Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

On arrival in Florida, which coincided with a (presumably typical going forward) summer COVID-19 case peak, I noticed that the wearing of face masks was actually more common than in Maskachusetts. This surprised me a little, given that MA has been the land of ordering people to wear masks and FL has been notable for its lack of mask orders. But, of course, given the hysterical media stories about Florida as the worst-afflicted state in the nation (except for all of the other states where the death rate has been much higher (and the COVID Olympics score would be even more in FL’s favor if you adjusted for percentage of population over 65)), it is natural that the more fearful residents and visitors would wish to protect themselves from a raging plague.

What was interesting was how the fearful had chosen to protect themselves. Instead of wearing N95 and P100 masks, as you might expect for people concerned about an aerosol virus, they were wearing simple cloth and paper masks, about as effective as a chain link fence against sand. I wonder if this is partly due to the media and government telling us that bandanas, paper surgical masks, and stylish cloth masks are “protective”. (I am aware that the theory is that if 100 percent of people wear such masks that transmission will be reduced (such that everyone gets COVID a few weeks later than otherwise? What is the point if R0 is not reduced below 1?), but this is seldom explained clearly. Certainly no public health official says, in public, “it is pointless for you to wear a mask if nobody else is.” (though sometimes they say that in private; see “Fauci Said Masks ‘Not Really Effective in Keeping Out Virus,’ Email Reveals” (Newsweek))

Some of the same phenomenon is on display with vaccine propaganda. A guy in his 60s cited Dr. Fauci for his belief that 99 percent of people having problems with COVID-19 are unvaccinated (according to the UK’s far superior medical record system, however, the Delta variant kills without distinction; roughly 60 percent of those hospitalized with COVID-19 in Israel are fully vaccinated). To show his concern regarding COVID-19, he was wearing a cloth mask emblazoned “Combat COVID” …. under his nose.

“18 US Orthodox Jewish girls kicked off a Delta-KLM flight following a COVID-19 protocols dispute, reports say” (Business Insider):

Eighteen Orthodox Jewish girls were barred from boarding a Delta flight from Amsterdam to New York on Thursday because of a dispute on a KLM flight about COVID-19 protocols, according to reports.

The passengers breached the protocols by taking their masks off to eat their own food outside of the designated mealtimes, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Despite my general adherence to the Swedish level of coronapanic, if I could take over as dictator of the U.S. and issue executive orders, my first order to would to make it illegal for airlines to sell the middle seat, except to families traveling together.

Related:

• Coronavirus will breathe life into my two-thirds-full airline idea?
• Two-thirds full airline idea

“Fauci: U.S. can get control of pandemic by spring if vaccinations rise” (Axios):

NIAID director Anthony Fauci told CNN on Monday the U.S. could “start getting back to a degree of normality” by next spring [of 2022] if more Americans are vaccinated against COVID-19.

Yes but: “There’s no guarantee, because it’s up to us,” Fauci said in his interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, noting that another variant could emerge unless the current surge is brought under control.

Fauci told Cooper that the U.S. should get “some good control in the spring of 2022” if “we can get through this winter and get really the overwhelming majority of the 90 million people who have not been vaccinated.”

Compare to a leading 20th century economic scientist:

Separately, I am curious about the #Science. If we host a raging a coronaplague, won’t most of those who are currently unvaccinated get infected and develop a similar immunity to what they would have received via vaccination? And aren’t we told by the media that the U.S. is currently suffering from Third Wave coronaplague? Why does it matter, therefore, if some people remain unvaccinated?

Same question on the variants… we’ve told that vaccinated people are still getting infected and becoming contagious, but are less likely to be hospitalized. If this is true, why would the production of variants be tightly correlated to the percentage of Americans who are vaccinated? (And even if we could get God to shut down domestic production of variants, wouldn’t variant coronavirus arrive in the U.S. from other countries? We don’t have a more or less sealed border like the COVID-free paradise islands of Australia and New Zealand.)

What if you don’t want to wait 7 months to see if Fauci’s fairy tale comes true? Move to Florida! There is plant growth all the time here, whether you want it or not. By the time you get your move organized, the current COVID-19 wave should be over.

What if you rejected my harebrained idea, Build downdraft paint booths for K-12 schools?, and #FollowedScience by investing in acrylic barriers?

“Those Anti-Covid Plastic Barriers Probably Don’t Help and May Make Things Worse” (NYT, 8/19/2021):

Covid precautions have turned many parts of our world into a giant salad bar, with plastic barriers separating sales clerks from shoppers, dividing customers at nail salons and shielding students from their classmates.

Intuition tells us a plastic shield would be protective against germs. But scientists who study aerosols, air flow and ventilation say that much of the time, the barriers don’t help and probably give people a false sense of security. And sometimes the barriers can make things worse.

Research suggests that in some instances, a barrier protecting a clerk behind a checkout counter may redirect the germs to another worker or customer. Rows of clear plastic shields, like those you might find in a nail salon or classroom, can also impede normal air flow and ventilation.

(Note the “false sense of security”, which is why the Swedish MD/PhDs didn’t want to order residents to wear bandanas and paper/cloth masks. Masked humans would be more comfortable crowding together and the vulnerable would feel comfortable entering indoor public environments that, in fact, could not be made safe with these primitive tools.)

Maybe the plastic barriers work better to separate diseased K-12 students? “The Science of Masking Kids at School Remains Uncertain” (New York, August 2021) says “no”:

At the end of May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a notable, yet mostly ignored, large-scale study of COVID transmission in American schools. A few major news outlets covered its release by briefly reiterating the study’s summary: that masking then-unvaccinated teachers and improving ventilation with more fresh air were associated with a lower incidence of the virus in schools. Those are common-sense measures, and the fact that they seem to work is reassuring but not surprising. Other findings of equal importance in the study, however, were absent from the summary and not widely reported. These findings cast doubt on the impact of many of the most common mitigation measures in American schools. Distancing, hybrid models, classroom barriers, HEPA filters, and, most notably, requiring student masking were each found to not have a statistically significant benefit. In other words, these measures could not be said to be effective.

#Science did not evaluate my downdraft paint booth idea, sadly. From the Watertown, Maskchusetts central post office, August 27, 2021:

Related:

• “The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill” (WIRED, 5/13/2021): “The distinction between droplet and airborne transmission has enormous consequences. To combat droplets, a leading precaution is to wash hands frequently with soap and water. To fight infectious aerosols, the air itself is the enemy. In hospitals, that means expensive isolation wards and N95 masks for all medical staff. … An indoor-air researcher at the University of Hong Kong, Li had made a name for himself during the first SARS outbreak, in 2003. His investigation of an outbreak at the Amoy Gardens apartment complex provided the strongest evidence that a coronavirus could be airborne. But in the intervening decades, he’d also struggled to convince the public health community that their risk calculus was off. Eventually, he decided to work out the math. Li’s elegant simulations showed that when a person coughed or sneezed, the heavy droplets were too few and the targets—an open mouth, nostrils, eyes—too small to account for much infection. Li’s team had concluded, therefore, that the public health establishment had it backward and that most colds, flu, and other respiratory illnesses must spread through aerosols instead.”