980 replies to this topic

[Florin]

In fact, everyday life often works on the same principle: people's opinions on any subject are usually based on the best evidence at the time, but those opinions change when new info comes in.

 

Sometimes this doesn't happen. It took forever for policy makers to acknowledge that covid is transmitted via airborne aerosols, and even after this was acknowledged, they rejected the respirator solution.

[gamesguru]

No they didn't, they knew it was airborne. They lied because the supply chain was already under stress, and they didn't want health care workers to be without masks. The idea that we could magically produce P99 respirators for all 300 million Americans overnight is highly naive.

 

The narrative about "don't use masks" to preserve them for the health care workers also has nothing to do with the ventilator crisis.

[Florin]

Why do you think supply chain strain was still an issue many months after the pandemic started? If this was still an issue, why wasn't there any massive effort to increase respirator production to meet the needs of the entire population? Why does the CDC still recommend masks? Why does the WHO still not mention respirators?

 

Infectious diseases like the cold and flu are also likely to be mostly or exclusively transmitted via airborne aerosols, yet CDC/WHO guidelines don't mention respirators or even masks. Why?

 

Why do you think policy makers knew it was airborne? All of the evidence I've seen suggests that most of them didn't believe covid could become airborne because their textbooks told them it was physically impossible. When their false textbook knowledge was challenged by aerosols experts, they refused to admit their mistake.

Edited by Florin, 17 July 2023 - 04:45 AM.

[Dorian Grey]

Why do you think supply chain strain was still an issue many months after the pandemic started? If this was still an issue, why wasn't there any massive effort to increase respirator production to meet the needs of the entire population? Why does the CDC still recommend masks? Why does the WHO still not mention respirators?

 

Infectious diseases like the cold and flu are also likely to be mostly or exclusively transmitted via airborne aerosols, yet CDC/WHO guidelines don't mention respirators or even masks. Why?

 

Why do you think policy makers knew it was airborne? All of the evidence I've seen suggests that most of them didn't believe covid could become airborne because their textbooks told them it was physically impossible. When their false textbook knowledge was challenged by aerosols experts, they refused to admit their mistake.

 

If you think it's hard getting an entire population to wear masks, think about what it might take to get everyone into respirators...  For life!  

 

SARS-CoV-2 is endemic, and here for the long haul.  Is it realistic to believe we might all be on respirators forever?  

[Daniel Cooper]

If you think it's hard getting an entire population to wear masks, think about what it might take to get everyone into respirators...  For life!  

 

SARS-CoV-2 is endemic, and here for the long haul.  Is it realistic to believe we might all be on respirators forever?  

 

That's the thing with measure like respirators.

 

Let's say they work very well, but they don't drive R0 to < 1. A likely scenario.

 

So you have the virus running around in the wild at a very low rate. Two things happen:

 

1.) The virus is evolving at a much slower rate because it isn't getting transmitted as much. Therefore it takes longer to get to the less deadly strains we have now.

 

2.) The only immunity we have that is significant is conferred from vaccines. We now know that the immunity is much less vigorous and of shorter duration than initially advertised. And we also know that the more vaccine boosters you take as time goes on, the less effective they each become.

 

You could find yourself in a situation where everyone is in respirators (which will certainly be government mandated to get the usage rate to where they would be truly effective) for a very long time. Probably until you develop really effective antivirals.

 

Sounds a little dystopian to me.

[gamesguru]

Why do you think supply chain strain was still an issue many months after the pandemic started? If this was still an issue, why wasn't there any massive effort to increase respirator production to meet the needs of the entire population?

 

Probably because the case fatality rate was on the order of ~1% and people didn't care that much. Can you give an example of any government that tried to produce (or secure) P99 respirators for everyone?

 

As Dorian states, getting everyone to comply with that is nearly as difficult of a problem as sorting out the supply chain.

 

I agree the idea of P99 respirators forever is a bit extreme. The virus has countless natural reservoirs now (deer, bats). The spike body keeps evolving. And the adaptive immune response is not sustained. All these factors make elimination through a vaccination protocol virtually impossible. There have been diseases eliminated or brought nearly virtually under control (smallpox, polio), but COVID is not turning out to be one. Could COVID eventually disappear like the 1918 virus did (in that case probably due to error catastrophe[1])? Yes, but it's unclear how likely this is to occur at this point. The virus has generally gotten less severe, and cases have gone down, but there is no sign of disappearing rapidly like H1N1 tends to. Interestingly, there is potential to lead a campaign of our own against the virus. See below study.

 

Molnupiravir’s mechanism of action drives “error catastrophe” in SARS-CoV-2: A therapeutic strategy that leads to lethal mutagenesis of the virus
2023 Jun 28
https://www.ncbi.nlm...es/PMC10300273/

Initially, scientists coined the term “error catastrophe” to indicate the collective loss of genetic information in a specific organism’s lineage. It illustrates the proposed inability of a genomic element in a population due to the decrease in the conformity of its replication machinery beyond a certain threshold level.1,2 Scientists also proposed different mathematical models to illustrate the error catastrophe occasionally. Eigen and Schuster proposed one initial mathematical model for error catastrophe, and the model predicted through mathematics the high error rates due to the error catastrophe effect.1,3

An error catastrophe is noted over time when a high mutation rate occurs during viral replication. A high mutation frequency was observed in the RNA virus compared with the DNA virus, so scientists have described the error catastrophe of RNA virus from time to time. Crotty et al. illustrated a term to explain ribavirin’s antiviral strategy.4 Initially, error catastrophe was commenced in molecular evolution theory. Virologists more commonly used the term to describe the antiviral strategy. In this article, we endeavor to depict a model molecular mechanism of the error catastrophe in SARS-CoV-2 due to the administration of an antiviral drug named molnupiravir (Figure 1A). We explained that the error catastrophe phenomenon leads to lethal mutagenesis of the virus.

 

References

 

[1] Carter, R. W., & Sanford, J. C. (2012). A new look at an old virus: patterns of mutation accumulation in the human H1N1 influenza virus since 1918. Theoretical biology & medical modelling, 9, 42. https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4682-9-42

[Florin]

Look, I'm only suggesting replacing ineffective masks with the voluntary use of respirators for high-risk groups until effective interventions such as vaccines or other therapeutics became widely available. Later lockdowns and mask mandates could have been avoided. What actually happened was way more dystopian.

[Daniel Cooper]

Look, I'm only suggesting replacing ineffective masks with the voluntary use of respirators for high-risk groups until effective interventions such as vaccines or other therapeutics became widely available. Later lockdowns and mask mandates could have been avoided. What actually happened was way more dystopian.

 

Do you really think these respirators would be voluntary? I have my doubts.  After all, they mandated masks that didn't really work.

[Florin]

Do you really think these respirators would be voluntary? I have my doubts.  After all, they mandated masks that didn't really work.

 

This is what I advocated from the start. I said that I supported mask mandates (assuming that they're at least somewhat effective) only until respirators became available.

 

Even if respirator mandates were imposed, they would have been much more effective than mask mandates. And respirators (like PAPRs) can be designed to be even more comfortable to wear than any mask.

[Florin]

 

Why do you think supply chain strain was still an issue many months after the pandemic started? If this was still an issue, why wasn't there any massive effort to increase respirator production to meet the needs of the entire population? Why does the CDC still recommend masks? Why does the WHO still not mention respirators?

 
Probably because the case fatality rate was on the order of ~1% and people didn't care that much. Can you give an example of any government that tried to produce (or secure) P99 respirators for everyone?

So now supply chain strain wasn't a real problem? So Fauci and Walkenski didn't care that much? Older people weren't dying higher than 1% rates?

 

Governments looked to WHO expertise and like-minded experts for guidance. So, why would they produce respirators instead of masks? Expert worship fooled them, like it fooled most people.

 

Also:
 

Infectious diseases like the cold and flu are also likely to be mostly or exclusively transmitted via airborne aerosols, yet CDC/WHO guidelines don't mention respirators or even masks. Why?

 

If people can't be bothered with wearing masks to avoid non-covid respiratory infections, why should they bother with obsessive hand washing or covering their sneezes?

[Daniel Cooper]

This is what I advocated from the start. I said that I supported mask mandates (assuming that they're at least somewhat effective) only until respirators became available.
 
Even if respirator mandates were imposed, they would have been much more effective than mask mandates. And respirators (like PAPRs) can be designed to be even more comfortable to wear than any mask.

 
Universal respirator mandates would be justified on the basis of lowering overall healthcare costs, particularly in countries with socialized healthcare. But in the US as well as it would be argued that the government still incurs significant expenditures due to covid sicknesses and death. So these things would not be voluntary once that particular cat is out of the bag.
 
Of course, in what used to be called third world countries (which is really out of date since the old US - USSR strategic alliances no longer apply) you wouldn't see levels of respirator wearing sufficient to stop the virus transmission, so those countries would remain as reservoirs - which would mean the developed world would have to keep their respirators on until they got a really effective vaccine or very good antivirals. 
 
We're not there on the vaccine as of today in my opinion - and there's a good chance we might never get there. We still don't have an effective HIV vaccine in spite of nearly 40 years of effort (it amazes me it's been that long). Probably somewhat closer on the antivirals but also not there.
 
So we'd all be wearing something akin to this for the last 3 years and into the foreseeable future?:



I agree that you would likely be very safe from getting the virus while wearing that getup. However, I think you overestimate the practically of people that have to spend a lot of time out in public wearing something like that for extended periods of time day in and day out.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 17 July 2023 - 08:12 PM.

[Florin]

Most people think that vaccines and antivirals are good enough that most mask mandates have been lifted and the same thing would happen with respirators. A lot of people still think that masks work but that doesn't seem to be enough to wear them forever as you fear would happen with respirators.
 
If good-enough vaccines and antivirals aren't available, high-risks groups would have to wait a little longer for those therapeutics to become available or wait for the variants to become less lethal.
 
The main reason for masks mandates was that "my mask protects you, and your mask protects me." This is why mandates applied to all groups regardless of risk; by wearing masks, low-risk groups protected high-risk groups and reduced the risk of overwhelming hospitals with covid patients. Earlier in the pandemic, respirators were unavailable for most people and that's why low-quality masks needed to be used.
 
With respirators, there's no need for mandates because "my respirators protect me, even if no one is wearing a mask." High-risk people would be highly-motivated to voluntarily wear respirators for obvious reasons.
 
If you don't like the old school PAPR design, newer designs (not all of them have been independently tested, unfortunately) are a bit more practical.
 

Edited by Florin, 18 July 2023 - 07:55 PM.

[gamesguru]

The main reason for masks mandates was that "my mask protects you, and your mask protects me." This is why mandates applied to all groups regardless of risk; by wearing masks, low-risk groups protected high-risk groups and reduced the risk of overwhelming hospitals with covid patients. Earlier in the pandemic, respirators were unavailable for most people and that's why low-quality masks needed to be used.
 
With respirators, there's no need for mandates because "my respirators protect me, even if no one is wearing a mask." High-risk people would be highly-motivated to voluntarily wear respirators for obvious reasons.

 

 

I'd like to reemphasize the infeasibility of continuously wearing such a device across a full day of activities.

 

Also pointing out that such a device was available to high-risk individuals throughout the pandemic. They simply had to order or design one themselves. But practically no one did this.

 

Since most people aren't resourceful enough to obtain an effective respirator, and there would be no restrictive mandates... what incentive or enforcement would prevent overwhelming hospitals?

[Daniel Cooper]

Most people think that vaccines and antivirals are good enough that most mask mandates have been lifted and the same thing would happen with respirators. A lot of people still think that masks work but that doesn't seem to be enough to wear them forever as you fear would happen with respirators.
 
If good-enough vaccines and antivirals aren't available, high-risks groups would have to wait a little longer for those therapeutics to become available or wait for the variants to become less lethal.
 
The main reason for masks mandates was that "my mask protects you, and your mask protects me." This is why mandates applied to all groups regardless of risk; by wearing masks, low-risk groups protected high-risk groups and reduced the risk of overwhelming hospitals with covid patients. Earlier in the pandemic, respirators were unavailable for most people and that's why low-quality masks needed to be used.
 
With respirators, there's no need for mandates because "my respirators protect me, even if no one is wearing a mask." High-risk people would be highly-motivated to voluntarily wear respirators for obvious reasons.
 
If you don't like the old school PAPR design, newer designs (not all of them have been independently tested, unfortunately) are a bit more practical.
 

 

 

I don't believe the real reason for mask mandates was "my mask protects you, and your mask protects me" since that was never really true. It was about certain people in the government feeling a need to placate the public since apparently they've watched a lot of science fiction where something bad happens and the world sinks into mass hysteria. Some of them just don't have a high opinion of the public they ostensibly serve.  That and there's just a certain built in bias in those that gravitate towards government work to want to tell people what to do.

 

For your respirators, the rationale for the government to mandate them is quite direct in socialized healthcare countries - "people getting covid will cost government run healthcare a lot of money therefore everyone has to wear these". It might be a slightly more difficult case to make in the US, but US healthcare is already about 50% socialized (between Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA). And I don't doubt that a case can be made that a pandemic will cost the US government a great deal of money outside of direct healthcare costs. We spent an extra $5-6T dollars that wouldn't have occurred in 3 years of covid at the point where I quit counting.

 

So of those two masks, which one did/do you wear on a daily basis?

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 19 July 2023 - 08:32 PM.

[Mind]

The plain fact is that the policies put in place during the COVID panic did not work. They were an utter failure. Everyone could see it with their own eyes in every country in the world. Even the island nations that were able to isolate themselves eventually all saw COVID spread throughout the population when they opened up. They couldn't treat their countries as a prison forever.

 

Even if you gave the public health bureaucrats the benefit of the doubt and say "at least they tried something" (and ignore all of their well-documented unethical and incompetent behavior/actions), you can't give them the benefit of the doubt anymore. They are still pushing for failed unscientific policies.

 

Focus and energy that is placed on continuing the failed COVID policies will only delay the development of other more powerful innovative immune/therapeutic interventions.

[Florin]

I'd like to reemphasize the infeasibility of continuously wearing such a device across a full day of activities.

 

Also pointing out that such a device was available to high-risk individuals throughout the pandemic. They simply had to order or design one themselves. But practically no one did this.

 

Since most people aren't resourceful enough to obtain an effective respirator, and there would be no restrictive mandates... what incentive or enforcement would prevent overwhelming hospitals?

 

Why would it be infeasible to wear something that's more comfortable than a mask?

 

Almost no one used PAPRs or even elastomerics because the experts didn't recommended them and instead recommended ineffective masks. Most people outsource their thinking to experts, which is fine most of the time, but in this case, millions jumped off the cliff to cure their headache.

 

The motivation to wear these things would be self-interest. If you had a 15% chance of dying of covid and an even greater chance of spending weeks in the ER, wouldn't you want to wear something that reduced that chance to basically zero while being more comfortable to wear than a mask?

 

If self-interest wouldn't work in some cases, age-based mandates could have been used.

[Florin]

I don't believe the real reason for mask mandates was "my mask protects you, and your mask protects me" since that was never really true. It was about certain people in the government feeling a need to placate the public since apparently they've watched a lot of science fiction where something bad happens and the world sinks into mass hysteria. Some of them just don't have a high opinion of the public they ostensibly serve.  That and there's just a certain built in bias in those that gravitate towards government work to want to tell people what to do.

 

For your respirators, the rationale for the government to mandate them is quite direct in socialized healthcare countries - "people getting covid will cost government run healthcare a lot of money therefore everyone has to wear these". It might be a slightly more difficult case to make in the US, but US healthcare is already about 50% socialized (between Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA). And I don't doubt that a case can be made that a pandemic will cost the US government a great deal of money outside of direct healthcare costs. We spent an extra $5-6T dollars that wouldn't have occurred in 3 years of covid at the point where I quit counting.

 

So of those two masks, which one did/do you wear on a daily basis?

 

No, they were definitely sincere. NPIs like masks seemed to work for east Asian countries and that's a major reason why the mask mandates were created. Ditto lockdowns.

 

Forever mandates aren't likely. First, I doubt the gov cares that much about saving money. Second, a lot of things can save health care costs if they were mandated, but they're not. Third, once a pandemic was declared to be over, there would be a lot of pressure to eliminate any mandates.

 

As soon as one of the less bulky, relatively-cheap PAPRs gets independently certified, I'll consider buying it.

[Florin]

Focus and energy that is placed on continuing the failed COVID policies will only delay the development of other more powerful innovative immune/therapeutic interventions.

 

The problem with therapeutics is that they usually take too long to develop and distribute. With respirators, you can wait as long as necessary (for the therapeutics to arrive) without too much hassle and they'll work against any fast-spreading pandemic.

Edited by Florin, 20 July 2023 - 01:23 AM.

[gamesguru]

Why would it be infeasible to wear something that's more comfortable than a mask?

 

Almost no one used PAPRs or even elastomerics because the experts didn't recommended them and instead recommended ineffective masks. Most people outsource their thinking to experts, which is fine most of the time, but in this case, millions jumped off the cliff to cure their headache.

 

The motivation to wear these things would be self-interest. If you had a 15% chance of dying of covid and an even greater chance of spending weeks in the ER, wouldn't you want to wear something that reduced that chance to basically zero while being more comfortable to wear than a mask?

 

If self-interest wouldn't work in some cases, age-based mandates could have been used.

 

It's important to distinguish between "comfort" and "convenience". A hang gliding suit may be extremely comfortable and cozy, but it is not a convenient piece of clothing for everyday or extended use. Nor is taking it on or off something that can be accomplished in a few seconds.

 

Experts are not going to recommend something which there is an economic scarcity of. It's like telling people that elephant ivory can cure shingles. Even if it were true, that would do untold damage to the environment and cause rampant price gouging as supply failed to keep up with demand.

 

Self-interest is not uniform enough to ensure more than a handful of people would use such inconvenient or uncommon respirators. I sincerely doubt enough people would adopt the use of these contraptions to stop (or even substantially slow) the spread.

 

You would have had to force older people to wear these things.

 

It's an interesting consideration but you seem to slightly oversimplify the practicality and effectiveness of it.

[Mind]

No, they were definitely sincere. NPIs like masks seemed to work for east Asian countries and that's a major reason why the mask mandates were created. Ditto lockdowns.

 

Forever mandates aren't likely. First, I doubt the gov cares that much about saving money. Second, a lot of things can save health care costs if they were mandated, but they're not. Third, once a pandemic was declared to be over, there would be a lot of pressure to eliminate any mandates.

 

As soon as one of the less bulky, relatively-cheap PAPRs gets independently certified, I'll consider buying it.

 

As was documented quite extensively in this discussion and the dedicated mask discussion, east Asian countries (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc...) that had very high mask compliance with high quality masks saw widespread transmission of COVID and in deaths per million they fared much worse than most of Africa, the Middle East, South America where mask usage was minimal.

Why would it be infeasible to wear something that's more comfortable than a mask?

 

 

 

Because it is inhuman. Humans are social animals. Living in a bubble ALL THE TIME is bad for all aspects of long term health.

[Daniel Cooper]

Because it is inhuman. Humans are social animals. Living in a bubble ALL THE TIME is bad for all aspects of long term health.

 

Indeed. There is now a concern that very young children that did remote learning for several years and were subjected to masked humans for a significant amount of time in their formative years may be burdened with life long learning, language, and socialization issues.

[gamesguru]

While I sympathize with the resentments against the mandate, it's simply not true to claim that Southeast Asia fared worse than South America.

 

Brazil had a feeble response to the pandemic and stands at around 3000 deaths per 1 million. While South Korea emphasized taking it seriously and isn't even at 700 deaths per 1 million.

[Daniel Cooper]

While I sympathize with the resentments against the mandate, it's simply not true to claim that Southeast Asia fared worse than South America.

 

Brazil had a feeble response to the pandemic and stands at around 3000 deaths per 1 million. While South Korea emphasized taking it seriously and isn't even at 700 deaths per 1 million.

 

Those numbers are correct.

 

The question is, why did South Korea fare so much better? They did several things differently from the rest of the world. Asian countries in general did mask more vigorously.  But, South Korea also sealed it's border very early after the pandemic was announced and instituted mandatory testing and smart phone based contract tracing early.

 

Testing and contact tracing can be very effective if you do it early enough - before the numbers of infected people reach some critical mass beyond which contact tracing is useless.  

 

In Asia countries there is a certain amount of "unapologetic xenophobia". You can see it in their popular culture where in television and popular music racial and nationally based tropes and stereotypes are pretty common. When covid-19 hit the scene, several Asian countries immediately closed their borders - Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea being notable examples. None of these nations thought twice about doing this, it seemed perfectly logical - there is a significant pandemic breaking out and circling the globe, best shut your borders and try to keep it out. No one really batted an eye at these measures, they seemed perfectly reasonable to the citizens of those countries.

 

In the West, most countries didn't really seriously consider locking down their borders till much later and these efforts were hampered by charges that to do so would be racist and xenophobic. The West never locked things down nearly as much as the major Asian countries. In the US, widespread testing started much later while the CDC rejected the Covid-19 tests that China and much of Asia were using - either because they didn't meet their standards or as a case of "Not Invented Here Syndrome" depending on who you ask. By the time testing was really going in the US and much of Europe, contact tracing was really fairly futile as there was such a large base of infected people.

 

In Taiwan, the closing of the border was so severe that a Taiwanese citizen traveling abroad at the time the border was closed could not return for quite a long time (nearly a year as I recall).

 

So was it the masking? The border closures? The early testing and serious contact tracing? A combination? It's very difficult to tease apart which differences in strategy were responsible for the differences in outcome.

 

It's even possible that different genetic populations have different susceptibilities to the virus. It certainly would not be the first time that a virus had different impacts on different peoples.

 

It's certainly true that if a country managed to keep covid out till much later in the pandemic when the virus had evolved to a less lethal form that they were sure to suffer lower fatalities than those countries that had widespread infections of the initial variants.

 

 

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 21 July 2023 - 04:10 PM.

[Mind]

While I sympathize with the resentments against the mandate, it's simply not true to claim that Southeast Asia fared worse than South America.

 

Brazil had a feeble response to the pandemic and stands at around 3000 deaths per 1 million. While South Korea emphasized taking it seriously and isn't even at 700 deaths per 1 million.

 

 

That is correct, It was a misstatement to include "most of" South America, as only Venezuela (and a couple central American countrie) fared better. The point is that South Korea was in the middle of the pack as far as COVID deaths per million around the world. If masks were the be-all-end-all pandemic response and South Korea had some the highest mask compliance with the highest quality masks, you would think they would be near #1. They aren't. Over 100 countries around the world fared much better.

[Florin]

It's important to distinguish between "comfort" and "convenience". A hang gliding suit may be extremely comfortable and cozy, but it is not a convenient piece of clothing for everyday or extended use. Nor is taking it on or off something that can be accomplished in a few seconds.

 

Experts are not going to recommend something which there is an economic scarcity of. It's like telling people that elephant ivory can cure shingles. Even if it were true, that would do untold damage to the environment and cause rampant price gouging as supply failed to keep up with demand.

 

Self-interest is not uniform enough to ensure more than a handful of people would use such inconvenient or uncommon respirators. I sincerely doubt enough people would adopt the use of these contraptions to stop (or even substantially slow) the spread.

 

You would have had to force older people to wear these things.

 

It's an interesting consideration but you seem to slightly oversimplify the practicality and effectiveness of it.

 

You're repeating the same arguments. Some of them were leveled at masks earlier in the pandemic.

 

The inconvenience argument is absurd; if you have a high risk of dying and being hospitalized, do you think you'd care about something that takes of few seconds to put on and take off?

 

The scarcity argument is nonsense; there was plenty of time to increase production. Experts (like Fauci and Walensky) didn't recommend even crappy N95s when they were/could have been available to everyone.

 

The people-are-dumb argument is dumb; if they have a good incentive to protect themselves, most people will. If too many won't protect themselves in some situations, age-based mandates could have been used.

 

You could also claim that I'm oversimplifying the practicality and effectiveness of gas masks during a poison gas attack. After all, every expert knows that water-soaked rags are more practical for a whole host of economic, convenience, and self-interest reasons.

[Florin]

As was documented quite extensively in this discussion and the dedicated mask discussion, east Asian countries (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc...) that had very high mask compliance with high quality masks saw widespread transmission of COVID and in deaths per million they fared much worse than most of Africa, the Middle East, South America where mask usage was minimal.

 

The increase in transmission was due to the relaxation of NPIs and that caused the much more contagious variants to spread like wildfire. Also, I wouldn't call any mask with earloops "high quality," as I pointed out before.
 

Because it is inhuman. Humans are social animals. Living in a bubble ALL THE TIME is bad for all aspects of long term health.

 

Indeed. There is now a concern that very young children that did remote learning for several years and were subjected to masked humans for a significant amount of time in their formative years may be burdened with life long learning, language, and socialization issues.

This argument is ridiculous. PAPRs are transparent and those that would have worn them would be mostly elderly, many of which are retired, so they wouldn't have to wear them "ALL THE TIME." Think about wearing any piece of protective equipment that's worn to mitigate risk like motorcycle helmets or gas masks. Is wearing that PPE "inhuman?"

Edited by Florin, 21 July 2023 - 07:49 PM.

[Florin]

So was it the masking? The border closures? The early testing and serious contact tracing? A combination? It's very difficult to tease apart which differences in strategy were responsible for the differences in outcome.

 

It's even possible that different genetic populations have different susceptibilities to the virus. It certainly would not be the first time that a virus had different impacts on different peoples.

 

It's certainly true that if a country managed to keep covid out till much later in the pandemic when the virus had evolved to a less lethal form that they were sure to suffer lower fatalities than those countries that had widespread infections of the initial variants.

 

I suspect the biggest factor was that the more contagious variants were kept out due to the border closures. The early, less contagious variants were easily controlled by the other NPIs, especially mask wearing (just like the flu was mostly eliminated everywhere masks were worn). But once the NPIs were relaxed, the more contagious variants rushed in and overwhelmed the poor-sealing, earloop masks.

[pamojja]

The inconvenience argument is absurd; if you have a high risk of dying and being hospitalized, do you think you'd care about something that takes of few seconds to put on and take off?

 

To me your still believing that myth is absurd too. We knew from the very beginning that risk in the most at risk population like the Diamond Princess is rather miniscule.

 

That some still believe in this scare, mostly created though forced ventilation where never indicated, withholding save and effective medications or punishing docs using them, was the main cause, were there've been the most human sacrifices.

 

In india it was well known that the over-the-counter medication of chlorquinine and ivermectin are effective. During the pandemic in some states there where prohibitions to pharmacies, and docs to prescribe these harmless, in India over the counter medications. Now these prohibitions are lifted since long again. So why still getting stuck on something so impractical and useless for such a small risk?

 

Better thinking about changing one's SAD diet instead anyway.
 

[Mind]

The increase in transmission was due to the relaxation of NPIs and that caused the much more contagious variants to spread like wildfire. Also, I wouldn't call any mask with earloops "high quality," as I pointed out before.
 

 

This argument is ridiculous. PAPRs are transparent and those that would have worn them would be mostly elderly, many of which are retired, so they wouldn't have to wear them "ALL THE TIME." Think about wearing any piece of protective equipment that's worn to mitigate risk like motorcycle helmets or gas masks. Is wearing that PPE "inhuman?"

 

In an acute short term danger situation - like a poison gas attack (your example) - you would have to wear the mask ALL THE TIME. Take it off for a couple of minutes to eat and drink, and you are dead.

 

Respiratory disease outbreaks are complex and evolve over long time scales. There are extremely few people who would be willing to wear a gas mask for months or years on end. Even for those people, when they take the gas mask off to eat - boom - infected. When they take off their gas mask to sleep - boom - infected. When they take off their gas mask because they are going insane from wearing it for months on end - boom - infected.

 

For those who say South Korea relaxed their mask requirements and that is why they performed so poorly in COVID deaths per million (not proven) - how long do you think they could keep oppressing the population for a disease with an IFR that is a tiny fraction of 1 percent? Remember, China tried that longest. The people were so fed up that they started calling for the ouster of dictator Xi. Literally the next day, the pandemic restrictions were all lifted.

[Florin]

To me your still believing that myth is absurd too. We knew from the very beginning that risk in the most at risk population like the Diamond Princess is rather miniscule.

 

That some still believe in this scare, mostly created though forced ventilation where never indicated, withholding save and effective medications or punishing docs using them, was the main cause, were there've been the most human sacrifices.

 

In india it was well known that the over-the-counter medication of chlorquinine and ivermectin are effective. During the pandemic in some states there where prohibitions to pharmacies, and docs to prescribe these harmless, in India over the counter medications. Now these prohibitions are lifted since long again. So why still getting stuck on something so impractical and useless for such a small risk?

 

Better thinking about changing one's SAD diet instead anyway.
 

 

I've heard that the risk of death was about 15% for those over 80 and the risk of hospitalization was far higher. That doesn't sound like such a small risk.

 

Most people think that chloroquine and ivermectin are unproven, so they're not going to use them even if they were available.

 

Maybe a better diet, exercise, and fists full of supplements would help you survive a poison gas attack, but you'd be foolish not to wear a gas mask anyway.