Ask HN: Is masking indoors like buying insurance for your brain?
2amichail169/2/2025, 2:44:23 PM
If you buy home and car insurance, why not also "buy" brain insurance via masking indoors?
Comments (16)
duxup · 5h ago
Everything is a risk to hassle / inconvenience tradeoff.
I'm not sure what the math is here but wearing a mask is a fairly high on my personal inconvenience scale. As far as daily non pandemic life, I'm not sure how much benefit there is.
I've got kids in school and so on, I'm going to be exposed to some extent. Is a lower level of potential exposure going to do me any good?
Hospitals that stopped requiring facemasks earlier didn't have higher rates of disease spread than those that continued to require them.
mrpound · 6h ago
Posts from 2020
pavel_lishin · 6h ago
Sure, if you think that wearing a seatbelt is like buying insurance for your body.
It's all risk mitigation.
amichail · 6h ago
So why doesn't everyone mask indoors to protect their brains?
pavel_lishin · 5h ago
The same reason not everyone wears a bike helmet.
AnimalMuppet · 6h ago
Because not everyone thinks the cost/reward tradeoff is worth it.
And there is a cost, in time, annoyance, lack of being able to speak clearly, glasses fogging... The cost is small, but not zero. The benefit is not zero, but arguably small. Bigger than the cost? Most people don't think so.
amichail · 5h ago
How is this different from buying home insurance?
AnimalMuppet · 5h ago
Most people have a mortgage that requires them to buy home insurance. They don't have the choice.
But even if they don't have a mortgage, it's still a completely different tradeoff. You can't use "people get home insurance" to draw conclusions on "people should mask indoors". Different risks, different costs, different tradeoff.
anovikov · 6h ago
I think someone who wears mask indoors outside of major pandemics is already kind of late insuring their brain.
At best it makes an "i am a radical leftist" statement.
pavel_lishin · 5h ago
Or they're protecting themselves because they're immunocompromised. Or because they are. Or because a reduced risk of catching a pretty annoying disease - both short and long term - is worth it to them.
Tell me, do you wash your hands?
dlcarrier · 4h ago
A family member of mine worked in a highly political field, and she once participated in a video call where the host, who was alone at home, wore a facemask throught the entire call. Everyone had to put extra effort into making out what she was saying, and it impeded with the automatic captioning system, all so that she could broadcast her political affiliation.
amichail · 6h ago
Maybe some people care more about protecting their brains than about what political statements people might think they are making?
jf22 · 4h ago
It's weird that mask wearing is a political identity in the USA.
duxup · 5h ago
Or maybe they're sick?
AnimalMuppet · 5h ago
That would be kind of them. Most people don't mask, even when they're sick.
But also, even if healthy, maybe they're immunocompromised.
I'm not sure what the math is here but wearing a mask is a fairly high on my personal inconvenience scale. As far as daily non pandemic life, I'm not sure how much benefit there is.
I've got kids in school and so on, I'm going to be exposed to some extent. Is a lower level of potential exposure going to do me any good?
Hospitals that stopped requiring facemasks earlier didn't have higher rates of disease spread than those that continued to require them.
It's all risk mitigation.
And there is a cost, in time, annoyance, lack of being able to speak clearly, glasses fogging... The cost is small, but not zero. The benefit is not zero, but arguably small. Bigger than the cost? Most people don't think so.
But even if they don't have a mortgage, it's still a completely different tradeoff. You can't use "people get home insurance" to draw conclusions on "people should mask indoors". Different risks, different costs, different tradeoff.
At best it makes an "i am a radical leftist" statement.
Tell me, do you wash your hands?
But also, even if healthy, maybe they're immunocompromised.