"The masks, for example, was always a very basic and easy thing to accomplish, yet so many rejected the very nature of covering their gaping maws from a pandemic that is clearly transmitted with bodily fluids."\

This amusing.

My wife is an RN and has had numerous COVID patients, so it's been exceptionally helpful that before becoming a nurse, she worked in a virology lab.

In doing so, she wears a "duckbill" N95 (she cannot be properly fitted with other available vendor's offering, so when she is requalified next year, if her facial contours change, her days of dealing with covid patients are over), all single use to avoid cross-contamination, along with fuil body, single use PPE. That's why, in a year and a half, she's avoided infection.

If you are wearing a single use N95 that you've been fitted for, you might have some measure of an effective preventative.

That polyester surgical mask, that you toss on the car seat between trips to Home Depot and Wally World is a cross-contaminating talisman. Worse is that obviously soiled handkerchief offering who knows what-viruses, bacteria, even fungus.

About twenty years ago, The Onion parodied the public's blind faith in medication with a fictional add for a fictional medicine called Sucrosa, and now I know why. The Dunning Kruger runs strong among some.

https://www.theonion.com/fda-approves-s ... 1819567087

Do you have multiple sources for your data? Or is this just you flaunting pompous bigotry?

Because it sure seems to conflict with other reported data:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/09/politics ... index.html



(Emphasis added.)

In a far more politically biased take, one writer has pinned a great deal of mistrust upon Democrats and leftist media that repeatedly portrayed "Trump's rushed vaccine" as untrustworthy--high on the list of critics being current VP Kamala Harris:

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/ ... ccines.php

The polarizing bigotry on display by Mr. NNN and his ilk do nothing--NOTHING--to help the overall national scenario.
"Oh, if we just keep constantly shaming and insulting all the people who won't vaccinate, we'll bring them around to getting vaccinated!"
................. said no one in their right mind, ever......

Recent news articles say that about 34 percent of Americans who are eligible for the vaccines have not yet gotten a shot.

Since I don't know how many Americans are old enough to qualify for the vaccines, this is just back of the napkin level numbers:

The USA Population in 2020 is 331 million. 34 percent of 331 million is 112 million. So are you telling me that roughly 70 million [thanks Lefty33] Americans are so diseased that they have "sound medical reasons" for not wanting to get vaccinated?

Is there any evidence that the vaccines have a one percent kill rate like Covid-19 does?

Brian

Of course he's not saying that. The point is that there are some exceptions in society who probably shouldn't get vaccinated at this time due to potential unknown complications regarding their own pre-existing medical conditions. But at the end of the day too many knuckle heads are cherry picking information or are simply acting ignorantly for no real reason other than....right, nothing.

Also, your back of napkin number is way off. Currently the amount of the US population that can not be vaccinated due to being underage is over 40 million, not anywhere close to 12.

I'd bet big money that none of the folks the - close to minimum wage - fast food worker is dealing with in this video will get vaccinated until someone they know dies from COVID-19 - even then there's a huge chance of denial.

https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout ... dont_care/

I hope you folks have seen the reports that airlines have decided that they need to teach flight attendants how to defend themselves in close quarters, including the double ear smash and the eyes poke.

Do you folks running a tourist line have a plan for such an adventure?

Brian

What it amounts to is this, halve the population doesn't believe in the same things as the other halve believe in. Neither side trusts the other side and their version of the science or politics etc. Would everybody agree with the conclusions of a study of the efficacy of face masks? If it went one way, one side wouldn't believe it and if it went the other way, it would get banned from being discussed on the internet.

The articles I cited happen to contest your version of divisive tribalism, just as it did the Nattering Nabob of Negativity to whom I posted them in response.

It's. Not. That. Simple.

People want--nay, DEMAND--simple solutions, "miracles," and most of all scapegoats to blame. The real world and nature/physics doesn't work that way.

So you're saying don't even try. Open faces for all, and you're a fool unless you have the expensive ER stuff. Got it.
Now, that is amusing.
Getting the ER-qualify stuff to the public was never going to be a realistic goal. I think everyone in the country understood that.
The basic idea was to prevent the projectile nature of what people spew out of their mouths when they talk, sneeze or what have you.
You argument is just like those who say you can't spank (or in a scary case I saw on TV, someone demanding to not discipline them in any way) kids when raising to be decent people, but providing no alternatives in it's place.
Sure the masks people do use aren't nearly as good as the good stuff in an ER, but even getting folks to do what they are doing, you're saying nobody should have ever tried any masks at all.
Not long ago I talked with a Army Colonel who is a MD and lectures about this to the NBC school classes on the subject. he told me he's simply given up trying to get the public to understand any of this. "They were always gonna do what they wanted," he told me, adding that he's utterly baffled at how people have not only declared all along the pandemic didn't exist, but that people who should be smarter that this think it's completely beaten now.

I think the point is this: Why not try harder and develop and mandate a real mask that has a very high effectiveness? Make it highly effective, and extremely comfortable. Let’s get a mask that has lots of creative, intelligent design to really do the job that is needed. It would not necessarily be equivalent to a surgical mask, but just a mask for the purpose related to preventing transmission between people in close proximity.

Sure it would be more costly than the crappy, do-nothing masks that we now using. But even if it were to cost $100 to be thoroughly perfected, so what? That is nothing compared to the money that is going down the drain during a pandemic.

I have always felt that there is a disconnect between how seriously we are to take masking, and yet how we allow masks to go undefined in terms of performance specification. It is no wonder that people regard masks as being only symbolic.

With this perfected mask, maybe we could work right through a pandemic in perfect safety. I had a supply of N95s in my shop, so I started wearing those, but while they are more effective than the lighter masks, they are murder on comfort. I cannot stand to wear an N95 for more than 30 minutes. There needs to be a whole new mousetrap in pandemic masks. It makes no sense to take masks so seriously but settle for rinky-dink mask quality. That makes no sense at all.

I conclude that the reason we have settled for the nearly ineffective masks is that they are the most comfortable mask concept because they are almost “no mask.” There has got to be a better way.

The "better way" is the vaccine.

I also had some industrial N95 masks and used them as they met the terms of my state's mask wearing rules. In the course of the many months, I had several people come up to me and challenge why I was wearing a mask that should be reserved for medical personnel. I had to point out to them that my mask was an industrial mask, it was not certified for medical use.

Anybody remember the photo published early in the pandemic of workers packaging "masks" at a factory in China and nobody in the room was wearing a mask, or gloves, or any other "clean room" protective gear. But any of those questionably produced masks or any other piece of cloth would meet the mask rules issued in my state.

PC

"So you're saying don't even try. Open faces for all, and you're a fool unless you have the expensive ER stuff. Got it.

Now, that is amusing."

Only amusing if you are emoting rather than thinking, so thanks for confirming that.

If my wife was asked to treat a covid patient with only a surgical mask, I'd be on her DoN in a red hot minute-there'd be no "gee thanks for trying", assuming as I suspect her dedication would overcome her sense of self-preservation.

Like any other medical intervention, use entails potential risks as well as potential rewards.

Potential risks of mask wearing include increasing your risk and others' risks of this or any other infection because you fiddle with them-especially in the cold weather when your nose runs to protect sensitive respiratory tissues-and now you fiddle with your mask, and put God knows what on that avocado you're feeling up.

And then there's hypoxia and hypercapnia for some people and if you are really lucky-pulmonary mycosis.

It was even funnier when I was going going to the gym and some dim-bulb would be yapping away on the phone while doing No. 2, emerge-put the mask over his face again and walk out without watching his hands. But hey, he's "trying" wearing a mask.

If you are into ineffective amulets, get a crystal or a rabbit's foot.


Post Script: Thank you confidential reminder:

There is something called "The Peltzman Effect" which occurs when a person readjusts their risk tolerance higher in response to a real or perceived safety measure. The classic example is the person who will drive worse whether because of their four-wheel drive.

There should be a real concern about people believing the masks are an effective safety device and then skipping ordinary hygiene like washing their hands. At least we're over the utterly stupid ubiquitous placement of anti-BACTERIAL hand sanitizers-because they don't kill viruses anyway, but they do risk creating bacterial superbugs resistant to Triclosan-the typical active ingredient.

There's your trouble right there. Your understanding does not match what is scientifically known. Mind you, that scientific knowledge was not known at the start of the pandemic, but it did later prove to match pre-existing understandings.

COVID spreads by microscopic droplets that are present in all exhalation, whether through mouth or nose. COVID is essentially a "free rider" on the spittle and snot every human emits everytime they exhale. Yes, we're dirty.

So there are 2 components to every attack: someone exhaling, and someone else inhaling. (Setting aside kissing, hand-mouth, or other contact).

Now, the "traditional wives-tale way" of thinking about infections is that A) you get infected, B) you FEEL SICK, and C) you become contagious, in that order, dammit! This creates a social narrative in that *in between* B and C, "the good people" isolate themselves, and thus, innocents are protected. This fits hand and glove with the American sense of freedom vs responsibility, so we're rather attached to it.

Unfortuately, COVID "uses that narrative against us" by reversing B and C, and deleting [edit:] B altogether for a great many of the infected.

Just like over 50 years we (read: not Tom Clancy) had a "gold standard" best practice for dealing with skyjackers, which was "hacked"/exploited successfully on 9/11.

This means you have a metric moose-load of infected who have no idea they're infected, and may indeed never know.


What your "do-nothing" masks actually do, very well, is deal with the *exhale* side of an attack. This wasn't known for sure about COVID-19 aka SARS-2, but we (well, anyone who cared to read the literature) knew this worked for other viruses, including coronaviruses such as SARS-1 so not a surprise.

However, when you combine this with symptom-free contagiousness, you find yourself at the gut-wrenching conclusion that "do-nothing" masks only work if everyone wears them. Remember ~2010 when everyone in Taiwan was wearing surgical masks? That's what that was. And it worked there because those people were filled with reverence and loyalty to the well-being of their entire nation (there's a word for that but I can't find it anymore).

Anyway, the paradigm becomes "my mask protects you, your mask protects me".

And that's why masks with exhale valves (even N95 masks with exhale valves) were forbidden. Though, to show how potent "catch it on the exhale" was, , a N95 with an exhale valve was rendered safe by putting almost any paper or cloth mask *over it*. They wanted you to do that anyway with N95 masks to extend their life.

Anyway, since your proposal is that we mandate a real mask that works that everyone must wear, we already have that mask, and it works great. It's the common cloth mask.




However, if we flip the paradigm to "my mask protects me, and f*** you"..... now you have to forget about managing the attack on the "exhale" side (where you notice, it is easy to manage)... and must block the attack on the "inhale" side. That'll take the kind of "Manhattan Project" you're thinking of. That'll match up to the political ideology of the Karens and Kens, who want it where everyone does their own thing and is responsible for their own protection, and if someone chooses to skip protection their choice affects only them. Wouldn't that be nice.

Well, you need an N95 for that - and as you observe, the cheap ones are not awesome for long-term wear. So that forces you into the more difficult designs/choices.


Because remember, we still need exhale filtration so if you're infected you aren't spreading it to others... but the whole point of the deal is *inhale* filtration to protect you from jackasses. So you need an inner dome of positive pressure of intake-filtered air to protect you, and an outer dome of negative pressure to be output-filtered to protect anyone with a lesser mask. That is going to make it super hard and uncomfortable.

At that point it becomes more practical to abandon exit filtration altogether, emit live virus with impunity... and people wearing cloth masks can just die. Won't be a problem if we make everyone wear your super-mask all the time.

But those are available right now, they're rather popular with dental hygienists who spend all day in the aerosol zone of patients of ??? status. They just get COVID tested every day.


Truth be told, the cloth masks do work *somewhat* on the input side, depending on fit. Th trouble is, if you've set up water pumps into ponds and the like, exhale tends to go straight, but inhale tends to be drawn equally in every direction. So exhale won't go through cracks in a mask, but inhale will.

I think you mean B is deleted, i.e. infected people are spreading C19 around without realizing it. Otherwise perhaps the best post in this thread. I actually still double mask a blue SARS single-use mask with a cloth snug-fitting mask, which does help on the input side.

Yeah, the early 2020 government response was keystone kops.

We did have a Strategic National Stockpile of PPE but it was exhausted after the 2009 H1N1 crisis, and was not replenished. Hospitals have a "gold standard" practice of using disposable PPE and throwing it in the trash literally every time they walk out of a patient room, I am not kidding — a nurse might use 100 masks in a day. I can't argue with their reasons, hospital-acquired infections kill a lot of patients, but it's clear — the system was totally unprepared to dynamically shift gears to respond timely to a TSHTF situation. They just kept wasting masks straight into oblivion because managers forced them to, because nobody wanted to be responsible for the liability of a change.

And they were very worried about the general public waving money around in a panic and overbidding hospitals for all the remaining masks in the supply chain.

So they spread the lie, on purpose, that masks did no good. That did happen. And they fessed up to it, and they owned the mistake.

However, conspiracy theorists, not content with an outright admission that they knew, have searched for evidence that "they knew", and have maintained their usual standard for evidence quality LOL. And so here we have this letter from Fauci. Read the date. Now, read the letter. It is advice to one specific person in one very specific circumstance, very early in the "not even pandemic yet". Not global advice, and certainly not relevant to a later date.