Texas becomes biggest US state to lift COVID-19 mask mandate

I don't think you made the point you intended to make, but you did make a good point.

LOL

 

Now if only you would grasp the point. I keep waiting, but it appears that day will never come.

 

Okay. Here's one.

A mix of states with and without mask requirements.

Pretend you have no preconceived notion about the effectiveness about masks.

Guess which states have had mask mandates and which have not.

 

Do lifeguards matter or not? This shouldn't be migraine-inducing to answer. Why pretend that it is a difficult question?

 

The pool is closed in winter and there is no lifeguard. Drowning deaths are zero.
The pool opens and a lifeguard is present. Drowning deaths increase a trillion bazillion percent above 0.
The lifeguard's presence caused the drowning deaths.

 

So without any preconceptions, my issues would be:

1) This only covers a one-month period
2) The scales for each graph are different
3) Number of cases would be a much better measure than hospitalization rate, given the question we are supposedly trying to answer
4) County-level would be more accurate still, since even states that supposedly have mask mandates are not exactly consistent about enforcing them. Texas had a mask mandate, and I was mocked for wearing a mask when I visited my family in rural Texas . . . no one was wearing one.
5) If we were, for whatever reason, limited to only comparing states, the honest thing to do would be to compare all states that have mask mandates to all of those that do not . . . which has already been done. I linked to it.

 

Funny....

 

Now try, at least try, putting on the same thinking cap and looking at the COVID numbers you posted. Is there a reason why there would be a spike in winter?

 

Those of us who have had family members who have died or were hospitalized due to this pandemic may not find it so funny.

 

Yes. It's cold/flu/Covid season and the holidays. Masks or no masks, people get more respiratory illnesses in cold months and when doing a lot of traveling/mingling. It's happened for centuries...when people didn't wear masks.

 

And more drownings have always happened during the summer. For centuries. Does that mean that lifeguards don't matter?

 

God works in mysterious ways.

Apparently, so do mask mandates.

LOL

...and then cold and flu season ended....

 

It's kind of the same everywhere you look....

 

Yes. Now if only you could be honest about your comparisons. This is no different than saying that snow chains don't work because there was still a spike of people getting stuck in the ice in the winter. Lifeguards don't work because there was a spike of drownings in the summer. Sun screen doesn't work because there's a spike of sun damage in the summer. Headlights don't work because there are still more crashes at night than during the day. Stop me when this sinks in.

 

Now imagine two states, 1 has lifeguards and the other does not, yet their drowning deaths per capita are similar.

 

Texas is checked because the lifting of the mask mandate doesn't officially start until Monday the 8th.

Doesn't really seem to matter though. All the trend lines are the same.

 

But only when you look at things for a very limited amount of time and don't consider variations at a county level and completely ignore an overall comparison of the states with lifeguards and those without.

Actual question: would it surprise you to find out that the drowning deaths in Hawaii were much higher than those in Montana, regardless of the number of lifeguards? Would that mean that lifeguards don't matter?

Now imagine counties in the same state. The counties without lifeguards have twice the number of drowning deaths as those with lifeguards. Would that give you some pause?

 

I live in Texas. You claim to as well. I see people go maskless all of the time, especially in rural areas. I've been mocked and harassed for wearing a mask. Imagine we looked within a state and controlled for policies and enforcement and found that the drowning deaths in non-lifeguard counties within that state were twice the drowning deaths of lifeguard counties.

 

We should still be wearing masks but it’s obvious having official mandates and draconian shutdowns didn’t do anything besides hurt economies and didn’t save significant lives. FL didn’t suffer more deaths than NY or CA or most of the NE, yet our economy didn’t implode nearly as badly like theirs did. AND we have a lot more elderly compared to them. Desantis did many things right while Leftist governors screwed up over and over again.

 

I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were trying to argue that safety features were ineffective. I agree that car safety features are very effective. I am, however also arguing that masks are effective, which you don't seem to be. (or did I misunderstand again?)

 

~ Here is something interesting about viral transmission / infection :

https://sph.umd.edu/news-item/flu-m...tudy-shows-coughing-and-sneezing-not-required

We learn as we go. The flu has always been elusive to prevent. Hopefully the vaccines will put an end to at least the Wuhan Special version .

 

Trump is so weak a Limp asparagus beat him .............. Hah !!

 

As everyone knows, the Republicans have been playing Extreme Hard Ball for quite some time. It's time for the Democrats to do likewise. They should first eliminate filibustering, and then pass a federal law on compliance with COVID mandates. And never mind the states rights nonsense. When Texas goes rogue and acts in some way that puts Texans at great risk by rejecting established science and the result is a Texas spike in COVID cases, that affects not only the entire nation, but the whole world! "How?" you ask. COVID transmission is how variants are created, and violations of good science, like lifting mask mandates, increases transmission and cases. And new variants stand a very good chance of rendering the existing vaccines ineffective and useless. And that variant will spread around the world.

So to protect me and all Americans, AND to protect the rest of humanity, our federal government should take total control of all COVID management and pass laws to accomplish it.

 

~ I do believe that pesky document called the U.S. Constitution prohibits that.