BBC: China pneumonia outbreak: COVID-19 Global Pandemic

[GhostofSparta]

For the anti-vaxxers:

 

However, I do know full well that their stupidity is going to affect innocent people, and that's truly awful and, to me at least, unforgivable. I just really wish there was a way to let these morons isolate and let themselves die without affecting anybody else.

[Califan007 The Constipated]

2 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

All because most Americans are too lazy to mask and take proper precautions. 

 

I'm guessing laziness isn't really the culprit here...

[PeterMP]

3 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

All because most Americans are too lazy to mask and take proper precautions. 

 

I feel like I should point out that many studies on large scale mask use by people including those done in other countries show small to no benefits of wearing a mask.

 

It isn't just Americans or even people that won't wear masks for political reasons.  Even for well intentioned people in other countries, the effects don't tend to be very large.

[Fergasun]

I didn't get the booster and I am not actively masking.  Everyone just wants to "get on with their lives".  

 

In my household we did eat out more,  but I went to as many sports tournaments as no COVID in 2020 after their resumption.  The events we attended were with a lot of people I thought of as antivax.  Maybe for a period in the fall 2020 we were more cautious till spring 2021.  Post summer 2021... that community was done with it.  I know 2 people who had hospital stays.  Like mid 40s makes taken out.  Maybe that was the difference... they didn't vax (and logic says yes! they were double digit hospital stays and your family was just sick for a few days). 

 

We never knew enough and we still don't know enough about COVID prevention.  I question if the 3 (or was it 2?) shots I had did anything.  My household of 4 has had 2 of us come down with COVID.  When the 2 of us popped we just figured "welp the other 2 had to have been exposed."   They didn't get sick (and it was pretty much 24-36 hours of soup, gatorade and sleep).  With vaccination rates now, COVID should be ripping through the country right about now.  Like spikes should have started since Thanksgiving... just like 2020, 2021 and 2022.  

 

Which brings me back to "we still don't know enough about COVID" and the vaccines. 

 

I still would contend that masking does reduce COVID (or flu or RSV) and that is what studies have shown as well as higher quality masks are better. 

[The Evil Genius]

46 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

I feel like I should point out that many studies on large scale mask use by people including those done in other countries show small to no benefits of wearing a mask.

 

It isn't just Americans or even people that won't wear masks for political reasons.  Even for well intentioned people in other countries, the effects don't tend to be very large.

 

Fwiw I did write...and take proper  precautions. Distancing, proper hygiene, getting boosters to immunizations, and masking are what's needed. Americans are either intellectually or physically lazy to do all of that, as evidenced by the rising cases again (and low #s recorded that are getting that last booster so far).

Edited December 19, 2023 by The Evil Genius

[China]

1 hour ago, PeterMP said:

 

I feel like I should point out that many studies on large scale mask use by people including those done in other countries show small to no benefits of wearing a mask.

 

It isn't just Americans or even people that won't wear masks for political reasons.  Even for well intentioned people in other countries, the effects don't tend to be very large.

 

Do you have data to back that up?

 

The first thing I just found when looking doesn't reflect that:

 

Quote

The results indicate that mask-wearing plays an important role in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Widespread mask-wearing associates with an expected 7% (95% CI: 3.94%—9.99%) decline in the growth rate of daily active cases of COVID-19 in the country. This daily decline equates to an expected 88.5% drop in daily active cases over 30 days compared to zero percent mask-wearing, all else held equal. 

 

Link

[Captain Wiggles]

Yeah I mean even Virginia Tech put out a study recently saying cloth masks are effective. 

 

https://news.vt.edu/articles/2020/11/eng-marrmasks-1123.html

 

CDC and NIH as well as Yale, John Hopkins, Stanford Universities have studies saying masks work against the spread of Covid. 🤷‍♂️

[PeterMP]

8 hours ago, China said:

 

Do you have data to back that up?

 

The first thing I just found when looking doesn't reflect that:

 

 

Link

https://www.cochrane.org/news/statement-physical-interventions-interrupt-or-reduce-spread-respiratory-viruses-review

 

https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-such-hand-washing-or-wearing-masks-stop-or-slow-down-spread-respiratory-viruses

 

I'm not saying that all the studies say none.  But for the most part in many studies it when looking at actual life it doesn't tend to be large and not just the US.

 

Even people that are critical of their work say things like:

 

"The Cochrane review did not include a large body of evidence, and that resulted in a biased conclusion. If all types of studies are considered, it is clear that well-fitting, properly used masks do have a measurable and significant effect on reducing transmission when properly worn by the vast majority of the population during times of high community transmission."

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10484132/

 

(Note that link talks about the Cochrane study is partially based on a study in Denmark where they see no real effect.  So not just the US.)

 

 

That's a lot of qualifiers to get you to where mask have a measurable effect.  There's a reason why they threw in all of those qualifiers, and it is because there are a good number of studies that show a small to minimal affect.  What studies seem to suggest is in reality that large numbers of people in the general public (including non-Americans) even if they wear a mask don't wear well fitted masks and wear them properly when they need to be worn.  The result is that in a lot cases, the result is small to none.

 

Now, I wouldn't extrapolate to every case or every specific individual there is no effect.  Some people can and will wear a mask properly and in those cases there will be a significant deduction in the risk of getting a respiratory virus.  If everybody properly wore a well fitted masks, then the spread of respiratory viruses would go down.  But that isn't clearly the norm in some other countries and not just the US.

 

And there are cases where they find larger more significant results.

 

But just really generally, cases are up pretty much across the northern hemisphere, including much of Europe, India, etc.

 

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-makes-wintertime-comeback-in-germany/a-67753001

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-67724695

 

It isn't a US specific problem.

Edited December 19, 2023 by PeterMP

[PeterMP]

6 hours ago, Captain Wiggles said:

Yeah I mean even Virginia Tech put out a study recently saying cloth masks are effective. 

 

https://news.vt.edu/articles/2020/11/eng-marrmasks-1123.html

 

CDC and NIH as well as Yale, John Hopkins, Stanford Universities have studies saying masks work against the spread of Covid. 🤷‍♂️

 

This sort of work is irrelevant to my point.  I'm not claiming that masks can't physically work.  I'm saying that many people aren't in the habit of properly wearing proper PPE, and if you don't wear the proper PPE properly, the benefit appears to be minimal and that's what seems to happen in some cases where this has been studied even those outside of the US. (and do other things needed).  And it isn't a US specific problem.

Edited December 19, 2023 by PeterMP

[EmirOfShmo]

My wife volunteered at the RVA Christmas Mother* a couple of days a week over the past 3-4 weeks. The last day (where they hand out clothing, toys, etc.) was last Thursday. My wife's  friend called her Sunday & said that 14 volunteers who worked on Thursday tested positive for Covid. Not sure how many people volunteered on that day or the actual total number of people who tested positive. Wife had a runny nose yesterday but tested negative. We're up to date on all the shots. 

 

*https://richmond.com/exclusive/christmas-mother/

[TradeTheBeal!]

lol, Hamas Pete is a mask truther.  
 

What fun he must be at parties!

[China]

What I got out of Peter’s post was not that masks don’t work, but that studies show a small benefit from people wearing masks mostly because people either aren’t wearing them properly or have ill fitting masks. 

[Captain Wiggles]

2 minutes ago, China said:

What I got out of Peter’s post was not that masks don’t work, but that studies show a small benefit from people wearing masks mostly because people either aren’t wearing them properly or have ill fitting masks. 

 

I don't dispute that. In fact I still see folks regularly wearing masks all half assed. 

 

In his original post tho he claimed "many studies on large scale mask use show no benefits". Majority of studies I've read say the opposite. 🤷‍♂️

[PeterMP]

4 hours ago, Captain Wiggles said:

 

I don't dispute that. In fact I still see folks regularly wearing masks all half assed. 

 

In his original post tho he claimed "many studies on large scale mask use show no benefits". Majority of studies I've read say the opposite. 🤷‍♂️

 

If you read the links I posted, what the Cochrane group does is they identify every peer reviewed published randomized study on a topic, then they look at the published methods and the data, and they try to put it altogether to draw a conclusion based on the studies in totality.  They will also include funded/supported studies that are on going. This is something they do for a multiple topics a year and have done for decades and are generally well respected.  They aren't a fly by night crew that threw something together for Covid.  They focus on randomized studies because randomized studies are generally considered the best way to do science.

 

In this case, they identified 78 studies.  I'll bet you won't find a published peer reviewed randomized study that was published before 2022 that they didn't at least look at.  And I suspect you won't find anything that was published in 2022 that they didn't look at.

 

And based on those 78 studies in totality, their conclusion is that practically people using masks made little to no difference.  Now we can quibble with words like many vs. most and which studies should be included and why for mask wearing that randomized studies aren't the best studies to use.  But when looking at 78 studies in totality and concluding the net effect is not very large and might not even be measurable, I'll stick with my original comments.

 

Now, the physics of what needs to happen for people to sick from many respiratory viruses, including Covid, says masks should work.  So when studies looking at actual real world result show that they seem to have a minimal effect suggest that the issue is people.  And those 78 studies come from a range of countries so the problem is people and not just people in the US.

Edited December 20, 2023 by PeterMP

[tshile]

18 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

This sort of work is irrelevant to my point.  I'm not claiming that masks can't physically work.  I'm saying that many people aren't in the habit of properly wearing proper PPE, and if you don't wear the proper PPE properly, the benefit appears to be minimal and that's what seems to happen in some cases where this has been studied even those outside of the US. (and do other things needed).  And it isn't a US specific problem.

To add some context:

hospitals have been very effective at not having outrbreaks, not because they’re magical people in a magical place but because they’re trained on how to wear well fitting masks properly at the right times and also they’re pretty big on the hand sanitizer/washing hands thing 

5 hours ago, China said:

What I got out of Peter’s post was not that masks don’t work, but that studies show a small benefit from people wearing masks mostly because people either aren’t wearing them properly or have ill fitting masks. 

Yup.

but look at who couldn’t figure it out. It tracks as normal. 🤷‍♂️ 

[The Evil Genius]

26 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

If you read the links I posted, what the Cochrane group does is they identify every peer reviewed published randomized study on a topic, then they look at the published methods and the data, and they try to put it altogether to draw a conclusion based on the studies in totality.  They will also include funded/supported studies that are on going. This is something they do for a multiple topics a year and have done for decades and are generally well respected.  They aren't a fly by night crew that threw something together for Covid.  They focus on randomized studies because randomized studies are generally considered the best way to do science.

 

In this case, they identified 78 studies.  I'll bet you won't find a published peer reviewed randomized study that was published before 2022 that they didn't at least look at.  And I suspect you won't find anything that was published in 2022 that they didn't look at.

 

And based on those 78 studies in totality, their conclusion is that practically people using masks made little to no difference.  Now we can quibble with words like many vs. most and which studies should be included and why for mask wearing that randomized studies aren't the best studies to use.  But when looking at 78 studies in totality and concluding the net effect is not very large and might not even be measurable, I'll stick with my original comments.

 

Now, the physics of what needs to happen for people to sick from many respiratory viruses, including Covid, says masks should work.  So when studies looking at actual real world result show that they seem to have a minimal effect suggest that the issue is people.  And those 78 studies come from a range of countries so the problem is people and not just people in the US.

 

Shouldn't the lead have then been that people not wearing the proper masks correctly make masking less efficient in stopping covid? 

 

I work with lab scientists (Infectious Diseases at a State Health Department) and to a T every one of them will tell you that masking, even half assed masking, saved lives during the height of covid. Are they now wrong? 🤔

Edited December 20, 2023 by The Evil Genius

[Captain Wiggles]

8 minutes ago, tshile said:

but look at who couldn’t figure it out. It tracks as normal. 🤷‍♂️ 

 

 

Masks work. 😷 

 

[tshile]

6 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

Shouldn't the lead have then been that people not wearing the proper masks correctly make masking less efficient in stopping covid? 

Well it depends - I think the context of the point was it’s not effective public policy

 

which tracks with how objective people evaluate public policy. There’s the theory of how it should work (masks, or another example is preventive care), but if people aren’t going to wear them correctly so they don’t work (or actually use preventive healthcare they now have access to) then it’s not necessarily good public policy. 
 

especially if the people most likely not wearing them or wearing them effectively, aren’t exactly receptive to the idea of doing it correctly. 
 

they did put out a whole thing in the beginning to try to teach everyone 

 

the general public decided to hord 95 masks so they couldn’t be found by people who need them

 

and make fun of the beard diagram they put out. 
 

public policy often fails to correctly factor in just how much majority of the population sucks. 

1 minute ago, Captain Wiggles said:

Masks work. 😷 

Only when done correctly. 
 

kind of like reading 

 

😮

Edited December 20, 2023 by tshile

[PeterMP]

From my day today, I gave a final today.  30+ people in a room with max capacity of 50 so the room is pretty full.  These are junior/senior science and engineering majors.  Many of them pre-med.  Several of them were obviously sick today coughing, sneezing, and sniffling.  None of the sick people were wearing a mask.

 

There is no mask mandate and no requirement to wear a mask.  I have one guy that is one of my better students that will be in medical school in a year or 2 (unless something shocking/disastrous happens).  He's smarter, harder working, and more contentious than my average student where my average student is smarter, harder working, and more contentious (and more educated) than the average American.  He regularly wears a mask to class (he doesn't wear one to meet with me one-on-one).  I don't know why he wears a mask but it certainly seems his intentions are good.  And it isn't like he's wearing the mask below his nose on a regular basis and doing so because he has to.

 

2 hours into a 2.5 hour final, he takes his mask off.  Takes a drink, eats a little (food is going hand to mouth and he didn't use hand sanitizer), drinks a little more, uses his hand to wipe around his mouth, and then puts his mask back on.

 

After 2 hours of people spewing whatever into the air that they're breathing/coughing, you have to think the air is full of whatever the sick people have.  When you take the mask off, you are exposing the inside of the mask to that air.  You are breathing in the things in the air.  Anything on a surface he's touched is on his hands, can transfer from his hand to his food, and to his mouth.  And then rubbing his hands around the mouth just makes it worse.  And then when you put the mask back on, the air that gets trapped isn't being sterilized.  All the air that's trapped between the mask and the mouth, everything he's now breathed or gotten into into his mouth is now being breathed out into the mask.  Anything around his mouth or on the inside of the mask that can be aerolized as he's breathing in and out of the mask can now be breathed in. 

 

I'm not comfortable putting a percentage on it, but I'd be willing to be that the majority of whatever benefit he got from wearing the mask for 2 hours was negated in the 2 minutes he had it off.

 

And again, this guy is smarter, more contentious, and better educated than the average American.  And pretty much as an upper level science major to take the classes he has to take to get into my class he's had several lab classes where there is some PPE wearing (though not normally mask) so he has more experience wearing some PPE and thinking about PPE than the average American.  And he can't do it right.

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

Aren't we to the point of not wearing masks if we are caught up on vaccinations/boosters and are comfortable in not doing so?  I keep getting my booster/vaccine every year with my flu shot.  When I go out I don't wear a mask unless it is requested by family/friends where someone immune compromised/underlying conditions/etc. where I would need to wear one.

 

We are way past the point of people not wanting to get vaccinated or wear masks changing their minds.  If they don't care enough about their own health or loved ones health, **** it, I'm not worrying about it either.

 

Edit:  This is not me advocating for not wearing masks or siding with anti-maskers.  Just think that at this point in time, it has come down to what everyone is comfortable doing, depending on the situation.

Edited December 20, 2023 by Dont Taze Me Bro

[Captain Wiggles]

2 minutes ago, tshile said:

kind of like reading 

 

👌

[tshile]

I’ve legit heard a number of people say they wear their mask if other people are wearing theirs, but if not they don’t bother. 
 

I believe in the effectiveness of masks with all the qualifiers. I wear masks whenever it makes sense to. 
 

but as a public policy thing? 
 

and I’ll tag @PeterMP

 

the only mass scale success I can think of seeing where the people involved weren’t trained like healthcare workers (which doesn’t mean much - it’s just the one I know of, maybe there’s tons 🤷‍♂️ ) would be the school districts. I haven’t read studies but based on news and following local districts, it seems pretty clear that school mask mandates significantly impacted in-school transmission numbers. 
 

 

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

Shouldn't the lead have then been that people not wearing the proper masks correctly make masking less efficient in stopping covid? 

 

I work with lab scientists (Infectious Diseases at a State Health Department) and to a T every one of them will tell you that masking, even half assed masking, saved lives during the height of covid. Are they now wrong? 🤔

 

What I can absolutely tell you is that belief is not overly well supported by the gold standard of the published scientific literature.  The results aren't inconsistent with a small effect.  So if you say there is a small effect over a large range of people in an environment with a lot of infection, then yes people's lives were saved.

 

And for well intentioned people I said the effects weren't large so at the height of Covid when I think more people took mask wearing more seriously, you probably have a larger effect.  You have an effect that isn't large but isn't negligible and so more of an impact.  But even then, the effect isn't very big.

 

**EDIT**

As I've essentially already said in my reply to China, I'm not saying mask don't do anything.  And some people will wear a proper mask properly.  Those people will see a large decrease in their chance of getting Covid.

 

I'm not saying that masking does or did no good.  The point is that in general the effect isn't very big in general, in many cases appears to be very small and not really measurable, and that isn't just a US thing.

 

We aren't the only country in the world that is having issues with viruses this year and if you want to look at why viruses is an issue in the US and not some country where it isn't an issue, the difference probably isn't masking.  Because masking doesn't generally seem to have a very large effect and in many cases has a small to immeasurable effect.

Edited December 20, 2023 by PeterMP

[PeterMP]

4 minutes ago, tshile said:

I’ve legit heard a number of people say they wear their mask if other people are wearing theirs, but if not they don’t bother. 
 

I believe in the effectiveness of masks with all the qualifiers. I wear masks whenever it makes sense to. 
 

but as a public policy thing? 
 

and I’ll tag @PeterMP

 

the only mass scale success I can think of seeing where the people involved weren’t trained like healthcare workers (which doesn’t mean much - it’s just the one I know of, maybe there’s tons 🤷‍♂️ ) would be the school districts. I haven’t read studies but based on news and following local districts, it seems pretty clear that school mask mandates significantly impacted in-school transmission numbers. 

 

I don't know, but I suspect the issue with drawing many good conclusions on schools in general during Covid is that there were multiple things happening, including mask wearing, increased spacing, more focus on general sanitization, essentially mandatory absences for sick people, etc. which would make it hard to draw specific conclusions based on any given thing.

 

Looking at what happened in schools and saying that masking had an impact, I suspect would be difficult.

[tshile]

Yeah our school district had near-0 recorded transmissions and they did all those. 
 

plus divided the population in half and did these AA/cleaning day/BB hybrid things for like 4 months when first returning to school 

 

and I imagine if you tried to deal with all the districts and various things they implemented in various ways, it becomes a nightmare