Posted on 03/22/2020 8:25:50 PM PDT by JBird77777
Health care workers are widely complaining that they lack sufficient masks, which they need to protect them from being infected by Coronavirus patients. This is consistent with well established prudent health care practice.
So it's apparent that the task force lied to us when it advised that healthy people shouldn't wear a mask, based on the lie that a mask doesn't protect the wearer, but rather protects others from being infected by an infected person wearing the mask. This advice seemed very strange when news programs regularly showed most people in public in China wearing a mask. This lie apparently was promulgated in order to save the scarce available masks for health care workers.
So there appear to be two ways to minimize the spread of the Coronavirus. They are probably equally effective.
A. Current plan. Advise almost all Americans to socially distance, spend $4 trillion on relief programs, destroy the economy and the stock market, cause great financial and personal harm to almost all Americans.
B. Much better plan. Advise everyone over 60 and those with compromised immune systems to socially distance, as currently advised and practiced, and advise all other Americans to return to their usual prior routines, including work, except to wear a mask, to be issued by the federal government. Spend money on the masks and nothing else.
Because President Trump has been accused of being anti-science with regard to climate change and other issues, he unfortunately has let Tony Fauci have his way with the current plan. Tony Fauci is an excellent immunologist, but he unfortunately isn't trained to take into account economic realities when proposing action. On Sixty Minutes this evening, he credited President Trump with deferring to him every time he gives him scientific medical advice.
If you have a good connection with President Trump, the task force, and/or influential members of Congress, please forward this much better plan to them as soon as possible, so that we can avoid continuing along the current tragic path.
Thank you.
The point of everyone wearing masks in public, even if it’s just a bandana over their nose and mouth is that it prevent everyone from spewing droplets into the air when they cough and sneeze.
Is it 100%? No, but it’s at least as effective as social distancing and allows for more normal economic activity
Average people who are not used to wearing a mask with touch their face more. This makes it more likely they will get the virus on their hands and then fiddle with the mask and get the virus on their face near their eyes, nose, and mouth. People who wear them as part of their job know how to fit them and then not touch them. There are also different kinds of masks out there. Some are true respirators and some have virtually no protection to something as small as a virus.
As someone with a compromised immune system, I say Option B all the way. It's patently ridiculous to crash the economy and cause everyone so much pain when the risk of catching it and something bad happening is real for so few of us.
I can stay in my home and have deliveries to my house, minimizing my risk. I can work from home. I can have my medical appointments via tele-medicine and the world can go on until this passes.
Why our Government insists on crashing the economy when so few of us are really impacted just escapes me. This insanity needs to stop.
In NORMAL USE they are indeed disposable. That said, you’re point is irrelevant to the primary issue which is the sudden, unplanned need/desire by many, many millions of people, more likely billions of people, suddenly wanting masks who would normally never even give a thought to a mask.
No supply chain can meet such a sudden need. This coupled with the fact that the primary source for those masks is China and that China stopped all exports to supply its Billions of people you have a shortage that cannot be alleviated anytime soon.
This is why the gov’t is prioritizing healthcare professionals over the average Joe for these.
The people tasked with treating us are logically being given priority over the masses because the supply is very limited.
Yet, because of what I have outlined previously, the supply is totally inadequate. And will remain so, so long as China keeps its production within its own country.
The world has screwed itself royally by having the production of so very many products in Communist China. In times like this we are at their mercy and, they have no mercy for us.
yes, hardware stores had some n95 masks, but those are not the ones most people would usually buy, most people when they think of masks from the hardware store are thinking of a regular dust mask like this:
that will do NOTHING against a virus.
B should have been the option from the get go.
I said this a week ago and everyone called me a moron...
better yet if we had better sick time for more people....especially in the health care field TPTB will lecture and possibly fire you if you call in sick "too much"..."too much" varies.....
I just got back from ER for an issue not related to COVID-19.
I had a N95 mask on and they took my temp which was normal. Then I was told that I didn’t need my mask beyond the checkpoint because everyone at that point had been tested. Except all the healthcare workers beyond the checkpoint were wearing masks. WTF?
Yeah, Ill let him know in the morning.
ER worker masks are rated against body fluids - hardware store ones are not. People in ERs tend to, er, exude all manner of body fluid and in times of heavy ER traffic, staff will often wear those anyway. Far more and far worse than COVID-19 can be transmitted by body fluids.
https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1794572O/surgical-n95-vs-standard-n95-which-to-consider.pdf
“Except all the healthcare workers beyond the checkpoint were wearing masks. WTF?”
Because they are exposed to stuff all day long, different stuff, not just CCP-19. They are the front lines. Wouldn’t want them to get you sick, and especially not each other.
ah, so your solution is to shut seniors in their homes, and let the youth keep infecting and reinfecting each other into nonexistence.
ooo kay. How about we shut everyone under 60 up, until they test negative three times at the end of 40 days?
I can only dream of that.
Just to be left totally alone.
Fauci is a big swamp critter.
I specifically said the majority of the masks I saw in January were N95. Your blanket statement that ‘masks from a hardware store won’t do anything against a virus except make you feel safe’ was wrong. No amount of subsequent responses by you will change that fact.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.