Sorry, I meant “negative consequences of mask-wearing are rare”, not “wearing moist and soiled masks is rare”. I’ve worn moist and soiled masks from time to time, and nothing bad has happened to me so far, except perhaps looking a bit unprofessional :-)
And I meant “rare compared to 100%”. Like, if even 1% of mask-wearers got a throat bacterial infection, that would be millions of throat bacterial infections in my country, 50,000 in my state, hundreds in my town, and probably at least one or two among my friends and family and acquaintances. So if that’s actually a thing that’s happening at a 1% rate, I think I would have heard something about it by now. Unless those infections were really not a big deal, such that they don’t rise to the level of even being worth mentioning to your friends.
(How many people do you personally know who have gotten a bacterial throat infection from mask wearing? How bad was it? Were they hospitalized? How many days of work did they miss?)
So I figure that bacterial throat infections from mask wearing is either <<1% likely to happen, or it’s really not a big deal when it does happen, or (most likely) both.
But it is a bigger deal for children. Children can get complications from throat infections.
You were looking at problems with one in ten thousand odds, but you don’t have ten thousand acquaintances of acquaintances, so it is unlikely that you would get second hand reports of problems with these odds.
You have even less acquaintances with children, perhaps no more than a few hundred, so even problems with odds of one in a thousand are unlikely to reach you via second hand reports.
What are the complications? Death? Weeks in the hospital? Lifelong complications?
I suspect that if there was even 1-in-100,000 chance of that kind of consequence from regularly wearing masks, I would have heard about it by now. But if you have a reference to actual incidents (not just speculation that it’s possible, but actual people who had these kinds of very very serious problems), I’d be interested to see that.
I want to consider possible impacts of my decisions that are either (1) common, (2) rare but catastrophic. MIS-C is not super catastrophic, but it’s fatal if you’re not promptly hospitalized, and occasionally fatal even if you are, if I understand correctly. So it enters into consideration, despite being rare. And even so I wound up declaring that MIS-C risk is too low to be decision relevant. I have a hard time imagining that wearing a mask will lead to consequences anywhere remotely as serious as MIS-C. So it wouldn’t enter into my consideration unless it was very common, like >1%.
Sorry, I meant “negative consequences of mask-wearing are rare”, not “wearing moist and soiled masks is rare”. I’ve worn moist and soiled masks from time to time, and nothing bad has happened to me so far, except perhaps looking a bit unprofessional :-)
And I meant “rare compared to 100%”. Like, if even 1% of mask-wearers got a throat bacterial infection, that would be millions of throat bacterial infections in my country, 50,000 in my state, hundreds in my town, and probably at least one or two among my friends and family and acquaintances. So if that’s actually a thing that’s happening at a 1% rate, I think I would have heard something about it by now. Unless those infections were really not a big deal, such that they don’t rise to the level of even being worth mentioning to your friends.
(How many people do you personally know who have gotten a bacterial throat infection from mask wearing? How bad was it? Were they hospitalized? How many days of work did they miss?)
So I figure that bacterial throat infections from mask wearing is either <<1% likely to happen, or it’s really not a big deal when it does happen, or (most likely) both.
But it is a bigger deal for children. Children can get complications from throat infections.
You were looking at problems with one in ten thousand odds, but you don’t have ten thousand acquaintances of acquaintances, so it is unlikely that you would get second hand reports of problems with these odds.
You have even less acquaintances with children, perhaps no more than a few hundred, so even problems with odds of one in a thousand are unlikely to reach you via second hand reports.
What are the complications? Death? Weeks in the hospital? Lifelong complications?
I suspect that if there was even 1-in-100,000 chance of that kind of consequence from regularly wearing masks, I would have heard about it by now. But if you have a reference to actual incidents (not just speculation that it’s possible, but actual people who had these kinds of very very serious problems), I’d be interested to see that.
I want to consider possible impacts of my decisions that are either (1) common, (2) rare but catastrophic. MIS-C is not super catastrophic, but it’s fatal if you’re not promptly hospitalized, and occasionally fatal even if you are, if I understand correctly. So it enters into consideration, despite being rare. And even so I wound up declaring that MIS-C risk is too low to be decision relevant. I have a hard time imagining that wearing a mask will lead to consequences anywhere remotely as serious as MIS-C. So it wouldn’t enter into my consideration unless it was very common, like >1%.