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COVID-19

June 12, 2021, 3:55 p.m.
Posts: 15656
Joined: Dec. 30, 2002

Max Bernier arrested for opposing covid lockdowns ?

June 12, 2021, 4:15 p.m.
Posts: 15656
Joined: Dec. 30, 2002

Posted by: XXX_er

I duno who complained, wasnt me in any case spending all your time here acting like an asshole is how you got your own ass banned if thats what actualy happened as opposed to they wouldnt let you use the computer in the psyche ward, in any case without you around things are way more civil cuz  there is enough air in the room for everyone and it would be nice if things stayed that way

Since it looks like we can't be friends perhaps you can be civil? 

Either way you identify as a whiner since that triggered a reply. Why reply otherwise yo?

June 13, 2021, 8:42 a.m.
Posts: 16505
Joined: Nov. 20, 2002

its been suggested that I " not respond to anymore of his nonsense " so i can't comment

maybe someone else wants to talk to you

June 18, 2021, 4:52 p.m.
Posts: 10382
Joined: May 23, 2006

+ Interesting comments on the Delta Variant from the Tweet feed of Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the UCSF School of Medicine…

If you’re fully vaxxed, I wouldn’t be too worried, especially if you’re in a highly vaxxed region….

Unvaxxed may well do OK for a while, probably through summer [due to the large number of vaccinated people]. But fall/winter now scares me a lot, much more than it did 2 weeks ago….

For Delta, Pfizer dose 1 is only ~33% protective. https://gov.uk/…/vaccines-highly-effective-against-b-1… This creates 2 problems: 1) People stay vulnerable until after shot 2 (& many let guard down earlier); 2) Loss in efficacy for dose 1 points to some degree of vaccine/immune escape. And – though this isn’t proven – I’d worry that a fully vaccinated elder, or someone whose immunity stems from an infection >12 mths ago, won’t be sufficiently protected over time, if immunity falls below a threshold needed to thwart Delta….

For a vaccinated person, watch the Delta % in your region (currently ~6% in the U.S. & rising) & Covid cases in your community. https://cidrap.umn.edu/…/delta-variant-makes-6-us-covid… If you’re seeing more cases & more Delta, I’d restore some precautions (esp. if you’re high risk) – at least indoor mask wearing (if you’ve stopped; BTW, I haven’t) in places w/ unvaxxed/unmasked folks.

I’ll now bet we’ll see significant (incl. many hospitalizations/deaths) surges this fall in low-vaccine populations due to combo of seasonality, Delta’s nastiness, & “back to normal” behavior…

For me, Delta adds to my resolve to keep mask on indoors when unvaxxed/unmasked people may be around. And I’m getting psychologically prepped for some restrictions to return in fall (tho highly vaxxed places like SF will likely do fine). Nobody wants that, but the virus doesn’t care what we want. For unvaxxed, I wish you well but my sympathy is flagging. Your bad choice is looking worse.

June 19, 2021, 12:55 a.m.
Posts: 23984
Joined: Nov. 23, 2002

Posted by: tungsten

+ Interesting comments on the Delta Variant from the Tweet feed of Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the UCSF School of Medicine…

If you’re fully vaxxed, I wouldn’t be too worried, especially if you’re in a highly vaxxed region….

Unvaxxed may well do OK for a while, probably through summer [due to the large number of vaccinated people]. But fall/winter now scares me a lot, much more than it did 2 weeks ago….

For Delta, Pfizer dose 1 is only ~33% protective. https://gov.uk/…/vaccines-highly-effective-against-b-1… This creates 2 problems: 1) People stay vulnerable until after shot 2 (& many let guard down earlier); 2) Loss in efficacy for dose 1 points to some degree of vaccine/immune escape. And – though this isn’t proven – I’d worry that a fully vaccinated elder, or someone whose immunity stems from an infection >12 mths ago, won’t be sufficiently protected over time, if immunity falls below a threshold needed to thwart Delta….

For a vaccinated person, watch the Delta % in your region (currently ~6% in the U.S. & rising) & Covid cases in your community. https://cidrap.umn.edu/…/delta-variant-makes-6-us-covid… If you’re seeing more cases & more Delta, I’d restore some precautions (esp. if you’re high risk) – at least indoor mask wearing (if you’ve stopped; BTW, I haven’t) in places w/ unvaxxed/unmasked folks.

I’ll now bet we’ll see significant (incl. many hospitalizations/deaths) surges this fall in low-vaccine populations due to combo of seasonality, Delta’s nastiness, & “back to normal” behavior…

For me, Delta adds to my resolve to keep mask on indoors when unvaxxed/unmasked people may be around. And I’m getting psychologically prepped for some restrictions to return in fall (tho highly vaxxed places like SF will likely do fine). Nobody wants that, but the virus doesn’t care what we want. For unvaxxed, I wish you well but my sympathy is flagging. Your bad choice is looking worse.

Masks have limited effectiveness for preventing spread/transmission from an infected individual.  And unless you're wearing a respirator rated at n95 or higher, masks are basically useless at protecting you from getting covid.

Still the best advice (besides being vax'd) is limiting contact with people you don't know to be vax'd or having immunity due to being already infected. At this point, imho we need to be prepared to live with this long term as a new type of flu and forgo most of the lockdown stuff. Unless the entire planet does it to completely stamp this thing out it's here to stay, and that opportunity has long passed. Time to get on with this being a risk for some people and then going about limiting your risk as best you can if you fall into the high risk group. More people die from other highly preventable stupid shit on a yearly basis, some some flu-like virus should not be destabilizing the world.

June 19, 2021, 11:19 a.m.
Posts: 112
Joined: July 24, 2013

Syncro - you bloody anti-masker and COVIDIOT #1.

Just kidding I agree with you 100%.

June 19, 2021, 11:26 a.m.
Posts: 23984
Joined: Nov. 23, 2002

Posted by: thefishtailbites

Syncro - you bloody anti-masker and COVIDIOT #1.

Just kidding I agree with you 100%.

hahaha

I think the thing that we all need to consider now that enough time has passed now to have some reasonable date accumulation and that we need to start thinking about different methods in terms of dealing with covid and it's variants over the long term. There will undoubtedly be a lot of the naysayers who were screaming all sorts of nonsense back at the start who will point their fingers and say "See! I told you so!", but what they won't grasp is that for some of them while some of their conclusions may have been right, their methods/reasoning from that time are still flawed. Broken clock effect. I think part of the issue we face is the medical and scientific community coming to terms with it's hubris that has existed for a long time.


 Last edited by: syncro on June 19, 2021, 12:01 p.m., edited 1 time in total.
June 19, 2021, 11:31 a.m.
Posts: 10382
Joined: May 23, 2006

Posted by: syncro

Masks have limited effectiveness for preventing spread/transmission from an infected individual. And unless you're wearing a respirator rated at n95 or higher, masks are basically useless at protecting you from getting covid.

sweeping statement is misleading


 Last edited by: tungsten on June 19, 2021, noon, edited 2 times in total.
June 19, 2021, noon
Posts: 112
Joined: July 24, 2013

Posted by: tungsten

sweeping statement is horseshit

SSIH https://www.ssih.org/

toungue - is this a secret message?

trust no one

June 19, 2021, 12:20 p.m.
Posts: 23984
Joined: Nov. 23, 2002

Posted by: tungsten

Posted by: syncro

Masks have limited effectiveness for preventing spread/transmission from an infected individual. And unless you're wearing a respirator rated at n95 or higher, masks are basically useless at protecting you from getting covid.

sweeping statement is misleading

There isn't any reliable or sufficient data to say that the masks most people are wearing (single layer cloth masks or procedure masks) are fairly effective in either sense. They are good for reducing droplet spread, but we now know that covid is aerosol spread. If you have something that suggests the masks most people use are effective against covid please share.

June 19, 2021, 6:23 p.m.
Posts: 10382
Joined: May 23, 2006

I just quoted the chair of UCSF School of Medicine stating covid was an aerosol and that he would be wearing a mask when in a room with anti-vaxxers.

Ergo, in his opinion, a mask must provide some measure of protection against covid as aerosol.

Anyone who's been paying any attention to the pandemic as it's unfolded will understand instantly that protection provided will depend on many factors. Fit and type of mask, size of room, how well the room is ventilated, # of people in the room, # of un-vaccinated people in the room, time spent in said room etc etc. 

By your logic since we can't possibly know whom might be carring the virus, vaxed or not, we should in future avoid ever being in a room with another human being.

June 19, 2021, 7:18 p.m.
Posts: 23984
Joined: Nov. 23, 2002

Posted by: tungsten

I just quoted the chair of UCSF School of Medicine stating covid was an aerosol and that he would be wearing a mask when in a room with anti-vaxxers.

Ergo, in his opinion, a mask must provide some measure of protection against covid as aerosol.

Anyone who's been paying any attention to the pandemic as it's unfolded will understand instantly that protection provided will depend on many factors. Fit and type of mask, size of room, how well the room is ventilated, # of people in the room, # of un-vaccinated people in the room, time spent in said room etc etc. 

By your logic since we can't possibly know whom might be carring the virus, vaxed or not, we should in future avoid ever being in a room with another human being.

Ok, so in that quote of yours there is nothing where Dr. Wachter says it's an aerosol. Be that as it may, I will assume he knows this. However, part of my posts were about the delay in the general medical/scientific community of coming around to the idea that covid was an aerosol. To be fair, this may be more a fault with media reporting, but health officials have continually supported the wearing of masks without any strong support that they are effective.

As per your words in the above quote, "protection provided (by a mask) will depend on many factors", which goes back to my statements about the type of masks one wears and why they are wearing them. It also goes back to my statement about physical distancing and avoiding contact. That is contextual though. For example, prolonged contact in a crowded room with poor ventilation is going to present greater risk than walking past someone on the street where you're a few feet apart. So don't twist my words to fit your narrative. If you want to talk about sweeping and misleading statements, you should probably direct your attention to the way you interpreted my thoughts.

At the end of the day, the masks the vast majority of people are wearing are not very effective at blocking aerosols due to leakage from poor fit and permeability to aerosol particles. That's why I said unless you're wearing an n95 rated respirator or higher, the masks most people are wearing are not doing anything, especially in the context where you may be most at risk for getting infected - prolonged close contact in smaller spaces with ineffective ventilation. So places like pubs and restaurants (where people will have their masks off anyway) and are talking loudly and therefore potentially expelling more virus are going to continue to be potential hot spots.

And again, there is still no reliable data that shows that the masks the vast majority of people on the street are wearing offer any sort of measurable protection. If you go back to the early days, a lot of people getting sick were in places where they were in close contact with infected people and wearing masks that offer limited protection, surgical type masks or procedure masks, and not respirators. Respirators work, masks not so much.

I have faith in established science, until the story I'm being told starts to have flaws appear. With covid I thought hey, this is new so we have to go with best guess until we know better. There's been enough time that we now know better; that fomites present basically zero risk with covid, that covid primarily does not spread via droplets, that respirators can cause more damage than harm. There are other legitimate questions that are now time to answer or investigate more thoroughly as well. At the end of the day Covid is not probably going to just go away, it's here for good and we have to learn to deal with it. The actions of the past couple of years do not strike me as a means for humanity to live out the rest of it's days. It's time to realistically weigh the harms from covid against the cost to society from the measures we've taken to try and prevent it.

If you have some sort of evidence (research/testing/data) that shows cloth masks are effective in the prevention of the spread of covid or preventing people from catching covid please share. The words of Dr. Wachter are not that.

June 19, 2021, 10:55 p.m.
Posts: 23984
Joined: Nov. 23, 2002

Just curious how much of that you've read and how you interpreted the percentage reduction numbers from mask wearing?

June 20, 2021, midnight
Posts: 112
Joined: July 24, 2013

I got lotsa time on my hands so I skimmed it and looked at some of the citations.  The studies done are on such a small scale, it's weird.  Even Bonnie H constantly said masks don't work (and may make things worse)  and then flipped one day to "it's the last line of protection" which means what?  I believe since we have these muzzles on we should have some serious "science" from Canada showing they are effective.

Through my own playing with ecig vapor and various masks they do little.  I can still fill up a room with vapor just as fast as I can without the mask.  The mask catches a small amount of vapor depositing wet material in front of my mouth on the mask...yum.   However if I layer up with 8 masks then I can't fill up the room with vapor, but I also can't breath.

Disregarding the mask debate, that link from tashi provided some addition interesting information near the end titled "Sociological Considerations" which had some interesting points I hadn't considered but confirmed others.

June 20, 2021, 9:48 a.m.
Posts: 23984
Joined: Nov. 23, 2002

Posted by: tashi

I’ve skimmed some parts, read the bit about particle side (droplet vs. aerosol issue)

I found it for you as you requested studies on mask efficacy.  This is particularly useful because it’s a meta analysis so it addresses many of the limitations and uncertainty of the available research while teasing out the information that is robust.

The percentage numbers vary widely from what I’ve gathered, but it seems pretty consistent that they aren’t perfect but do something.

I did a quick read of most of it and unfortunately the article is contradictory in some spots, does not really address the issue of cloth/single layer masks and doesn't detail covid particle size. I'm surpised the authors came to the conclusion they did when the info they reviewed doesn't support it imho. So I would disagree that this analysis supports mask efficiency. Further, I have seen research that found that procedure/surgical style masks have negligible effect in stopping the transmission of viruses in a hospital setting. This supports why hospitals that dealt with high intake of covid moved to  respirators for their staff and anecdotally (I say this because I have not seen any hard research, just news/media reports from hospital staff) the respirators stopped spread among hospital staff.

For now I'll stick to testing, contact tracing, quarantining, physical distancing and vaccines as the most effective methods to curtail covid. At best I'm neutral on masks, but don't feel they are the panacea some make them out to be. Vaccines ultimately will be the most important factor. I still think it's time to start considering how we're going to live with this new virus in our society. This includes considering who is most likely to be seriously affected by covid and how those people (ostensibly including me, you and tungsten someday) can be protected while allowing society to function in a manner where it doesn't feel like we're living in a lab experiment.

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