Friend of friend on Facebook:
What I don’t get: If masks work, why aren’t we back at work? If masks don’t work, why are we being asked to wear them?
She’s a stay-at-home mom here in the Boston suburbs.
11 thoughts on “Stay-at-home mom >> All of Academic Epidemiology?”
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‘Cause the shutdown is about power and the masks are about submission and humiliation. But she isn’t supposed to ask that question and I’m not supposed to answer it. If only we were too scared to think, then what they tell us would make sense.
My theory is that masks work to prevent coronavirus largely the same way as condoms work to prevent the spread of HIV; i.e., the number one reason for failure is that they’re used incorrectly or not at all. We know from the fact that ~2,000 people continue to die of coronavirus each day in the US that masks are currently not effective enough in the ways they are being used (and there’s probably also some difference in effectiveness between a NIOSH-approved 3M brand N95 mask currently selling for $36 each on eBay and the old gym sock that people more realistically have access to).
If seat belts work, why do we need airbags? If seat belts don’t work, why are we being asked to wear them?
The official line went from “Improvised masks not only don’t work, but can actually do more harm than good,” to “Everyone should wear face coverings whenever they’re outside their homes,” in a small number of days. This can’t possibly be a result of any kind of scientific reasoning. It’s because people really want to believe there’s something they can do to not get the disease. Unfortunately, also something that if *other* people don’t do it, they’re who are causing the disease.
Social distancing was invented for the purposes of pandemic response in the US back in 2007. It’s never been tried before. The masks orders in combination with social distancing have also never been tried before, at least not at this scale. All of these measures have been put into place because we don’t have anything else. We are judging if they work and how well they work as we go along every day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distancing-coronavirus.html
“Strategic, out-of-the-box thinkers,” is how Dr. Venkayya, who now oversees vaccine production at Takeda, a Japan-based pharmaceutical company, described what he was looking for.”
“Dr. Glass’s daughter Laura, then 14, had done a class project in which she built a model of social networks at her Albuquerque high school, and when Dr. Glass looked at it, he was intrigued.”
““My God, we could use the same results she has and work from there,” Dr. Glass recalled thinking. He took their preliminary data and built on it by running it through the supercomputers at Sandia, more typically used to engineer nuclear weapons.”
And rather, we had something else. We had four to six weeks at the beginning of the pandemic in China when the CCP ordered Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (D-Ethiopia) at the WHO not to tell the world that the virus could be spread from person to person, and not to declare it a pandemic. Then we had several more weeks of our own delays, during which time we failed to protect and understand the course of the virus in nursing homes, among the most vulnerable population, and the people who overwhelmingly die from the disease. Now we are trying to arrest the spread of a disease that is already impossible to contain among the general population.
Here’s the 29 page PowerPoint for the Massachusetts Reopening Plan.
https://www.mass.gov/doc/reopening-massachusetts-may-18-2020/download
In crafting this report, the Reopening Advisory Board and other state officials:
• Heard testimony from more than 75 business associations, labor unions, non-profits, and community coalitions
that collectively represent more than 112,000 businesses and more than 2,000,000 employees
• Received and reviewed more than 4,600 written submissions from associations, businesses, and residents
• Engaged stakeholders and analyzed information in over 45 hours of Zoom meetings over the past 20 days
And there you have it.
Clearly, those in high risk areas, like hospitals, consider it necessary to wear masks, and other protective gear.
To assert that masks, which are universally used by doctors and nurses in hospitals, only work inside of a hospital is just silly, but the medical community is asserting this to the public, through the WHO and the CDC, even today (5/18/20).
The process of filtering air is not that complicated. The mask filters in both directions. Some masks are better than others. An N95 mask is going to work better than a thin cotton bandanna.
They should be properly donned and removed, and work in conjunction with other practices, like washing hands and social distancing.
The approach to this virus has been to underestimate it, again and again.
We need more N95 mask production.
Mask it or casket.
Because the public propaganda apparatus has destroyed persons’ ability to think and especially to think in terms of trade-offs and marginal benefits. It’s all right and wrong, black and white.
Wearing a cloth mask while alone in your office? That strikes me as having no benefit, considerable discomfort, and increased risk for respiratory diseases cultivated on the inside surface of the mask.
If in your particular circumstances, you judge going back to work at your workplace to be beneficial on net, when and how to wear a mask is just one factor to consider among the complicated trade-offs.
Whoa. Social distancing and quarantining have been around since the Plague in Europe, and certainly since the 1918 flu. The massive lockdown was probably too intrusive but people in Queens might disagree. For a guy who lives and breathes messaging, The President I’ll Not Name has TOTALLY failed at communicating both the problem and the limits of the solutions. I feel fortunate to be a senior citizen with enough means to remain a spectator for now. When I’m ready to emerge, I’ll take whatever precautions make sense to me at the time, since nobody in “leadership” has offered a convincing recommendation.
Why do you need “leadership” if you are already taking “precautions that make sense” ?
I am no fan of Trump (bernie is a better entertainer, in my opinion, being a failed wannabe commie and all), but did Macron or Sanchez or Conte or Wilmes “lead” any better ? Where does this naive “Вера в доброго царя-батюшку” come from ?
What could he practically do ? Quarantine NYC from where 65% of infection spread out ?
https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-nyt-coronavirus-new-york-us-outbreaks-20200507-hcvprhldzzfovnggw5gdpd5hai-story.html
Gina Raymondo tried to limit the influx of New Yorkers to RI and miserably failed after Cuomo (apparently the wise one according to the NYC population opinion) threatened to sue RI. Can you imagine Trump attempting to do that ?