CNN Reporter Breaks Down After Devastating Covid-19 Report

[Silvanus]

Does it look like things have gone back to business as usual? I'm really confused as to why you're ignoring that many places still can't open in several states.

I'm not, loads of places have been closed for the majority of the period since March 2020. But plenty of them (at least in the UK and, as far as I'm aware, throughout the US) have periodically reopened, closed again later, reopened again and closed again. Restrictions on movement have been put in place, then scaled back, then reinstated.

Well you have of course read nothing about the Soviet Union so I wouldn't expect you to understand how easy it is for politicians to not give a shit about sinking their own economy for power.

The USSR formed a substantial part of my degree study. But the Cold War-- that being the global diplomatic/military standoff between the USSR & the USA-- did not necessitate all shops closing and internal movement ceasing for a substantial period of time.

Politicians have, from time to time, been ready and willing to allow economic damage for the sake of political power. Hell, look at Brexit, an act of economic vandalism, which the Conservative Party are nonetheless willing to see through to the bloody end because it would be politically ruinous among their supporters for them to do anything else.

But there is no political gain for UK and US politicians in locking down without necessity. They have gained almost nothing; they have lost both revenue and popular support throughout lockdown. If we're looking solely at their direct and immediate control over people, even that has been damaged and undermined; the lockdown has stretched the police thin, unable to respond to lockdown-related rulebreaking; mask-wearing will be rendering CCTV less useful; and all the data they had on spending habits & travel habits has become obsolete. EDIT: And their relationship with big business, so important to them, is in tatters.

There's a reason the governments of the US and UK put off lockdowns as long as they possibly could, until they had no other choice. It was a hazardous and self-serving reason, but that's Johnson and Trump for you.

 

[Gergar12]

I have this theory, that in the US at least, they(Trump/conservatives or the establishment) ignored Covid to kill the old who were economically less useful and to relieve social security, and Medicare(elderly health insurance in the US)

After hearing the theory from an accredited professor that the US wanted to do the war on terror/Iraq & Afgan Wars to sustain the US dollar as a reserve currency vs the rising euro. I am starting to believe in theories like this again.

Seriously it means republicans, and non-progressive Democrats would kill their voters to gain more power(both national, and personal), money, and whatnot. See old people had you voted progressive, this wouldn't have happened. The people you voted for are killing you. Whereas the people I voted for would have saved you.

 

[Gergar12]

More evidence for my theory;

"These horrific totals were not inevitable. The virus is an efficient killer, but it has accomplices. In New York, ProPublica reports, Governor Andrew Cuomo may have placed nursing-home residents in unnecessary danger. By requiring facilities to accept all medically stable patients, even if they were COVID-positive, and prohibiting them from testing would-be residents for the virus, Cuomo opened their doors to infection. New Jersey enforced a similar policy, with similarly deadly results. Governors calculated the risks in front of them and, as hospital beds ran low, shifted the burden to those least able to shoulder it. Forcing the sick into nursing homes may have relieved local hospitals, at least for a while. It also sacrificed the elderly and the disabled to disease – though that’s a conclusion the state of New York itself disputes."

Source: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/america-is-sacrificing-the-elderly-to-coronavirus.html

 

[Thaluikhain]

I have this theory, that in the US at least, they(Trump/conservatives or the establishment) ignored Covid to kill the old who were economically less useful and to relieve social security, and Medicare(elderly health insurance in the US)

I doubt that they'd intentional go out of their way to kill people, they just didn't care. Perhaps when their political opponents championed saving people and they had to oppose them, and thus oppose saving people. But I'm guessing it was more indifference and petty malice than large scale planned malice.

Shifting burdens to the weakest members of society is hardly unusual.

 

[Agema]

We have a study done in a lab saying zinc + ionophore hindered SARS-COV-1 replication.

We have studies from a lab showing raspberry juice kills cancer cells but so far no-one's cancer has been cured by eating raspberries. There is a very substantial difference between what you can show in a petri dish and what goes on in a real organism.

There's not a single study for early stage covid infection that showed HCQ did nothing or did harm. I really don't understand how you can say there's more data (or more robust data) saying HCQ is ineffective. Link me to a SINGLE early stage robust study that showed HCQ was either ineffective or did harm.

Hydroxychloroquine for Early Treatment of Adults With Mild Coronavirus Disease 2019: A Randomized, Controlled Trial

Compared with usual care, early treatment with HCQ failed to reduce the viral load in nasopharyngeal swabs after 3 and 7 days of treatment and shorten the

academic.oup.com

ACP Journals

Also, bear in mind that some of the "pre-exposure" studies actually include continued treatment with HCQ after covid-19 was contracted, and you can include failures there, too. More to the point, perhaps, if HCQ is neither useful in pre-exposure, moderate or late treatment, what really is the likelihood it's useful in early stage?

I would also draw your attention to the latter paper's statements about adverse effects (43% HCQ compared to 20% placebo; see below).

The WHO Solidarity trial said remdesivir isn't effective too, but you'd recommend that with it's own slew of side effects (and some we probably don't know of since it's a newer drug) along with a price tag that is at least 300x that of HCQ.

I would not say I have recommended remdesevir. I explained the case for why it was approved, and if anything damned it with faint praise.

A "substantial" proportion of users have adverse effects, that's not true. The drug is old and very well known, it's handed out like candy in several countries, it does very very little harm.

When you read a drug database and it calls a side effect "common", this usually means it is suffered by 1-10% of patients. The common side effects of HCQ are (according to the British National Formulary): abdominal pain; appetite decreased; diarrhoea; emotional lability; headache; nausea; skin reactions; vision disorders; vomiting

So that's 9 whole conditions individually experienced at rates of 1-10% for users; in total a very substantial number of patients have adverse effects. They just tend not to be very serious ones. This is also without considering contraindications, and additional problems with adverse drug-drug interactions due to polypharmacy (i.e. taking more than one drug, particularly an issue for the elderly). Just to give you some idea here, 11% of unplanned hospital admissions are due to adverse effects from medication. It's a big deal.

And most, if not all, of the studies we've done on the public wearing masks showed no benefit (before this whole pandemic). That's literally why people said masks don't do anything at the start. There's no way one can claim we have robust data claiming unequivocally that masks (worn by the public) are effective. Because to do proper tests/trials would be unethical.

I notice here that you are subtly twisting the terms of the argument to studies on masks worn by the public. We don't need studies on masks worn by the public, we want studies on wearing masks to control infection. The public then just need to be educated on proper mask usage and we hope they comply.

Also, nobody is telling people to take vitamin d either when we have so very very very much correlational data that it is likely something that will provide covid benefits. We have more data implying vitamin d works than we do that masks work.

The government (well, mine at least) has clear recommendations on ensuring proper Vit D consumption, which have been clearly reiterated in the light of covid-19 and increased time spent indoors. They aren't hailing it as a miracle cure for obvious reasons.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

We have studies from a lab showing raspberry juice kills cancer cells but so far no-one's cancer has been cured by eating raspberries. There is a very substantial difference between what you can show in a petri dish and what goes on in a real organism.

We have several shown studies about zinc inhibiting viral replication in several viruses including SARS-COV-1, MERS, EAV, and even HIV. So why not take an ionophore and zinc?

Zinc supplementation and containment of covid-19 virus pandemic

www.bmj.com

Hydroxychloroquine for Early Treatment of Adults With Mild Coronavirus Disease 2019: A Randomized, Controlled Trial

Compared with usual care, early treatment with HCQ failed to reduce the viral load in nasopharyngeal swabs after 3 and 7 days of treatment and shorten the

academic.oup.com

ACP Journals

Also, bear in mind that some of the "pre-exposure" studies actually include continued treatment with HCQ after covid-19 was contracted, and you can include failures there, too. More to the point, perhaps, if HCQ is neither useful in pre-exposure, moderate or late treatment, what really is the likelihood it's useful in early stage?

I would also draw your attention to the latter paper's statements about adverse effects (43% HCQ compared to 20% placebo; see below).

You said previously a 200-person study is iffy. That study had under 300 patients and it showed less hospitalization and faster recovery in the HCQ group, not statistically significant though. I linked to an 8,000 patient study that showed HCQ worked to a degree.

When you read a drug database and it calls a side effect "common", this usually means it is suffered by 1-10% of patients. The common side effects of HCQ are (according to the British National Formulary): abdominal pain; appetite decreased; diarrhoea; emotional lability; headache; nausea; skin reactions; vision disorders; vomiting

So that's 9 whole conditions individually experienced at rates of 1-10% for users; in total a very substantial number of patients have adverse effects. They just tend not to be very serious ones. This is also without considering contraindications, and additional problems with adverse drug-drug interactions due to polypharmacy (i.e. taking more than one drug, particularly an issue for the elderly). Just to give you some idea here, 11% of unplanned hospital admissions are due to adverse effects from medication. It's a big deal.

Having some diarrhea or headache isn't anything major. Over indulging in fruit causes diarrhea. HCQ was bad mouthed for cardiac incidents early on, which it very very very rarely causes in people that aren't already in the ICU. If you look over all the HCQ studies that probably range over 100,000 people at least, I don't think you'll find one cardiac incident caused by the drug outside of the ICU setting.

I notice here that you are subtly twisting the terms of the argument to studies on masks worn by the public. We don't need studies on masks worn by the public, we want studies on wearing masks to control infection. The public then just need to be educated on proper mask usage and we hope they comply.

I recall people posting mask studies in households about flu transmission in the old v1 thread, I assumed in a medical setting there was more data and more conclusive data but N95s are also worn in a medical environment and are far better than the masks the public wears. Doing a bit of research, not even surgical masks in a medical environment have solid data of actually doing anything. It basically comes down to a "better safe than sorry" approach. The most promising potential effect of masking is lowering the viral load to reduce overall severity, and there's really no data on that whatsoever (It's a "we know A, B, C to be true and assume that leads to D being true" form of logic). You do realize I'm all for masking, it's just that there's no robust data proving they do anything.

Unmasking the Surgical Mask: Does It Really Work?

For a century, the surgical mask has been the symbol of a safe and sanitary medical environment. The problem is that researchers don't really know if that's true.

www.medpagetoday.com

The government (well, mine at least) has clear recommendations on ensuring proper Vit D consumption, which have been clearly reiterated in the light of covid-19 and increased time spent indoors. They aren't hailing it as a miracle cure for obvious reasons.

The UK recommends 400 IUs of vitamin d a day, which isn't good enough for deficient people, and it's mainly for bone health vs immune system health. I obviously don't know what the messages from the press or government in the UK have been, but in the US, pretty much nothing on recommending people take vitamin d.

 

[Silvanus]

We have several shown studies about zinc inhibiting viral replication in several viruses including SARS-COV-1, MERS, EAV, and even HIV. So why not take an ionophore and zinc?

"Why not" is the wrong question. We should be asking, "why should we?", and the answer to that is only settled with a better standard of evidence.

When people just ask, "why not take X if it might possibly help", that's when the fraudsters and snake-oil salesmen start making their money. Costs get inflated, marketing campaigns get pushed, and soon enough people are paying through the nose for standard, unremarkable water.

On a societal level, though, ineffective remedies draw attention away from effective ones. People may take ineffective remedies, falsely consider themselves safer, and then be less likely to take actually effective remedies.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

"Why not" is the wrong question. We should be asking, "why should we?", and the answer to that is only settled with a better standard of evidence.

When people just ask, "why not take X if it might possibly help", that's when the fraudsters and snake-oil salesmen start making their money. Costs get inflated, marketing campaigns get pushed, and soon enough people are paying through the nose for standard, unremarkable water.

On a societal level, though, ineffective remedies draw attention away from effective ones. People may take ineffective remedies, falsely consider themselves safer, and then be less likely to take actually effective remedies.

Again, you can say the same thing with masks and social distancing. There's really nothing saying those things work either. And, nobody's just pulling stuff from thin air saying "why not?", there's data saying it helps and at worst large amounts of correlational data pointing directly at certain things. People are already usually vitamin d deficient with the groups most adversely affected by covid being the most vitamin d deficient. Vitamin d just generally helps your immune system and it's "the thing" that fights off covid or any other virus. There's studies that show Vitamin D supplements protect against acute respiratory infections including colds and flu. Covid is an acute respiratory infection.

And no one's going to be making bank off supplements or even HCQ. You can claim that masks are only pushed to sell those and make a profit too, there's no data supporting they work with any definitive answers.

 

[Agema]

We have several shown studies about zinc inhibiting viral replication in several viruses including SARS-COV-1, MERS, EAV, and even HIV. So why not take an ionophore and zinc?

"Why not?" is a valid thing to say. However, so is "why?"

You said previously a 200-person study is iffy. That study had under 300 patients and it showed less hospitalization and faster recovery in the HCQ group, not statistically significant though. I linked to an 8,000 patient study that showed HCQ worked to a degree.

It's also a randomised, controlled trial, which is much better than an observational study.

Having some diarrhea or headache isn't anything major.

Yes, I already said it wasn't major. It is, nevertheless, harm: there's the principle of non-maleficence in medical ethics. Also from a pragmatic perspective, it also frequently detracts from adherence.

I recall people posting mask studies in households about flu transmission in the old v1 thread, I assumed in a medical setting there was more data and more conclusive data but N95s are also worn in a medical environment and are far better than the masks the public wears. Doing a bit of research, not even surgical masks in a medical environment have solid data of actually doing anything. It basically comes down to a "better safe than sorry" approach. The most promising potential effect of masking is lowering the viral load to reduce overall severity, and there's really no data on that whatsoever (It's a "we know A, B, C to be true and assume that leads to D being true" form of logic). You do realize I'm all for masking, it's just that there's no robust data proving they do anything.

<sigh> I think you want to believe that more than it's actually true. Never mind that a lot of studies have been done on masks in the last few months, and - unlike HCQ - the data has been very supportive.

The UK recommends 400 IUs of vitamin d a day, which isn't good enough for deficient people, and it's mainly for bone health vs immune system health. I obviously don't know what the messages from the press or government in the UK have been, but in the US, pretty much nothing on recommending people take vitamin d.

Most people (~80%) in my country generally don't need supplements at all. For the others, 400 IU supplements are fine, added to diet and metabolism, for the vast majority. People with unusually high risks of deficiency will normally already have medical advice as required.

 

[Silvanus]

Again, you can say the same thing with masks and social distancing. There's really nothing saying those things work either. And, nobody's just pulling stuff from thin air saying "why not?", there's data saying it helps and at worst large amounts of correlational data pointing directly at certain things. People are already usually vitamin d deficient with the groups most adversely affected by covid being the most vitamin d deficient. Vitamin d just generally helps your immune system and it's "the thing" that fights off covid or any other virus. There's studies that show Vitamin D supplements protect against acute respiratory infections including colds and flu. Covid is an acute respiratory infection.

And no one's going to be making bank off supplements or even HCQ. You can claim that masks are only pushed to sell those and make a profit too, there's no data supporting they work with any definitive answers.

The level of supporting evidence is really incomparable. There's a clear scientific consensus for mask-wearing; there isn't for HCQ.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

"Why not?" is a valid thing to say. However, so is "why?"

I'm not in the field, I don't really care about the "why" and the ins and outs of how everything works within the body. The fact that there's these studies into zinc means professionals in the field think with at least decent reasoning to the "why" and how zinc interacts in the body to lead them to hypothesis that it may work or else they wouldn't have done these studies.

It's also a randomised, controlled trial, which is much better than an observational study.

It's also a very small study with rather young participants. Without looking back at the numbers, I'll just assume there's 150 per group (HCQ vs control) for easy math purposes. Say 10% of that age group would require hospitalization from covid infection, and 10% is probably high as I don't think 10% of 40 year olds require hospitalization. Assuming the 10%, that means normally 15 people from each group would require hospitalization. And, say we find out in a year that HCQ lowers hospitalization by 10%, that would only show 1 or 2 people less in the HCQ group going to the hospital in this study. There's no way the study with such a low patient count in such a low risk age group could show us statistically significant data pointing to HCQ helping 10% (or being ineffective or even being worse than the control group by 10%). Hell, it's probably statistically likely that you'd have 2 or 3 more people going to the hospital from 1 of the 2 groups of 150 40-year-olds if they all literally got the same treatment.

Yes, I already said it wasn't major. It is, nevertheless, harm: there's the principle of non-maleficence in medical ethics. Also from a pragmatic perspective, it also frequently detracts from adherence.

The minor harm from a headache (which covid already gives most people) or diarrhea is barely anything if it saves a trip to the hospital just on financial harm alone, let alone possibly getting long term symptoms or death.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

<sigh> I think you want to believe that more than it's actually true. Never mind that a lot of studies have been done on masks in the last few months, and - unlike HCQ - the data has been very supportive.

I can say the same thing about data being supportive of HCQ, Vitamin D, zinc, Ivermectin. Being supportive and showing definitively that it helps are 2 different things. I really don't understand how you're so onboard with mask data when it's not even as robust as this other data that you're not onboard with. Where are these mask studies that show definitively that they help? I showed you that the medical community can't even agree that surgical masks do anything over the years. I know that article is basically 10 years old but I doubt we've magically just got to doing some large scale study with super great testing method that shows without question that masks actually do anything. Also, I kept separating medical and public environments with regards to masking because they're completely different with the public side having way more variables. Maybe a mask helps a lot at a grocery store when only interacting with people for a minute or less or talking to someone for 5-15 minutes. But being in a restaurant for an hour with a infectious person a table away, is a mask going to help there? Or when hanging out watching TV or playing games with friends or family in a house, is a mask going to hold up for hours? Or at work in 8-hour shifts working with someone that's infectious?

And the tests we can do to actually test mask effectiveness aren't ethical to do. Putting people in a room for say a half hour pumping in covid particles (recreating being in the same room with an infectious person) against a masked group and unmasked group would tell us but you can't be purposefully infecting people obviously.

Most people (~80%) in my country generally don't need supplements at all. For the others, 400 IU supplements are fine, added to diet and metabolism, for the vast majority. People with unusually high risks of deficiency will normally already have medical advice as required.

400 IUs is not nearly enough to bump up your serum levels if you are deficient in vitamin d. Fauci takes 6,000 IUs a day. Even my vitamin d supplement that is 2,500 IUs per capsule says to take twice a day.

"The results of the 2008–2012 NDNS study clearly demonstrate that intakes of vitamin D in the UK are far too low throughout all age ranges"

Vitamin D Serum Levels in the UK Population, including a Mathematical Approach to Evaluate the Impact of Vitamin D Fortified Ready-to-Eat Breakfast Cereals: Application of the NDNS Database - PMC

Vitamin D status is relatively poor in the general population, potentially leading to various conditions. The present study evaluates the relationship between vitamin D status and intake in the UK population and the impact of vitamin D fortified ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Low levels of vitamin D in UK 'extremely concerning', warns the British Nutrition Foundation

The BNF's annual lecture calls for greater focus on vitamin D deficiency in younger healthy populations.

www.foodnavigator.com

 

[Phoenixmgs]

The level of supporting evidence is really incomparable. There's a clear scientific consensus for mask-wearing; there isn't for HCQ.

There isn't though. There's consensus recommending masking but there's not anywhere near a data consensus.

Unmasking the Surgical Mask: Does It Really Work?

For a century, the surgical mask has been the symbol of a safe and sanitary medical environment. The problem is that researchers don't really know if that's true.

www.medpagetoday.com

 

[Silvanus]

There isn't though. There's consensus recommending masking but there's not anywhere near a data consensus.

Unmasking the Surgical Mask: Does It Really Work?

For a century, the surgical mask has been the symbol of a safe and sanitary medical environment. The problem is that researchers don't really know if that's true.

www.medpagetoday.com

Take a longer look at that article. Firstly, it's 12 years old, long pre-dating COVID and a lot of other research and meta-analysis into the area.

Secondly, most of the article is concerned with masks in a surgical setting (i.e., employed by medical professionals in hospitals) or during seasonal flu. Only the penultimate section of the article deals with mask-wearing among the general public; it cites only a single trial, and that trial only showed that mask use alongside hand hygiene significantly lowers risk.

The part of the article that actually brings up "conflicting evidence" is specifically about masks protecting healthcare workers (not patients, note) in hospital settings. That isn't what we're discussing.

But let's look at something more recent from the same source. What does Medpage say now? Mid-pandemic, with another decade's worth of studies?

"Be a patriot. Wear a mask."

More mask-wearing would cut the US death toll significantly.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Take a longer look at that article. Firstly, it's 12 years old, long pre-dating COVID and a lot of other research and meta-analysis into the area.

Secondly, most of the article is concerned with masks in a surgical setting (i.e., employed by medical professionals in hospitals) or during seasonal flu. Only the penultimate section of the article deals with mask-wearing among the general public; it cites only a single trial, and that trial only showed that mask use alongside hand hygiene significantly lowers risk.

The part of the article that actually brings up "conflicting evidence" is specifically about masks protecting healthcare workers (not patients, note) in hospital settings. That isn't what we're discussing.

But let's look at something more recent from the same source. What does Medpage say now? Mid-pandemic, with another decade's worth of studies?

"Be a patriot. Wear a mask."

More mask-wearing would cut the US death toll significantly.

I know how old it is, our testing methods for masks didn't magically advance in the last 10 years. Like I said to Agema, we can do studies that would definitively show one way or the other but they aren't ethical.

Here's the Danish mask study from November of nearly 5,000 people. And it shows no data that is statistically significant that masks do anything.

Opinion | Here's How to Think About the Danish Mask Study

What the DANMASK-19 trial showed and didn't show about mask use and COVID-19

www.medpagetoday.com

Your 1st link is just an opinion piece with no data whatsoever.

The 2nd link doesn't show any numbers or data where they are getting their figures from. Saying that masks would have saved like 130,000 lives is some pie-in-the-sky number with no data backing it whatsoever. Remember, there's data "analysis" saying Trump won the election too.

Again, you don't have to convince me masks help, I believe they do, but there's no data I can show anyone to prove that they do. And the thing none of these studies have studied (AFAIK) is the effect of viral load, which has more potential for helping than lowering infection rates modestly at best. I've constantly brought up the fact that Japan is the only country that has done really well without doing a smother/lockdown strategy that basically eradicates the virus from the country, and the unique thing about them is that they masked from day 1 and they have naturally good levels of vitamin d from their diet. But, that's nothing but loose correlational data at best.

 

[Silvanus]

I know how old it is, our testing methods for masks didn't magically advance in the last 10 years. Like I said to Agema, we can do studies that would definitively show one way or the other but they aren't ethical.

Here's the Danish mask study from November of nearly 5,000 people. And it shows no data that is statistically significant that masks do anything.

Opinion | Here's How to Think About the Danish Mask Study

What the DANMASK-19 trial showed and didn't show about mask use and COVID-19

www.medpagetoday.com

Testing methods, no. That doesn't mean no meaningful analysis has been done. The source you quoted from Medpage referred to next-to-no research on public mask use (a single study?). A lot more has been done in the decade since.

On that Danish study: that's not even evaluating mask usage. It's evaluating the efficiency of adding a recommendation to wear a mask alongside other public health suggestions. You need to start looking at the details of research before quoting it in support of a certain position.

Your 1st link is just an opinion piece with no data whatsoever.

The 2nd link doesn't show any numbers or data where they are getting their figures from. Saying that masks would have saved like 130,000 lives is some pie-in-the-sky number with no data backing it whatsoever. Remember, there's data "analysis" saying Trump won the election too.

Why d'you think I linked those? It wasn't to provide raw data; it was to show that even the medical source you're quoting for supporting evidence is actually now staunchly behind mask usage.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Testing methods, no. That doesn't mean no meaningful analysis has been done. The source you quoted from Medpage referred to next-to-no research on public mask use (a single study?). A lot more has been done in the decade since.

On that Danish study: that's not even evaluating mask usage. It's evaluating the efficiency of adding a recommendation to wear a mask alongside other public health suggestions. You need to start looking at the details of research before quoting it in support of a certain position.

Why d'you think I linked those? It wasn't to provide raw data; it was to show that even the medical source you're quoting for supporting evidence is actually now staunchly behind mask usage.

I didn't say no meaningful analysis can be done. I'm saying over decades, the medical community can't even agree that surgical masks do anything. There's a lot less studies/data on public mask usage. And public mask usage has many more inherent variables than masks in a medical setting, thus harder to get statistically significant data pointing one way or the other.

You can't really do a mask study and force people to wear masks because you're doing this study or any mask study where you tell people to do this during their normal daily lives. The only thing that lets you know if they wore masks is what they told you. The study does say that 46% of participants wore the mask as recommended, 47% predominantly as recommended, and 7% not as recommended. That is based on what the participants said obviously. Like I said, it's really easy to do a mask study to definitely tell you if they work, it's just not ethical and that's why it's not done.

I'm not arguing whether mask wearing is recommended by medical professionals, it's whether there's data supporting it. Masks are recommended because just maybe they could've saved 130,000 lives, they could have only saved 100 lives, or even no lives. We just don't know. Masks are recommend because they do no harm and it's basically the "better safe than sorry" approach. I probably think masks do more than most medical professionals because of the viral load potential, which is rarely talked about, but I have no data proving or pointing towards that because there's no studies on that. I think there's no viral load studies on humans at all, it was all gathered from animal studies.