As a good friend of Ed's, I am offended as hell by the replies to this post. I would respectively ask that they be removed by those who posted them. I appreciate PMC's original post and I replied with what I see as helpful information to other volunteer groups. A case in point - as you look at paid staff in professional settings, they are all wearing masks. But a group of guys working informally tend to forgo the masks. That is the point I was making.

If anything, Ed and I differed greatly on our political views and avoided the topic. I would appreciate the same respect here.

Again, I ask that any political commentary associated with this topic please be removed. Show some damn respect.

J.R. May

J.R.:

We all grieve for Ed, his friends and family, just as we grieve for the loss of anyone from this virus. It's a tragedy. When working or volunteering, I know most in the railroad community are either wearing proper masks or at least doing our part to social distance when in shop buildings. Like anything, you and Ed had a choice and the freedom to follow the CDC guidelines or forgo them. It's truly sad that a virus has become so politicized on the right versus left. We have folks chiming in that President-Elect Biden is turning the tide on a virus and he isn't even in office yet. Really? Like the other threads, go ahead, lock and delete. When someone doesn't agree with viewpoints, censor. It's become the underlying theme of 2020.

Just using the term NPC tells me you are trying hard to troll and irritate. For those who are not quite familiar with the term, a detailed article on its use can be found here. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/p ... r-ban.html

Ultimately this kind of political discussion is not meant for this forum, but I will draw the line here. I work in healthcare, my parents work in healthcare, my sister works in healthcare. The last ten months have been a living hell for us, in part because of people like you claiming this is a hoax and a fabricated threat. We have dozens of horror stories some first hand of the impacts of COVID19 and we can tell you its very real and has impacted thousands of people. My father has seen patients who have had body parts amputated after COVID has killed the cells that connected them to their body. My mother has spent ten months organizing testing tents and handling outpatient care. I have worked with patients who have taken on brain damage from the disease. Don't you dare tell me its some hoax and fake, we have all been in the frontlines and want to drag your sorry ass here and see how well you handle being in our ICU's and sick wards right now. Not only that you are here in a forum morning the loss of a man who had a major impact in his preservation community, and you want to tell them the cause of his death is false and fake? Damn you, damn you to hell.

Mr. May, with all due respect, starting a discussion thread is sort of like having a child - you can point it in a direction, but in the final analysis it has a mind of it's own as to where it goes and what it becomes. The best one can hope for is that it contributes something meaningful and constructive for the greater good. I certainly have not been trying to be destructive in my posts to this or any other topic on here.

Your moderators are watching. If you want to rant about politics and Covid take it somewhere else. Please use the report button to help us keep up with posts that need attention.

If you talk about the impact of Covid on museums or heritage railways your post probably won't be deleted. If you speak kindly of the departed, and at this point there have been a number of people in our community who have fallen to Covid, your post probably won't be deleted. You post will most likely be deleted if you post a rant, if you speak poorly of a member of our community, or post some conspiracy theory nonsense.

Have a good day,

Tom Gears
Moderator

With a significant proportion of England now being under the highest level of the 4 tier system in place - i.e. "Stay at Home" is the advice given - the few remaining preserved lines that were operating services over the Christmas/New Year period have suspended operation earlier this week. At least some of the lines did manage to get some cash flow in to pay the bills in this short period.
A Nationwide vaccination programme has started to be rolled out, but it looks like Easter before decent numbers of people will receive it, so I'm not expecting much in the way of museum/preserved line activity before then, possibly even later.

For those of us who did not know Mr. Rizzo, we have learned enough about him in this and other threads to know that his passing is a tremendous loss. One can only express sympathies to his family, friends, and associates at their loss. It is a sad time.
However, this damnable virus is taking its toll in many different ways. It has become an existential threat to our very way of life. At some point, we are going to have to make hard decisions on allowing the virus to be in charge of us, or to get our lives and nations economies back in gear. The decisions are difficult, but we cannot go on like this for much longer.
In this area, we are seeing a couple of museums, including one railway museum, start to sell off smaller assets. If they are selling assets to keep the utility bills paid, they are probably on a slippery slope to oblivion. We will probably see more of this.
All of the fairs, collector events, and assorted gatherings were cancelled in 2020. For many of the fairs, it was the first closure in over 150 years, including through times of war. Local Lions and other clubs were basically inactive. For volunteer supported organizations, this has been a year from hell and let's hope they can pick up the pieces and re-engage with potential volunteers.
A young lad, 16 years old, took his own life, I am told because of shut down related isolation from other friends. Young people I know have ended long term relationships because of separation from their girl or boy friends.
Families have been prevented from gathering over the Christmas season. We cannot know the long term effects to the family, but from conversations, I can say that it will be dire.
A local restauranteur announced last week that he is closed for good. It was a popular place for 24 years. I expect he will get along okay personally, but several people, including some younger ones, are out of work. Locally, I think he is the first casualty of what will be a growing list of closing restaurants, bars, and small businesses. Many years of hard work and investment are gone.
Of course, our elected people did not know going in that they would be confronted with a global pandemic, and had to react in the midst of this violent storm. History will tell if they did the right things. In the U.S., you do have a new government coming in in the midst of this, although there are few indications that they have any more capacity to deal with it than the rest.
One could go on. There is a series on television right now on the Aztecs. These people had many years of comfortable living. As they lived their lives, they probably cheerfully assumed things would always go on as they knew it. They did not see the possibility of an outside threat that would destroy their way of life, literally, overnight.
This is a big test for us all. There are no clear solutions, or at least, solutions that do not come with other perils.

Hear, hear! Well said.

“Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Dr. Benjamin Franklin August 2, 1776 as per historian Jared Sparks

We may one day make that difficult decision to restart the economy. However, we will not able to instantly restore the economy just because we decide we want to. So while it was our conscious decision to stop the economy, we have no power to restart it. Simply allowing the economy to restart will not instantly restore the economy that we have lost. It may take a decade to accomplish that.

Businesses that have ceased operating for a long period of time will have to invest in extensive new marketing to bring their customers back. Even if that would work, the investment will seem risky to those who have witnessed how easily they can be damaged by a mandatory shutdown. And many businesses have permanently been closed due to their expenses that continue whether they function or not.

Of course. I don’t think anyone believes that we’ll recover with the flip of a switch. It will be a process, but none of it will happen until someone makes the decision to rip the bandaid off.

I hope this isn't too political as these days it seems like questioning the masks is not allowed. None the less I will share it here in hopes that if it saves a life as I feel it is a perspective in this debate that needs to be heard and seems to be getting censored all too often.

Covid came into my job back in Mid December. We are a place where masks are 100% mandatory and everyone wears them no exceptions 100% of the time. Like most places some wear them a little better than others, some use fabric, some use surgical ones but in the end none of the masks made a damn bit of difference!

At the end of the day the people who got Covid myself included were all those who spent a lot of time out on the shop floor where it seems like somewhere between 2/3-3/4's of those of those who worked in that part of the company got it. (I think the numbers may have hit 20people in total but I haven't been back into work since then between quarantine and vacation so numbers could be a little off).

What concerns me the most is that a lot of people right now are using these masks like they are a condom. They put them on and think that they have a level of protection that enables them to go places and do things that they wouldn't otherwise do if they didn't have a mask on. If my experiences and what I observed at work is the case the mask appears to provide as much protection as a tissue paper condom! I suspect that whatever limited theoretical benefit the user is gaining from wearing one they are likely undoing by putting themselves into far more risky situations than they would if they didn't have a mask on and felt totally unprotected.

In conclusion any organization and or person who is counting on a mask as part of their Covid 19 prevention plan please think again! These things provide at best a questionable minimal level of protection and at worse are providing people with such a false sense of protection that they are doing more harm than good!

At this point in time with a vaccine likely less than 3 months away for those over 65 it likely would be best to just tell any members over the age of 65-70 to just plain stay home until they get the shot. At this point it doesn't sound like it is that far off.

Based on what I saw at work and my own personal experiences if Covid got into a train car and you had a good super spreader on board I would be willing to bet the masks won't do much of anything. The good news is for the guests under 50 chances are most of them probably have mild symptoms, their young kids like my own would never even realize they are sick. The one that I would be scared about though is that 85year old guy in the conductor's outfit, that friendly old guy who knows every building along the side of the line, and loves walking up and down the cars telling all your guests about them 3trains a day. Please for everyone's sake assume the mask is a useless piece of crap I found it to be and ask him to come back to your museum when he gets his vaccine. It won't be long now till he's a priority and it is just not worth the risk.

The masks don't reliably protect anyone "from" COVID-19, and of course don't really do anything about fomite contamination from ingestion (incidentally there are said to be up to about 40x more ACE2 receptors in parts of the gut than in the lungs or bronchi, which I think accounts for some of why small amounts of ingested virus from fomites produces enhanced risk of infection). The masks are to help prevent anyone with the virus from preferentially spreading droplets to contact surfaces, and indirectly, in conjunction with social distancing, from spreading airborne. And properly-designed masks -- for SARS-CoV-2, they don't have to be particularly expensive masks -- do, in fact, materially help preclude the spread of the virus both from lungs and gut, and by touch followed by ingestion. And that is an essential part of any current socially-imposable strategy to limit spread.

The problem is that what spreads COVID-19 best is talking -- and most everywhere you go, you'll see people talking or shouting, or worse, getting up to counters or registers and talking directly at people from 3' or so away. Or talking loudly at their cell phones and then poking fingers at screens and then grabbing handrails or touching surfaces. THAT behavior is what any political set of mandated social rules should address even before masks of any kind, worthless or otherwise, become mandated as the same kind of panacea that birdlike masks with sweet-smelling substances in them were during the Plague.

No one in a social situation who wishes to help restrict the spread of COVID-19 should object to regular mask-wearing in public, even if no more than a courtesy to others that builds trust even if you know you're not infected -- or your coworker community. (And that before we look at the issue of 'silent carriers' or infection during the incubation stage...)

But the type of mask is sometimes more than just statutory: N95s in particular are worse than useless, because their stupid little exhaust vents shape and propel any droplets in exhaled breath for added range. Surprisingly it's a year in, and we still have morons claiming they're 'better' because they are a higher level of 'filtration'. Meanwhile: if your glasses are fogging, something is getting out past the mask... these are better-design issues and have mechanical solutions available but they never seem to get even to 'first responders' and the front-line medical community, while all sorts of clever fashion masks proliferate all over the Net 'because they can'.

The idea of filtering exhaled breath is a good one. As a mandatory practice, an efficaceous design of mask is a reasonable social precaution ... when a society can't or won't develop quicker humoral immunity or antiviral treatments, as ours hasn't and, even with rapid immunization, probably will not. I personally think that masks and careful social distancing (including distancing from contact with surfaces that might contain the slight contamination necessary) combined with restrictions on direct talking or telephone use can keep the risk of critical untreatable 'triage' outbreaks like those in New York City down indefinitely. And those things should be continued as a matter of morals and ethics, not would-be tyrannical grandstanding by politicians or other power-hungry types.

What I find more than a bit sad is that our 'effective' response to the virus after this long a time is still largely related to merely arresting spread of the virus. The CDC had the sequence for this virus, understood and read, by early March, and in what should have been recognized as a triumph of applied research had a test designed for production nine days later. Then the producers screwed up reagents, public authorities rejected the tests in their entirety ... and we were off to Outbreak City.

Strange with that level of competence we still don't have effective humoral tests. Strange that treatment with 3CLpro inhibition isn't widespread. Strange that people are still dying from being placed on ventilators if they express ARDS, even though we've known conclusively how to treat precisely this sort of ARDS since 2012, and the necessary parallel heart-lung support was mainstreamed as a practical 'artificial-heart' technology just about the time the pandemic started growing teeth. Very few people "die" from COVID-19 directly; it's secondary conditions, notably ARDS in early outbreak stages, that appear to cause the bulk of the lethality observed. The convenient 'scam' used first in Europe and then gleefully adopted here of branding any death while infected with COVID-19 as a COVID-19-caused death does the actual cause of treatment development no good service at all.

And here I am agitating to set up effective mask production that will also work for the "next" pandemic, when we get an actually dangerous virus like mutated H1N1 that none of those feel-good masks would slow down. I'm not the one that should have to be doing this, and it's almost frightening that large numbers of demonstrably effective mask versions aren't taking over the mainstream market.

I sure hope these vaccines work as expected, although I haven't felt right since I had the initial dose of the Moderna version. But I'd still feel better if someone produced the clonal 3CLpros and perhaps the actual data on what ACE2 does as a receptor as well as just a surface enzyme. Any older person whose B-cell production is compromised will still, likely, be dependent on one of the other approaches such as massive periodic antibody injection. And who's heard enough about all those in the past weeks or months?

I find it somewhat fascinating reading the few folks who have convinced themselves that wearing a mask does not help reduce the spread of Covid 19 despite all the respected scientific evidence that it is HIGHLY effective in blunting the pandemic.

Also, the readily available empirical evidence from nations ( S.Korea, Formosa and others) that early on adopted strict mask wearing mandates and have tiny death rates compared to the USA.

My guess is that these deniers must be akin to those in the 1400's who continued to say that the earth was flat despite Columbus's discoveries to the contrary.

Guess there'll always be some who delight in denying facts no matter what. Not surprising in a way as our fearless leader for the last 4 years has certainly been the denier in chief right to his last painful breath.

Happy New Year, Ross Rowland

There are many activities that can be done by older members working independently, without the need for them to risk exposure to others. If the members are willing to put some time and effort into improving their capabilities with a computer, they can work on member notifications and group e-mailing, help produce material for the website and group publications, and help scan and organize technical library materials. Most of the public learns about your organizations through the internet, improving the public “face” of your organization may help with the recovery. Take a cue from other organizations that have done a good job with their internal and external communication during this crisis. In my area, the Mass. Bay RRE and the Amherst Railway Society have done a particularly good job. The outfits that went into this still holding envelope stuffing sessions once a month have been dead and buried for a year now, and it is unlikely anybody is going to care much about continuing those activities.

PC