Yes - There is a circle on masks BECAUSE they are misused - They are used for SHOW in public, especially outdoor environments in which transmission is neglible BUT once people are with friends/family in private indoor settings which are a higher risk for transmission, then masks are off - At least on two or three occasions I have asked in this forum if people wear masks in indoor settings when with associates and the silence is deafening - To be honest, your latest post is a rambling dissertation about not much at all, rather than the current subject of mask use and their effectiveness.
Yes - There is a circle on masks BECAUSE they are misused - They are used for SHOW in public, especially outdoor environments in which transmission is neglible BUT once people are with friends/family in private indoor settings which are a higher risk for transmission, then masks are off - At least on two or three occasions I have asked in this forum if people wear masks in indoor settings when with associates and the silence is deafening - To be honest, your latest post is a rambling dissertation about not much at all, rather than the current subject of mask use and their effectiveness.
- Mar 21, 2015
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Japan is also freaking out because numbers continue to rise, so part of this decision is probably a reaction to the situation here. But yes, I think they're closing the barn door shut after the horse has already bolted.
From this article: https://japantoday.com/category/nat...all-nonresident-foreign-nationals-from-abroad
"The two people infected with the variant are hospitalized in Tokyo. They are a pilot in his 30s who returned to Japan from London on Dec. 16 and a woman in her 20s, one of his family members, with no history of visiting the country, the health ministry said.
"The man was not subject to quarantine at airports because of his occupation and the woman is believed to have been infected through him. Three people had close contact with the pair and one of them tested negative, while the status of the other two is unknown, according to the ministry.
"On Friday, the government said five people -- four males and one female all aged under 70 -- had been confirmed as infected with the new variant following their arrival from Britain."
But - for those traveling to Japan, it might even be a blessing in disguise for them if they can't come here at the moment - due to rising numbers. I would hope not, but wouldn't be surprised to at some point hear about people from exempted countries taking some virus back home with them after their visit here.
In general no tourists have been allowed in anyway.
- Jan 31, 2016
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Compartmenting your respondents make you feel more comfortable? I never said any of this whether it's relevant or not. Which you're becoming less so....
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Vaccination in the EU started today. Of course, the anti-vaxxers and the conspiracy theorists are having a field day. The CMs of official institutions and mainstream media should consider disabling comments on their stories and videos, because I don't see how they're doing any good in this situation.
It hurts my brain to read some of that comments. Antivaxxers in Skovakia after vaccination of some epidemiologist, president, ministers : " It is fake. I dont believe it. They injected them water, vitamin B, C or nothing. Common people get real dangerous one." Some of them told it was air
. Antivaxxers and hoaxers told politicians should go first if they believe vaccines. When they went indeed first it was fake or they cut the line the dirty politicians. Unreal and mindblowing these people. Chris Gadsden
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Let’s be honest for a moment, different than you thinkers have never been relevant.
It’s over? Ok, what did the virus win? Take your time, but I’d like to know.
Chris Gadsden
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We can only hope the nonsense is just noise. In the US there seems to be much more eagerness than many would have thought.
With the launch of the KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor, a new KFF survey finds an increase in the share of the public saying they would definitely or probably get a vaccine for COVID-19 if it was determined to be safe by scientists and available for free to everyone who wanted it. This share now stands at 71%, up from 63% in a September survey
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/report/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-december-2020/
Chris Gadsden
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Who would have thought?
In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control.
The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of Covid-19. Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Dr. Li’s death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese government’s instinct to suppress inconvenient information.
Yet China’s censors decided to double down. Warning of the “unprecedented challenge” Dr. Li’s passing had posed and the “butterfly effect” it may have set off, officials got to work suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.
They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: “As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.”
The orders were among thousands of secret government directives and other documents that were reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic.
At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/technology/china-coronavirus-censorship.html
In my opinion, the virus didn’t win. The CCP won. But let’s blame anybody but where the blame truly goes. Every single government on the planet should literally turn their backs to China. Unwind all of it.
In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control.
The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of Covid-19. Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Dr. Li’s death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese government’s instinct to suppress inconvenient information.
Yet China’s censors decided to double down. Warning of the “unprecedented challenge” Dr. Li’s passing had posed and the “butterfly effect” it may have set off, officials got to work suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.
They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: “As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.”
The orders were among thousands of secret government directives and other documents that were reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic.
At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/technology/china-coronavirus-censorship.html
In my opinion, the virus didn’t win. The CCP won. But let’s blame anybody but where the blame truly goes. Every single government on the planet should literally turn their backs to China. Unwind all of it.
Chris Gadsden
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This is simply wrong. Masks are a component of the medical delivery system in the US,not a cure. A single action,a single element to a successful medical mosaic that slows the spread of disease. There are many many many examples of things,safety system items in society that do not require special training or knowledge for there successful use. Traffic lights,self closing doors,painted lines on the street for traffic and crosswalks, signs using graphics indicating dangerous curves or livestock in the road. Soap dispensers in bathrooms,self flushing toilets..and some I am very familiar with, fire alarm pull stations, emergency lighting and doors that automatically unlock during certain emergency conditions.
all examples are things that the general public does to save their lives and the lives of others without doing much of anything.
So your point about masks being misused is 1000% valid, the clinical importance of the mask, it's weight value in the overall strategy I feel has been greatly overvalued, inflated.
All things are not equal. Masks are not a cultural norm in the United States, the reasoning and resistance to mask use in the US is far more about issues other than misuse or medical benefit.
The reasons that Americans are not using masks,at whatever level are too vast and personal to attempt to figure out..
If you watch lots of bike racing you see what math looks like..how many calories,how many watts can a rider or team generate as part of an overall strategy to get a result. Over and over you see riders going w highly improbable break aways, expenditures of limited valuable energy for nothing. Stupid racing. In US circles, some say don't burn your matches.
in the US Covid response it's been an everyday,almost by the hour waste of time and money.
Got limited time, you need to fight the virus, but instead you get distracted by an exploratory committee on buying Greenland. You have the public's attention,and instead of careful lifesaving information, the leadership spends months explaining that information at meetings was sarcastic and the President was just messing around when he said to drink disinfectant,not wear masks,use lighting as treatments or cures for Covid 19.
Most would say that those are vivid examples of wasted time and money.
With only so many matches available, why waste so many,so many weeks in a contrarian role against your staff arguing about Malaria meds, would appear on face as a waste of effort and money. All completely unfocused and a deadly distraction.
So you have to ask over and over and over again, why give misinformation? Why spend so much time and money on doing things that are completely counterproductive to the objective of public health,preserving life?
So when you only have so many hours in the day,and war is declared,people are dying and are wounded in record numbers, how could weeks of golf be part of a clinical corrective action?
There is no real rationalization for any of this other than incompetence, ignorance or arrogance, or a combination of these..
in the US Covid response it's been an everyday,almost by the hour waste of time and money.
Got limited time, you need to fight the virus, but instead you get distracted by an exploratory committee on buying Greenland. You have the public's attention,and instead of careful lifesaving information, the leadership spends months explaining that information at meetings was sarcastic and the President was just messing around when he said to drink disinfectant,not wear masks,use lighting as treatments or cures for Covid 19.
Most would say that those are vivid examples of wasted time and money.
With only so many matches available, why waste so many,so many weeks in a contrarian role against your staff arguing about Malaria meds, would appear on face as a waste of effort and money. All completely unfocused and a deadly distraction.
So you have to ask over and over and over again, why give misinformation? Why spend so much time and money on doing things that are completely counterproductive to the objective of public health,preserving life?
So when you only have so many hours in the day,and war is declared,people are dying and are wounded in record numbers, how could weeks of golf be part of a clinical corrective action?
There is no real rationalization for any of this other than incompetence, ignorance or arrogance, or a combination of these..
Only deafening if you don't read the responses. I wear a mask inside NO MATTER WHAT in public spaces (store, work), and don't have visitors in my house. Your argument all along is that masks don't work because people don't use them correctly, but at my work we are required to wear masks and everyone has complied. At the store masks are required and most people have complied. That greatly reduces the viral load that everyone breaths.
- Apr 15, 2014
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There are several specialists in Belgium that recommend using only one dose of the BioNTech-Pfizer and (soon) Moderna vaccines, because (i) the efficacy is likely near or even above 90% already with one dose; (ii) the new variant(s) make the situation more urgent.
There are legal barriers though (the vaccine was greenlighted for the two-dose procedure), so this would likely need to be solved at the EU level.
Canada is also considering such a strategy.
There are legal barriers though (the vaccine was greenlighted for the two-dose procedure), so this would likely need to be solved at the EU level.
Canada is also considering such a strategy.
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- Jun 9, 2014
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I think there are good arguments on both sides. I would stick to the two dose given that there are still bottlenecks in distribution. There are also some immunological reasons that make me think that single doses are less effective. Definitely questions about durability too. I hope the J&J vaccine result rolls out soon.
I never wear a mask inside my home except when the repair people are inside, although I probably should do so. There is just 2 of us and neither is high risk. No-mask pods are not without risk, but it is the level of risk i can live with.
I never wear a mask inside my home except when the repair people are inside, although I probably should do so. There is just 2 of us and neither is high risk. No-mask pods are not without risk, but it is the level of risk i can live with.
Chris Gadsden
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And here it is:
Personally, I’d rather get the f’ing virus than live like this. I get you are responsibly doing everything you can not to be part of the problem and not to spread the virus.
Perhaps I am reading too much into your comment but I’d rather put a gun in my mouth than completely isolate and there’s no GD way I’m wearing a mask inside my own home. If this is what it takes then I’ll gladly tell you I’m not built for it.
- Jul 27, 2010
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Big under-reported story? How about the CDC, bowing to intense public pressure, revising the order of people to be vaccinated:
www.persuasion.community
Even the revised order--in which only medical workers are in the first tier--does not minimize the expected number of deaths, as many of these younger workers are getting vaccinated at the same time as older people with a higher risk of death, and before older people in the second tier (> 65 years old). There are a couple of other factors, though, that this analysis doesn't take into account. First, while young hospital staff are far less likely to die from an infection as the elderly, if they get sick, and can't work, this impacts the care that older sick people get. And second, saving the life of someone who is 80 does not add as many years to that person's life as saving someone's life who is 40. The probability of dying from an infection is many times greater for the 80 year old than the 40 year old, but if we consider years saved, the difference narrows. The life expectancy of a 40 year old man is almost five times that of an 80 year old man. Should we take this into account? Suppose, hypothetically, you could only save one of two people, one 40 and the other 80. Wouldn't you prioritize the 40 year old? Ethics is a very messy business.
Why I'm Losing Trust in the Institutions
Yascha Mounk: The CDC came scarily close to adopting a plan that would have killed thousands of Americans.
www.persuasion.community
Even the revised order--in which only medical workers are in the first tier--does not minimize the expected number of deaths, as many of these younger workers are getting vaccinated at the same time as older people with a higher risk of death, and before older people in the second tier (> 65 years old). There are a couple of other factors, though, that this analysis doesn't take into account. First, while young hospital staff are far less likely to die from an infection as the elderly, if they get sick, and can't work, this impacts the care that older sick people get. And second, saving the life of someone who is 80 does not add as many years to that person's life as saving someone's life who is 40. The probability of dying from an infection is many times greater for the 80 year old than the 40 year old, but if we consider years saved, the difference narrows. The life expectancy of a 40 year old man is almost five times that of an 80 year old man. Should we take this into account? Suppose, hypothetically, you could only save one of two people, one 40 and the other 80. Wouldn't you prioritize the 40 year old? Ethics is a very messy business.
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- Oct 14, 2017
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Unless there is a study that shows 1 dose is AS effective as 2, I'll stick with the 2 doses. Also there is very likely a specific reason for the 2 doses. Plus if we look at the Astra Zeneca trials it appears that their 1 dose would be around that 60% or maybe less as it appears the first full dose (instead of a half dose) makes the second dose less effective in that particular vaccine. So, I'd see a full trial to prove 1 dose is as effective as 2.
As for wearing a mask at home, no. Granted my husband works at a hospital and is more likely to bring home something other than Covid anyway. On his health, the sinus drainage he's had for 9 consecutive months have finally dried up and stopped and now he's feeling a lot better. Maybe if we're really lucky what they saw in the CT Scan that they are diagnosing as cancer is just all the major complications from 9 months of continuous sinus drainage.
As for wearing a mask at home, no. Granted my husband works at a hospital and is more likely to bring home something other than Covid anyway. On his health, the sinus drainage he's had for 9 consecutive months have finally dried up and stopped and now he's feeling a lot better. Maybe if we're really lucky what they saw in the CT Scan that they are diagnosing as cancer is just all the major complications from 9 months of continuous sinus drainage.
Chris Gadsden
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Big under-reported story? How about the CDC, bowing to intense public pressure, revising the order of people to be vaccinated:
Why I'm Losing Trust in the Institutions
Yascha Mounk: The CDC came scarily close to adopting a plan that would have killed thousands of Americans.
And this is why nobody should ever place much trust in their government.
- Jan 31, 2016
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You do realize that this "government" is the product of, and still custody of the current President. It never belonged to "the people". He gutted every meaningful department of regulation he could; demeaned any that dared challenge whatever tweet d'jour brainfart he uttered and labelled most of the country as traitors for not yielding to him. We did get the inevitable rule of people voting purely on their prejudices.
Chris Gadsden
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Grow up already. The Govenment has been crap since at least Lincoln.
can you name a time when the vast majority in DC were not corrupt? Neither can I.
Now sit down.
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I'm a consultant in infectious diseases. 'Long Covid' is anything but a mild illness | Joanna Herman
Nine months on from the virus, I am seriously debilitated. This is how the new NHS clinics need to help thousands of us, says Joanna Herman
- Aug 5, 2009
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The great opportunity: how Covid transformed global crime
2020 led to surges in everything from domestic abuse to black markets in fake vaccines
- Jun 9, 2014
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Yascha's argument is a load of BS. He is losing faith in experts but used their models as gospel to claim that the plan definitely would lead to more death? Guy is definitely out of his depth. Anything to cry more about wokeness.Big under-reported story? How about the CDC, bowing to intense public pressure, revising the order of people to be vaccinated:
Why I'm Losing Trust in the Institutions
Yascha Mounk: The CDC came scarily close to adopting a plan that would have killed thousands of Americans.
Even the revised order--in which only medical workers are in the first tier--does not minimize the expected number of deaths, as many of these younger workers are getting vaccinated at the same time as older people with a higher risk of death, and before older people in the second tier (> 65 years old). There are a couple of other factors, though, that this analysis doesn't take into account. First, while young hospital staff are far less likely to die from an infection as the elderly, if they get sick, and can't work, this impacts the care that older sick people get. And second, saving the life of someone who is 80 does not add as many years to that person's life as saving someone's life who is 40. The probability of dying from an infection is many times greater for the 80 year old than the 40 year old, but if we consider years saved, the difference narrows. The life expectancy of a 40 year old man is almost five times that of an 80 year old man. Should we take this into account? Suppose, hypothetically, you could only save one of two people, one 40 and the other 80. Wouldn't you prioritize the 40 year old? Ethics is a very messy business.
First, given that we don't know how much (If any) that the vaccine will decrease transmission or the prevalence (and timeliness) of vaccinations, estimating the effect of vaccination on death is an estimate with enormous error bars. So the 0.5%- 6% should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
Second, the 65+ crowd generally have less capable immune systems, so generally respond less effectively to vaccines. We just saw this with the sanofi trial that got pulled because the dose used was only effective at generating antibodies in the young. We don't know how well extrapolating the relatively small numbers of the trials to the general pop of elderly will be. Signs were pretty good, but is still a bit unknown. Plowing a scarce resource into people who might not respond as well is not automatically the optimal strategy. 65+ generally can social distance easier than essential workers who are more likely to propagate the infection, which brings us back to the earlier point. If the vaccine does limit transmission, one theory is that the infection will be stopped sooner by vaccinating the spreaders, which trend younger.
Third, we know that minorities are way over represented in the death tallies. If we want to limit death, why would we not look into vaccinating these groups earlier than other groups. I know Yascha wants to boil this down to wokeness run amok, but he is not remotely giving accurate representation to a very complex issue.
View: https://mobile.twitter.com/notdred/status/1342653273426325506
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