the other person from the tribe.
All this to quell your own anxiety. You make it about someone else’s that you perceive.

Same sort of thing that happened in witch trials and to people like Ignaz Semmelweis.

Can anyone confirm that the OP isn’t the author of the Daily Mail 🤣 articles. Max is that you - trying to be relevant?

I've not seen recent polling levels so wouldn't want to guess at percentage of support. But opppsition appears to be enough that any attempt at a mandate would create problems. People who advocate for it never seem to proactively address obvious issues relating to exemptions, enforcement and stigma, which doesn't help.

The problem of people assuming masking mission creep is exacerbated by the frequency of advocates saying they also want masks in other public spaces- transport is a common favourite, as seen upthread, and stupid.

I've not seen recent polling levels so wouldn't want to guess at percentage of support. But opppsition appears to be enough that any attempt at a mandate would create issues. People who advocate for it never seem to proactively address obvious issues relating to exemptions, enforcement and stigma, which doesn't help.

The problem of people assuming masking mission creep is exacerbated by the presence of someone in basically every discussion saying they also want masks in other public spaces- transport is a common favourite, as seen upthread, and stupid.

Edit- to clarify, this is a response to the recent posts about masking

What’s really depressing is that nothing seems to have been learnt. We had a worldwide pandemic of a virus that has left hundreds of thousand of people, including my own child, permanently disabled. Yet, because of our politicians deliberate obfuscation of the entire experience, many people remain wilfully ignorant and we now can’t start even a discussion on reducing transmission of air borne viruses without being accused of being bat shit crazy, told to get over it, that Covid’s just a cold, blah blah blah.

The amount of ignorance that still surrounds clean air astounds me. In the last few weeks I’ve attended two GP appointments and two hospital appointments. In each case, consultation rooms I went into were the size of a shoe box, windows sealed shut. Surely by now it should be second nature to open windows in a medical setting, when the weather allows. This is such a simple step to reduce air borne viruses. And it’s free!

How anyone can argue against clean air in schools and hospitals is absolutely beyond me, but here they are on this thread. I’m actually quite envious of their ignorance.

Some people think it will harm their immune systems if they don't breathe in pathogens all day. Unfortunately the majority of people have no idea how the immune system works.

I think there are a vocal minority who are against masks in healthcare settings.

Baffles me why people are so anti clean air. I kind of get why clean air zones would be unpopular because there are some pay offs e.g. convenience/charges. But what’s the issue with sticking a corsi-rosenthal box or similar in the corner of a classroom?

Covid asked the question how much do we care about kids health. Turns out the answer seems to have been not that much.

She only mentioned them in healthcare which is reasonable, but I see what you're saying, people have such a hysterical reactions to masks it is easier not to mention them. In some ways it doesn't make a difference though, many previous posters insisted that air filters, or any reference to cleaning the air whatsoever actually meant masks, so it is very difficult to communicate about air quality.

Speaking as one who would like better air quality and is interested in improvement measures, I'd advise anyone wanting to campaign on that to say absolutely nothing at all about mask mandates. They're unpopular and thus unenforceable. It simply detracts from the point.

Unfortunately Violet has already made this particular mistake. Unless someone invents a time machine, it might be in her best interests to disavow her previous comments and state that she now wants to focus on air quality measures.

Also, HEPA air filters, which Violet Affleck was primarily talking about and which many people on here are either incapable of understanding or determined to ignore because they do not fit with the ignorant nonsense they want to post, have nothing to do with masks and don't impede communication in any way.