Fixing the COVID-19 Crisis in 30 days

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Here's the ridiculous part of all this "Social distancing:" You are standing in a line at the supermarket happily spewing your exhaled breath into a small, invisible "cloud" around you and feeling secure, knowing you are not mixing your slightly slowed droplets with anyone else.... And then you move forward six feet- right into the other person's cloud of exhaust.

Repeat that six times when it's busy and you have potentially infected or become infected by six people.

It's all a big waste of time and an effort to program us into submission in my opinion...

If you are sick, stay home. If you get sick, stay home or get medical attention. If you are in one of those "at risk" categories, quarantine yourself. Otherwise, go about life as usual...
 
Tantalum said:
I know, right? I almost find gloves worse. You'll see the dude handling money, wipe down a countertop, then handle deli meat all without switching gloves, and no one seems to bat an eye because he's wearing gloves
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I thought people wore gloves to protect themselves. I don't mean medical personnel who change between patients, but people who have contact with cash, mostly. I've seen this even before Covid.
 
jsstevens said:
And it’s intended to break up and slow the accelerated air stream to keep those droplets and anything else going with them from traveling so far. Put a mask on and try to blow out a candle for illustration.
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Science: Mask usage reduces transmission rates from 90% down to less than 5%.

Main Stream Media: Mask usage does not reduce transmission rates down to 0%.

Internet: Even if everybody wears a mask, you can still get COVID-19.

John Q. Public: MASKS ARE USELESS. WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO WEAR A MASK???!?
 
asicer said:
Science: Mask usage reduces transmission rates from 90% down to less than 5%.

Main Stream Media: Mask usage does not reduce transmission rates down to 0%.

Internet: Even if everybody wears a mask, you can still get COVID-19.

John Q. Public: MASKS ARE USELESS. WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO WEAR A MASK???!?
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you owe me a new irony meter.
 
weilke said:
- Mostly droplets.
- Minor contribution from smaller respiratory aerosols (airborne).
- Possible (but never conclusively demonstrated) entry via the eyes.
- Minor contribution from 'fomites' (contaminated objects).

Droplet transmission can be reduced by social distancing and masks (both as measure of source control but also as PPE for the wearer)
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Yes, so it seems like the mask effectiveness, in terms of the fraction of virions which make it through, however they are carried, should be roughly the same in both directions.

If entry via eyes or from fomites were a larger contribution, then I could see how there might be an asymmetry between source and wearer protection. But it seems like it should be quite close given the minor contributions of the other routes.
 
asicer said:
Science: Mask usage reduces transmission rates from 90% down to less than 5%.

Main Stream Media: Mask usage does not reduce transmission rates down to 0%.

Internet: Even if everybody wears a mask, you can still get COVID-19.

John Q. Public: MASKS ARE USELESS. WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO WEAR A MASK???!?
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The use of N95s by professional health care workers likely reduces transmission by about 95%.

There are a lot of differences between that and the general public wearing cloth masks.

I think the failure to recognize this distinction is a cause of a lot of the disparities you note.

Of course, John Q. Public has a very hard time understanding something that involves probabilistic distinctions, rather than simply 2 category distinctions.
 
IK04 said:
Here's the ridiculous part of all this "Social distancing:" You are standing in a line at the supermarket happily spewing your exhaled breath into a small, invisible "cloud" around you and feeling secure, knowing you are not mixing your slightly slowed droplets with anyone else.... And then you move forward six feet- right into the other person's cloud of exhaust.

Repeat that six times when it's busy and you have potentially infected or become infected by six people.

It's all a big waste of time and an effort to program us into submission in my opinion...

If you are sick, stay home. If you get sick, stay home or get medical attention. If you are in one of those "at risk" categories, quarantine yourself. Otherwise, go about life as usual...
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Works great, except for the large number of people who get it asymptomatically and spread it to susceptible people who live in the same home. There are a very large number of multi-generational homes, some by choice, some by economics. Where is this susceptible population supposed to go to isolate themselves and who will pay for that? When the grandparents are the child-care provider, who will watch the kids while the parents are at work doing their "essential jobs"?

When you live in a rural or suburban middle to upper-middle class bubble, it is easy to forget how a huge percentage of the population lives.
 
Anyone who has trouble breathing wearing a mask either has an anxiety issue they need to deal with, or has a respiratory problem and should consider themselves at high risk if they get COVID.

Signed, an overweight 50-something who can still pass a respiratory function test to wear full-face respirator for HAZMAT work.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
Of course, John Q. Public has a very hard time understanding something that involves probabilistic distinctions, rather than simply 2 category distinctions.
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It doesn't help when the government makes no serious attempt at educating people about the differences.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
It doesn't help when the government makes no serious attempt at educating people about the differences.
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Ha ha! Very funny.. You used "Government" and "educating" in the same sentence.

Government run schools are the root of most of our problems as a civil society.
 
IK04 said:
Ha ha! Very funny.. You used "Government" and "educating" in the same sentence.

Government run schools are the root of most of our problems as a civil society.
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You're right. The government has no place in presenting scientific facts to its population. You should keep that in mind when a hurricane warning is issued.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
You're right. The government has no place in presenting scientific facts to its population. You should keep that in mind when a hurricane warning is issued.
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which public schools teach hurricane forecasting? Is that grade school or middle school level?
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
The use of N95s by professional health care workers likely reduces transmission by about 95%.
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When HCWs are provided with a sufficient supply of properly fit tested N95s, gloves, gowns and face-shields transmission in the healthcare setting should be near zero (the data from hospitals that had positive staff members suggests that they more likely than not acquired it either outside of the hospital or from other staff rather than patients).

The NIOSH rating is for 95% of 0.3 μm test dust, it doesn't deal with numbers of viral particles. It is also worth noting that the N95 filters both larger and smaller particles than the nominal rating, its just rated to the standard particle size. We also know that for the virus to retain its ability to infect, it has to:
- bring a bunch of friends
- remain in a blob of fluid that protects it against drying out.

This is not an anthrax or fungal spore that is truly airborne, it is a virus that is very intolerant to drying out and needs to be transmitted in a particular way.

So even though a N95 doesn't filter out 100% of the possible ways how the virus can get into ones airway, it appears to be 'good enough' for all but the most aerosol generating medical procedures.

There are a lot of differences between that and the general public wearing cloth masks.
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The main difference is that a surgical mask doesn't affect your air exchange and you can wear it for hours on end while a properly fit tested N95 is a giant pain in the azz to wear, increases your work of breathing, leaves an imprint on your skin and after a full shift the bridge of your nose is sore.

I think the failure to recognize this distinction is a cause of a lot of the disparities you note.

Of course, John Q. Public has a very hard time understanding something that involves probabilistic distinctions, rather than simply 2 category distinctions.
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The failure to recognize many of these distinctions is willful.
 
MauleSkinner said:
which public schools teach hurricane forecasting? Is that grade school or middle school level?
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I'm not the one who brought public schools into the discussion. But for reference, I'd put a good wager that most meteorologist were brought up through public schools, including college.

Government support of the sciences has a history that goes back quite a few hundred years.
 
IK04 said:
Here's the ridiculous part of all this "Social distancing:" You are standing in a line at the supermarket happily spewing your exhaled breath into a small, invisible "cloud" around you and feeling secure, knowing you are not mixing your slightly slowed droplets with anyone else.... And then you move forward six feet- right into the other person's cloud of exhaust.

Repeat that six times when it's busy and you have potentially infected or become infected by six people.
Click to expand...

That would be a concern if airborne spread via small respiratory aerosols was the dominant mechanism. If the main mechanism of spread is via larger droplets expelled while talking and breathing, most of those follow gravity and drop down to the floor within 3ft of the person emitting them. If in addition, the person wears a mask that further reduces the projection of those droplets, the potential for transmission decreases further.


All bets are off if you are in a enclosed space with turbulent air flow from forced ventilation: 2nd floor chinese restaurant with mini-split, slaughterhouse, NYC subway.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
I'm not the one who brought public schools into the discussion. But for reference, I'd put a good wager that most meteorologist were brought up through public schools, including college.

Government support of the sciences has a history that goes back quite a few hundred years.
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Yup...and with “no child left behind”, the government provides additional funding to school districts so that students with special needs can get help...as long as those special needs students aren’t helped enough to keep up with the rest of the class.

But if you only count the above average to gifted students, government-run schools (the premise of the post you responded to) don’t do too badly.:rolleyes:
 
MauleSkinner said:
Yup...and with “no child left behind”, the government provides additional funding to school districts so that students with special needs can get help...as long as those special needs students aren’t helped enough to keep up with the rest of the class.

But if you only count the above average to gifted students, government-run schools (the premise of the post you responded to) don’t do too badly.:rolleyes:
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No child left behind means the teacher has to focus on the bottom quartile of the class. This is done at the expense of the rest of the class. This is because little Johnny can't be allowed to fail. That is a problem that is rooted in little Johnny's parents and who gets elected to the school boards, not the teacher. I am not a fan of Common Core or NCLB. That doesn't mean you throw out public education, it means you work to improve it. One of the only positives to COVID is that standardized testing in schools has been largely tossed aside in California.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
No child left behind means the teacher has to focus on the bottom quartile of the class. This is done at the expense of the rest of the class. This is because little Johnny can't be allowed to fail. That is a problem that is rooted in little Johnny's parents and who gets elected to the school boards, not the teacher. I am not a fan of Common Core or NCLB. That doesn't mean you throw out public education, it means you work to improve it. One of the only positives to COVID is that standardized testing in schools has been largely tossed aside in California.
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I’m not criticizing the teachers. I’m criticizing the way the government demands teachers not do their jobs. And other than the school board wanting the federal funding to get extra people in the classroom to focus on the bottom quartile so that the regular classroom teachers don’t have to do so at the expense of the rest of the class, I’m not blaming the school boards. But the fact is, federal funding gets taken away if little Johnny gets more than 40% of his spelling words for the week. Little Johnny can’t be allowed to fail, but he can’t be allowed to succeed, either.

I’d also be willing to bet that California didn’t toss aside standardized testing to provide better education. More likely to keep from looking bad because the educational system can’t teach the bottom quartile with other COVID restrictions in place.
 
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Jeff Oslick said:
You're right. The government has no place in presenting scientific facts to its population. You should keep that in mind when a hurricane warning is issued.
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My State just *removed* their raw data from their Covid website this week, FWIW.

Highly dedicated to the “transparency” they promised now, apparently...

Nah. Just look at their pretty graphs and assume the data behind them is accurate.

The third party checkers were actually in favor of their numbers even. Which leads to the natural and likely conclusion that they want to do things the numbers don’t support now. No other real reason to remove those links.
 
weilke said:
The failure to recognize many of these distinctions is willful.
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I have some friends who think the failure of the government to tell people about the actual effectiveness of cloth masks versus N95s is willful. I tend to subscribe more to the 'never assume malice when incompetence will suffice as an explanation' crowd.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
I have some friends who think the failure of the government to tell people about the actual effectiveness of cloth masks versus N95s is willful. I tend to subscribe more to the 'never assume malice when incompetence will suffice as an explanation' crowd.
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I would generally agree, but I think in this case the incompetence is being used as a weapon in a battle for power.
 
Bob Noel said:
welcome to the interweb
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But they can't write anything that isn't true on the internet.


Oh look, hydroxychloroquine works. There are even doctors in white coats who say so:

www.americasfrontlinedoctors.com








(the 'organization' seems to be little more than a newly registered domain name, a cheaply thrown together website and a list of physicians with no particular expertise in drugs, trials or epidemiology.)
 
PaulMillner said:
wow. A remarkable claim offered without remarkable proof.
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I like how you didn't quote my whole sentence. Sounds typical of...oh wait dont want go there.

But here scroll down to the section that says what are health defects of vitamin D deficiency. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15050-vitamin-d--vitamin-d-deficiency

https://www.webmd.com/diet/guide/vitamin-d-deficiency

Not that you will believe what it says but hey. There are plenty more out there.

Geez some peoples kids, can't use there own brain and think on their own and parse quotes to make someone sound completely and utterly uniformed. I may be completely and utterly uninformed but I can read and make my own decsisions and not just take what others say as the truth.
 
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wsuffa said:
30 days? The "experts" are now saying 60 days, and that's with a ban on interstate travel (e.g. no flying).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-it-would-take-to-get-back-to-normal-by-october/2020/07/27/a8886854-d02d-11ea-8c55-61e7fa5e82ab_story.html?hpid=hp_opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-a-right:homepage/story-ans
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To make that effort be worth it, we would need to massively increase testing. This was sort of mentioned toward the end.
For this to be worth it, I believe we would need to scale up testing to occur pretty much at all social choke points and mass gatherings. e.g. at all airports, sea ports, grocery stores, major events (NFL, College)...

Tim
 
simtech said:
I like how you didn't quote my whole sentence. Sounds typical of...oh wait dont want go there.

But here scroll down to the section that says what are health defects of vitamin D deficiency. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15050-vitamin-d--vitamin-d-deficiency

https://www.webmd.com/diet/guide/vitamin-d-deficiency

Not that you will believe what it says but hey. There are plenty more out there.

Geez some peoples kids, can't use there own brain and think on their own and parse quotes to make someone sound completely and utterly uniformed. I may be completely and utterly uninformed but I can read and make my own decsisions and not just take what others say as the truth.
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Neither of the articles supports the statement that 'chronic vit d deficiency is the underlying cause of most illness and cancers.' Yes, being vit D deficient is not healthy, but the conclusion you posted simply does not follow.
 
tspear said:
To make that effort be worth it, we would need to massively increase testing. This was sort of mentioned toward the end.
For this to be worth it, I believe we would need to scale up testing to occur pretty much at all social choke points and mass gatherings. e.g. at all airports, sea ports, grocery stores, major events (NFL, College)...
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Might be a good job for dogs.
 
weilke said:
Neither of the articles supports the statement that 'chronic vit d deficiency is the underlying cause of most illness and cancers.' Yes, being vit D deficient is not healthy, but the conclusion you posted simply does not follow.
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Again I didsay "I think"...that means I believe, my own thought, I did not say chronic vitamin d deficiency IS the cause of. Words were left out to make my quote seems like I was stating that it was.
 
simtech said:
Again I didsay "I think"...that means I believe, my own thought, I did not say chronic vitamin d deficiency IS the cause of. Words were left out to make my quote seems like I was stating that it was.
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Mh, okay.

simtech said:
My vit D was looow...doc but me on high dose pills for a while. Now I take daily D3 and I have not been sick for the past 3 years. I think chronic vit d deficiency is the underlying cause of most illness and cancers. Ive been much healthier since getting my levels up to where they should be. And I spend ALOT of time outdoors too. I'm Italian so I need more time outdoors.
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Snipping that statement out of the entire post didn't misrepresent your position. Neither your personal experience, nor the articles you quoted support that statement. You were vit D defficient, you took steps to correct it, that's good. Other people who are vit D deficient should do the same.
 
tspear said:
To make that effort be worth it, we would need to massively increase testing. This was sort of mentioned toward the end.
For this to be worth it, I believe we would need to scale up testing to occur pretty much at all social choke points and mass gatherings. e.g. at all airports, sea ports, grocery stores, major events (NFL, College)...

Tim
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I assume you mean after the shutdown. Under the proposal, everything except grocery would be shut dow for up to 2 months.
 
wsuffa said:
I assume you mean after the shutdown. Under the proposal, everything except grocery would be shut dow for up to 2 months.
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Yes

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