While watching TV last night, I turned briefly to the Emmys and saw a lot of people in close quarters indoors joyously singing a song. Good for them. One of the biggest losses from the government’s lockdowns is the socialization that is so much a part of our being human. “Man is a social animal,” said Aristotle, and man, are we ever seeing how true that is!
Here’s what I wonder. I wonder how many of those few dozen people I saw shame others who don’t wear masks or, even worse, advocate mask mandates.
There’s an old line: “Practice what you preach.” But that’s not apposite here.
What I want them to do is preach what they practice.
They practice not wearing masks. Then they should preach against mask usage for the vaccinated and against government mask mandates. Maybe some of them already do. Good. All of them should.
Note: the pic above is of a group at the Emmys last night.
UPDATE: Check out the San Francisco mayor’s justification for going maskless at another singing event. She gets to decide what is an important event that justifies going maskless. As well she should be able to. But so should we.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Sep 20 2021 at 9:17pm
Do you really decide how you behave based upon how people in Hollywood behave? I find that hard to believe but just because I dont doesn’t mean you cant. You can always find someone behaving badly or like a hypocrite to justify your own behaviors if you want but I think it makes a lot more sense to base your beliefs and behaviors based on reason, evidence and a good moral base.
David Henderson
Sep 20 2021 at 10:03pm
You wrote:
No. I’m not sure why you ask.
You wrote:
I agree. Vaccines are quite effective. One should take that into account in deciding whether to mask. Also masks are iffy. One should take that into account also.
Alan Goldhammer
Sep 21 2021 at 8:39am
Vaccines are indeed key but the problem is that herd immunity for Covid-19 appears to be in the measles range, requiring as much as 90% of the populace to be vaccinated in order to provide reasonable protection for everyone. This is why we continue to see high levels of Covid-19 and hospitalizations in areas where vaccine uptake is under 50%.
I challenge David’s assertion that masks are iffy. The key problem is that most people have not purchased the right masks, nor do hey put them on correctly. We have been using South Korean KF-94 masks for some time now (make sure you purchase them from a reliable supplier as mass merchants seem to be selling lots of counterfeits). These masks are almost foolproof in terms of providing the correct seal to one’s face. The price has come down appreciably and I find that I can wear one for a couple of days (I only wear them when going into stores where there is a closed environment and questionable ventilation.
In the end it comes down to a personal benefit-risk decision and certainly as someone who is >65 years of age, my decision is likely much different than someone in their 20s.
zeke5123
Sep 21 2021 at 10:02am
The problem isn’t getting to 90%; the problem is that the vaccines are pretty leaky.
As for masking, nice sleight of hand to go from “masks work” to a particular kind of mask used properly works. If your intervention requires a particular kind of mask with a particular kind of use, then (i) don’t broadly advocate for masks (or challenge claims masks are iffy), (ii) be humble in that any intervention will face real world challenges (including humans not wearing them right) and those can’t be hand waved away when setting policy, and (iii) agree that yes cloth masks don’t really do anything, but then say XZY mask could help.
Alan Goldhammer
Sep 21 2021 at 10:55am
I have no idea what you mean by vaccines being ‘leaky.’ If you mean that breakthrough infections might occur, yes that is true. The critical issue is whether vaccines prevent excessive hospitalization and mortality. The answer to this is that they do. You cite the data from Israel, but from what I can see only 80% of the population has been vaxxed which is short of what is needed for herd immunity.
Your statement about masks is puzzling as well. Even rudimentary masks can offer some protection. I’m reminded about what I learned in high school sex education many years ago (1965 to be exact; and I have no clue whether this is even taught anymore). The teacher was discussing various means of contraception and the probability of a girl (again this is the language of many years ago) getting pregnant. If two methods of birth control are used each with 90% efficacy markedly improves (you can do the high school math here). It’s similar with using masks. Don’t you wonder why there are no major Covid-19 outbreaks in South Korea and Taiwan? Even China has very low rate of outbreak though they do take draconian action if there is one.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 21 2021 at 11:26am
But cloth masks DO block a few viral particles at little cost and inconvenience. Better masks would block more at a little more cost and inconvenience. Where you land is indeterminate, but zero masking looks odd to me. And just signaling good will to other people ought to be worth something, too.
MikeP
Sep 21 2021 at 11:42am
Don’t you wonder why there are no major Covid-19 outbreaks in South Korea and Taiwan?
They are islands with tight borders. Amazingly, the less masked nations of New Zealand and Australia can say the same thing.
suddyan
Sep 22 2021 at 7:47am
[Allan Goldhammer: Vaccines are indeed key but the problem is that herd immunity for Covid-19 appears to be in the measles range, requiring as much as 90% of the populace to be vaccinated in order to provide reasonable protection for everyone.]
Completely false. “Herd Immunity” does not require vaccines. “Reasonable” protection for everyone is what every individual reasonably wants for themselves. If your own “reasonable” pretection says you want a vaccine then go ahead. My personal “reasonable” protection says I have something even better: proven treatment protocols and natural immunity.
What I regard as UNREASONABLE is you possibly trying to force your own, subjective, unreasonable assessment of “reasonable” onto me.
But that seems to ever be your style. Your endeless regurgitations of falsehoods advancing coercion and control over others (of which you have now delivered yet another prime example) leads me to conclude that.
My conclusion: You are not a good person.
Mark Z
Sep 22 2021 at 1:18pm
Herd immunity almost certainly does require vaccines. Over the course of 2020, perhaps 30% of people got covid. It would probably take almost 3 years for enough people to get it to reach herd immunity, and immunity already shows signs of wearing off in some people within 1 year; more relevant, new variants that escape the immune system seem to arise more than fast enough to render accomplished immunity less effective. IOW, more people would need to be innoculated in a shorter timeframe to achieve herd immunity than is possible via just letting it burn though, and only via vaccines can that be done.
I can’t for the life of me understand why some people prefer natural infection to vaccines as a means of innoculation, in any case.
MikeP
Sep 22 2021 at 1:41pm
Herd immunity almost certainly does require vaccines.
Interestingly, we do not have herd immunity against the four common cold coronaviruses. Why should we believe we will have or even want herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2?
The most likely case is that, a few years from now, SARS-CoV-2 will simply be the fifth coronavirus common cold. Everyone will catch it every few years, and as few will die after their first time catching it as die from any other common cold.
After all, SARS-CoV-2 behaves very much like a common cold in children. The younger they are the less harmful it is to them, and they then have lasting immunity that means all subsequent times it will produce no more than cold symptoms.
We can thank vaccines for reducing to near zero the chance of death in the older and more vulnerable from their first time catching SARS-CoV-2. We now should do whatever we can to allow the more contagious and less lethal variants of this respiratory virus to evolve naturally, as they have evolved throughout humanity’s history. In particular, we should let people get back to living. If healthy people dominate the spread of SARS-CoV-2, then only variants that allow healthy people to keep walking around and spreading it will win out over more lethal variants.
By persistently locking down and social distancing, we are treading ground never seen before in the hundreds of thousands of years of humanity’s existence. It is a frightening and uncontrolled experiment on our collective immune systems and coevolving viruses.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 21 2021 at 11:19am
I can’t believe the emotional energy that goes into the anti-mask movement.
It seems that masks reduce somewhat the outward transmission of viral particles from an asymptomatic infected person and another potentially infectible person. The benefit depends of course on the environment (distance ventilation) and the susceptibility of the other persons (age, vaccine status) and if evaluated case by case in some circumstances the benefits would fall below the tiny inconvenience of wearing a mask, which of course also varies with the circumstance (not being able to smile at the supermarket cashier or at your partner over dinner or at a party.) Perhaps the recommendation should be something like what I just described, but as a practical matter, “wear a mask indoors except while eating or drinking” is not too far from optimum and probably good enough taking into account that no one is going to be hauled off to jail for violating the rule.
David Henderson
Sep 21 2021 at 12:25pm
You write:
Two comments:
I’m guessing that that’s because you have little sympathy for people for whom masks are a big deal. You refer to the “the tiny inconvenience of wearing a mask.” That’s the tell. For many people, it is not tiny at all. I had to wear a mask for 12 hours straight last month while traveling from Grand Forks to Minneapolis to Atlanta to San Jose. That inconvenience was not “tiny.”
It’s important to distinguish between the “anti-mask movement,” which does exist, and the “anti-mandated-mask movement,” which also exists. To be sure, there is overlap but it’s not total.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 21 2021 at 5:40pm
You are right. I do not have that much sympathy for those who thing wearing a mask has a high cost. I too had to wear a mask for 12 or so hours between Cortez CO and Washington DC. Yes, I’d rather not have worn it, but knowing I was doing something to prevent someone from contracting COVID-19 and reassuring them that I was considerate of their health was worth it.
Ryan M
Sep 22 2021 at 11:31am
I couldn’t agree more.
I have not worn a mask at all during the past 18 months, except twice at the doctor’s office. Both times I had trouble breathing and could feel my pulse elevating noticeably. I am rather claustrophobic, to the point of panic attacks. And it a completely unconscious response – my brain says one thing, but my body responds differently.
Due in part to my extreme aversion to masks, I began doing tons of research from day one. I am not against doing something that is truly beneficial, but I want to know that it actually is. I am amazed at how many people repeat the “official” line on masks (which has only been official – and opposite to the accepted understanding prior to this – since about March of last year), when virtually all of the evidence shows that masks are little better than useless. Cloth masks may very well do more harm than good, and very few people use the right mask correctly. Even so, the cost in human interaction, facial recognition and expression, and the ultimate de-humanization of the public greatly exceeds any scant benefit they might provide.
I don’t know if this blog allows links to other articles, but there is an excellent rundown of the actual science on masks over at City Journal.
David S
Sep 21 2021 at 2:59pm
“the tiny inconvenience of wearing a mask.”
This is true for many people. For all people, the mask decreases blood oxygen levels. For healthy people, this doesn’t matter. For many people, this gives them headaches and other stress symptoms, which they may not associate with the masks. For others, it causes fainting and death.
Also, small children should never wear masks, as the risk of death is too high. Yet a mask mandate often makes parents put a mask on the child, through misunderstanding of the rules. It would be interesting if it were possible to estimate how many children have been killed by misunderstanding the mask mandates. Unfortunately it looks like the data I have access to (even for top level deaths of children under 5) is limited to 2019 and earlier.
A mandate force everyone into the same bucket. We live in different buckets.
suddyan
Sep 22 2021 at 7:54am
[Thomas Lee Hutcheson says: I can’t believe the emotional energy that goes into the anti-mask movement.]
And I cannot believe the emotional energy and ideology that goes into the mandatory mask movement – where masks have utterly failed to stop the spread (which years of established science suggested was going to be the case).
Yet when one extremely poor study like the “Bangladesh” one manages to wring a poor conclusion out of the statistically convoluted data, it is blasted across all the believers’ media, while the mases of real-world empirical evidence invalidating mask mandates (see Popper and falsification) is ignored.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson is a prime example of what he claims the “others” are.
Ryan M
Sep 22 2021 at 11:42am
Perhaps the most damaging impact of the mask-zealot movement is the notion that your mask protects me against you. That was a fairly obvious piece of propaganda and is not supported by the actual scientific evidence. It does, however, go a long way toward pitting neighbor against neighbor and sowing distrust and resentment. When people say that wearing a mask is courteous, I would counter that so is smiling at someone and actually exhibiting kindness. Masks are a very poor substitute for actual human interaction, and only a truly decadent society would accept that substitute.
But there is also this to consider. I have been asking repeatedly since day one – if masks work, what is the end-game? They will never eradicate this virus, which much spread widely and often before it will dissipate. It is necessary, eventually, that everyone be exposed. So if masks work, what is the point of masks? To avoid an illness that everyone must eventually get? The purported justification was to avoid hospitals being overrun, but that has been proven time and time again to be unnecessary. If the justification is simply to avoid getting sick, then we have to accept that masks are to be a permanent staple of human existence forever. So mask zealots have no end-game. It’s “wear this mask for the rest of your life,” and along with that a turn toward what truly is a totalitarian impulse to coerce acceptance of that “new reality.” The losses in liberty and human flourishing are impossible to quantify. And the losses in life will be exactly the same, just spread out over a longer period of time. Whereas, all of our experience with viruses tells us that if the virus were simply allowed to “run its course,” it would become endemic (this has already largely happened) and very likely become the next common cold. Even the evidence from the past 18 months confirms the truth of this, yet we persist in these unbelievably destructive courses of action, which serve well to tear apart societies and eliminate liberty (just look at Australia), and which serve very poorly to actually mitigate any actual costs of viral spread.
MikeP
Sep 21 2021 at 3:33am
I think it makes a lot more sense to base your beliefs and behaviors based on reason, evidence and a good moral base.
If I based my behaviors on reason, evidence, and a good moral base, I would offend legions of people — for example, most of the other people at high school football games where we all, beyond any sense of sanity, are required to wear masks.
Instead, while my beliefs are well-grounded in reason, evidence, and a good moral base, my behaviors must be tempered and restrained so as not to upset or offend or get me thrown out or arrested. I am quite happy to not argue with people who believe that masks are useful and to let them mask themselves if they let others go mask-free. But I don’t have that option indoors in my county and outdoors in my kids’ school districts.
So I choose to behave based on other people’s essentially religious assertions, a complete lack of evidence, and sheer immorality as freedoms and rights are abrogated with no regard to cost or benefits.
David Henderson
Sep 21 2021 at 9:30am
You write:
I think you’re still basing your behavior on reason, evidence, and a good moral base, even when you’re masking outdoors where it’s absurd to do so. It’s the reason part. You reason that if you don’t do it, you’ll be punished in some way or prevented from attending.
Something that helps me deal with government in these situations is to think of it as a big angry bear. That helps me not moralize too much and, instead, to just remember to focus on how to survive and thrive around the big angry bear. That’s why I pay the incredibly high taxes I pay; it’s why I don’t bother fighting expensive traffic tickets for driving in ways that endangered no one; etc.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 21 2021 at 11:31am
Outdoors but close proximity and likely shouting seems like a borderline case of where masks would do more good than harm. At least it’s close enough not to get all “victim-y” about having your reason trampled upon.
MikeP
Sep 21 2021 at 12:57pm
The effectiveness of surgical and cloth masks is somewhere between 0% and 20%, with all RCTs before 2020 and after 2020 landing at 0%. I count the Bangladesh study as demonstrating 0% effectiveness since the effectiveness has an age gradient that is 0% for all age cohorts under 50 — i.e., all age cohorts at low risk from COVID.
Meanwhile, vaccines are highly effective against severe illness and death, and SARS-CoV-2 is essentially endemic in all well-connected polities.
So between masks being at most 20% effective, people having complete autonomy to vaccinate themselves against severe illness and death, and the fact that everyone is going to catch it eventually, there is no valid reason to control spread with mandates that force people to wear masks against their will.
At least it’s close enough not to get all “victim-y” about having your reason trampled upon.
Masks are physically oppressive, psychologically oppressive, and — if one believes they are useless and their mandates are unwarranted — spiritually oppressive.
“Close enough?” Close enough for the force of the state to be employed? As a society, we used to ask for more than that.
Philo
Sep 21 2021 at 4:05pm
If all you can say in favor of masks at football games is that they might do (slightly) more good than bad, should you not be objecting to official mask mandates at football games?
suddyan
Sep 22 2021 at 7:59am
[Thomas Lee Hutcheson says: At least it’s close enough not to get all “victim-y” about having your reason trampled upon.]
Well, if only people like Thomas Lee Hutcheson was not so unscientifically and unreasonably “oppress-y.”
Let me put it bluntly: People like Thomas Lee Hutcheson started it. And then they have the gall to preach that we should not “get all victim-y.'”
No, they should stop being “oppress-y” first. Then we would have no problem.
MikeP
Sep 21 2021 at 12:13am
I agree completely.
I don’t call these people hypocrites. I call them people. They are making a choice on what risks to take both individually and — because presumably they have been thoroughly advised — as potential contributors to spread in the population.
This carries three clear benefits over calling them hypocrites:
1. It encourages others to exercise their own individual judgment of their own risks and responsibilities.
2. It encourages those people to realize that, just maybe, others would also want to take the risks they have taken and that therefore they should fight for more freedoms.
3. It tacks against moralizing Puritan reactions that poison interpersonal relations.
Interestingly, it is in the interest of the media to work against all three of those benefits.
David Henderson
Sep 21 2021 at 9:25am
Well put, Mike P.
Dylan
Sep 21 2021 at 9:16am
To be somewhat fair, you’re not privy to what other precautions might have been required. I’m speaking at a small, indoors event next week. Everyone must show proof of vaccination and have a negative covid test. Everyone except the person speaking will be masked along with other precautions.
I think some of these are overkill. I think some aren’t really supported by “the science.” But I’d also be surprised if something like the Emmy’s didn’t have similar or more strict rules in place.
David Henderson
Sep 21 2021 at 9:34am
Dylan,
Good point. After I wrote this and was telling my wife about it, she told me that everyone at the Emmys was required to be vaccinated.
But there are many people around, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were in the group at the Emmys, for whom that’s not enough when they’re talking about other people’s behavior or advocating further restrictions even on the vaccinated. That certainly fits the London Breed story; she requires masks even for those who are vaccinated.
I’m curious, if you want to share: what event will you be speaking at? What’s the topic?
zeke5123
Sep 21 2021 at 10:07am
The data from Israel strongly suggests the vaccines are very leaky. So, if there is a public health concern about stopping the spread, then it seems vaccination status is relatively not that important (i.e., there may be some benefit, but it isn’t close to sterilizing). But I don’t think there is a real public health concern about stopping the spread — the vast vast vast majority of at risk people have the person option of taking a vaccine that prevents most serious harms. Once people can choose to largely protect themselves, then the public health justification seems weak.
Mark Z
Sep 21 2021 at 3:47pm
I’m not quite sure what ‘leaky’ means, but if what Alan Goldhammer surmises above about what you mean by this, then Israel doesn’t support your claim nearly as much as you think. I’d recommend Jeffrey Morris’s blog post on this to get a full explanation, but the apparent weak effectiveness of vaccination in Israel is mostly an artifact of vaccination status correlating very strongly with age, and age correlating strongly with probability of infection and hospitalization. After taking this into account, Morris finds vaccines still appear to be about 92% effective for people <50 and 85% effective for people >50 at preventing severe disease (actually, >90% for both groups based on latest data).
Dylan
Sep 21 2021 at 12:15pm
Of course, hypocrisy is so prevalent that I’m disinclined to point out anything but the most egregious examples. I’m honestly pretty surprised that a big event like the Emmys didn’t have more restrictions in place than my small event, just from a PR perspective point of view.
I’m emceeing an event in NYC for tech startups that is sponsored by a Fortune 500 company. My understanding is the sponsor is the one that is behind the list of requirements. They are also keeping the audience to around 30 in a space that is designed to sit more than 5x that number.
Phil H
Sep 22 2021 at 6:46am
Once again, a bizarre debate sparked by literally nothing. Neither Henderson nor anyone else in this debate has any idea if any of the people seen at those parties are involved in any kind of mask advocacy.
I don’t mind calling out hypocrisy when we actually see hypocrisy. But this is… just made up. Why debate a fantasy about the way you think celebrities behave?
Jon Murphy
Sep 22 2021 at 10:58am
Do not assume that just because you are unaware of something that everyone must be as well. A Google search will find countless examples of these folks advocating masks and mandates and bemoaning not-wearing masks.
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