Wear a freaking mask already

Many. When beloved leaders don't lead by example, things never get really right. Still today Trump followers think that this virus is a hoax or at least a Democratic ploy and is nothing more than a little flu. We see people saying so in this very board every day. There's been people who actually died and declared before dying "I didn't know that this was so serious, I believed in Trump" as numerous such testimonies were published several times. And then it's also the inaction. Trump did nothing for several weeks other that the partial travel ban. No beefing up of PPE domestic production. No stocking up on effective lab tests. No hiring of a large number of contact tracers. He kept saying it was a Democratic hoax and would magically disappear. By the time he woke up to the seriousness of it, it was too late for containing it through contact tracing.

You have to understand that I'm not a Dem and I'm not posting on Covid-19 out of partisan positions for the good reason that I don't have a party. Yes, Dems attack Trump on anything that they can, but that's not me, given how I've also praised him in the very post you're responding to. So, for me is not a question of what the Dems could have done but rather simply looking at what was done. And this is not Monday Morning Quarterbacking because contemporaneously I was telling my wife exactly what I'll tell you now: US nationals and their spouses and children of course should have been allowed in, as well as lawful permanent residents, period. Nobody else, from nowhere (remember how Trump restricted travel from the EU but not from the UK for a while, where the virus was also raging? That's one clear example of incomplete). Closed borders except for our returning people. Now, for the returning people, quarantine would have to be rigorous, with the option of going to tents like it was done for cruise ships, or go home but under strict orders to remain home with law enforcement checking on compliance from time to time, under penalty of stiff fines. You think it couldn't be done? Think again. An estimated 40,000 people came in from China. It's a lot of people but it's not impossible to manage. Look at Italy's case. They passed a bill into law through their Parliament, establishing a new felony called "aiding an epidemic." Do you know what the penalties were? Very steep fines plus up to freaking twelve years in prison. Do you know how many they indicted? 40,000. Same number... if they could do it, why couldn't we? How did they do it? They put the Army in charge of enforcing it. OK, so here I wouldn't go as far as the 12 years sentence, LOL, but we could have had stiff fines, enforced by Law Enforcement. There are actually already instruments in the law for this, which were used to force people to quarantine during the Ebola crisis. Remember that nurse who was outraged that she was ordered to quarantine and tried to fight it off legally? She lost and had to quarantine, IIRC.

Again, it's the issue of a beloved leader leading by example. Today, millions of his followers wouldn't be doubting the mask initiative if he had supported it from the beginning, and had masks himself.

Oh boy. You clearly haven't listened to the White House Press Brief on April 6, 2020. It is available on YouTube and there is also an official transcript that can be found in the White House website. Read it, or listen to it, and come back to me on this, OK?

As they say, "the buck stops here." That is, the Oval Office.
And you are saying that having a team of specialists in charge of preparedness for the next pandemic wouldn't have made a difference, when we faced... a pandemic? Really?

You may not have noticed the new guidelines issued by the CDC about testing, implemented by their director who is a Trump loyalist and nominee. You may not have noticed that when he tweeted against it, merely hours later the HHS cancelled funding for testing centers in Texas. Well, the outcry was so much that Trump actually reversed course, good for him on this. But it's not just the action to curtail testing, but also, again, the symbolic weight of it all. I mean, a joke? This is absolutely not a joking matter. This is actually a life and death matter. How many people didn't take the surge in cases in the South seriously enough because Trump kept saying the surge was just a matter of more testing, while the number of hospitalizations was also climbing and the percentage of positive tests was climbing as well, showing that the surge was real and not just more testing? Well, AGAIN Trump minimizing it and dismissing it contributes to people thinking "no big deal" and going out to party and to the beaches, as we saw happening for example in Florida.

My friend, leadership matters, and outstanding leaders lead by example.

While I do not hesitate in giving credit to Trump for the good stuff (therefore I lavishly demonstrate that I do not suffer from TDS and I do not post under the influence of "orange man BAD"), I'm also not blind to his blunders.

 

Again, I'm not posting this to blame conservatives (I have many conservative positions, myself) and I'm not a fan of Fauci's and how he's handled it but two wrongs don't make a right. Regardless of what Fauci said the CDC could have said "absolutely not, masks are important to protect the wearer too!" And my friend, EVERYTHING in a matter such as public health and a governmental agency in charge of it, is political.

Do you actually think that the freaking Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the organization with the highest reputation on Earth for this kind of thing, is made of incompetents? No, what happened is that the leadership, nominated by Trump, has been a bit willing to go along with his wishes, for example the wish to keep the total of deaths low, for the sake of his political image.

No, obviously it can't. There is no good reason to curtail testing in this situation of wide spread we're still facing. None whatsoever. More tests are needed, not less. The CDC saying that asymptomatic people who are contacts of positive cases shouldn't be tested is preposterous. That is precisely the most important people who need to be tested, so that they don't transmit the virus to others for the sake of not knowing that they are also infected. Not testing asymptomatic contacts is incredibly boneheaded, and since I know very well that the scientists of the CDC perfectly know that, the guideline can't be ascribed to anything other than politics, again, in tune with the White House's desire to see the numbers dropping for electoral purposes, even if the drop is artificial. It's funny that the White House kept whining that the numbers were going up due to more testing only, not more infections (which was a lie) and now Pence in the RNC touted the "fact" that the numbers are dropping; well, if you test less, they will drop, duh. Double standard. Before, it was the testing, but now it is not? Right.

 

No but many others I've posted did. I actually posted 29 studies featuring masks and real-life coronavirus infections (MERS, SARS-1, and SARS-CoV-2). This study being from the Department of Physics, they were not dealing with the virus. They are not a virology lab.

 

Thank you for the hyperboles. By the way, yes, face shields do play a role in protecting the wearer, but masks play a bigger role. Transmission is more common through the noses and mouths than through the eyes (but it does exist through the eyes).

Face shields, though, are more protective of the wearer. If with a mask you are not releasing virus into the environment, the absence of a face shield doesn't make people spread covid-19 to as many people as possible given that people DO NOT shed viruses through their eyes therefore covering their mouths and noses is sufficient for community protection. So your hyperbole (which, don't get me wrong, I do understand as sarcastic and politically motivated) is actually quite ridiculous and divorced of the most basic epidemiological knowledge about this virus.

 

That’s all good and all, but I think it’s still worth noting by the end of H1N1s run in the Us, there were 61 million confirmed cases. Covid is only at 6 million cases, so 55 million behind the last pandemic to strike America. Maybe it will exceed that number, maybe it will fall short, but we weren’t going to such extremes with that virus. And guess what? We made it through just fine without masks, goggles or social distancing, or locking down. History argues everything we have done this year has been completely unnecessary, H1N1 proves that. And there wasn’t a vaccine for that virus at first either.

We can cite science all we want, but it still suggests, based off of pandemics in the past, that we are overreacting and causing the world to laugh at us. Masks would be one thing if there was actually toxic gas we could be inhaling. Gloves would be one thing if we were handling something that was a biohazard. Infections in the eye are rare, they’ve happened but they are rare. I personally don’t think anyone should be afraid of catching the virus. If you have had the common cold, you have already had a coronavirus. It’s the reason science is suggesting those who have will have a advantage on Covid, because of T cells. If we are going off stats, you’re much more likely to survive Covid than die from it. Nearly 3 million have recovered. That’s promising.

We didn’t need to close businesses and schools during H1N1, we don’t need to now. Imagine if we had the same scientists going berserk during that pandemic. The Great Recession would have been much worse.

 

Oh boy... so many misguided notions...

First, the H1N1 is an influenza virus. This one is a coronavirus. Vastly different bugs. Different size, different R naught number, different IFR, different CFR, different target organs, different pathology...

Second, the (H1N1)pdm09 virus (that's its full name) in 2009 killed 12,469 people for the ENTIRE duration of the US component of this pandemic. Well, we are VERY FAR from the end of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and guess what, this one has killed ALREADY (and it's far from over) 188,861 people. Can you notice, say sarcastically, a "slight" difference in the aggressiveness of these two viruses??? Hello???

Third, the (H1N1)pdm09 virus did NOT have a propensity to cause endothelial lesions, which is the most notable characteristic of the human disease called COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2. Do you have any idea what this entails? Well, for starters, it's not just a respiratory illness like the flu. It hits the body EVERYWHERE because the entire body has blood vessels with endothelial layers. So, sure, the CFR is hovering around 3% and the IFR is estimated to be between 0.65% and 1%, but do you have any idea of the morbidity rate, that is, how many people survive but acquire permanent organ damage, unlike the disease caused by the (H1N1)pdm09? So here are some of the possibilities (all dully documented in several cases): strokes (from the endothelial lesion and hyper-coagulation state), cognitive impairment from brain damage, renal insufficiency, severe pulmonary fibrosis with permanent shortness of breath, and worst of all, myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) with markers that are suggestive of progression to heart failure in a few years in... brace for it... 78 freaking percent of survivors in a random sample of 100 people, mean age 49 with a standard deviation of 14, 67% of them with MILD and moderate disease, and WITHOUT underlying heart conditions. Scary huh? Yeah, it is. Here:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916

So, dear, the death toll is not the whole story with this novel disease that is getting better and better understood as we go, and is freaking serious. Yeah, yeah, a bunch of people survive it and a bunch recover from it... but one in five develop serious disease (not to forget, the German study above found severe complications even in a bunch of people with mild cases), and what we've been discovering now is that too many of those acquire life-long consequences that will have an impact on general health, qualify of life, productivity, and life expectancy.

Fourth, let's talk about the IFR for the (H1N1)pdm09. Actually your numbers are off, not 55 million but rather, the median point of the estimate is 60.8 million cases. OK, do you know how much this gives us in IFR (Infection-Fatality Rate)? 0.02%!!! Let's say it slowly: Zero point zero two percent!!! Again, do you notice, say sarcastically, a "slight" difference in the aggressiveness of the two viruses??? Hello??? No wonder health officials did NOT react in 2009 like we are reacting now.

Fifth, do you think that just having a common cold makes you immune to this coronavirus? Think again because only 20% of common colds are caused by coronaviruses, while the other 80% are caused by rhinoviruses, RSV, parainfluenza, and a large number of viruses that aren't even named or classified. Sure, if theoretically you've had lots of common colds that happened to be caused by coronaviruses, you'll have slightly better partial immunity against the family, but this is by no means full immunity.

Sixth, History argues? Well, that's fine if you quote history selectively. You might want to look at some other pandemics... Have you ever heard of the three waves of the so-called Spanish Flu in 1918 and 1919? Look up the polio epidemic, too, and so many others... But still, other than the Spanish Flu, this one is the worst one in the last 100 years, in some regards. It has called already 3 times the number of Americans who died in the Vietnam war. Think about it.

Seventh, "H1N1 proves that" - no, it doesn't prove zip. You can't use a virus from a different family to say anything about this one. This is like saying, "well, I have a little cat at home and it is a friendly little creature and it doesn't scratch or bite me. That means I can walk into the cage of a hungry lion and there will be no risk whatsoever for me. After all they are both cats, right?" I mean, I can't decide if I should laugh out loud at your line of argumentation or just be appalled and scratch my head with still another example of a lay person who thinks he knows Medicine from what he believes are common sense notions (well, they aren't).

Eight, yeah, we're causing the world to laugh at us but not because we overreacted. That's because we UNDERreacted and got a really messy effort to contain this that failed miserably (4% of the world's population, 22% of the world's cases and deaths), more than any other advanced country, and even managed to be worse than a lot of third world countries. But hey, as a consolation, Brazil and Mexico are proportionally doing worse. Great news, huh?

So, we overreacted? Let me tell you what Italy did: they voted a law in Parliament making of any breach of the lockdown and the mask mandate, a felony called "Aiding an Epidemic" carrying a stiff fine and... brace for it... 12 years in prison. They put the Army on the streets to enforce it and indicted 40,000 people, which brought the violations to a screeching halt. The Army in the Phillippines was shooting lockdown violators on sight. And you think they are laughing at us because we overreacted? Yeah, it's funny, but what is funny is not what you think. What is funny is your misguided opinion. (It's not that I support those authoritarian measures; it's just to say that a lot of countries took this much more seriously than we did).

Ninth, "gloves would be one thing if we were handling something that is a biohazard." Huh, dear, this *is* a biohazard. What exactly is your definition of a biohazard??? Oh my God...

Tenth, "I personally don’t think anyone should be afraid of catching the virus." I'm SO GLAD that YOU are not in charge of anything... because your personal opinion on this couldn't be any more misguided.

Eleventh, "Covid is only at 6 million cases"... that we know of. As you might have noticed, there are a lot of undiagnosed cases, and the pandemic is not over, so, before you say "just" 6 million cases, let's wait and see what the final numbers will be, OK? Remember, the second and third waves of the Spanish Flu were actually MUCH worse than the first wave and the whole thing dragged on and on for more than two years (although, again, these were different viruses, but just so that you don't think that all pandemics end very fast since YOU were the one who quoted History to support your arguments). Don't be another "Mission Accomplished" guy who will look foolish when it becomes clear that the mission is far from having been accomplished.

It's quite incredible that there is still someone here spouting this kind of nonsense. I think your post should earn some sort of special Raspberry reward for the number of misguided concepts. Gee!

 

If it's proven that immunity only lasts months, I will stop wearing my mask. If that's the case, the only way to sustain immunity is to be constantly exposed while your body has enough immunity to fight it off with little to no symptoms. This will constantly refresh your immunity as well. In fact, this extended isolation could make us like the Native Americans dying from smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, chicken pox, yellow fever, and whooping cough, All because they were so isolated from other people that they hadnt built up immunity or resistance to these diseases.

Basically we'll die no matter what so f' it.

 

Latest news is 90% of those testing positive are not contagious so mask wearing may not be all that worth while . My opinion morphs as more information comes in

 

I often think, "there's so much wrong with that, I don't even know where to start."

This was an excellent point by point analysis.

 

I'm still going to wear two masks, industrial under surgical over, but I'm wearing them for Influenza now.

 

What's wrong with you people today? After that incredibly misguided post by the member Balto, this, too? You are talking about a population that went several generations without exposure to the viruses brought in to them by the white people who came to their lands... not a few months of staying at home. Do you think evolution is this fast? No, most definitely you won't be dying from smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, chicken pox, yellow fever, and whooping cough just because of a few months of epidemiological precautions!!!

Your idea is 100% boneheaded. You think you should repeatedly expose yourself to a dangerous virus in order to build up immunity? You may end up dead, instead, given that bigger viral loads lead to more severe disease. Or maimed. Not many die but many suffer organ damage, something people don't seem to realize as they just look at death stats.

Much more prudent is wait for the vaccines, which are coming. It's much better to build up your immunity with dead virus, attenuated virus, virus' s-protein, virus sub-units, etc., depending on how the vaccine is made, because these things can't infect you and cause the disease, than to try to build up your immunity with the live and active virus, which can kill you.

You don't get the Raspberry Award for the most misguided post ever because Balto earned it first, but your post is a close second.

 

Yeah, sure, because influenza is so much more dangerous than covid-19, right? The latter is just a little flu, right? Insert rolling eyes here.
Yes, do protect yourself against the flu, with the simplest and most efficacious measure to avoid serious/fatal disease: a flu shot! Have you heard of those?
And yes, do wear a mask, but wear it against the SARS-CoV-2 because against this one, we don't have a vaccine yet (but it's coming).

 

There is strong evidence that you build resistance to the disease so that it isn't as bad the next time. It doesn't accumulate like that. There is also a possibility that the vaccine will not be effective shortly after its created due to the virus mutating.

 

Do you know if all droplets are the same size?

 

What about the fact that the virus can enter through the eyes and ears too? In which case a mask is totally useless.

Okay, so when you said, "I think the CDC has been contaminated by politics", you actually meant, I think the CDC has ALWAYS been contaminated by politics because it is a governmental agency in charge of public health?

I think that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is made of HUMAN BEINGS. And humans are not perfect. Are you saying that the CDC is perfect? If it IS perfect, then it must be purely politics at play.

Are you promoting a conspiracy theory?

If the CDC is engaged in a conspiracy, putting Trump's re-election ahead of public health, I just have one simple question: WHY IN THE HELL HAVE THERE BEEN NO LEAKS?

 

Would you say that Trump is "beloved" in New York and New Jersey where the most people have died?

You're assuming that in believing Trump, they took certain actions which led to their death. You do not know that.

You make it sound like those things relied on personal decisions from Trump. Under ANY President, Republican or Democrat, the agencies and departments would be comprised of the exact same experts. If you think that it would have been ANY different under Biden, you're kidding yourself.

He said that the Democrats POLITICISATION of the virus was a hoax! Snopes and FactCheck disagree with you:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-remark/

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/democratic-ad-twists-trumps-hoax-comment/

At what point are you saying that he "woke up to the seriousness of it?"

Yes, and my point is that the travel ban is something that I've not heard the dems attack Trump on. So it's odd that you are attacking him on it.

Who the hell else other than that was allowed in?

And instead, people just passed through and went home with no procedure at the destination airport?

You're joking right? It's over FOUR hours long! I'm willing to bet that he didn't say anything CLOSE to calling hydroxy a cure. Again, all that Trump has done is promote it's POTENTIAL! If you had something substantial here you would have already highlighted something instead of encouraging me to waste FOUR hours of my life which I would never get back!

Well it could have made a NEGATIVE difference - who knows! It may have been deemed to not be an effective team and one which could be replaced with a superior team in another part of the government. Was it the one and ONLY team of specialists in charge of preparedness for the next pandemic in the entire government? If so, then it was a mistake to axe it, but I'm very confident that it wasn't. Again, we don't know the reasons why this action was taken, we don't know if there was something which replaced it and we can't say that had it NOT been dismantled, it would have made any difference.

Well I didn't say that it was a joking matter. Trump JOKED about slowing the testing,
saying that this is what he told the CDC to do so that there would be less cases. I just assumed that this is what you were referring to.

No idea. Do you know? I'd be interested in an answer, but I suspect that you don't have one.

So absolutely nothing to do with the Florida governor's lack of restrictions? Public health measures are a STATE matter.

 

Well you said "URI novel coronavirus." There's nothing "novel" about coronaviruses which cause the common cold.

 

Is that based on science?

 

Okay, but my point is that there's nothing PROVEN about it.

 

Proven to who is the question. It's not a court of law deciding the fate of a defendant its the court of public opinion and the study i provided was proof enough for me. If it's not proof enough for you so be it.

 

Based on the study I linked to earlier.

 

Furthermore, the CDC just reported that the WuFlu alone is responsible for only 6% of the reported deaths from COVID-19.

That comes to approximately 11,160 people and .000034 of the population.

Personally, I think people just need to exercise common sense and do what they think is best for themselves and others in light of the conditions in their area, and if you've got the virus you've got no business going out in public, even if you're wearing a mask. Exercise common sense - stay home.

I live in a low-risk rural area where wearing a mask probably doesn't do any good, however, if you live in a high-risk urban area it's probably not a bad idea to wear one when you're inside around a lot of people.

The fact that the governor of my state (Virginia) and the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives have been caught ignoring their own mandates and advice tells me a lot of things I already knew. If the virus was as dangerous and deadly as they say it is they wouldn't be ignoring their own social distancing and mask guidelines.

By the way, kudos for keeping an open mind about all this. The data has been notoriously unreliable and ever-changing...

 

Flu shot is at best fifty percent effective which is no better than flipping a coin.

 

Well, if the virus mutates, so much for your immunity built-up by exposing yourself to the current strain. This would work against both the immunity from natural infection, and the immunity from vaccines.

And yes, viral load does accumulate, which is why some people with high exposure like store clerks (before masks became required by businesses), healthcare workers, first responders, have had comparatively worse cases of the disease even when young and healthy, due to repeated exposure.

Where do you get your notions? Quotes and links, please. I'm curious because NO serious/legitimate/properly trained expert thinks that people should repeatedly expose themselves to this dangerous virus to build up immunity. Are you getting your info from some blog or some YouTube pundit or some nutsy website?

 

Same range of sizes, some variation depending on what someone is coughing up.