Wear a freaking mask already

What about it? I've recommended goggles and face shields too. It's just that if not even masks we can get people to wear, it's a bigger uphill battle to get them to wear eye protection. But if you look at my very signature you'll see that I also recommend eye protection. And while the eye route is possible, the breathing one is much bigger. So if someone will agree with wearing just one PPE then it should be a mask. Ideally, though, both.

Good point. I guess I should have said "the CDC has been contaminated by politics, lately, even more than it used to be the case."

Sure, not perfect but definitely very far from incompetent.

Good point. I guess I should take it back and not affirm it with such certainty but only as a possibility. I'm very suspicious, though.

Have you by any chance noticed what happened to whistle blowers and leakers, recently? People may just be afraid to speak up or even to be the source of a leak because who knows who to trust, in this climate?

 

Novel coronavirus means that this one is a member of the family but this one is new and has jumped species at some point in late 2019. Not such a difficult point to grasp. Coronavirus is a family which causes part of the common cold cases (20), SARS-1, and MERS, but this specific one, SARS-CoV-2, which causes the endothelial disease known as COVID-19, is novel indeed.

Sorry, no time now to keep addressing your other posts, will come back to this later today.

 

A mask is a broad spectrum primitive barrier that don't care what kind of virus tries to attack it and break through.

 

Why should I wear a seat belt? It won't prevent injury 100% of the time.

Why should people use birth control? It doesn't prevent pregnancy 100% of the time.

Why should I do preventive maintenance on my appliances? It doesn't mean they won't break down.

SOME protection is not the enemy of perfect protection.

 

He certainly is by a segment of the population (and remember, both states have elected Republican governors recently), and unfortunately, precisely the very segment of the population most prone to misbehaving due to misguided notions about this virus as a "Democratic Hoax." You know, a lot of conservatives are in the hugely ridiculous impression that the entire international medico-scientific community is involved in this huge plot to exaggerate this virus' danger 'cause Trump.

I do know that. Some of them said so in very precise and thorough statements. You haven't been following. There's been people saying in interviews before they got even worse and died "given what Trump said I thought it was OK to go out and not take any precaution, I thought it was all a hoax, then I got the virus and now I'm getting really sick and worried that I may die, I wish I hadn't believed him." And then they died. Or spouses reported what they had said. Or they posted arrogantly on social media before they got sick and died. Proof is abundant, if you want to search. I guess you're not willing to.

Really? I never liked Hillary Clinton but I do think she is way more competent than Trump, so if she were the president things maybe would have happened a whole lot differently, and it's not like it can't be done. Look at Angela Merkel, look at the New Zealand PM (forgot her name). And have you noticed the level of incompetence in Trump's entourage? "The best people" indeed. A lot of them fired, huge turnover... Chaos, chaos, all the time. Not conducive of a steady and consistent response.

True but he's been dismissive of it in many occasions; that comment was predictably fertile for misunderstandings (again, he never explains things fully for his followers), and he is STILL dismissive, retweeting days ago that only 9,000 people died of it in the US which is preposterous. You don't remember the "in a few day cases will be zero." "It will magically disappear in April." Etc.

While I don't remember the exact date it was right after a close friend of his died of it.

Hey, I'm not a Dem, and I'm smarter than most, LOL. [wink] But no, you're wrong, there's been lots of comments on the absence of tighter quarantine and testing in airports and faster shutdown of international travel. Again, you're not searching well enough.

I'd have to look at this more closely but I believe people on certain visas were let in, and it's not even a question of that, but also, a question of controlled and enforced quarantine of the ones coming in. In any case at the very least people from the UK for whom he implemented no restriction whatsoever for a while.

Pretty much. Have you heard of any American citizen or permanent resident other than the ones in cruise ships, under mandatory and enforced 14-day quarantine from returning from abroad?

Well, I have highlighted the relevant parts in other posts in the past in another forum (I hadn't joined here at the time, in April) but like you I don't want to spend 4 hours listening to Trump's rambling and disorganized words, but you can find YouTubes with summaries and the relevant parts if you will. But don't accuse me of not providing proof because I did. It's there. If you don't want to check it's your problem.

Really? Pray tell, who was in that superior team and in what department? Recent it has surfaced that Obama TRIED to replenish the stockpile of PPE but the Tea Party congressmen stopped him. Then he left concerns about it for the next administration in the transition period, and instead of acting on it, Trump went ahead and decreased preparedness even more. Smart! We don't know if there was something which replaced it? Yes, we do, because there wasn't anything or else Trump would be touting it all over the place. Zero. Nada. Trump didn't want a lot of scientists around... he loves the uneducated.

Not just that. Like I said, there was concrete action to curtail testing and there still is. And again, it's no joke. Joking abou this is incredibly distasteful

I'm not in the business of interviewing every single person in the South to find out, but we've seen enough covidiots spouting nonsense around and we've seen the crowds flocking to beaches and bars.

Again, leadership matters, and again, I do blame the governors (actually from both parties) and have done so in many posts.

 

Size of the virus matters. The influenza virus is way bigger than the coronavirus. So coronaviruses can be filtered only by masks that have unwoven ninofibers to trap them due to brownian motion.

 

Thanks for explaining how the Parliament has reached the status of a tyrannical government toward free thinkers. We don’t tolerate that here in the US. Threatening to imprison citizens is not a noble act. Other countries, like The Philippines, have a blatant disregard for human rights.

Sweden demonstrated that a libertarian approach works well against the virus. They completely flattened their curve by the end of July, going into August. No lockdown or closure of schools, except maybe for universities. Belgium, which did lockdown, has a higher death rate than Sweden. We don’t say that the US should be listening to Sweden for nothing. Really, how difficult is it to leave it to the people whether or not to wear a mask, whether or not to hold a concert, to be able to hold a funeral for gods sake? Maybe the people we shouldn’t have in charge are those who can’t grasp simple concepts.

Given the common cold is part of the coronavirus family, one could suppose that one won’t be immune to COVID, but be better armed to fight the virus.

 

Unsurprisingly, you don't even understand what I'm saying. Didn't I say I do NOT support the authoritarian measures adopted by Italy and the Philippines? What part of "it's not that I support those authoritarian measures" you don't understand??? You quoted this line yourself by quoting my whole post, so no excuses... Again, I was simply saying that other countries took it more seriously than we did, contrary to your claim that we "overreacted." I didn't say that I support those countries' reactions. I actually explicitly said that I do not. Reading comprehension, please.

Sweden did demonstrate something, but not what you think they did. Sweden has a higher death rate than its true neighbors. Again you're selectively quoting Belgium, which seems to be paying a statistical price for their own efficiency because it's supposedly the country that went to the most lengths to properly diagnose all deaths. Anyway, if you want to compare to ONE country, sure. I'd say, Sweden is doing better than Brasil, right? (Brazil, 582 deaths per million of the population, and right next, Sweden, with 576!!!) So, the hyper-developed Swedes must be SO proud to be 6 deaths per million - slightly - better than the trainwreck known as Brazil!! Great! Viva the Swede! Unbelievable... On the other hand, Sweden is doing worse than Mexico!!! Mexico!!! And 46 positions up, we see Denmark, with 108 deaths per million. Sixty four spots ahead, we have Finland with 61 deaths per million. 74 positions ahead of Sweden, we have Norway with 49 deaths per million.

So, come again, do you really think that Sweden is proving YOUR point because they are doing better than Belgium? LOL... No, dear. Sweden proves MY point because it is doing MUCH WORSE than the countries that are REALLY similar, such as Denmark, Finland, and Norway.

So did you get your nice talking point from some "influencer" to just compare Sweden to Belgium and think that you could make a point? LOL That's what happens when people don't look at a situation globally but just engage in selective quoting (like your blunder of quoting the 2009 N1H1 to make a - completely failed - point about pandemics.

It is possible to increase the contagion and then see it drop (what you are calling flattening the curve), but the issue is, what price are you willing to pay? Sweden has paid a price, in a bigger death toll than its true neighbors that share similar cultures and similar human development indexes, and flattened *their* curves much better and with a much smaller death toll.

------------

It's not that the common cold is part of the coronavirus family... again you don't seem to understand even simple concepts that are explained to you. It's rather that the coronavirus family is part of the larger set of viruses responsible for the common cold, at a rate of 20% so 80% of common colds are NOT coronaviruses. The larger set is not "part" of the smaller set. It's the other way around. Talk about simple concepts... LOL.

"We don't say that the US" etc... Look, I don't care for whoever you think "you" are. You're simply not qualified to issue an opinion on this, given the 11 blunders of your previous post, and you keep persisting on piling up even MORE errors.

How difficult it is for people to decide to wear a mask, you ask, as if I disagreed? You haven't been reading me because I have not advocated for mask mandates; much the opposite, I've advocated for educational campaigns regarding masks, and let people decide on their own. Concerts, etc., are a different matter as they are superspreader events and there is a need for a permit, so, it's perfectly normal for city hall to regulate these things, and it's been done forever and ever. In this case, most states and cities are not willing to issue such permits, for good reason.

Oh, guess what, I do agree with ONE phrase in your post: "Maybe the people we shouldn’t have in charge are those who can’t grasp simple concepts." Absolutely. We may disagree, though, on who are the ones who can't grasp simple concepts. I think that by reading these posts we've exchanged, most people will easily understand who is not grasping simple concepts.

Have a nice day.

 

What the hell? Both states have elected Republican governors recently? Cuomo is NY governor! And before him it was another Dem!

If his supporters think that it is a "democratic hoax" then they're idiots and deserve to die, because Trump didn't say this.

How the hell do you know that? Trump has certainly said nothing like this! So what does it have to do with him?

Again, if they believe that it was a hoax then they're idiots and deserved to die, because Trump didn't say this. Are you aware that Nancy Pelosi was out there in the last week of February telling people that they should come to Chinatown? https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/nancy-pelosi-visits-san-franciscos-chinatown/2240247/

Are you aware that Fauci on February 29 went on national TV saying that people don't need to change anything about their lives? https://www.today.com/video/dr-fauc...s-no-need-to-change-lifestyle-yet-79684677616

If these people who you refer to, "thought it was OK to go out and not take any precaution", then it wasn't simply because TRUMP! I really feel like you're totally clueless to all of the above and I'm telling you things which you didn't know! And I'm not even American!

Are you by any chance thinking of that stupid woman who basically murdered her husband by feeding him fish tank cleaner? I believe she said that Trump called fish tank cleaner a cure or something! The leftist media blamed Trump!

Such as telling CDC scientists what to do?

What about them? They have subject matter agencies/departments? Yeah, I know that. You seem to think that matters such as the response to a pandemic is solely in the hands of a country's leader. If that was the case, I don't suspect we would be having this conversation! I don't suspect we would have a world left! There would CERTAINLY be no more America with Trump in charge!

Yeah, but this doesn't include people who actually knows things about pandemics. CDC head was there for two years and Fauci has been around for roughly one thousand years. You're talking about people like Flynn and Bolton and the Chief of Staff turnover. All totally irrelevant to a pandemic. But yes, it has been pretty chaotic. Instability can be a con for Trump, but I can't think of any negative effects that the turnovers have actually had.

If you think that it would have been any different under Biden, you're kidding yourself.

Rambling and disorganized words with which he used to merely promote hydroxy's POTENTIAL! MANY people, experts included, have promoted it's potential. I'm not sure your problem is with that.

I'm saying that there MAY HAVE been a superior team in another part of the government.
What's more likely though is that the duties which that team had were simply reallocated to other areas of government. Again, we don't know.

Can you link to a news article. I tried to find it but couldn't.

Again, you're assuming that it was Trump PERSONAL decision to axe this team.

And you're assuming a nefarious, almost conspiratorial motive behind this decision with testing. Why can't it be for the official reasons given by the CDC head?

You don't think that I'M joking about it do you?

As well as 'covidiots' in various parts of the country flocking to mass protests, right?

What could Trump have done to prevent Florida residents from getting back to their lives as the restrictions were lifted in that state?

 

Well I certainly didn't call the CDC incompetent.

No, what happened to them?

 

Well I assume that you do acknowledge that there is such a thing as as scientific proof. So then, can we not speak of 'the court of science?'

 

So shouldn't masks have a certification for coronaviruses so the consumer can pick one that actually works?

 

No such thing.

 

Is there one that actually works?

 

Well I assume that you do acknowledge that there is such a thing as as scientific proof.

 

Size of the virus matters if it is carried in droplets?

 

It depends on what you consider "recently" - I was thinking Pataki but I'll grant you he served until 2006 so OK, not *that* recent.
New Jersey, though, much more recent: Chris Christie, the previous one.

Come on, he minimized it over and over and over. He is still doing it, with the 9,000 deaths thing.

How the hell do I know that? By simply reading this forum and other forums, where plenty of people keep saying that. Some even say it's an international George Soros conspiracy. And you know, lately Trump has even been endorsing QAnon.

Like I said multiple times, I blame both parties.

Do you take me as a Fauci defender by any chance? What in the hell makes you conclude that? What have I said for you to tell ME about what Fauci did or didn't do?

I'm very far from clueless, dear. What's wrong with your argumentation, are you veering towards personal attacks now? Civility, please. When you start the personal attacks, it's usually because you're running out of arguments (or debating in bad faith, take your pick). I was enjoying the debate with you. Don't spoil it, please. As for the content of your criticism, I am appalled that you don't seem to understand the concept of leadership and the weight of the word of the POTUS in many people's minds. Maybe because Australia is not a presidential country. Here, people tend to look up to the POTUS. Or used to.

When you tout misinformation and you live in an "alternative facts" world some idiots take you seriously.

Such as many other actions, and more consistency. Why, because do you ACTUALLY think that America has responded well to this crisis??? I mean, if we wanted to buy design screw up just for the heck of it, we probably wouldn't have achieved such a bad result. 4% of the world's population, 22% of the world's deaths, and we're supposed to be an advanced country.

Where does the buck stop? Again, I'm appalled that you don't seem to understand the power of good leadership.

I can.

When the team is losing you want to fire the coach and hire another one.

No, it definitely wasn't JUST that. You say you didn't read the whole thing because it would take four hours. So if you didn't read it, the only other option for you to comment upon it is to have second-hand accounts, often biases and with an agenda. It definitely wasn't just the "potential." Read it. You are not sure what's my problem with that? I'll tell you. I happen to think that to dispense medical advice, someone needs to go to college for pre-med, study hard for four years, get good grades and take the MCAT, enroll in a medical school, work his behind off for four more years, graduate, pass the USMLE steps one, two, and three (quite difficult), apply to and get accepted by a residency training program, work his behind off for four more years, sit for the Board exams (hugely difficult), apply for a medical license in one of the 50 states, get accepted by showing good training and good character, obtain a DEA license and an NPI number... THEN you can dispense medical advice. People who aren't so qualified should abstain. It's actually illegal, as in a felony, to exercise medicine without being a licensed physician. "You have nothing to lose, take it" in the context of a supposed pharmacological treatment for a disease, can't be construed as ANYTHING other than medical advice. Is it reason enough for ya, to have a problem with that? Well, it is for me.

Yeah, yeah, sure. This mysterious team that only you seem to believe that it hypothetically exists, don't you think that if it did exist, Trump would be touting its expertise and the wonders done by it? Come on. It. Doesn't. Exist.

Do you actually know how to perform a Google search? Because it took me all of half a second to find numerous articles. Here is one:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...avirus-trump-congress-tea-party-a9469186.html

It's actually quite funny that this is your take. Again, where do the buck stop? Maybe if Trump actually read briefings and stop playing gold all the time he'd have his eyes on the ball. Not the golf ball. The nation's ball.

I just read this morning an account of how Dr. Scot Atlas, the covidiot who calls himself a doctor (a radiologist, mind you, not an epidemiologist or infectious disease specialist) is the one who is behind the curtailment of testing, and the one who convinced Trump that it was a good idea. Trump seems to be totally in love with him... from his previous sting at Fox News he is now a Trump advisor. The guy is nuts. His ideas couldn't be more misguided. They are actually dangerous. Once I got the full spectrum of what is going on, it consolidated my voting decision. These people are dangerous. They need to be removed from the White House before we end up with 2 million dead and 10 million maimed.
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...hing-herd-immunity-idea-lambasted-by-experts/
The above is not the article I read, which is behind a paywall and I'm not getting to it now from home where I don't benefit from my organization's subscriptions. In the one I did read, it detailed how he is trying to sabotage testing precisely to foster his idea of herd immunity, and Trump loved it. If you want to debate with me why this is an incredibly boneheaded idea, I can. This guy is a moron and Trump is falling for it, because it matches Trump's desire to minimize this and to find a way out of it so that he gets re-elected. But it's the wrong wrong wrong, actually catastrophic approach, for like 100 reasons.

No, I don't. I was talking of Trump. Unlike you, I'm not in the business of personally attacking my opponent.

Absolutely. Are you under the misguided impression that I support that, or that I'm some sort of partisan who deplores it when Republicans act stupidly but give a pass to Democrats when they act stupidly? Not so.

Consistent and coherent leadership.

 

Neither did I. I know that they aren't. But they aren't the ultimate decision makers since they are part of an administration. See my other post of today about the interference of Dr. Scott Atlas on the matter of testing.

Got fired. Look up the people who testified against Trump in the impeachment hearings. Look up someone called Lt. Col. Vindman. Look up the guy who tried to tell him early on that hydroxychloroquine was a bad idea, Rick Bright.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/rick-bright-trump-hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus.html

 

They do already. It's called a CDC-NIOSH certification for the respirators, and the FDA endorses the certification of the ASTM standards for the surgical masks. It's not practical to certify for coronavirus (masks are not built for a specific pandemic), but you can certify for percentage of filtration at 0.3 micron and at 0.1 micron. For a mask to be considered medical grade it needs the CDC's (through NIOSH) and the FDA's endorsement. If they lack the certificate they can NOT advertise as medical grade.

They are actually required to say "non-medical grade." Which of course doesn't stop counterfeiters, who are members of organized crime. But yes, the certificates do exist and can be consulted on the CDC website and the FDA website, with links to each certificate (pdf format) for each maker.

There is a way to find the same for the European Union for their FFP1, 2, and 3 standards. I used to know how to look that up, but I don't know where I put the link.

Now, the KN95 standard from China, I have no clue how to verify if a maker is legitimate, and it's been said that 90% of the ones they sell to the US market as KN95 are counterfeit. They may have certificates but the certificates are just as fake as the masks.

 

It seems then that warnings should be required for the masks containing copper or zinc advertised on TV.

 

Oops, a typo. I meant nanofibers. Yes, the very small coronaviruses (average diameter 0.1 micron) can disperse in aerosol that is almost free-floating, unlike some bigger and heavier viruses. Droplets, no, they should be of a range of size according to what the person is expelling from his/her lung, amount of mucus, etc, force of the cough or sneeze, forcefulness of speaking/singing, and unrelated to the virus' size... but the aerosol is a different matter. Smaller viruses are more likely to be airborne via aerosol.

 

This was a wonderful post. If this site still had a way to rep folks, I'd rep you.

 

What kind of warning? I don't know exactly what you are talking about. Some copper/zinc masks are certified by the CDC-NIOSH. Example of a maker of these, so certified, is Innonix Technologies, certificate #84A-7796. I won't say the brand name of the masks they make because I don't want to be accused of spam. It's just an example.

 

Yes, I lavishly praised that post, too. So refreshing to see someone who gets it, among the MASSIVE misinformation we read here every day! Well, we can still "like" the post. I think it is an indirect "rep" because you can see someone's total number of posts and total number of "likes" so I guess those with a high percentage of "likes" are more likely to be reputable posters.

 

I think it’s important to keep things in perspective. This week everyone is up in arms about the CDC declaration only 6% of C19 deaths don’t involve a comorbidity. Of course that doesn’t mean only 12,000 people have died in the US from C19. But what it does mean is if we were a healthier country our death rate would be drastically lower.

This brings me to the part where we blame one party or another for poor response to the pandemic. Some say Trump is responsible for the death rate, but he didn’t make us fat. We have 22% of deaths with 4% of the world population. But by WHO data, we have around 18% of the world’s obese people here within our borders. We have 35,000,000 more obese people in the US than China has with a 1.4 Billion population. The only places with more obesity per capita are little islands like the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Nauru and small countries like Kuwait.

I think it’s important to consider comorbidity on both sides of the equation. If we are going to use them to support high death counts we need to admit they are more responsible for those death rates than politicians we don’t want in office.

Just my $.02.