Coronavirus

New Zealand proves that if you're two islands, of 3-4 million people, and you focus on stamping out a virus above any other considerations, you can do so. Until you open back up to the world again, and then you'll get exposed again.

Holding them up as a shining example of what to do for the rest of the world, while not understanding first and foremost their inherent advantages over everyplace else in the world, is like holding Houston's track record of snow-free road days as a example of public works.

 

they are to covid what the US was to military powers wanting to attack us in pre-nuclear days.

 

Anybody remember the government making you get under your school desk in case of a nuclear attack? Wear your cloth mask!

 

I remember those drills, but only barely. What an awesome analogy.

 

We use to call them duck and cover drills. It was more fun than studying.

I suppose the masks are intended to improve people's confidence. And, I'm sure if worn properly they help a little when combined with hand washing, social distancing, and all the rest.

My niece is an RN working in a hospital in South Carolina that is over run with Covid cases. She's made it 10 months without contracting the virus, but she's a fanatic about taking precautions. She wears a mask and gloves, changes out of her uniform before going home, wipes down her phone and car, etc.

 

Poor analogy. The pre-nuclear days would be before 45, so that would include the Jap attack on Peral Harbor, the extensive and damaging German U-boat attacks on US shipping and even shore facilities in 40 and 41, the Mexican rebel incursion of Poncho Villa before our entry into WWI, and the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, to kick off the Spanish American war.

The post Korea phase of the US military is really the only time where we have not extensively reduced military size and capacity after a war, relying on two oceans to keep the foreign hordes at bay.

Even after WWII, the military shrunk to the point that the initial response to the Korean invasion was a disaster - Task Force Smith, which is widely discussed in the military as to what not to do after a conflict is over.

Off topic, but duck and cover drills, while a punch line now, actually do make a big difference in terms of civilian causalities during A bombs. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, anyone in the direct line of sight of the bomb was subject to both intense burns and massive does of radiation, while those inside even wooden buildings had a much better chance of survival. Same with regards to flying objects and glass. Get down and hide, and you're in much better shape. Unless it's Tsar Bomba that's been dropped on your city.

 

So what's your point here?

That masks and hiding under a desk do absolutely ZERO to protect you?

Or that they're not perfect ways to protect yourself and therefore we shouldn't waste our time with them?

Either way, you're wrong.

 

I find it curious that out of all the people who say masks and other measures don't work, that almost zero percent of them work in frontline healthcare settings.

Things that make you go hmmmm.....

 

Ok here it goes. Try to keep up. Back in the days before you were born, they would do drills in school where the teacher would instruct you to get under your desk for a nuclear attack. This was a government action. Do you think the desk was protecting kids from a nuclear attack?

Today, they are asking you to wear a cloth mask to protect you from a virus. The reason healthcare workers avoid it is due to wearing N-95 quality masks. That’s a big difference. While the cloth masks might serve some protection from capturing the wearer’s droplets, it’s not protecting the wearer. It was simply a way for them to conserve the N95’s being sucked up by the public like it was toilet paper.

 

If they worked, then why are cases so high, and the listed death rate higher than it's ever been, when cloth face coverings (can't really call more or less a dirty sock a mask - masks are N95 or such that are actually designed for this duty, not an old scarf worn over the mouth, sometimes nose) are widely used.

I guess the idea is that things would be even worse without them, but that's a difficult argument to make, and can't really be proven as you're just guessing about the outcome, instead of seeing a change in results.

I think a lot of the dislike of cloth face coverings is how the medical community has disgraced themselves beyond redemption through the whole Wuhan Virus situation.

First it was no big deal. Dr. Saint Faucci himself said he didn't see it being a problem. Then it was, but no point in wearing masks, so don't bother and certainly don't buy any. Then OK, they do help and we lied about it so you fools wouldn't go and buy them all up.

Then it was Two Weeks to Stop the Spread!!!, remember that? Two weeks to flatten the curve, not to drive it down to zero, but to reduce the spike so the same number of people would get sick, but not all at once. Sounded reasonable, then two weeks became 4 then 2 months then 9, with no end in sight.

Meanwhile, small business owners and their employees went broke then bankrupt, all while government employees didn't even lose a single retirement point, much less a paycheck.

Protests against lockdowns that resulted in losing your life savings and the business you spent your heart and soul to open and run were evil super spreader events that brave medical types stood powerfully in front of to stop. Then when some felon with twice the lethal dose of fentanyl died in cuffs in Minneapolis, protests were suddenly fine and even encouraged - White Coats for Black Lives!

At some point, a large segment of the general public tunes the alleged experts out after all of this.

I don't know if you've ever been in a leadership role in a crisis - I have in the Army. The most important thing you posses is your credibility. You don't always have to be right - the troops know no one in combat is going to know it all. But if you are shown to be lying to them, playing games with what you say based on politics, and not sharing the same risks and burdens as they do, you're finished as a leader, and they won't follow what you tell them to do.

The Wuhan should be a case study for public heath officials as to what not to do. But they'll just give themselves awards and wait for the Hollywood movies to show them all as heroes.

 

Those are not comparable scenarios.

N-95s are certainly better, but it's wrong to say that other masks are worthless.

Link: Efficacy of cloth face mask in prevention of novel coronavirus infection transmission: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Even if the cloth mask filter barrier is large enough for COVID virions to pass through, it's way too simplistic to state that makes the cloth mask worthless.

COVID virions don't travel in straight lines. They follow Brownian motion models, which any of the UT physics majors will tell you results in erratic pathway like a pool ball bouncing around a table. So most of the virion particles get trapped in the mask because they don't pas in a straight line through the mask but bounce around, greatly increasing the chances of getting caught in the fabric.

Also, COVID particles don't travel by themselves, most are bound to respiratory droplets which greatly increases the size of the aggregate and makes them even more likely to get caught in the mask.

So yes, you should wear a damn mask, even if it's cloth, and even though it's not perfect, and even though it's not as good as an N-95.

Wearing a flimsy cloth mask beats the **** out of wearing nothing.

 

You be you, I’ll be a white trash healthcare worker. So which CDC guideline do you follow? The one where masks are ineffective, the one where masks only protect the wearer, or the one where it protects everyone while cases are at an all time high?

 

And you still haven’t sponsored.

 

Do I look like the CDC to you? Nice straw man. I don't give a **** what they say, I only care what the evidence shows.

 

Great. Show me the scientific evidence that cloth masks work.

I met with one of my Hospitalist Directors today. He has treated 100’s of Covid patients over the last 9 months. He was wearing a N-95 when he entered the room. I quickly worked to put my cloth mask on. He said, “Don’t worry about that. I have a N-95 on. We are protected.” So he was protected and I was not in danger without a mask. Get under your desk!

 

I already posted a study above.

At any rate if you are going to use an appeal to authority logical fallacy, why dont you ask him if wearing a cloth mask is better than wearing nothing?

And when he tells you it is, I guess you'll have to go back to being a sheep losing your manhood. Hell you lost it already since you are a slave to the government carrying a cloth mask around. I thought you were a real Texan, but I guess not. Some kind of man you are, taking orders from the government like a good little sheep.

 

You answer you own questions with the previous response.

You've now cursed three times, and insulted, someone who works in the heath care field so has first hand knowledge, and who has a different viewpoint than you on this subject. One that the CDC themselves has changed positions on several times.

Virtue signaling, and positions of moral superiority, are not effective in convincing the general public of the benefits of a radical change in their everyday behavior.

Providing facts, without lying to them, and informing them of benefits / trade offs, while acknowledging that there is a lot that the health care field does not currently know, is the way to maintain the credibility needed for pubic heath issues.

Something they have consistently not done.

 

Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study - PubMed
If SCIENCE can't prove that wearing a mask during surgery makes a difference in post operative infections, how can you believe that a mask with about 1000 nm pore size can prevent the spread of a 72 nm virus?
Also consider the cloth masks have never been shown by SCIENCE to reduce the spread of any disease.
But go ahead with your religious beliefs.

 

Give it up. I fought this fight here about 125 and 175 pages ago. Back when this was going to be gone the Wednesday after the election.

 

I think the concept of face coverings in that the virus, while super small, isn't coming out of your mouth and nose by itself, it's being carried in snot and puss and mucus (yuck!), and all that slime gets caught to some unknown extent by the dirty sock on your face.

The trade off to that is the greatly increased number of times a person rubs their mouth and nose with their hand to fiddle with the sock, so then their hand has slime on it - the traditional nose / hand / hand /nose method of flu transmission that's always been discussed before the Wuhan.

Look, if the medical guys had said at the beginning "this works to some unknown extent, it's not magic, and wearing a dirty old cloth on your face while screaming during a protest isn't doing anything. We advise it cuze it's better than nothing and may help, we'll try to do studies on it and see if it helps. And we don't recommend closing by force of government anyone's business as that is their life's work and they need to be able to earn a living like the rest of us", there would not be the wide scale pushback against face coverings.

 

I'll say this one more time for the people in the back -- I don't give a f**k what the CDC says. I'm sure as hell not their spokesman.

I will say this -- the difference between the anti-mask demogogues and the vast majority of doctors and scientists is that the latter group is willing to change based on what research shows whereas the former group is so stubbon they refuse to change course despite what the research shows.

Let's get real. Anti-mask people are just like the anti-vax crowd. It doesn't matter how many studies come out proving them wrong, they are fools who just ignore it and stick their head in the sand.

Let's use your Army example. Which leader is better? The one who tells everyone he's right no matter what and refuses to alter his battle plan despite new intelligence reports? Or the leader who changes his mind and attack plan based on new data?

According to your logic, the first leader is better.

 

It's good that you realize you lost that fight.

 

Like a pissing match with a skunk. No one wins.

 

Another note about the anti-mask people. They're mostly hypocrites who are doing right-wing virtue signaling while behind the scenes they do exactly what the government tells them to do.

They don't want the government telling them to wear a mask, but they sure bend over and take it when Uncle Sam tells them to pay their taxes and wear a seat belt.

They're sheep just as much as people who wear masks.

 

Skunk wins. Clearly you have little skunk experience.

 

So unless a person is a tax cheat, they can't have a differing opinion about cloth face coverings? Got it.

As for Barry, you know he's had plenty of skunk experience - that was their Thanksgiving feast in OK.

 

I thought it was whatever roadkill they could pick off of the road.

 

No skunk is Thanksgiving. Roadkill is Festivus.

 

Oh, I see. You learn something new every day.