Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Syt]

*ceteris paribus

[alfred russel]

AR the question posed is whether *ceteris paribas* fewer people would have died in Texas wearing masks than without since early March.  Looking at last week's case counts is useless to answering that question, both because of the unreliability of case counts generally and because you are comparing it against history as opposed to measuring what the counts would have been last week had more people worn masks.  Case counts could be going down for lots of reasons, most notably increasing vaccine coverage.  So your proposed analysis has no control and therefore undercuts nothing.

The argument that less mask wearing has zero effect is a pretty extraordinary claim given what we know about efficacy of masks in helping control spreads.  Before calling out Krugman as a liar you should have sufficiently compelling evidence to prove that.  Raw weekly  case counts doesn't cut it.

I'm not calling him out as a liar, I'm calling him out for the data indicating he is wrong.

"The argument that less mask wearing has zero effect is a pretty extraordinary claim given what we know about efficacy of masks in helping control spreads."

It is fucking exasperating that you would say this. WHO HAS MADE THIS ARGUMENT!

Not only have I been saying that masks would control the spread, I was posting on here that I though masks would reduce transmission back before masks were mandated and authorities were saying not to use masks. More people wearing masks means there will be less transmission! I'm 100% on board. If the governor of Texas had asked my opinion on lifting the mask mandate, I would have said not to, but he didn't ask my opinion.

The argument is whether lifting the mask mandate caused increased spread in Texas. The data doesn't support that it has. Which I don't think is an unexpected outcome for a few reasons - primarily that people are doing what they and their community are comfortable with regardless of what their elected leaders are telling them.

You can attribute the decrease to vaccines if you want, but Texas is almost at the bottom in vaccine shots / capita and also in the lower half of cases / capita.

[DGuller]

The argument that less mask wearing has zero effect is a pretty extraordinary claim given what we know about efficacy of masks in helping control spreads.  Before calling out Krugman as a liar you should have sufficiently compelling evidence to prove that.  Raw weekly  case counts doesn't cut it.

To fair, you're attributing at argument to AR that he did not make, and frankly I struggle to see how that can be an honest mistake.  I think AR has been pretty clear that he thinks rolling back Texas restrictions was meaningless because people's actual mask wearing has nothing to do with what unenforced regulations exist on the books.

[Berkut]

That is exactly the argument you are making.

Lifting the mask mandate did in fact cause increased spread. At least, that is the argument Krugman is making and you are disputing.

You cannot argue that claim while NOT arguing that masks do not reduce spread.

If the number of deaths absent the mask mandate is even 1 person higher than it would have been WITH the mask mandate, then Krugman is right, and you are wrong.

The TOTAL number of deaths goes down, that is completely irrelevant to his argument.

You are arguing, in effect, that you think seat belts saves lives, but NOT wearing a seatbelt doesn't save a life if the number of deaths by traffic accidents falls after the seatbelt law is repealed - even if at the same time there was a fuel shortage and the amount people drove was cut down by 75%.

All Krugman is arguing is that with the mandate, less people would have died then without the mandate. He is making no argument about the total number of people dying.

[Berkut]

The argument that less mask wearing has zero effect is a pretty extraordinary claim given what we know about efficacy of masks in helping control spreads.  Before calling out Krugman as a liar you should have sufficiently compelling evidence to prove that.  Raw weekly  case counts doesn't cut it.

To fair, you're attributing at argument to AR that he did not make, and frankly I struggle to see how that can be an honest mistake.  I think AR has been pretty clear that he thinks rolling back Texas restrictions was meaningless because people's actual mask wearing has nothing to do with what unenforced regulations exist on the books.

That can only be a valid point if your claim is that in the entire state of Texas, NOBODY cares at all what the governor or government says about mandates.

That itself is a pretty fucking extraordinary claim.

And it is almost entirely supported only by his random anecdotes about traveling around in rural areas. I think there are some pretty significant urban areas in Texas, and I suspect there are plenty of people in Texas who largely don't pay all that much attention to the politics of it all, but mostly just go along with what the government tells them to do. In any case, the argument that everyone ignores the government so much that mandates or no mandates makes ZERO difference in mask wearing and hence spread of Covid and hence deaths from Covid is pretty ridiculous.

[DGuller]

Let's not assume positive (or more precisely non-negative) correlation between mandates and behavior, which is what you're doing here.  We're not dealing with adult minds here, adult minds will have enough sense to wear a mask anyway regardless of what the government says.  Among the people that are borderline, I can see how some would take a cue from toothless regulations, but I can also see how some would do the opposite just because that's what people with the minds of a 12-year old do.

[The Minsky Moment]

The correlation I assume is that if the state governor tells the people of the state they don't need to wear masks anymore and repeals all restrictions including enforceable restrictions on state or local property, then that will cause mask use to decline cet par. not increase.  And I think the burden of proof is very much on the side arguing the contrary.

[The Minsky Moment]

The alternative is assuming we need to treat the American population like a particularly stubborn and perversely behaved infant and putting in a reverse mandate banning mask use so that reverse psychology will lead to more use.

[alfred russel]

That is exactly the argument you are making.

Lifting the mask mandate did in fact cause increased spread. At least, that is the argument Krugman is making and you are disputing.

You cannot argue that claim while NOT arguing that masks do not reduce spread.

If the number of deaths absent the mask mandate is even 1 person higher than it would have been WITH the mask mandate, then Krugman is right, and you are wrong.

The TOTAL number of deaths goes down, that is completely irrelevant to his argument.

You are arguing, in effect, that you think seat belts saves lives, but NOT wearing a seatbelt doesn't save a life if the number of deaths by traffic accidents falls after the seatbelt law is repealed - even if at the same time there was a fuel shortage and the amount people drove was cut down by 75%.

All Krugman is arguing is that with the mandate, less people would have died then without the mandate. He is making no argument about the total number of people dying.

That is reducing Krugman's take to the realm of unverifiability.

You are setting up a scenario that is impossible to refute. If cases quadrupled over the past month, I strongly suspect many of you guys would be citing it as a result of the state repeal of all restrictions.

But if you want to argue that there must be someone, somewhere in Texas, that stopped wearing a mask because the mandate was lifted, and that since masks are effective that must be result in some increased spread, and since covid-19 results in death in some percentage of people we must have had at least one additional death in Texas and Krugman must have been right, okay. But then I could argue that there must be some person that were terrified of the situation created by the repeal (media is rife with those takes, but I don't know if anyone with the take that they've been wearing a mask and will now stop), and thus stayed home or avoided visiting Texas in the past month, and by some marginal effect reduced covid spread and thus saved lives.

I wouldn't make either of those arguments (yours or my hypothetical argument) though I'm sure on some extremely marginal level they both have validity. It is just obvious that transmission has not only slowed in Texas post the repeal of all restrictions and fallen to the lower half of the country, which is I think pretty damn good evidence that the state level mandates were devoid of real effectiveness.

[The Minsky Moment]

Hard to test and verify is not the same as unverifiability.

Difficulty to verify is not an excuse for cherry-picking obviously misleading data as a cudgel.

[alfred russel]

Hard to test and verify is not the same as unverifiability.

Then how would you suggest we could disprove Krugman's thesis?

Difficulty to verify is not an excuse for cherry-picking obviously misleading data as a cudgel.

Do you really think the data in any way indicates that the rate of transmission in Texas has increased since the repeal? (including against national benchmarks if you want to consider the effect of vaccines)

[Threviel]

Before we decide if AR is an egoist we should find out what happened with his adventure cat. If its still in his care even though the plan didn't pan out he might be a nice guy. If he killed it or kicked it out he's a huge ass.

[alfred russel]

Before we decide if AR is an egoist we should find out what happened with his adventure cat. If its still in his care even though the plan didn't pan out he might be a nice guy. If he killed it or kicked it out he's a huge ass.

Sadly I think adventure cats are a fraud that was used to entice me into getting a cat by my fiance (I think she was suckered into the adventure cat myth as well). Our cat just turned two and we have accepted that he is a housecat and not an adventure cat.

We've put down a deposit on a puppy which we have higher hopes that we can take with us on outdoor pursuits. I also hope that once we get a house our cat will get more comfortable in the backyard and get to hunt real prey.

[The Minsky Moment]

Hard to test and verify is not the same as unverifiability.

Then how would you suggest we could disprove Krugman's thesis?

You could design a proper study that properly models the alternative scenario of continuing mask mandates, in the same surrounding context. There are ways of doing that.

Do you really think the data in any way indicates that the rate of transmission in Texas has increased since the repeal? (including against national benchmarks if you want to consider the effect of vaccines)

There is plenty of data to support the conclusion that masks inhibit transmission so your entire case revolves around proving the extremely counterintuitive proposition that Abbott's order increased mask usage or held it steady. Unitl there is proof of that proposition it is not a reasonably contestable question. 

[alfred russel]

You could design a proper study that properly models the alternative scenario of continuing mask mandates, in the same surrounding context. There are ways of doing that.

I disagree. There will never be a model taking into account all the population level effects of the Texas statewide order that has anywhere near the consensus on design and inputs to conclusively determine anything.

There is plenty of data to support the conclusion that masks inhibit transmission so your entire case revolves around proving the extremely counterintuitive proposition that Abbott's order increased mask usage or held it steady. Unitl there is proof of that proposition it is not a reasonably contestable question.

I don't agree that my entire case revolves around that.