Lifting Masks = Back to Getting Down With The Sickness

Phoenixmgs

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You are obviously less likely to get a "super-spreader" event. Indoors the air moves little and is relatively constrained, so virus-containing particles can hang around in the room air for potentially long periods of time, amassing relatively high concentrations and posing a risk even to people substantially distant or who enter the room after the infected person leaves. Outdoors the virus will more readily be dispersed. However, infected people can still pose a sufficiently substantial risk to people close to them that it warrants masks as a precaution. In some environments like stadia or the pub garden above, there is a substantial risk of transmission relating to proximity, length of time in contact, and reduced air movement (obstruction of wind by walls, etc.). The distance the people at the pub garden were at, they'll be showering each other with small droplets of saliva just with regular conversation.
Really, you're still pushing for outdoor events being "sufficiently substantial risk"? Indianapolis just had the Indy 500 with 135,000 people and no outbreaks from that event and not even half of Marion county (the county where the race takes place) are vaccinated as the county is waiting to hit 50% vaccinated to remove all restrictions. I'm literally in Marion county for work right now and nobody is at all concerned about the virus here, barely any masks being worn (outside or inside). Heck, I don't even bring a mask in my pocket anymore in case I'm asked. At this point, if they do ask for me to wear a mask (which no one has), I'll ask for them to provide me a mask because that's what companies got federal funding for, to provide masks to customers.

I don't think people should be prevented from congregating outside currently. I just think in certain circumstances, mask-wearing should be recommended or even insisted upon.
So we're in agreement then, telling people to not congregate outside causes more infections than it stops?
 

crimson5pheonix

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The word mask is not even in my source.
Quit using ctrl-F and read.

The CDC says WHEN YOU'RE SICK
Why are you capitalizing that?

Funny how nobody has yet to comment on the study that looked at all the US states for a year and compared infection rates in with regards to mask mandates and survey data of how many did wear masks, and found "Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level COVID-19 spread during COVID-19 growth surges."
Because the rest of us look at SE Asia and already know that's a load of bullshit.
 

Buyetyen

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Are people without an issue (say mental illness) not allowed to read what doctors in that field are saying and post a link to what they said? Is a white person not supposed to listen to what a black person says about black issues and post a link to what they said?
I have no idea what point you think you're making but I'm sure it's irrelevant to whatever I was thinking.
 

Agema

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Show me the data and I'm willing to change my tune.
No you will not change your tune. You get shown data, and you start nitpicking or bullshitting complaints that apply more to any data you have presented, except that you neglected to subject them to critical analysis in the first place.

Covid is very close to SARS, there's no reason to believe it won't act more similar to SARS than it does to common cold coronaviruses.
I've just explained a way SARS-CoV-2 acts more like common coronaviruses than it does SARS-CoV-1 just to illustrate how unsafe that reasoning is.

You keep saying all these things and you literally have no proof that backs up anything you say.
I presented some time back a thorough analysis of publications on Vit D and covid (and other respiratory diseases) by an expert panel of the UK government. It will be amongst the most thorough reviews of the area according to current knowledge that you will be able to lay your eyes upon. And yet here you are telling everyone you Googled an article or two or saw a YouTube clip of Rhonda Whoever and that makes you the best informed man around.

I don't care if it was others that said HCQ was an antiviral, but it wasn't me.
Your argument is in essence that you didn't call it an antiviral despite the fact that it was under study precisely because it was believed to be an antiviral, whilst you were touting it as having an antiviral mechanism of action. In other words, you are attempting to claim you didn't say something that you absolutely should have been saying if you knew anything about the field. In which case, you are arguing you are ignorant and incompetent.

I've been saying the same thing for over a year...
...and it's basically been all wrong.

You did essentially the classic error of every half-arsed amateur: you read an article or two and assumed they were true, and didn't think you needed to know anything more. Unfortunately, getting science right is about knowing the wider field.

For instance, the key to writing a literature review is to start by reading the literature, because it is only by knowing the literature in the first place that you can build on it with appropriate analysis and conclusions. I see this in student literature reviews. They read a paper, add that to their text, then they read another paper and add that to their text, and so on until they hit the word limit. This is evident in three seconds flat because papers contradict each other and so the lit review contradicts itself, or there is repetition because papers are basically saying the same thing but the student hasn't realised, and any number of other faults. It's even stuff like calling adrenaline "adrenaline" in one place and "epinephrine" in another, because they're just copying whatever the last paper they read said rather than synthesising a coherent work.

One of the useful things about having read the field first is then sorting out what is more or less likely. Zinc was a very distant shot. Proper reading would have established from the word go it was an unlikely pick for why HCQ is an antiviral. Yes, there's a paper saying zinc and HCQ, but there are a lot more with better ideas. But you have to read around to realise this. If you just read a paper on zinc and follow it up with a paper on HCQ and job done, you've just gone and fucked up.

And herein comes the fact that you latched onto this with a strength far greater than the evidence base supported - as you later did with HCQ, ivermectin, Vit D etc. You did this I suspect due to a series of cognitive biases. The rest is merely obstinacy. You are simply not capable of making sense of the data, not only because you are fundamentally unskilled in the scientific knowledge to do so, but because you have formed an irrational attachment to those initial beliefs that you adopted on inadequate information.

When you say there's no "proof" ("evidence" is a more appropriate term), actually, there is lots. The current state of science is on my side, not yours. What you really mean is "Convince me otherwise". But convincing a person is not about data, it's about a wider psychological shift to make it more attractive to them to change their view. One of the obvious barriers to convincing people is that it means they have to admit they were wrong. And most people really do not like doing this, so they tend to give very high preference to their existing beliefs. Even if their beliefs were formed on a negligible understanding of a completely inadequate data set. Your claim that approximates to "prove otherwise" is indicative of that bias you have, because it reveals your fundamental assumption that your existing belief is true, which you have then invested too much ego into to let go.

I have no particular interest in convincing you. (Anybody who debates on the internet should quickly learn to drop that ambition from their discussions.) I just enjoy arguing, and I don't think you should be allowed to propagate bullshit and lies without challenge.
 

Seanchaidh

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So what's the deal with long COVID? Seems pretty relevant to any conversation about the impact of restrictions on quality of life. What's the impact of "recovering" from COVID on quality of life?

 

Eacaraxe

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So what's the deal with long COVID?
We decided to act like a bunch of braying jackasses in the face of a novel virus about which absolutely nothing of its long-term effects on the body would be. Just like how we're acting like a bunch of braying jackasses in the face of a variant to that virus that's more contagious, with more severe symptoms, against which vaccines are less effective. Because apparently evolution ain't real y'all.
 

happyninja42

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So what's the deal with long COVID? Seems pretty relevant to any conversation about the impact of restrictions on quality of life. What's the impact of "recovering" from COVID on quality of life?

Pretty sure long covid is referring to the long term, potentially life long effects of having the virus. Given it damages the lungs, and your breathing capacity, I would suspect that would be a long term issue. So things like constant fatigue, shortness of breath, inability to engage in any rigorous activities that would make you breath hard (so many of the fun things in life), loss of sense of smell and taste I suspect might not come back after recovery. Things like that would be my guess to the general meaning of "long covid"
 
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Agema

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So what's the deal with long COVID? Seems pretty relevant to any conversation about the impact of restrictions on quality of life. What's the impact of "recovering" from COVID on quality of life?
Obviously covid has a significant risk of lung damage. Potentially also vascular damage, nerve damage, and various other bits of tissue/organ damage. These might derive from things like blood clots (but remember guys, it's the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines you really need to worry about), or unusual viral actions, or abnormal immune / inflammatory responses, etc. This damage is likely to have repercussions on how people feel.

The intrinsic problem - and some of this potentially from the medical profession - is that if medicine can't see a clear mechanism, or be able to observe a clear biological effect, etc. then the inclination will always be to say these people are malingerers. The medical profession has long had an issue that some doctors believe that what they can't see or treat therefore doesn't exist.

If anyone's thinking "sounds like chronic fatigue syndrome" (a.k.a. myalgic encephalomyelitis) about now, you're probably in the right kind of area both in terms of potential mechanisms and societal reaction.
 
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Eacaraxe

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Obviously covid has a significant risk of lung damage. Potentially also vascular damage, nerve damage, and various other bits of tissue/organ damage. These might derive from things like blood clots (but remember guys, it's the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines you really need to worry about), or unusual viral actions, or abnormal immune / inflammatory responses, etc. This damage is likely to have repercussions on how people feel.
But don't worry, it's all good guys. The same people who opposed lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing mandates, indoors capacity restrictions, cancelation of public events, mask mandates, enhanced sanitation and hygiene requirements, extended unemployment benefits, vaccination, or any kind of expansion of public health care whatsoever, but somehow think snorting lines of fish tank cleaner and bleach will cure it, will almost certainly oppose and resist disability and social safety net expansion for those who develop long COVID, by any means necessary.

And as a way post, date, postscript, don't forget that like a bunch of braying jackasses, we in the US are doing our best to cover up the impact and expontential growth of the delta variant, whilst simultaneously telling everyone it's now okay to go out and party it up, unmasked...just in time for July 4th!
 
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Phoenixmgs

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Quit using ctrl-F and read.

Why are you capitalizing that?

Because the rest of us look at SE Asia and already know that's a load of bullshit.
A word is either in an article or it's not and "mask" wasn't in the article.

Because masks have been recommended FOR THE SICK for quite awhile now. Nothing shows that masking the healthy helps lower infections.

Huh? What about SE Asia makes the study a load of bullshit?

I have no idea what point you think you're making but I'm sure it's irrelevant to whatever I was thinking.
You were trying to say someone without mental issues isn't allowed to comment on them or say what mental health doctors are saying.

No you will not change your tune. You get shown data, and you start nitpicking or bullshitting complaints that apply more to any data you have presented, except that you neglected to subject them to critical analysis in the first place.
You don't show me the type of data I'm asking for. I don't care if HCQ prevents or doesn't prevent infections, that was never something I said it might do.

I've just explained a way SARS-CoV-2 acts more like common coronaviruses than it does SARS-CoV-1 just to illustrate how unsafe that reasoning is.
No, you didn't, you referenced some bat coronavirus that's not infectious to humans. Many experts were saying the whole time that immunity will be long-lived.

I presented some time back a thorough analysis of publications on Vit D and covid (and other respiratory diseases) by an expert panel of the UK government. It will be amongst the most thorough reviews of the area according to current knowledge that you will be able to lay your eyes upon. And yet here you are telling everyone you Googled an article or two or saw a YouTube clip of Rhonda Whoever and that makes you the best informed man around.
Oh my god, your goddamn "expert" UK government panels that only recommend vitamin d for bone health that is a decades old mindset. Basically any doctor that finds someone needs vitamin d, they aren't telling them to take a measly 400 IUs of it.
 

Phoenixmgs

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Your argument is in essence that you didn't call it an antiviral despite the fact that it was under study precisely because it was believed to be an antiviral, whilst you were touting it as having an antiviral mechanism of action. In other words, you are attempting to claim you didn't say something that you absolutely should have been saying if you knew anything about the field. In which case, you are arguing you are ignorant and incompetent.
Nope, not even the Dr. Zelenko guy that gave all his patients HCQ in NYC claimed that HCQ is an antiviral.

What health agencies have evidence that ivermectin doesn't work? How is the "science" in your favor? You can't even make a statement that you don't need masks outside, the science is definitely not on your side there. Giving a people a suite of 100% safe things like vitamin d or zinc and an ionophore that has a chance to help somewhat is a bad thing to do when there are no known treatments because it's a new virus? My whole point for a year is treat the virus early instead of waiting until people get sick enough to need hospitalized care. So what if they didn't end up working, there was no harm and it only cost pennies. That's literally the same argument for masking.

From NIH:

Recommendation
  • There are insufficient data for the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel (the Panel) to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. Results from adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific, evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19.
 

Phoenixmgs

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So what's the deal with long COVID? Seems pretty relevant to any conversation about the impact of restrictions on quality of life. What's the impact of "recovering" from COVID on quality of life?

In the US, we don't treat covid early and it results in more long covid. There's a doctor I listened to from India that has treated over 6,000 covid patients and depending on the day of sickness your on, he has a different treatment path for you. He even treats people with diabetes as if they are like 3 days further into the disease because of how much more covid affects them. And he has had very few that have developed long covid because he treats the disease for the length of the disease. It's a night and day difference between how say Andrew Cuomo was treated (basically sit home and deal with it as Cuomo literally talked about his time with covid on TV).
 

Phoenixmgs

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We decided to act like a bunch of braying jackasses in the face of a novel virus about which absolutely nothing of its long-term effects on the body would be. Just like how we're acting like a bunch of braying jackasses in the face of a variant to that virus that's more contagious, with more severe symptoms, against which vaccines are less effective. Because apparently evolution ain't real y'all.
The vaccines are very effective against the variants. We're still using the same measles vaccine for like 50 years, I guess measles doesn't evolve then. Everything else we have a vaccine for took even longer to develop with the virus having more time to evolve and the vaccines for everything else have worked just fine. With covid, you form CD8 cells against 52 different parts of the spike protein so a few mutations don't really mean anything. Also, there's a limit to how much something can evolve. Dr. Paul Offit, top US vaccine expert, says the virus being able to escape immunity is extremely unlikely. Maybe you shouldn't watch the fear-mongering media as much.

But don't worry, it's all good guys. The same people who opposed lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing mandates, indoors capacity restrictions, cancelation of public events, mask mandates, enhanced sanitation and hygiene requirements, extended unemployment benefits, vaccination, or any kind of expansion of public health care whatsoever, but somehow think snorting lines of fish tank cleaner and bleach will cure it, will almost certainly oppose and resist disability and social safety net expansion for those who develop long COVID, by any means necessary.

And as a way post, date, postscript, don't forget that like a bunch of braying jackasses, we in the US are doing our best to cover up the impact and expontential growth of the delta variant, whilst simultaneously telling everyone it's now okay to go out and party it up, unmasked...just in time for July 4th!
Florida has been open for a long ass time, where's all this death and sickness in Florida at? Texas has been fully open as well since March, where's all the death and sickness there? Where's any data of these fully open states becoming an apocalyptic wasteland predicted by the liberal mainstream media? Maybe you should be more worried about say the inflation rate in the US (take a look into that) than covid that is basically nonexistent, we have 1/50th the cases of covid now than we do of the flu during the flu season.
 

crimson5pheonix

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A word is either in an article or it's not and "mask" wasn't in the article.
If you read you know I got both of those sources saying to wear a mask from your article, inline with the reading are lists of recommendations. They ask you to wear a mask no less than twice. Your original point was that the CDC doesn't recommend wearing a mask for the flu, you were objectively wrong.

Because masks have been recommended FOR THE SICK for quite awhile now. Nothing shows that masking the healthy helps lower infections.
...

You can't seriously be this illiterate (scientifically and literally) can you? This is all an act? You do understand what mask wearing is supposed to accomplish in a pandemic don't you? You do understand what the mechanisms at play here are? You do comprehend when a person with a respiratory infection is infectious, don't you?

Huh? What about SE Asia makes the study a load of bullshit?
They mask up out of cultural obligation to a much higher degree than western nations and thus, have infection rates at 1/10th or even 1/100th of the US. They're not spiking their water with vitamin D or zinc, they're not mainlining Hydroxychloroquine, they just wear masks. They wear masks, and the infection rate drops to nothing.

Note, I do not say they have strong mask mandates, some of them do and some of them don't. But they fairly universally have a cultural proclivity to wearing masks during a pandemic and not getting all pissy that they have to.
 

Agema

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Nope, not even the Dr. Zelenko guy that gave all his patients HCQ in NYC claimed that HCQ is an antiviral.
Wrong. From Derwand, Scholz and Zelenko (2020):

"The early clinical phase of COVID-19 has not been the focus of much research so far, even though timing of antiviral treatment seems to be critical. The optimal window for therapeutic intervention would seem to be before the infection spreads from the upper to lower respiratory tract and before severe inflammatory reaction ensues. Therefore, diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 outpatients as early as possible, even based on clinical diagnosis only, may have been an underestimated first step to slow down or even stop the pandemic more effectively. Based on clinical application principles of antiviral therapies, as demonstrated in the case of influenza A, antiviral treatments should be used early in the course of infection.

Due to the lack of a vaccine or SARS-CoV-2 specific therapies, the proposed use of repurposed antiviral drugs remains a valid practical consideration. One of the most controversial drugs during the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is the well-known oral antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)..."


Or we could take Hecel at al (2020):

"This core idea is sustained by: (i) the results of the first independent clinical trials which show the clinical benefit of chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) treatment inCOVID-19 infected patients, and further built on: (ii) numerous reports on the anticoronaviral and antiviral properties of CQ and HCQ, (iii) antiviral properties of Zn(II) and Zn(II) ionophores, and (iv)ongoing clinical trials which include Zn(II) in CQ/HCQ treatments.

Cold the mode of action, or at least one of the possible modes of action of CQ/HCQ be as simple as being an ionophore"

So, these are papers one might expect that someone who claims to know the science about zinc and HCQ would have read. They call HCQ an antiviral, including through a proposed mechanism as a zinc ionophore.

What health agencies have evidence that ivermectin doesn't work?
Stop trying to change the burden of proof. It's up to you to show that it does work, and the evidence in so far, on the whole, not only does not support it working but doesn't even look encouraging. I have already pointed out that it is bad medical practice to give people useless drugs, which you just determinedly ignore.

Giving a people a suite of 100% safe things like vitamin d or zinc and an ionophore that has a chance to help somewhat is a bad thing to do when there are no known treatments because it's a new virus?
There are known treatments. There have been known treatments for about a year now.

Vitamin D, zinc and other nutrients? Sure, why not, at reasonable doses - they aren't going to do any harm.

"Ionophore" means a drug, and we have evidence that these drugs harm people. I'm sick to the back teeth of hearing you prattle on about them being "safe" (until it's suddenly convenient to point out their potential toxicity). They give people adverse effects, including potentially serious ones. If there's no rationale for use, they are better off not administered except as part of a clinical trial.
 

stroopwafel

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Obviously covid has a significant risk of lung damage. Potentially also vascular damage, nerve damage, and various other bits of tissue/organ damage. These might derive from things like blood clots (but remember guys, it's the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines you really need to worry about), or unusual viral actions, or abnormal immune / inflammatory responses, etc. This damage is likely to have repercussions on how people feel.

The intrinsic problem - and some of this potentially from the medical profession - is that if medicine can't see a clear mechanism, or be able to observe a clear biological effect, etc. then the inclination will always be to say these people are malingerers. The medical profession has long had an issue that some doctors believe that what they can't see or treat therefore doesn't exist.

If anyone's thinking "sounds like chronic fatigue syndrome" (a.k.a. myalgic encephalomyelitis) about now, you're probably in the right kind of area both in terms of potential mechanisms and societal reaction.
Isn't the mere definition of a functional disorder the lack of clinical markers or structural abnormalities? The other difference between functional disorder and organic disease is that the former never deterioriates in symptoms or presents itself as rapidly advancing in severity. 'Long covid' is a diagnosis of exclusion with most likely a large psychosocial component like other psychosomatic conditions. Viral infections might trigger such a condition but it's most likely a response of the immune-system to infection in general and aggrevated by stress and emotions than anything specific to covid considering conditions like chronic fatique syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, vague pains etc existed long before covid. The world doesn't begin and end with that respiratory disease. Unlike the severe(if rare) side-effect of the AZ/JJ vaccines that you so condescendingly disregard there is actually clinical evidence that this is directly caused by the vaccine other than 'long covid' for which there is zero evidence.

''The intrinsic problem - and some of this potentially from the medical profession - is that if medicine can't see a clear mechanism, or be able to observe a clear biological effect, etc. then the inclination will always be to say these people are malingerers.''

You debate Phoenixmgs ad infinitum about the lack of scientific data that HCQ has any kind of effect but take the existence of long covid at face value eventhough this also lacks any objective clinical markers. You even try to argue that the lack of diagnosis is because of medical bias not because of every diagnostic test coming up negative. Whatever argument suits you I guess.
 
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stroopwafel

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Functional disorders like GAD can indeed be very rapidly deteriorating and increase quickly in severity under the wrong circumstances. Often there's a clear trigger, usually psychosocial, for the worsening of symptoms but there need not be. In clinical practice a functional disorder is one which can not be observed via testing or clinical markers but it can be hard to differentiate functional disorders from other kinds of mental illness, as the vast majority of mental illness can not be tested for or observed in different imaging tools like MR, CT etc.. So at some point it comes down to a judgement call from a medical professional as to whether you're suffering a functional anxiety or have a proper depression with an anxiety component (for example). To say that this can be both unreliable and deeply stigmatizing is putting it mildly.



The problem with Long-Covid/Post-Covid at this point is that we don't know enough about it and it is essentially a "kitchen sink" diagnosis that encompasses many different symptoms that persist after the end of the Covid-19 infection. Some of them are very easy to observe with basic medical tests, such as lung damage, decreased oxygen uptake and changes in blood pressure and heart rate, while others fall within the purvey of potentially functional symptoms, like fatigue and post-exertion malaise. I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that some of what we consider Long-Covid at this point will eventually be re-classified or dismissed entirely, but there's enough people suffering serious, observable residual symptoms that it can't be dismissed as just psychosomatic symptoms.
Thanks for elaborating. Someone recovering from a really bad infection with visible tissue damage is ofcourse a separate category. Long covid as a I understand it is more from people(usually younger and in otherwise good health) who had mild to moderate symptoms but with a really long tail so to say.
 

CriticalGaming

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So now that masks havent been a thing for months in some places and we are back to large gatherings (like nba playoffs). Are we seeing covid surge back to life? Hospitals being overwhelmed?

People are arguing about the seriousness of the virus. But i feel like the simple idea of the masks has gone from the debate.

Ya'll be arguing so much that the original argument has been lost.
 
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stroopwafel

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So now that masks havent been a thing for months in some places and we are back to large gatherings (like nba playoffs). Are we seeing covid surge back to life? Hospitals being overwhelmed?

People are arguing about the seriousness of the virus. But i feel like the simple idea of the masks has gone from the debate.

Ya'll be arguing so much that the original argument has been lost.
Masks never did anything but social distancing, work from home orders, lockdowns etc ofcourse do a lot to curtail infection rates. I think at this point there is widespread immunity either from people being vaccinated or having been previously infected. Covid might surge again in fall with colder weather, immunity waning off and new variants. Who knows? Mass gatherings will probably remain tricky.