Lifting Masks = Back to Getting Down With The Sickness

crimson5pheonix

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Phoenixmgs

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You have, once again, failed to read. The article pointed out there was a problem with people incorrectly wearing masks, frequently taking them off, or making a mask in such a way as to make it useless.

Illiteracy strikes again, stop using ctrl-f and read.

But you just said the masks worked during the Spanish flu and when they stopped wearing masks, the cases spiked again...



Funnily enough, there were mask mandates and when people bitched about them enough saying it wasn't worth it, they lifted the mandates and it immediately started spiking.



🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
:unsure::unsure::unsure::unsure::unsure::unsure: Indeed...
 

crimson5pheonix

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But you just said the masks worked during the Spanish flu and when they stopped wearing masks, the cases spiked again...
Well you've said that masks weren't a thing before the pandemic, which you were wrong about. Then changed it to public masking, which you were wrong about. So the fact you don't know history literally at all isn't really surprising.


:unsure::unsure::unsure::unsure::unsure::unsure: Indeed...

Learn to read, or else nobody will ever take you seriously.
 

Seanchaidh

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Again, do you not understand how many drugs fail every year that have mechanisms to work?
Nothing anywhere near as simple to understand, straightforward, and easy to observe as the effect of masks on the transmission of fluids in your mouth and nose to the surrounding environment. Nothing like arcane pharmacological speculations not panning out when tested in human subjects.

WHERE'S THE REAL WORLD EVIDENCE FOR MASKS?
SNEEZE INTO ONE AND FIND OUT

Surely, just a coincidence that Florida did better than New York without mask mandates.
Do you have any idea the population density of New York City compared to others? Differences in weather conditions? Amount of travel into and out of each state from all over the world? Scandals about the treatment of nursing home patients? Other issues or differences in policy affecting one or the other state but not both?

How many variables are lurking to spoil just such a state versus state comparison? Think, Phoenixmgs, think!
 
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Agema

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It is true, there's far more data for vitamin d...
No, there isn't. Well, there might be "more data" in total, it's just that so much of it is inconclusive or negative. It might be more precise to say that the scientific case is less clear and less positive than it is for masks.

1) The most basic problem is that lower vitamin D levels tend to be caused by large range of conditions. Several of those conditions also increase risk of severe reactions to covid. So there's an intrinsic problem that studies reporting large numbers of people with low vitamin D levels in hospital with covid are confounded by the fact that they're actually made vulnerable to covid by their underlying health condition or age, not low vitamin D; or even that their vitamin D levels are just temporarily lower than normal because they are ill.

2) Agencies and studies are hopelessly mixed about what low vitamin D levels actually are - there is no consistency in what "deficiency" or "sufficiency" is. Underpinning this lack of consistency is the fact that there isn't good evidence for when low vitamin D becomes problematic, itself partly due to that there may be wide variability between individuals anyway.

3) Too many of these studies are low quality.

4) Enough studies by now exist for us to know that giving covid-19 patients loads of vitamin D is ineffective (or very low effectiveness) at preventing covid symptoms becoming more severe.

* * *

I think you must believe that health agencies are declining to push vitamin D like crazy just because of a perverse refusal to accept what you think is a clear scientific argument. Why would they tell everyone to mask up but not cram vitamin D down their throats if vitamin D was better than masks? Who seriously believes that health bodies and governments - that want people healthy, the health services not overburdened and an economy back to work - would not grasp anything so cheap, simple and obvious as a vitamin supplement and hammer it for all its worth if it worked? Or do you just believe that they and their scientific / medical recommendation panels are all a bunch of know-nothing idiots?

But I think from the last 18 months you have demonstrated substantial elements of conspiracy theory-like thinking, distrust of establishment, wishful thinking and a vast overestimation of your own capabilities to assess scientific information. So yes, I think you are exactly the sort of person to believe stuff like that.
 

Cheetodust

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No, there isn't. Well, there might be "more data" in total, it's just that so much of it is inconclusive or negative. It might be more precise to say that the scientific case is less clear and less positive than it is for masks.

1) The most basic problem is that lower vitamin D levels tend to be caused by large range of conditions. Several of those conditions also increase risk of severe reactions to covid. So there's an intrinsic problem that studies reporting large numbers of people with low vitamin D levels in hospital with covid are confounded by the fact that they're actually made vulnerable to covid by their underlying health condition or age, not low vitamin D; or even that their vitamin D levels are just temporarily lower than normal because they are ill.

2) Agencies and studies are hopelessly mixed about what low vitamin D levels actually are - there is no consistency in what "deficiency" or "sufficiency" is. Underpinning this lack of consistency is the fact that there isn't good evidence for when low vitamin D becomes problematic, itself partly due to that there may be wide variability between individuals anyway.

3) Too many of these studies are low quality.

4) Enough studies by now exist for us to know that giving covid-19 patients loads of vitamin D is ineffective (or very low effectiveness) at preventing covid symptoms becoming more severe.

* * *

I think you must believe that health agencies are declining to push vitamin D like crazy just because of a perverse refusal to accept what you think is a clear scientific argument. Why would they tell everyone to mask up but not cram vitamin D down their throats if vitamin D was better than masks? Who seriously believes that health bodies and governments - that want people healthy, the health services not overburdened and an economy back to work - would not grasp anything so cheap, simple and obvious as a vitamin supplement and hammer it for all its worth if it worked? Or do you just believe that they and their scientific / medical recommendation panels are all a bunch of know-nothing idiots?

But I think from the last 18 months you have demonstrated substantial elements of conspiracy theory-like thinking, distrust of establishment, wishful thinking and a vast overestimation of your own capabilities to assess scientific information. So yes, I think you are exactly the sort of person to believe stuff like that.
They're all in the pocket of big mask!
 

Agema

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So... it'll become endemic coronavirus?
Yep. That I think is the long-term trajectory. Covid forever as "'flu mk. 2": another respiratory disease ticking away in the background worldwide year on year, polishing off a small proportion of elderly and vulnerable, plus every few years-decades evolving a new strain able to sweep the world with a big uptick.
 
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stroopwafel

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Yep. That I think is the long-term trajectory. Covid forever as "'flu mk. 2": another respiratory disease ticking away in the background worldwide year on year, polishing off a small proportion of elderly and vulnerable, plus every few years-decades evolving a new strain able to sweep the world with a big uptick.
In isolation yeah but shouldn't covid be seen in the wider context of climate change, loss of biodiversity, rising termperatures, deforestation, encroachment on wild nature, overpopulation etc. It's likely more novel viruses will continue to occur because the circumstances that enable them from emerging are only getting more and more in the favor of new diseases. Just look at what is happening in Madagascar. A poor country that never even contributed to climate change. The point of no return has already been reached. I feel like the next plague will make covid really look like small beer.

But I think we can rest assuredly in the knowledge that in the face of an existential threat we as people are able to stand together and uni..oh wait lmao.
 

Agema

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In isolation yeah but shouldn't covid be seen in the wider context of climate change, loss of biodiversity, rising termperatures, deforestation, encroachment on wild nature, overpopulation etc. It's likely more novel viruses will continue to occur because the circumstances that enable them from emerging are only getting more and more in the favor of new diseases. Just look at what is happening in Madagascar. A poor country that never even contributed to climate change. The point of no return has already been reached. I feel like the next plague will make covid really look like small beer.

But I think we can rest assuredly in the knowledge that in the face of an existential threat we as people are able to stand together and uni..oh wait lmao.
I think it might be premature to see covid as a result of these factors: these sorts of novel viruses (assuming SARS-CoV-2 is natural) will occur occationally even if we aren't trashing the planet.

But my feeling is that the fossil fuels industry has already won. Sometimes disaster has already occurred, it's just waiting for the actual damage to roll in. They've made their mega shitloads of dosh, their shareholders will have bought property on higher ground, and as the vast sums of damage roll in, their descendants will be enjoying their vast inheritances with zero liability. I suspect we're already at the point we just need to hope we find some way of sequestering greenhouse gases or otherwise preventing Greenland and other major glaciers from melting.

Europe and NA will probably get off relatively lightly. But that means they'll be where the millions, tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of refugees will aim to go.
 

tstorm823

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Yep. That I think is the long-term trajectory. Covid forever as "'flu mk. 2": another respiratory disease ticking away in the background worldwide year on year, polishing off a small proportion of elderly and vulnerable, plus every few years-decades evolving a new strain able to sweep the world with a big uptick.
I mean, this is the 7th human infecting coronavirus we know of. You're describing the status quo pre-covid19 just as well as the status post-covid19.
 

Agema

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I mean, this is the 7th human infecting coronavirus we know of. You're describing the status quo pre-covid19 just as well as the status post-covid19.
No. Most of the other human-infected coronaviruses still out there (e.g. SAR-CoV-1 appears to be extinct outside virology laboratories) are virtually harmless, except perhaps for the severely immunocompromised.

The more pulmonary infections going round, the more chance someone vulnerable is going to catch one and potentially die. So for instance, imagine an old person has a 10% chance of infection with 1% chance of death upon infection. Now add another equivalently dangerous disease which the other does not give any immunity to, their chance of death is effectively doubled. So we should expect more deaths.
 

Kwak

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Surely, just a coincidence that Florida did better than New York without mask mandates.
https://apnews.com/article/business...rus-pandemic-7ca97f0d685ab25559cf9b51cfc077eb
A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida on Sunday broke a previous record for current hospitalizations set more than a year ago before vaccines were available.
...


Florida is now leading the nation in per capita hospitalizations for COVID-19, as hospitals around the state report having to put emergency room visitors in beds in hallways and others document a noticeable drop in the age of patients.

In the past week, Florida has averaged 1,525 adult hospitalizations a day, and 35 daily pediatric hospitalizations. Both are the highest per capita rate in the nation, according to Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida.
 

Gergar12

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I am watching the White House briefing on it right now. All of this incrementalism, and political cowardice. Just force people to get vaccinated already, you idiots. It's the most straightforward easily, nonwonky thing to do. Keep it simple stupid, don't complicate this, you need vaccines for this, but you don't need it here, mask here, but not here.