Lifting Masks = Back to Getting Down With The Sickness

[Kwak]

Then there was the release of Fauci's email (Freedom of information act) which shows not only did it likely come from a lab, he individually may have helped fund gain of function research, illegal here in the USA but something that can be done in China.

Quote it.

 

[Dalisclock]

I don't think we should have done any of this (lock down, masks, shots).

I don't wanna do any of them either, but there's a nasty fucking virus that infected the entire planet(and we lost the chance to contain it a LONG fucking time ago) and we have to deal with it best we can. Until the Vaccine was created, Lockdowns, social distancing and/or masking were the best ways to fight it and until enough people are vaccinated, they're still tools we have to consider. Doing nothing is not an option and never has been.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Got my two shots, still wearing a mask.

 

[Dreiko]

It's not the left-wing that politicized the masks, though.

I never said it was, I said it was politicized AS being a left wing thing, not that the left was the ones who politicized it as such.

 

[stroopwafel]

Broadly there's a positive correlation between deaths and economic losses when we look at different countries. In the end, what seems clear is that countries that best controlled the pandemic took the least economic damage. Thus this idea of "economy or lives" is a myth.

I don't think that is true. Countries only took little economic damaga b/c they took on massive amount of debts. Italy for example would have completely fallen over if it weren't for the E.U. printing money in unlimited supply with negative interest rates. Result is massive inflation in stock and property market and shortages of everything(raw materials, computer chips, aluminium, wood etc). Money is expensive(negative interest rates) and looking for goods and services that aren't there withouit this having led to higher wages. That is the only reason people don't notice the inflation b/c there is no wage/price spiral yet. But how can this be maintained when western economies have aging populations, low birth rates and have already reached the limits of their growth due to overexploitation of the environment?

What politicians have done is simply kick the can down the street. Covid has been a public health crisis for sure but it is a relatively minor problem compared to the more existential threats to western economies like aging populations and climate change. Western countries should start reducing it's debt not piling on massive amounts of more debt. That is the direct result of covid but the sad fact is that most of that money didn't even end up where it's needed but rather ended up in the financial institutions, stock and property market where it only further enriched an already wealthy class.

 

[Agema]

I don't think that is true. Countries only took little economic damaga b/c they took on massive amount of debts. Italy for example would have completely fallen over if it weren't for the E.U. printing money in unlimited supply with negative interest rates.

But if Italy took on a huge amount of debt, that's because its GDP crashed. Indeed, the Italian economy lost about 20% in the first two quarters of 2020. Ouch: that was one of biggest drops in Europe.

Result is massive inflation in stock and property market and shortages of everything(raw materials, computer chips, aluminium, wood etc). Money is expensive(negative interest rates) and looking for goods and services that aren't there withouit this having led to higher wages. That is the only reason people don't notice the inflation b/c there is no wage/price spiral yet. But how can this be maintained when western economies have aging populations, low birth rates and have already reached the limits of their growth due to overexploitation of the environment?

Decreases in economic activity should result in lower inflation: demand goes down, prices go down. Remember last year, when oil producers ended up paying people to take their oil? Although there may in some cases be a wrinkle with covid, because supply was also potentially impacted (businesses closed or otherwise negatively impacted). We expect inflation during the recovery - people start earning again, and those people who were earning but had little to spend on start throughout using all that money they saved.

Again, figures will probably bear this out. UK inflation dropped from around 2% to 0.5% in 2020, and some projections say will hit 4% within the next year.

What politicians have done is simply kick the can down the street. Covid has been a public health crisis for sure but it is a relatively minor problem compared to the more existential threats to western economies like aging populations and climate change. Western countries should start reducing it's debt not piling on massive amounts of more debt. That is the direct result of covid but the sad fact is that most of that money didn't even end up where it's needed but rather ended up in the financial institutions, stock and property market where it only further enriched an already wealthy class.

Depends on what measures the government took. It seems to me pretty clear the government poured a lot of money into welfare (paying rents and unemployment benefits). This is giving money to the poor, even if of course they promptly give it to landlords and shop owners. But they'd do that with their salaries anyway. I'm sure many governments also backed very dubious schemes which did deliver little but enirched shareholders.

I agree Western governments should make serious efforts pay off their debts. But they can't cut social spending without wrecking the poor, and the rich (who are the ones with the spare money to pay plenty more tax) refuse to pay taxes: so they probably won't. They just have hope that the financial markets are happy with a new normal supporting 100+% GDP national debts. Of course, they could inflate their debts down, but everyone seems to hate inflation.

 

[stroopwafel]

Decreases in economic activity should result in lower inflation: demand goes down, prices go down. Remember last year, when oil producers ended up paying people to take their oil? Although there may in some cases be a wrinkle with covid, because supply was also potentially impacted (businesses closed or otherwise negatively impacted). We expect inflation during the recovery - people start earning again, and those people who were earning but had little to spend on start throughout using all that money they saved.

Again, figures will probably bear this out. UK inflation dropped from around 2% to 0.5% in 2020, and some projections say will hit 4% within the next year.

To an extent that is why the government money supply was warranted; to prevent companies from falling over so that when demand surges again this wouldn't result in exploding prices. The problem is that they overdid it to such an extent that even the financial markets say it is enough b/c they have no further recipients to invest in. Meanwhile money is so expensive for banks that they charge customers with as little as 100k negative interest rates while the money itself loses value due to high inflation plus account holders have to pay a 'wealth tax'(atleast here) that the stock and property market is exempt from eventhough that exploded in value thanks to government spending. People earn money on massive amounts of debts(espescially mortgages and large bank credits) but lose money on savings which is in line with monetary policy to stimulate 'growth' even if that is completely dependent on keeping the costs of debt low through inflation and the money presses.

I believe it was originally Olivier Blanchard who came up with this theory(I forgot his name but some American later run with it) but even Blanchard thinks central banks went too far with it.

Depends on what measures the government took. It seems to me pretty clear the government poured a lot of money into welfare (paying rents and unemployment benefits). This is giving money to the poor, even if of course they promptly give it to landlords and shop owners. But they'd do that with their salaries anyway. I'm sure many governments also backed very dubious schemes which did deliver little but enirched shareholders.

I agree Western governments should make serious efforts pay off their debts. But they can't cut social spending without wrecking the poor, and the rich (who are the ones with the spare money to pay plenty more tax) refuse to pay taxes: so they probably won't. They just have hope that the financial markets are happy with a new normal supporting 100+% GDP national debts. Of course, they could inflate their debts down, but everyone seems to hate inflation.

It is a comparitively small amount to what the stock and property market received. Most of the money ended up in the financial institutions and these aren't exactly the kind of persons who would ever suffer the effects of budget cuts. Ultimately the capital markets will put pressure on governments to limit spending and governments will act accordingly to not lose faith of the capital markets and keep the costs of their debts manageable. A high state deficit is predicated on the assumption of future economic growth but in western economies there just aren't enough young people or even resources to make that a reality yet the costs of the retirement class will only balloon through higher medical costs and longer lifespans. Too many receivers and too little payers to make it all possible. The central banks are completely out of touch but the sad thing is that it are ultimately, once again, the poor that will pay the price with high living costs, wage suppression and budget cuts. If they aren't kicked out of their homes in the meantime.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

No, because if you could read and knew history, you'd have already known what was going on. I'm not going to hold your hand anymore on this, anybody can see the sequence of events and see how masks were effective, when they were subverted, when they were discarded, and when the waves of the flu hit.



That's a long way to say "I'm wrong" without actually saying the crucial part that you're literally talking out your ass. This should be the point where you stop and reflect on your argument that you might not know what's going on.

Yet you still haven't taken a long or short or roundabout way to admit you were wrong...

Dude WTF?

When you breathe, you expel droplets of fluid, and these can contain virus particles. The big droplets tend to have limited range and drop to the floor - this is commonly called droplet transmission, and is definitely effective at transmitting infection. The smaller droplets (also called aerosols) can go a much longer distance and hang around in the air for a protracted period of time, and this is what's termed airborne transmission. These are infectious, whether as very small droplets of fluid, or if they dry up to leave virus particles floating around (in a manner similar to, say, dust).

Let's be absolutely clear about this: if you have a material barrier between your breathing passages and the atmosphere, that barrier is going to intercept a substantial number of small particles whether they are very small virus-containing droplets or very small bits of virus-containing dry matter.

People aren't getting covid from big droplets, the thing is airborne. People just normally breathing in masks isn't catching a SUBSTANTIAL number of tiny particles that flow/sit in the air. If masks stop what you say they stop, covid (and any other airborne disease) would be super fucking easy to stop by just putting on a mask, that has never fucking happened during covid or in recorded history beforehand.

Do you mean this? Do you think it is a good study?

Secondly, as I repeatedly say, at the point you are trying to pick on individual papers to make your point, you are asking for trouble. Like with ivermectin, where the principal study that supported its use turns out to look very much like it is fraudulent, and without it there isn't even a shadow of an adequate case.

Yes, I think it's a good study in the sense that it naturally had few variables in it (whereas mask studies have so many variables it's not even funny). Sure it has low numbers just looking at the number but all the people were high risk which is better than looking at like 1,000 people that had 50 high risk people in the group. By itself does it prove anything? No but I never just banked on that study solely for vitamin d (it's just one of very many). But where is a mask study that is even as good as that? I haven't seen one. Vitamin d studies have the REAL WORLD consistencies that mask studies do not.

You are asking the wrong question. The correct question to ask is "What does the sum total of studies say about the link between vitamin D and covid outcomes?" The answer to that question is "Very little".

I provided a look at 20+ vitamin d studies that all had consistently showed vitamin d levels showed a significant link between vitamin d and covid outcomes.

This, biologically, makes absolutely no sense at all. If you take a huge, single bolus of vitamin D3, once absorbed it will start being converted into the 25OHD and then the active form of vitamin D by liver enzymes immediately, and tissue delivery will occur rapidly. To use an analogy, codeine must also be converted into an active form (i.e. morphine) by liver enzymes before it works as an analgesic. And yet you pop a couple of codeine tablets, you'll feel pain relief in about 30 minutes: because 30 minutes is all it takes for enough codeine to be absorbed, converted to morphine, and that morphine to be transported to your central nervous system. You might argue that it takes a week for the maximal concentration of a single Vit D bolus to develop (as conventionally measured by plasma 25OHD), but in fact the amount of available, active vitamin D will increase substantially within hours.

What you might more safely argue is that the theorised benefits of vitamin D require long-term biological changes (such as altering protein expression, or complex cell activity and proliferation) that takes days-weeks. An analogy here might be SSRIs for depression: they will increase levels of 5-HT (serotonin) within hours, but the anti-depressant effects do not emerge for about 2-3 weeks because it is theorised that the benefit of enhanced serotonergic signalling is that it causes long-term changes to neuronal activity which need that time to develop. Or taking iron for iron deficiency anaemia, because resolving the anaemia is dependent on the relatively slow process of red blood cell production.

So whilst there may be an element of possibility in what you say (in that a vitamin D bolus in hospital does not have sufficient time to exert protective effects to prevent illness worsening), you're also telling me you that don't know what you're talking about.

If vitamin D3 works that fast in large doses, why is the standard prescription for low vitamin d level patients 50,000 IUs a week for 6-8 weeks to get their levels up (to then take 1,000 or so IUs a day from there)? Shouldn't a single 50,000 IU dose get their level up on its own then?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Did you really just post this?

Your ignorance is matched only by your arrogance.

HAHAHAHAHA no way dude.

Then, why don't all of you explain to me how covid is so transmissible if it's not airborne. Or if masks worked as well as you think, how has no masked country been able to control the spread of covid?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Stop. Just stop. You're embarrassing yourself. You started this whole thing off with a whiny little opinion piece saying that you shouldn't have to isolate or mask up, that it's those oldies and those sickies who should be locked away while you gallivant around in the face of a disease that was obviously never going to affect you. Every single post you've made on the topic since then has been a frantic rearguard action to defend your self-serving sniveling, to the point where you have posted literally dozens of scientific articles and pages that directly contradict the points you make in those very posts. And now this? At long last, have you no decency?

There's just one thing you should do now, and it's post these three words in this exact order: "I was wrong."

I'm not sure how far you're going back as to what I've said, I was for masks for a good year because "why not?" but it's been over a year, where's the proof? Florida did the whole protect the vulnerable and had less deaths per capita than say New York or Illinois or Michigan. Experts said that would work and it worked. Is that the best way to do it? NOPE. The best way to limit death is limiting the amount of virus in the country, which was already completely shot before the US did anything (around mid-March 2020). 20% of NYC was infected by MAY, you can't do a Australia or New Zealand or South Korea when you fucked up so very bad at the start. Dr. Marky Makary that I bring up a lot over Fauci was saying in January 2020 we need to do some drastic things to stop the virus from entering the US and being widespread whereas Fauci on February 29th told a NYC news station that there is currently no danger and people can go about living normally. Once the cat is out of the bag, you can't put it back in (and should use different strategies thereafter) unless your gonna pull a China and do super draconian lockdowns, which the US never came close to doing.

Continued...

 

[Phoenixmgs]

At least in America, having most people stay home isn't necessarily safer because if people are home, they got laid-off/fired/furloughed and don't have health insurance meaning if they get sick they'll probably delaying going to the hospital unless they really need to because of fear of medical bills. You can argue for a lot of people that staying working with health insurance with more potential for getting covid is better for their well-being because they can get medical attention if they need it and get it earlier. There's a lot of nuance going on that everyone just ignores. Also, no country has been able to keep people home until a large percentage of people are vaccinated because you can't do that for a year+, that's not a valid option and thus you really only have 3 options; 1) to be like Australia (which the US fucked up before we did anything), 2) to be like China doing draconian lockdown to get back to Australia being an option, or 3) to live with the virus and limit as much death as possible in that situation. The US failed at 1, the US would never do 2, so 3 is the only option left and the strat that limits deaths most in situation should be used. I was never against doing the #1 and best option, but it was just something the vast majority of countries acted far too late on and became impossible so then you gotta do the best you can in a shit situation.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I mean, America hoarding vaccines while enforcing vaccine patents is directly responsible for areas with low vaccination rates causing new mutations of the virus. Also, America big. Having a "bad put higher than normal" vaccination rate matters dick all when the multiple country sized areas that make up the United States have vastly different rates of vaccination.

Doing whatever it takes to get most of the people in the world immune to covid the fasted possible is the best obviously, no argument there. Trying to force the vaccine on the naturally immune is delaying that so vaccine mandates are responsible as well. My post was saying that unvaccinated Americans are not very likely gonna be the cause of new variants because they are very small % of the worlds population is all so stop blaming some unvaccinated American for being the potential cause of a new variant. Blaming and shaming people is not how you get them to do what you want anyway. The bigger macro discussion of what's best for the world is a different discussion. I'd say giving out vaccines to the most at risk (elderly) across the world then moving down to the next highest risk group is ideally the best method, but we all know that was never gonna happen.

HA. What is happening now just proves that you can't treat people like adults who can make their own decisions. People are more then willing to accept some really stupid things and then fight tooth and nail against anyone who proves them wrong. "Make their own decisions" what a crock of shit when we have people who are rabidly anti mask or social distancing.

But, people were never treated like adults since the very start, thus it was never tried. It all became political at the very beginning. How soon was it that people were posting on Facebook "STAY THE FUCK HOME!!!!!" and shaming people? It was the very fucking first month in March 2020. With how widespread the virus already was, we were gonna have to find a way to live with it and staying the fuck home until vaccines were developed and available wasn't a fucking option. The amount of human interaction needed to keep essential supply chains running means that everyone nonessential staying home wasn't gonna get rid of covid so why shame people? The goal at the start was to SLOW THE SPREAD, it wasn't to eliminate covid because, again, not possible. As long we did enough to not overwhelm healthcare, that's really all we could do. But, yeah, yelling at people to wear a mask outside was really fucking helpful wasn't it? Yelling at kids for being at the very safe outdoors beach was really fucking helpful wasn't it?

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Yet you still haven't taken a long or short or roundabout way to admit you were wrong...

I haven't been so yet.

Then, why don't all of you explain to me how covid is so transmissible if it's not airborne. Or if masks worked as well as you think, how has no masked country been able to control the spread of covid?

Like here where you think airborne means it literally flies through the dry air and have completely ignored where masked countries have done better than unmasked ones. You're just clueless.

 

[Agema]

Yes, I think it's a good study in the sense that it naturally had few variables in it (whereas mask studies have so many variables it's not even funny).

Well, at least you put a note of caution in there with "in the sense". It is not a good study.

Sure it has low numbers

Yes: in fact it has catastrophically low numbers. The test group is ~50 (okay) but the control group is a truly awful 9. It has other problems too, mind. Plus, when you talk about "variables", there are very important variables not accounted for in the paper. And other problems.

If vitamin D3 works that fast in large doses, why is the standard prescription for low vitamin d level patients 50,000 IUs a week for 6-8 weeks to get their levels up (to then take 1,000 or so IUs a day from there)? Shouldn't a single 50,000 IU dose get their level up on its own then?

Depends:

1) The upper limit daily recommendation is 4,000 IUs daily; depending on clearance, 50,000 IUs weekly might be an equivalent dose for steady state, if I could be arsed calculating it. If that were true, it might de facto be equivalent to a "standard" dose.
2) It might not be a "standard" dose in the sense of an official recommendation. It might just be something that someone did and wrote it up, and because they wrote it up, other people who read that article did it too and along the principle rolls. If this is the case, it might be "too much" (and I suspect some doctors will opine so if this is the case, again checkable if I could be bothered): a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Of course, the nut still gets cracked, you just might crack something else unintended too.

There are a lot of issues that could be considered: what the starting point of the patient is, how well the patient is likely to respond to treatment, what the desired end point it, etc.

 

[Agema]

People aren't getting covid from big droplets, the thing is airborne.

Droplets are definitely a way of catching covid. In fact, I'm pretty sure when I caught it off my wife, there was a pretty good chance it was by direct oral fluid exchange. If you stand within three feet of someone, you can definitely slobber small blobs of phlegm straight into their mouth. Everyone here has probably experienced that slightly unpleasant feeling of moist spatter at some point - and that'll just be the particularly large ones you can feel.

People just normally breathing in masks isn't catching a SUBSTANTIAL number of tiny particles that flow/sit in the air. If masks stop what you say they stop, covid (and any other airborne disease) would be super fucking easy to stop by just putting on a mask, that has never fucking happened during covid or in recorded history beforehand.

Imagine you were firing tennis balls randomly at a wall with 6-inch holes in. I can quite guarantee some of those tennis balls are going to hit the wall and bounce off, and others will go through the holes.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Or if masks worked as well as you think, how has no masked country been able to control the spread of covid?

Because a country isn't masked, the people are, or atleast, are told they should be. And all you need is enough people to not follow the guidelines (which every country has plenty of) for something like this to spread. That's not even mentioning how modern architecture, like that of supermarkets, makes it pretty impossible to even follow those guidelines.

 

[Worgen]

But, people were never treated like adults since the very start, thus it was never tried. It all became political at the very beginning. How soon was it that people were posting on Facebook "STAY THE FUCK HOME!!!!!" and shaming people? It was the very fucking first month in March 2020. With how widespread the virus already was, we were gonna have to find a way to live with it and staying the fuck home until vaccines were developed and available wasn't a fucking option. The amount of human interaction needed to keep essential supply chains running means that everyone nonessential staying home wasn't gonna get rid of covid so why shame people? The goal at the start was to SLOW THE SPREAD, it wasn't to eliminate covid because, again, not possible. As long we did enough to not overwhelm healthcare, that's really all we could do. But, yeah, yelling at people to wear a mask outside was really fucking helpful wasn't it? Yelling at kids for being at the very safe outdoors beach was really fucking helpful wasn't it?

Have some fun super spreader events.

10 of the Worst Covid-19 Super Spreader Events So Far

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I cannot believe that we've devolved down into "if you treated people like adults, everybody would've masked up on their own, but you hurt their feelings instead"

Meanwhile I work retail. Had a couple other customers print off fake "mask exemption" cards. Had one person complain that our hand sanitizer wasn't strong enough to kill covid while not wearing a mask. Had a dude come in with an anti-shrapnel mash, another with a catchers mask
Had a gal try and get me fired when I told her she wasn't allowed in the store without a mask and that we would have to do curbside. She got upset because she claimed to have several severe lung conditions that make wearing a mask uncomfortable. Lung conditions that would mean that she would definitely die if she got covid.
These are the fucking children I'm supposed to coddle while pretending they are acting like adults? Adults can handle some blunt advice without throwing a fucking tantrum. The CDC recommended store employees stop enforcing mask rules because too many employees were getting fucking stabbed

 

[Buyetyen]

Then, why don't all of you explain to me how covid is so transmissible if it's not airborne.

The particulate it hitches a ride on is what makes it airborne. It doesn't just fly through dry air. Jesus Christ, man. Is it really that hard for you to admit that you don't know literally everything?

 

[bluegate]

I cannot believe that we've devolved down into "if you treated people like adults, everybody would've masked up on their own, but you hurt their feelings instead"

Meanwhile I work retail. Had a couple other customers print off fake "mask exemption" cards. Had one person complain that our hand sanitizer wasn't strong enough to kill covid while not wearing a mask. Had a dude come in with an anti-shrapnel mash, another with a catchers mask
Had a gal try and get me fired when I told her she wasn't allowed in the store without a mask and that we would have to do curbside. She got upset because she claimed to have several severe lung conditions that make wearing a mask uncomfortable. Lung conditions that would mean that she would definitely die if she got covid.
These are the fucking children I'm supposed to coddle while pretending they are acting like adults? Adults can handle some blunt advice without throwing a fucking tantrum. The CDC recommended store employees stop enforcing mask rules because too many employees were getting fucking stabbed

That's all well and good, but, I'M AN ADULT MOM, YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO WEAR ANYMORE! YOU'RE SO OPPRESSIVE! LIVING HERE IS LIKE LITERALLY LIVING IN AUSCHWITZ!