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b)  if the benefit of masks is one fucking life, then yeah, stop bitching about it and mask up

This type of reasoning is a fallacy. 

Literally the world is full of things that we could do differently that would save 'one effing life' and we don't do those things. 

In fact, there are a lot of things that we could do differently that would save far more lives. 

• We could make tobacco products illegal.
• We could ban sales of alcohol.
• We could institute 25 mph speed limits on all public roads.
• We could ban drive-through restaurants (or some other ban targeted at fast food products).

The biggest killers in the US are heart disease, cancer, accidents, and chronic respiratory diseases.

Banning tobacco would take a big step out of heart disease, cancer, and respiratory diseases, and lower death rates by those causes. Banning fast food or otherwise forcing Americans into a healthier diet would help considerably with heart disease and diabetes and obesity, and lower death rates by those causes. Motor vehicle fatalities are around 35K annually--I'll bet you could drop that 50% by mandating a 25 mph speed limit coast to coast. 


We don't do these things because there's a balancing test between freedom, cost, efficiency, and safety. 

We wore masks to protect the vulnerable. Now the vulnerable have access to vaccines which are FAR more effective than masks to protect them. So why do we still need the masks?

No, not at all.

Last year, in Texas at least, any and all schools that were in-person, were 100% masked.  My kids went to school from September 2020-May 2021, and wore masks every single day.  That is true of all other children in Texas who went in-person.

This year, there will be large school districts that maintain mask mandates, but there will also be large school districts that do not.  And it's going to be easy to determine if we see a pop in cases/hospitalizations/ICU/death based on those well-defined geographical boundaries.

We're getting an almost perfect scientific control group and test groups out of this occurrence.

I'll certainly be paying attention to the data.

California has a statewide mask mandate in schools. 

By comparison to some states like TX/FL that are banning mandates statewide, it definitely should give us comparison data.

That data (and the conclusions it should generate) will be agreed upon by almost nobody and almost everyone will have the same opinions on masks at the conclusion of the 2021-22 school year as they did before the year started. 

With a credible base size in the millions, we might see a small difference.

That data (and the conclusions it should generate) will be agreed upon by almost nobody and almost everyone will have the same opinions on masks at the conclusion of the 2021-22 school year as they did before the year started.

my opinion exactly

Wrong.  Our district ditched the masks during the latter part of the spring semester.  Seems like it was March or April but the last few months they did not wear masks.  The sky did not fall, no more or no less kids got corona, and the kids that I know that got corona didn't really get sick either. 

Most importantly no kids or teachers died and I don't even think any teachers had to be hospitalized. 

course all the mask supporters will argue that your past experience was not with the new variant delta

but I dont think it will make a difference and some experts say that even though this new strain is faster spreading that its not as strong

course all the mask supporters will argue that your past experience was not with the new variant delta

but I dont think it will make a difference and some experts say that even though this new strain is faster spreading that its not as strong

I would like to know how they even know it was delta?  I don't think your run of the mill test will tell you that, the only way to know is to do a sequence on it and I wonder how many of those are being done?  

There will be additional noise if kids under 12 start getting vaccinated in disparate numbers.