Lifting Masks = Back to Getting Down With The Sickness

[Dwarvenhobble]

On Masks:

I'm hoping I can ditch them preferably before it's time to get my flu shot this year.
I wear my lab specs in labs then tend to want to remove them the moment I can and I'm out of the lab even if I get the special ones that don't steam up.
With masks I'm mostly fine wearing them but I want my facial hair back. I don't like having to have no beard or mask with a beard and have it weirdly curl up and half the time end up going in my mouth.
I also without fail manage to sneeze in my mask seemingly then have the fun of the awful feeling of the mask. full of my own sneeze on my face for the next however long.
I put it on when going out and it stays on until I'm home because taking them off and putting them back on is only really something to do if you're disinfecting your hands each time otherwise well done your smearing bacterial / viruses from surfaces all over your face right near entrances to the body.
Also I'm fed up of the fact you can gauge how much of a fucking idiot people are in public now, I'm not even talking the anti-mask lot I mean the idiots who only care about looking like they're doing the right thing and have their noses hanging out of the masks or the fun I had getting my first vaccination where in the post jab waiting area I got to watch a woman take her mask off to talk to her friend on the phone while everyone else was sat there like "WTF lady".

The only good thing that's come of this has been the fact far less people try to talk to you on the street to either borrow money or try to sign you up to either consultations to switch your energy provider or to donate to some charity you've never heard of.


On health related to demasking:

People washing their fucking hands more / in some cases at all likely has done more to reduce the spread of viruses and bacteria than masks have done. Add to that everywhere cleaning every surface far more.

No people shouldn't de-mask just yet just because they're vaccinated. The present vaccines are 90% effective at providing some immunity and 70-90% effective at providing total immunity and that's after having both doses not just 1. It means there's still a 10% chance you can get serious covid and a 10-30% chance you can get some form of covid. We have to wait for herd immunity because you just know sods law will mean a load of people in clusters will all turn out to not be immune so de-masking too fast will just allow the virus to thrive on and spread among those groups.

Wait - didn't Trump say he'd made insulin as cheap as tap water?

He did. Biden suspended all Trump orders from coming in.

Did Biden Temporarily Freeze Trump Rule Lowering Insulin, EpiPen Prices?

In his first week on the job in January 2021, President Joe Biden issued more than a dozen executive orders.

www.snopes.com

Biden freeze hits two Trump drug price rules

A freeze by the new Biden administration on Trump-era regulations will hit at least two rules aimed at lowering drug prices, including one dealing with insulin and EpiPens for under-served patients.

edition.cnn.com

Believe it or not I can't find a damn update on if the Biden Administration have delayed it further or chosen to allow it to pass

 

[Agema]

Please post the data that shows masks work and is also not correlational.

See this article, it has links to relevant studies.
Also, this paper is quite handy for some perspective.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Please post the data that shows masks work and is also not correlational.

I would cite a physics textbook and the germ theory of disease but I'm guessing you would think that doesn't count.

 

[tippy2k2]

Our mask mandate lifted last week (Public Transportation and medical places are the only ones required still by the government to wear them. Individual businesses can mandate it but I have yet to find a business that has required it).

At this point here at least, the shot is so available that at any time I could go to a handful of sites and just walk in for it (and get an appointment at essentially anywhere if I have a specific place I want to go to). As much as I'd prefer EVERYONE goes to get their damn shot, at this point if you want it, you likely already have it. If you don't have it, you're likely not going to get it. We're at approx 60% vaxed (so not including "natural immunization) and it seems likely it'll stay around this level.

I still have my mask in my pocket just in case and will put it on out of respect for any employee wearing it (since they're at work, they don't really get a call in this situation since they need a job too presumably) but in my everyday life, I'm no longer wearing my mask.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I think we will get the real picture of our current virus status by the end of the year, as big venues gradually open up to more and more people.

NBA play off games are allowing over 16K into stadiums. Guns and Rose's is touring again starting in August iirc. conventions are opening up, trades shows are happening, Vegas is open for everything.

I will add that Texas has been 100% open and no mask mandate for like two months now, maybe longer time is weird lately. And there has been no alarming uptick in cases.

Periodically i think we are going to see Covid pop up here and there, but with vaccine and improved medical knowledge on how to deal with it, it is going to become less and less of a big deal. Basically it'll be the flu, which to this day still kills over 70K people in the US every year and we have a fucking vaccine for it too. But the age of living afraid of this thing is rapidly coming to an end.

 

[Agema]

Periodically i think we are going to see Covid pop up here and there, but with vaccine and improved medical knowledge on how to deal with it, it is going to become less and less of a big deal. Basically it'll be the flu, which to this day still kills over 70K people in the US every year and we have a fucking vaccine for it too. But the age of living afraid of this thing is rapidly coming to an end.

Firstly, it's much lower - about 30-40k in the USA. Although it can vary a lot, especially when a new strain emerges.

It's also a lot trickier than that: the recorded deaths ascribed to "influenza" are generally more strictly "influenza and pneumonia" deaths - but not all pneumonia is caused by influenza. So how many really are due to influenza? This is hard to say. I've seen estimates of under a quarter, which might suggest fewer than 10,000 a year die from the 'flu in the USA each year.

We should also note that 'flu has a lot of variants, and the vaccine has limited efficacy partly because it's much harder to catch all the different variants. Thus far, the covid-19 vaccines appear to be at least reasonably effective against all covid-19 forms; less so against some of the newer ones like the India variant, but good enough to prevent a huge amount of hospitalisation and death.

 

[CriticalGaming]

It's also a lot trickier than that: the recorded deaths ascribed to "influenza" are generally more strictly "influenza and pneumonia" deaths - but not all pneumonia is caused by influenza. So how many really are due to influenza? This is hard to say. I've seen estimates of under a quarter, which might suggest fewer than 10,000 a year die from the 'flu in the USA each year.

That's like saying people who died with Covid also had 2-3 other co-morbidities on average. So how many people actually died of Covid alone versus, died with other shit but also had covid to push them over the edge. 99% of the people in nursing homes probably.

If you count that, then the true death toll of Covid is dramatically lower than the number says it is, because we already know that Covid was much more harmful to people already on the way out the door.

So if you say they were Covid deaths, then by fair comparison we have to call the flu deaths flu deaths right?

If fact I wonder if they have a statistic of how many perfectly healthy people got Covid and died strictly from Covid and no other conditions made worse by C19.

EDIT: Found it. Looks like 16% of covid deaths were people without comorbidities. In a virus that only killed about 10-15% of high risk people (old) anyway. So you further have to divide that by another 16-17%. And we are looking at a VERY VERY VERY VERY small number of healthy people not bouncing back. Which is crazy.

I think the main thing that made this pandemic so crazy was the speed in which the virus could apparently spread. Not the overall mortality factor of it. Because if Covid didn't spread as fast, it is unlikely that it would have been much of a concern. We likely would have just treated it like a bad flu season and nothing more. Maybe extra precautions for not allowing sick people to go to work or whatever.

Image source https://www.ajmc.com/view/contribut...ities-mortality-detailed-in-fair-health-study

 

[happyninja42]

Further, while we today spend more on mental health then before and have a lot more people diagnosed with it, we really need to question whether we have a "pandemic" of mental illness today or whether people have just started seeking medical care for it in greater numbers then before. Mental illness has been heavily stigmatized all the way up to the early 00's in the Western World and is still a great taboo in many other parts

It still is taboo in the western world, to varying degrees. But yeah, I see this all the time with veterans. Family members will come in with them, practically dragging this stubborn old assholes into get benefits, because they just refuse to accept they have a problem. If you even hint at them having emotional/psychological problems, they get SO defensive. They've been conditioned to believe that unless you are as bad as the worst guy out there, then you don't have the right to complain. Never mind they wake up nightly with terrors, for decades, cause emotional stress to their family that has to deal with them and their obvious problems. "Now look here, I'm not trying to get nothin' from nobody. I'm not like those guys who came back from Vietnam, all busted up and broken. I've just got some issues"....that I just ignore entirely and pretend don't exist, because if I do that, I convince myself they aren't a problem. And then you look over at the wife, and the expression she gives is one that speaks volumes about how things are NOT ok at home, and that he needs help, but he's too proud, and stubborn. Generations of people, just ignoring problems because they were taught to do so. And they would self-medicate, and beat their spouses, and nobody would talk about any of it.

So yeah, it's not a new thing that suddenly appeared out of this generation, implying they are somehow just a bunch of wimps and pussies. It's been around for centuries, and we just swept it under the rug, and the fallout from it still damages those around us.

 

[CaitSeith]

Information is more reliable before politics gets involved. The general position among experts on masks before covid was they're useful if you're sick at protecting others from your sickness, and that's still true. So I'll keep my masks around for the future, for if I have symptoms of illness but have to go out in public anyway, and otherwise I'm ditching the things wherever and whenever people take the signs down requiring them.

The only issue with that plan is that, once infected, it takes from 5 to 6 days for symptoms to appear; and you are already contagious 48 hours before the first symptom. So by the time you decide to put on the mask, you already spread the virus for 2 days because you were already sick and you didn't even know it.

EDIT: As much sense as "only the sick should wear mask" may sound like it has; if you can't tell you are sick (like in this case), it's better to err in the side of caution. No one is perfect.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

See this article, it has links to relevant studies.
Also, this paper is quite handy for some perspective.

First link is basically all correlational.

2nd link is very pie-in-the-sky and model heavy: The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce Re to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained. There was masking mandates in many countries and that did not come close to happening. Overall, direct evidence of the efficacy of mask use is supportive, but inconclusive.

I've given more evidence in favor of other things that you waved away because the evidence was not conclusive enough. Stay consistent with your requirements for proof. You are a lot more lenient in the requirement of proof of things you want to be true vs things you don't want to be true. I've always been for masking in this pandemic but there just isn't anything that has proven masks to unequivocally effective. And, at this point in the pandemic (in the US) when community transmission is so low, there's very little point in wearing masks anymore (or else the CDC wouldn't have dropped that bomb that vaccinated people don't need masks because there will be obviously non-vaccinated people in stores not wearing masks). There's definitely no reason to wear masks outside. I saw someone riding a bike and wearing a mask Saturday, why?

 

[CriticalGaming]

EDIT: As much sense as "only the sick should wear mask" may sound like it has; if you can't tell you are sick (like in this case), it's better to err in the side of caution. No one is perfect.

The problem with that, is it implies you should always wear a mask forever because you can never know when you are sick and contagious at any given time. Potentially you are always sick. And people need to be able to live their lives. You can't be under constant fear of invisible germs and "what ifs". I just don't think it is a good long term mentality to have.

 

[tstorm823]

The only issue with that plan is that, once infected, it takes from 5 to 6 days for symptoms to appear; and you are already contagious 48 hours before the first symptom. So by the time you decide to put on the mask, you already spread the virus for 2 days because you were already sick and you didn't even know it.

EDIT: As much sense as "only the sick should wear mask" may sound like it has; if you can't tell you are sick (like in this case), it's better to err in the side of caution. No one is perfect.

I'm inclined to believe that coughing is a big deal. A person can be theoretically infectious before symptoms, but aggressive symptoms like coughing are how a lot of viruses physically spread to most of their victims. I don't think covid19 is likely exceptional that way, by my understanding, the vast majority of cases trace back to people with apparent symptoms.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

The problem with that, is it implies you should always wear a mask forever because you can never know when you are sick and contagious at any given time. Potentially you are always sick. And people need to be able to live their lives. You can't be under constant fear of invisible germs and "what ifs". I just don't think it is a good long term mentality to have.

Yes, the amount of people that are now inherently scared of other people is beyond ridiculous. On Reddit there's a thread about asking people if they are vaccinated or not and if someone answers that "it's none of your business", you should consider that person a "threat".

 

[Kwak]

He did. Biden suspended all Trump orders from coming in.

Did Biden Temporarily Freeze Trump Rule Lowering Insulin, EpiPen Prices?

In his first week on the job in January 2021, President Joe Biden issued more than a dozen executive orders.

www.snopes.com

Biden freeze hits two Trump drug price rules

A freeze by the new Biden administration on Trump-era regulations will hit at least two rules aimed at lowering drug prices, including one dealing with insulin and EpiPens for under-served patients.

edition.cnn.com

Believe it or not I can't find a damn update on if the Biden Administration have delayed it further or chosen to allow it to pass

Still pending.
And it wouldn't really have done what Trump claimed anyway.

Rescission of Trump-Era Insulin, Epinephrine Rule Moves Forward

The HHS is proposing to a rescind a Trump administration drug rule that required community health centers to pass on all their insulin and epinephrine discount savings to patients.

news.bloomberglaw.com

The HHS under President Joe Biden had delayed the effective date of the rule (RIN 0906-AB25) until July 20 to give agency officials more opportunity to review the rule and ensure it wouldn’t impede the agency’s and health centers’ “immediate priority work” of responding to the pandemic.

Former HHS leaders argued the drug rule would benefit patients who struggle to pay for expensive insulin and allergy medication. However, the health centers said they already pass on those savings, and this rule was merely an administrative burden that paints them as entities that price-gouge patients.

It’s not clear how many facilities would have had to follow the rule or face funding restrictions.

....

Fact check: Biden administration delays implementation of Trump rule on insulin, EpiPens

The Trump executive order on the cost of insulin and EpiPens at community health centers isn't being reversed, as some claim. The rule is on hold.

www.usatoday.com

The National Association of Community Health Centers, among others, expressed support for the new administration's move, saying the Trump rule would not have lowered the cost of insulin and EpiPens for most Americans who use them, as advertised.

In a Jan. 25 statement, it also said the Trump rule reflected "a fundamental misunderstanding" of federally qualified health centers and the 340B drug program, placing extensive administrative burdens on them.

“The stated aim was to cut drug prices. However, it triggered alarm among safety net providers and bipartisan lawmakers because it would accomplish the opposite of what the Trump Administration intended — ultimately making it harder for health centers to provide affordable life-saving services and prescription drugs — especially during the pandemic,” the association said.

It pointed out that the only patients affected would be those using the health centers.

 

[CaitSeith]

The problem with that, is it implies you should always wear a mask forever because you can never know when you are sick and contagious at any given time. Potentially you are always sick. And people need to be able to live their lives. You can't be under constant fear of invisible germs and "what ifs". I just don't think it is a good long term mentality to have.

Not really. 5 - 6 days without symptoms implies that after 7 days without new cases, it's safe to be without a mask (as long as the sick stay in quarantine). Besides, it's wearing a freaking mask! People are able to live their lives with masks. But we have seen the problem of people not following even short term plans.

 

[CriticalGaming]

But we have seen the problem of people not following even short term plans.

This is strictly the result of inconsistent messaging. I've always said that if we had been forced under an extremely strict lockdown for 21 days, then we would have avoided the vast majority of these problems.

But there was so much bullshit and counter-advice going on. Our leaders would says shit, but then not follow their own rules, and that really pisses people off.

All we needed was a three week lockdown of everything, and it would have been fine.

 

[Agema]

EDIT: Found it. Looks like 16% of covid deaths were people without comorbidities.

Dude, it most effectively kills old people. Old people have morbidities. About two-thirds of over 65s have high blood pressure alone: it's part of being old. They have things like arthritis, impaired kidney function, dementias, enlarged prostates... because that's what being old does to people. Any disease that mostly kills old people is going to have a huge proportion of its victims with a comorbidity.

First link is basically all correlational.

Or to translate, "I don't really know what all of that means, so I'm calling it correlational as a way of pretending I can ignore it".

 

[CriticalGaming]

Dude, it most effectively kills old people. Old people have morbidities. About two-thirds of over 65s have high blood pressure alone: it's part of being old. They have things like arthritis, impaired kidney function, dementias, enlarged prostates... because that's what being old does to people. Any disease that mostly kills old people is going to have a huge proportion of its victims with a comorbidity.

And instead of quarantining Grandma, we instead locked the entire world down. Ruining scholarships, education of our kids, people's careers, small businesses, etc etc, because people refused to not just take care of the elderly folks.

Whatever you wanna say about that, there is a rule in contact sports MMA, boxing, martial arts, etc. That rule is, "Protect yourself at all times." Meaning that the ref cannot always save you, and you must be protective of yourself as much as possible to avoid injury as much as possible even if you lose.

Basically saying, when the messaging and the danger of this virus was clear. Why could the people who know they are at risk, take the steps to protect themselves, while everyone else lived their lives? Would Covid have bled through the younger population? Yes, which it did anyway, to fairly minor overall effect with a few exceptions here and there. At the same time, there would not have been such a massive drop off of employment, a drop in small businesses, the shutdown of children's education, basically all the other effects of pisspoor management of this whole fucking thing that will have ripple effects long after the virus is a non-factor.

 

[Baffle]

And instead of quarantining Grandma, we instead locked the entire world down. Ruining scholarships, education of our kids, people's careers, small businesses, etc etc, because people refused to not just take care of the elderly folks.

Whatever you wanna say about that, there is a rule in contact sports MMA, boxing, martial arts, etc. That rule is, "Protect yourself at all times." Meaning that the ref cannot always save you, and you must be protective of yourself as much as possible to avoid injury as much as possible even if you lose.

I don't think putting grandma in the Octagon was likely to increase her chances of COVID survival; if anything that's a silly idea.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I don't think putting grandma in the Octagon was likely to increase her chances of COVID survival; if anything that's a silly idea.

I think you just sparked an idea for a new Sports Network.

ESPN = Elderly Sports Network. It's slower, but there is a higher chance for injury.