You are being willfully stupid now. Twisting and distorting is not valid argument. It isn't about doing what I am told, it's about doing what I am aware would help, and if nobody was discussing it, and they weren't, I had no such knowledge. It's pretty obvious that for better or worse with the pandemic there is an entirely different level of public discourse and awareness.

As to the topic of whether masks in fact help, I do have some skepticism, but so far I've been persuaded I should err on the side of they might given what I've read.

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And you should read fully. I'm guessing you didn't click on the link that provided a table.

I don't really understand what you're saying. You participate in society and are well aware of societies niceties and simple signs of respect. For example, saying bless you after someone sneezes. Saying excuse me if you bump into somebody. There is a general respect in life and in your interactions with people. I believe simply wearing a mask in public is something that falls under the same umbrella at this moment.

I did read it. That is ONLY for persons at high risk of severe illness. Look at the top of the column. For persons not at high risk, the table says not recommended.

In 2018, the CDC said this about wearing a mask during flu season: “very little information is available about the effectiveness of face masks and respirators in controlling the spread of pandemic influenza in community settings.”

The flu has been around forever and yet “very little information is available" about the effectiveness of masks? :confused:

What changed from 2018 to 2020 that the CDC could have “very little information" to "follow the science"?

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Are you not a high risk person? Even if you aren't, shouldn't you consider some of that "respect" Pack's is referring to and wear one for the people who are high risk?

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Perhaps there is room to consider that this may be a singular moment in time where for about a year and a half you're being asked to wear a mask in public.

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I don't know what you mean when you say that. We're in the middle of something our generation hasn't experienced before. It seems like you're upset it wasn't solved immediately.

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For me, it's the liberal hypocrisy. When the mean orange man stated something about the virus that wasn't true, he was spreading misinformation. When the CDC or...(fill in the blank) states something about the virus that isn't true, it's given a free pass because we're in the middle of something we've never experienced before.

My bad on the ad hominems. From what I've seen of your generation though including my own family, the ageism is somewhat justified. :D

What rules do you mean? I'm talking about wearing a mask in public still. I'm not talking about restricting you from doing anything while you're at it.

Again you are overlooking my basic point that I was not aware of any information in 2019 that would have led me to consider wearing a mask. It has nothing to do with the state other than that the state typically would be a major source of information.

I do wear one. In 2009 I was completely unaware of this -- it certainly was not widely discussed -- and in any rate back then I would not have considered myself high risk so the CDC would not have advised me to wear a mask.

Except that President Trump eventually admitted he intentionally downplayed the risks.

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And no other politicians did the same?

Oh, please bite, Peter. Please!!!

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No, my argument is that when one has good reason from whatever source to believe his conduct may be detrimental to others, and there is a way to mitigate that that isn't terribly restrictive, one should do that. You keep conflating this point with other issues and trying to twist my argument.

Whether in fact masks help is a separate point certainly worth discussing, but my argument assumes (as I have conceded) that they are helpful to others.

For example, I am pretty diligent about recycling what I can. Nobody knows if I do or don't, there is no state or social pressure, but I do it because I feel it's the right thing to do so in a miniscule way I do my part.

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Specific criticisms please.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19

Abstract

The science around the use of masks by the public to impede COVID-19 transmission is advancing rapidly. In this narrative review, we develop an analytical framework to examine mask usage, synthesizing the relevant literature to inform multiple areas: population impact, transmission characteristics, source control, wearer protection, sociological considerations, and implementation considerations. A primary route of transmission of COVID-19 is via respiratory particles, and it is known to be transmissible from presymptomatic, paucisymptomatic, and asymptomatic individuals. Reducing disease spread requires two things: limiting contacts of infected individuals via physical distancing and other measures and reducing the transmission probability per contact. The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high. Given the current shortages of medical masks, we recommend the adoption of public cloth mask wearing, as an effective form of source control, in conjunction with existing hygiene, distancing, and contact tracing strategies. Because many respiratory particles become smaller due to evaporation, we recommend increasing focus on a previously overlooked aspect of mask usage: mask wearing by infectious people (“source control”) with benefits at the population level, rather than only mask wearing by susceptible people, such as health care workers, with focus on individual outcomes. We recommend that public officials and governments strongly encourage the use of widespread face masks in public, including the use of appropriate regulation.

Also.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2776536

When the hysteria and anxiety around getting the disease is 99% WORSE than the disease itself, there is some sort of disconnect. I'm talking in the low risk category. People under 60 with no comorbidities.

Could have been Cuomo/deblasio, here in NY and their:


"It's like fighting air, we cant control it" comment

Call for 50,000 ventilators

Call for aircraft carrier and javits center to be used as hospitals.

People didnt use their common sense. They wore masks outside because they were told to. Many looked down on others as "doing the wrong thing for the country". Now CDC says it fine. Well actually there was never a risk of contracting it outside. There was 100 cases attributed to a Singaporean construction site that were miscatagorized.

Believe half of what you see and none of what you read or hear. Rely on what you know to be true. The same thing happened in 1918 and we didnt understand the science behind, but we've acted the same. Wait until these roaring 20s pass, to see how we really fared.

How would I "know what is true" about a complex (and novel) infectious disease, when I am not a scientist by training?

It's sure easy to be smarter than other people with the benefit of hindsight.

Conversely, we were told from the very beginning to listen to the experts. How can one be an expert in something for which very little is known? The "experts" (WHO) told us there was no evidence of human to human transmission of Covid. So how do you determine what you believe and what you don't?

Question for the people who resist wearing masks around others:

When you sneeze or cough, do you cover your mouth? Why or why not?

I wear a mask most of the time, but I'll answer the question. When I sneeze? Yes, and I turn my head away from others as well. When I cough? No.

That's an interesting approach. Why one and not the other? I find my hand reflexively covers my mouth either way.

If I sneeze, it's because something has triggered my sinuses. I don't want to spread my germs.

If I cough, it's because I'm choking. I wouldn't cover my mouth...the only way for the obstruction to exit.

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What ill motive do you ascribe to this group of scientists and statisticians around the world?

 View ORCID ProfileJeremy Howard, Austin Huang,  View ORCID ProfileZhiyuan Li,  View ORCID ProfileZeynep Tufekci, Vladimir Zdimal,  View ORCID ProfileHelene-Mari van der Westhuizen,  View ORCID ProfileArne von Delft,  View ORCID ProfileAmy Price, Lex Fridman,  View ORCID ProfileLei-Han Tang,  View ORCID ProfileViola Tang,  View ORCID ProfileGregory L. Watson,  View ORCID ProfileChristina E. Bax,  View ORCID ProfileReshama Shaikh,  View ORCID ProfileFrederik Questier, Danny Hernandez,  View ORCID ProfileLarry F. Chu,  View ORCID ProfileChristina M. Ramirez, and  View ORCID ProfileAnne W. Rimoin


afast.ai, San Francisco, CA 94105;


bData Institute, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94105;


cWarren Alpert School of Medicine, Brown University, Providence, RI 02903;


dCenter for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China;


eSchool of Information, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599;


fInstitute of Chemical Process Fundamentals, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-165 02 Praha 6, Czech Republic;


gDepartment of Primary Health Care Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, United Kingdom;


hTB Proof, Cape Town 7130, South Africa;


iSchool of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town 7925, South Africa;


jAnesthesia Informatics and Media Lab, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;


kDepartment of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139;


lDepartment of Physics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong SAR, China;


mComplex Systems Division, Beijing Computational Science Research Center, Beijing 100193, China;


nDepartment of Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China;


oDepartment of Biostatistics, Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095;


pPerelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104;


qData Umbrella, New York, NY 10031;


rTeacher Education Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050 Brussels, Belgium;


sOpenAI, San Francisco, CA 94110;


tDepartment of Epidemiology, Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Your appeal to authority mantra is a straw man by the way. I am not suggesting anything is true simply because someone in authority said it is. By your logic nobody could ever cite to any study.

That makes a certain amount of sense. In the unlikely event I was choking, covering my mouth would not be very high on my list of priorities. However, I have coughed far more often than I've nearly choked on food.

That makes sense. But I don't get sick, so I really don't cough. And I only sneeze if something aggravates my sinuses. Funny, but it just happened. I'm cooking some bacon and it's very heavily peppered.

Go vegan. LOL.

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It is a logical fallacy in the abstract I agree, but I am not appealing to authority. I am citing the CONTENT of the study and asking why you disagree with its apparent conclusions. Certainly one can consider the credentials of the authors as supporting the conclusions without being guilty of a naked appeal to authority argument.

If you say something and I point out it's inconsistent with Einstein's theory of relativity, have I only appealed to authority?

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Yes controls are always preferable but sometimes not practical.

Science changes constantly, and at least reading the article suggests they did a really deep dive and critical reexamination of the data. If there was bias, financial self-interest, etc. that would certainly be a factor to consider, but I don't see that.

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Well for one you're in the middle of an active pandemic, pretty hard to set up an RCT for masks on a global basis.

They certainly discussed the RCTs in this section.
Reviews and RCTs of Mask Use for Other Respiratory Illnesses.

Also, they noted this:
The standard RCT paradigm is well suited to medical interventions in which a treatment has a measurable effect at the individual level and, furthermore, interventions and their outcomes are independent across persons comprising a target population.

By contrast, the effect of masks on a pandemic is a population-level outcome where individual-level interventions have an aggregate effect on their community as a system.

I'll even assume that this is true and it is now impossible to use controls. Does it not still suggest that the earlier studies are better, because they use controls? Why should I ignore the science before March, 2020 and just accept whatever the CDC says after March 2020?

See my addendum quoting what they said about RCTs. And I am relying at the moment on this article, not the CDC.

I'll repeat the quote so it's in one place with your question.

"The standard RCT paradigm is well suited to medical interventions in which a treatment has a measurable effect at the individual level and, furthermore, interventions and their outcomes are independent across persons comprising a target population.

By contrast, the effect of masks on a pandemic is a population-level outcome where individual-level interventions have an aggregate effect on their community as a system."

By the way:

Exception: Be very careful not to confuse "deferring to an authority on the issue" with the appeal to authority fallacy. Remember, a fallacy is an error in reasoning. Dismissing the council of legitimate experts and authorities turns good skepticism into denialism. The appeal to authority is a fallacy in argumentation, but deferring to an authority is a reliable heuristic that we all use virtually every day on issues of relatively little importance. There is always a chance that any authority can be wrong, that’s why the critical thinker accepts facts provisionally. It is not at all unreasonable (or an error in reasoning) to accept information as provisionally true by credible authorities. Of course, the reasonableness is moderated by the claim being made (i.e., how extraordinary, how important) and the authority (how credible, how relevant to the claim).

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So what's your explanation (speculation, whatever) as to why this particular group of scientists and statisticians, obviously representing a broad swath of institutions around the world, and not obviously biased or beholden to anyone, came to the conclusions they did and concluded that the prior studies did not apply to the COVID-19 pandemic?

I need to understand that, I think, before simply rejecting this study out of hand for the sole reason it disagreed with prior studies.

I am not by the way merely assuming they are right, for better or worse I found their exposition fairly persuasive. Now granted this science is above my pay grade, but in my chosen profession I have had to learn a lot of complex subject matters and think for a layperson I am pretty good at it. (Must be a logical fallacy there lol.)

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Has this abuse occurred on Net54, in real life, or a blend of the two?

I read some of the evidence differently than you do, and would take issue with some of your characterizations, but I respect the position you have articulated and find it more engaging to discuss than someone who simply comes in with a conspiratorial, denialistic perspective.

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Thanks to you as well, enjoyed it.

Debate without name-calling??
Without my side yelling that your side is going to ruin America?

WTF?

Did you even read that? Specifically table 1 they refer to in the main text?
Persons who had no increased risk of serious illness did NOT have masks recommended.

Compared to Covid, during 2009-10 H1N1 was a minor leaguer. Totally unlike the version from 1918.
https://www.healthline.com/health/h1n1-vs-covid-19

Harder to catch, nearly always not much more than a bad cold.
The comparison isn't even close.

Conveniently leaving off the headings of those columns. The first is pretty much everyone the second is people at risk of serious disease.

Cherry picking data makes for a weak argument.

Masks are effective, something I believe the CDC dropped the ball on at the beginning.
While most aren't fine enough to filter out some virus sized particles, some are.
Surprisingly including some of the finer HVAC filters used mostly in labs.
Even more surprisingly, the non-woven fabric many reusable shopping bags are made from is very nearly equivalent to N-95, sometimes probably better. It's just not certified as a healthcare filter material.

What they do, and should have been obvious is to slow down the exhaled air, giving the particles less push to travel the same distance in the air.
In other filtering situations, it's also well known that any filter is better than none.

A video showing the difference in different situations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNCNM7AZPFg

And another explaining how much is stopped by what from a study using actual Covid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GndKYJ4uBI


I live in a city with a fairly high asian population, and it wasn't at all unusual to see someone -especially the elderly wearing masks before this, even outside of flue season.

Move to Texas. :)

I got my vaccine because of what I have read and seen. Statistically it is better to have one. To say otherwise seems to be contrary to the vast majority of health professionals opinions and research I have read. Ane at this point I am not wearing a mask where I am not required to. If people want to wear one, awesome, if they don't, awesome. I don't care any longer because anyone who wants a vaccine can get one. If they get Covid it's on them not me. And I am aware that the efficacy rate of the vaccines isn't 100% but it's 94%- 95%, so I am taking my chances. I am also aware we don't know of long term side effects. I still think the I made the right decision for me. To each their own.
:)
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That is so ridiculous, especially given that when you look at the reality of how COVID is usually passed: being in close quarters for at least 15 minutes with someone infected. Some health experts (real ones, not extreme political propaganda lunacy) have said as much, and it also makes sense realistically, as how many people claim that they probably got COVID from taking a jog in public without a mask? It's been pretty clear that situations like locker rooms, homes, packed spring break parties, etc seem to have been responsible for most of the spread.

But of course not many experts wanted to come out with such info since it's taboo in these spots to publicize anything but the most overly cautious advice.

So if someone called the cops on me for walking around w/o a mask in open areas that were far from back-to-back people, my problem wouldn't be the "muh rights" part, but the sheer idiocy of considering it a COVID issue

I spent this past winter in the Orlando area of Florida. During my stay I did not hear of one person in the community I was in get COVID. I was socially active seven days a week playing golf, bocce ball, church, and going out to dinner. All of these activities included persons from outside of my family/ household. Masks were only worn to get into a restaurant, but not while we were seated. There were times where we would have as many as 8 couples in our group. We were from separate households, we all sat together, and nobody that I know of caught an illness of any kind.
My point here is, if you are ill, stay home. Hopefully this is something good that we will learn from all of what has happened during this difficult time. To many times people go out while being sick not thinking of the people you may come in contact with.

Do you mean to seriously suggest people in Orlando were somehow exempt from the surge Florida saw this winter? Show me some statistics that confirm that. What you personally heard of really doesn't mean much. I do agree sick people should stay home, obviously.

No offense to anyone but India is being ravaged right now. I think if it was so easy to avoid getting sick then they wouldn't be having the issues they are. Like I said earlier these stories kind of minimize what people have gone through.

Peter, I'm not saying that there were no cases in Orlando. What I am saying is that the people that I had direct contact with neither had COVID nor mentioned knowing of anyone in our community having COVID. Some of the people had started or completed their shots, some did not have any shots. There were people from different parts of the US and Canada in our community.
This was just my experience this past winter.

Understood but that type of anecdote doesn't really mean much, respectfully. Thousands of people in my town had it per the Mayor's office but I never personally heard of any cases. I don't think it's something people broadcast.

Culturally they do things much different than the US. Many of them need to shop for food each day, they live hand to mouth. Now they are forced to all go out at once between 6a and 10a. Life expectancy already 10 years younger than the US due to poor diet, etc, multi generations in the same house . Also, very poor health care system.


Riddle me this, India is 4x the size of the US, Cases are almost the same as US at 30 million, but deaths are 50% of US deaths despite all the other issues. Could 75% of the "deaths attributed to covid" probably be something else? I'm not say only 6% like the cdc commented that death certificates only said covid, but maybe closer to 12% died due to covid 19.

It's a shame anyone has to die, but without death, there cant be life.


That being said, at some point y'all will be forced to get the vaccine if you want to leave the house. If ya cant beat em you will have to join them or live in exile

C'mon, Ted, everyone knows the PCR test is the most accurate test ever with zero chance of ever getting false positives, and despite of whatever else you might have died of, if you tested positive for covid, you died of covid and nothing else. Get with the program, man. :D

"Manitoba Chief Microbiologist and Laboratory Specialist: 56% of positive “cases” are not infectious

"PCR testing was invented to find genetic viral material in a sample and has not traditionally been used as the sole method for identifying people suffering from a viral or bacterial disease"
"Dr. Bullard testified that the most accurate way to determine whether someone is actually infectious with Covid is to attempt to grow a cell culture in the lab from a patient sample. If a cell culture will not grow the virus in the lab, a patient is likely not infectious. A study from Dr. Bullard and his colleagues found that only 44% of positive PCR test results would actually grow in the lab"
https://www.jccf.ca/manitoba-chief-m...7YnWc-PlDM2I18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBS9j7nHDsM

:)

I have not read this entire thread, so excuse me if my comments have been stated before, but this is my perspective on the vaccine, and really, pretty much all healthcare choices. As many of you know already, I am a family doctor. I say this not as a way of saying I know better than anyone. It merely gives those reading a better understanding of what frames my perspective.

The problem with the US system is that we try to blend freedom of choice with absence of responsibility from the consequences of choices that go bad. This is true of pretty much every system we have,m not just healthcare. Understand that I am not advocating we change, but I think it's important to recognize the weakness that exists.

It happens all the time. People talk about the freedom to makes choices, even bad ones, and how it's their body, etc, BUT then expect health insurance system, and all who pay into that system, to pick up the tab when things go south. For example, people want the freedom to choose to smoke, but then want someone else to pay the tab for the lung cancer and the heart attack/strokes that they got, at least in part due to them exercising their rights.

This kind of all started back when the laws changed that made hospitals unable to refuse treatment to someone, in an emergency situation, because they could not pay. The idea was that it is inhumane to refuse in that instance. While I agree that this is cold, it does remove some of the responsibility from the individual to care for themselves, in a manner of speaking, like making sure they have health insurance or having a doctor to take care of their sinus infection instead of showing up in the ER, or not driving drunk, and other examples( I could go on and on). This along with many other incremental changes, mostly based in compassion, has slowly over time created a system where each of us has the freedom to choose, but expects others to foot the bill. (and if you don't think using your healthcare insurance does not affect everyone else's rates/costs, then you do not understand how health insurance works.)

Now, getting back to COVID vaccine specifically...
IMO, both sides of the equation should be balanced. What I mean is this, if there is a risk to getting the vaccine, there should be a s similar risk for not.

So, on one hand, if you get the vaccine and have a side effect, there is a very robust system in place for the person to be compensated for this event.
and to balance it out, if you choose not to get the vaccine, then get COVID, any healthcare costs should be the responsibility of individual and their family. Jobs should be able to say that sick time cannot be used for COVID related illnesses if you CHOOSE not to get the shot.
I think the same logic/system could apply to many other things as well, like flu shots, colonoscopy, etc. Don't get a flu shot, treatment for flu infection and any complications should not be not covered. No colonscopy? then Colon Cancer treatment is not covered.

To me this is the most fair way to do it. We each get the freedom to make our choices and live with the consequences of them. This may sound harsh, but true freedom comes with significant risk. We have, over time, attempted to remove risk from life. Unfortunately, removing risk through things like shared risk means that we give up a certain amount of that freedom by being obligated to each other.

I have personally seen many many people die from this disease. I am in favor of all adults getting the vaccine. I am waiting on the data for children to come out before deciding on if I think it's worth it for them.

The doctors and nurses and medical workers who have dealt with this awful disease on the front lines deserve far more credit for their efforts and sacrifices than they ever will get. I am sure it bothers some of them to hear all the minimization and outright denialism and conspiracy theories coming from some quarters.

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As one of my favorite sites likes to say, the plural of anecdote is not data. But there is a lot of data out there on which to draw, although one can debate its significance.

I am kind split on the topic, tbh.

I know how serious the disease is and how many it has killed, but I also think the politicization of this has definitely created some misconceptions about the true reality. I read that there was a poll taken where 70% of those self identifying as Democrats stated there was greater than a 50% chance of being admitted with Covid. The Republican number was closer to 50% of people thought the risk was over 50%. We know the true number is 1-5%.

On the other side, we have lots of people who think that the hospitals have been exaggerating the death numbers by manipulating death certificates. This is a significant oversimplification as most people do not understand how doctors(not hospitals I might add) complete official Death Certificates. For example, Let's say someone has Heart Failure that is stable, and then gets COVID. The COVID causes the person's overall health to be compromised and the Heart Failure worsens. Now, if that person dies from the Heart Failure, the correct way to complete the Death Cert is put Heart Failure as the first cause of death, but also to add COVID as part of the cause as well.The rationale is that if the person did not get COVID, their Heart Failure may not have worsened and caused the death at that time.

It's understanding examples like these that show how the news media and politicians, on both sides, have really failed the American people in explaining the full story.

In a way, this illness has been both minimized and overblown at the same time. Only in America, could we pull of such an amazing feat!

Exactly. It's not binary. The virus can certainly be the straw, or brick, that breaks the camel's back, even if the camel had a weak back to begin with. That does nothing in my mind to minimize the role of the virus in that death.

And agree about the politicization, on both sides.