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COVID-19 (Aka China Virus)


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A lot of pseudo science in here. @pawnman is right, and it's not apples and oranges. Masks do work, because the virus hasn't been demonstrated to be an aerosol that has to be filtered out at the nm level. They primarily work by blocking large droplets by sick people wearing them and, therefore, not emitting large droplets. Large droplets aren't just emitted from yelling. They're emitted from breathing. They're emitted from talking. They're emitted from existing. You ever gone outside in the cold and "seen your breath?" Those are large droplets. They are emitted ALL THE TIME. Let's establish some facts as of our current understanding:

1) "no study has demonstrated actual clinical evidence of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2"

2) "the overwhelming majority of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is via large respiratory droplets as conclusively demonstrated by contact tracing studies, cluster investigations, the lack of infection spread in hospital settings with universal masking protocols and the low estimated R"

Source: https://www.pennmedicine.org/updates/blogs/penn-physician-blog/2020/august/airborne-droplet-debate-article

3) Masks that are not N95s very effectively block the vast majority of large droplets. This study that came out shows that simple surgical masks or even single-layer cotton masks are extremely effective at stopping large droplets.

Source: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.201663

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44 minutes ago, SpeedOfHeat said:

<sigh>

Pawnman, why is the surgeon wearing the mask (Let’s say I’m getting a knee replacement)?  Because he’s afraid of getting sick from my knee?  No.

The surgeon is wearing the mask to protect me, the patient.

This aligns with the messaging throughout this thing that wearing a mask is about protecting others.

My comment above was about how useful a surgical mask is in protecting the wearer.

What the Google machine tells me (via fda.gov) is that an average surgical mask “may help block large-particle droplets, splashes, sprays, or splatter.“  

And that’s my point.  In public, especially with social distancing in effect, do you guys frequently encounter “large-particle droplets, splashes, sprays, or splatter?”

Seriously ask yourself.  Is that a thing?  

Are people coughing or sneezing on or near you?  I don’t know.  I’m just saying that’s not my experience.  Yelling, singing, or whistling are also probably good examples, but again, I personally don’t see that in a typical grocery store run.  I see a handful of healthy people with no cough or sneeze, adhering to distancing, and yet wearing masks.

Do some woodworking with a surgical mask on.  Cutting, or especially sanding.  You’ll be coughing on saw dust inside of 10 minutes.  It does not block fine particles at all.  And that’s literal pieces of wood.

I found (I think) the article that Slackline references above.  It suggest that cloth masks block “some viral particles” and “can reduce the inoculum of the virus which enters the mask,” resulting in a milder or even asymptomatic infection.  So you get sick, but not as sick.  Fair enough.  It’s a short article and there’s no data cited.  

To me, it is conditions and behavior based.  If we are now asserting that a mask can protect the wearer because it blocks “some viral particles,” it seems to me that the emphasis should be on wearing them in the places where there is a real chance of someone else’s spit hitting your face. i.e. while watching a movie on the couch with someone, not while walking down an aisle at Costco.

That's the point.  Wear your mask to protect other people, because you can carry the virus and have no symptoms.  You don't know if you have it or not.

Just like a fire light in the cockpit... Take the precautions for an engine fire, instead of saying "well, I don't smell any smoke, must be a faulty detector"

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Dudes, whether or not it "filters" COVID out of your breath is not the point - of course it doesn't. What masks do accomplish is reducing the "energy" of your breath, thereby minimizing the size of the cloud and the distance it travels. That is why it's more difficult to breathe through, and that is the point - to minimize the spread.

It takes more than one individual virus to infect you, so the less exposure you have, the less chance you have of contracting the disease and spreading it yourself.

Point being: masks are accomplishing their stated goal.

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8 hours ago, SpeedOfHeat said:

I think the opposite is occurring, at least right now.  Sick people are staying home.  Have you seen someone running a fever, or clearly congested, or with a persistent cough at the work place or casually shopping at Costco?  My experience has been that anyone who coughs, even once, even into their mask, gets a hairy eyeball.  I think very few legitimately sick people are out and about.

What we have is sick people at home without masks, getting their family members, or roommates (or nursing home cohabitants/caregivers) sick, and healthy people out of their homes wearing masks, essentially for no reason.  We have it all backwards.  

And to your last comment, about protecting yourself via mask, are you (correctly) wearing an N95 or better?  Because the surgical mask or the homemade cotton mask is doing nothing to protect you.

I’m from Wyoming. I was there for the holidays. Plenty of people didn’t wear masks, though there’s a mask mandate, however it’s not enforced. Why? Because people there are more hilfuck than Texans and don’t care about COVID. The people who I’ve seen that are the most adamantly against masks are usually the ones who have a higher chance at dying of COVID (i.e. fat, old, etc.). 

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39 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

If that’s the goalpost, ok.  Confirm your position is we can cease mask wear once cases plateau or decrease?

My position is we can stop when

1. Every person knows whether they are a carrier every day

2. Enough people are vaccinated that spread is negligible.

Is it that hard to wear a mask?  Do you rail against seatbelt laws or complain that requiring shoes in a place of business is oppressive?

Putting a mask on is, quite literally, the least you can do.

 

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maybe we should let healthy LOW RISK people ( < 99.99% chance of dying) back into the economy VOLUNTARILY and if you feel at risk YOU isolate at home until a vaccine gets into your arm?

there is zero evidence the lockdowns work or masking works...i'm talking PRACTICAL evidence not some lab study.

there IS LOTS OF EVIDENCE the lockdowns are KILLING people's businesses and lives.

masks are the new virtue signaling

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14 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

maybe we should let healthy LOW RISK people ( < 99.99% chance of dying) back into the economy VOLUNTARILY and if you feel at risk YOU isolate at home until a vaccine gets into your arm?

there is zero evidence the lockdowns work or masking works...i'm talking PRACTICAL evidence not some lab study.

there IS LOTS OF EVIDENCE the lockdowns are KILLING people's businesses and lives.

masks are the new virtue signaling

Actually there’s tons. Because you specified practical evidence ONLY, here’s but one example:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/hair-stylists-infected-covid19-face-masks.html
 

If you would like me to get you the scientific evidence, I can do that as well.

 

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1 minute ago, Negatory said:

Actually there’s tons. Because you specified practical evidence ONLY, here’s but one example:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/hair-stylists-infected-covid19-face-masks.html
 

If you would like me to get you the scientific evidence, I can do that as well.

 

sure in that case it makes sense to wear a mask! close contact in a room...CHECK!

how about when outside? walking on the sidewalk? it's not a one size fits all solution, but when daddy government gets involved that's all it can be.

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Just now, Negatory said:

Your graphs fails to address your actual point: what would those curves have looked like if the people who did use masks didn’t? What if literally no one had done anything, would it have been worse?

ah the classic "well not everyone has complied ENOUGH" response. that's not very scientific don't you think?

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3 minutes ago, Negatory said:

Actually there’s tons. Because you specified practical evidence ONLY, here’s but one example:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/hair-stylists-infected-covid19-face-masks.html
 

If you would like me to get you the scientific evidence, I can do that as well.

 

Clearly you don’t know what a scientific study is. Thanks for participating, you’ll get your trophy with all the other kids. 

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the point guys is government arbitrary "rules" are KILLING people. quite literally. and for what EFFECT?!

it's not working!!!

it's not about the mask. it's about the government overreach destroying american businesses and lives.

that's what im passionate about.

Edited by BashiChuni
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the point guys is government arbitrary "rules" are KILLING people. quite literally. and for what EFFECT?!
it's not working!!!
it's not about the mask. it's about the government overreach destroying american businesses and lives.
that's what im passionate about.

Seriously? Government overreach on a mask mandate is your big takeaway? Masks are destroying businesses? I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but were/are seatbelts an overreach? People still die while wearing them, should we get rid of that too?

Other poor government decisions related to covid are ruining businesses, 100% agreed. Stop making this all about masks, it just sounds stupid. Once again, stellar leadership on the part of our CINC has made something so simple and effective a political tool. And so many sheep just jumped on board.

If people would just stop complaining about masks and realize it’s not some twisted govt plot to slowly exert govt control over you (a la frog in boiling pot) we could be much closer to the end of this mess.


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maybe we should let healthy LOW RISK people ( there is zero evidence the lockdowns work or masking works...i'm talking PRACTICAL evidence not some lab study.
there IS LOTS OF EVIDENCE the lockdowns are KILLING people's businesses and lives.
masks are the new virtue signaling


This assumes that people can voluntarily isolate at home if they feel at risk.

A good portion of our country lives paycheck to paycheck, so their choice is to quarantine and lose their job (assuming the vaccine is immediately available to them, it still takes 6+ weeks to develop immunity), or go to work and put themselves at risk.

That's not a real choice. It's a choice between fulfilling immediate needs (food and shelter) or expose themselves to risks they cannot control (where there's people they have to interact with who don't care to mitigate the risks).

Taiwan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Australia to name a few countries all seem to be doing well with aggressive measures and showing they work in practice, if you actually enforce those measures and people comply with the measures. Contrast this with the US lockdowns being "there's a lockdown in effect, so don't go out unless you absolutely have to, or if you want to, or whatever. It's not actually going to be enforced" and then being surprised when the lockdown doesn't have a huge effect in our cities.

The other practical evidence masks and isolation/quarantine works is that there hasn't been an explosion of covid cases originating from hospitals. So hospital staff wearing masks (and I'll grant you that the higher risk staff in close contact are likely using n95 masks), segregating Covid patients from other patients, and limiting access helps significantly slow the spread within hospitals.

Along similar lines, the other piece missing from just pointing at mask mandates and Covid cases is what the actual compliance is.

I'd rather kill business than people. Businesses will eventually come back once we get through this. Look at any other major natural disaster (hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes): communities rebuild, and businesses rebuild after completely being destroyed. If we take care of our people, they can rebuild their businesses and our economy.

And are lockdowns killing people? Or is it our country's lack of safety net and ability to respond adequately to a pandemic?

Do the pandemic restrictions suck? Yeah, absolutely. But it's still not as bad as any deployment I've been on. Does wearing a mask suck? Kinda, but I think wearing my David Clark headset over a 16-24 hour FDP sucks worse.
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33 minutes ago, jazzdude said:


 

 


This assumes that people can voluntarily isolate at home if they feel at risk.

A good portion of our country lives paycheck to paycheck, so their choice is to quarantine and lose their job (assuming the vaccine is immediately available to them, it still takes 6+ weeks to develop immunity), or go to work and put themselves at risk.

That's not a real choice. It's a choice between fulfilling immediate needs (food and shelter) or expose themselves to risks they cannot control (where there's people they have to interact with who don't care to mitigate the risks).

Taiwan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Australia to name a few countries all seem to be doing well with aggressive measures and showing they work in practice, if you actually enforce those measures and people comply with the measures. Contrast this with the US lockdowns being "there's a lockdown in effect, so don't go out unless you absolutely have to, or if you want to, or whatever. It's not actually going to be enforced" and then being surprised when the lockdown doesn't have a huge effect in our cities.

The other practical evidence masks and isolation/quarantine works is that there hasn't been an explosion of covid cases originating from hospitals. So hospital staff wearing masks (and I'll grant you that the higher risk staff in close contact are likely using n95 masks), segregating Covid patients from other patients, and limiting access helps significantly slow the spread within hospitals.

Along similar lines, the other piece missing from just pointing at mask mandates and Covid cases is what the actual compliance is.

I'd rather kill business than people. Businesses will eventually come back once we get through this. Look at any other major natural disaster (hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes): communities rebuild, and businesses rebuild after completely being destroyed. If we take care of our people, they can rebuild their businesses and our economy.

And are lockdowns killing people? Or is it our country's lack of safety net and ability to respond adequately to a pandemic?

Do the pandemic restrictions suck? Yeah, absolutely. But it's still not as bad as any deployment I've been on. Does wearing a mask suck? Kinda, but I think wearing my David Clark headset over a 16-24 hour FDP sucks worse.

 

I think you underestimating the problems that many small businesses are in. 

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2 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

maybe we should let healthy LOW RISK people ( < 99.99% chance of dying) back into the economy VOLUNTARILY and if you feel at risk YOU isolate at home until a vaccine gets into your arm?

there is zero evidence the lockdowns work or masking works...i'm talking PRACTICAL evidence not some lab study.

there IS LOTS OF EVIDENCE the lockdowns are KILLING people's businesses and lives.

masks are the new virtue signaling

There's plenty of evidence that masks work.

I wonder how many people would be willing to compromise: "You wear masks everywhere, and we'll reopen everything".

Probably still a bridge too far for some.

I'll put my faith in actual scientists that the masks work: https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/07/do-cloth-masks-work

 

Quote

The evidence from epidemiologic data and case studies may be even more compelling. A recent study, for example, used publicly available data to calculate the COVID-19 growth rate before and after mask mandates in 15 states and the District of Columbia between the end of March and late May of 2020. Researchers found that mask mandates led to a marked slowdown in the daily growth rate, estimating that mask mandates may have prevented up to 450,000 cases of COVID-19.

 

Edited by pawnman
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