Posted on 04/30/2020 6:21:17 AM PDT by sickoflibs
With medical supplies in high demand, federal authorities say health workers can wear surgical masks for protection while treating COVID-19 patients — but growing evidence suggests the practice is putting workers in jeopardy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said lower-grade surgical masks are “an acceptable alternative” to N95 masks unless workers are performing an intubation or another procedure on a COVID patient that could unleash a high volume of virus particles.
America’s health care workers are dying from the coronavirus pandemic. These are some of the first tragic cases.
But scholars, nonprofit leaders and former regulators in the specialized field of occupational safety say relying on surgical masks — which are considerably less protective than N95 respirators — is almost certainly fueling illness among front-line health workers, who likely make up about 11% of all known COVID-19 cases.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that that’s one of the reasons that so many health care workers are getting sick and many are dying,” said Jonathan Rosen, a health and safety expert who advises unions, states and the federal government.
(Excerpt) Read more at ohiocapitaljournal.com ...
Disgusting crap article.
Put the health care workers on hydroxychloroquine and the masks are moot.
The masks themselves are as useful as a condom full of pinholes are to blocking STDs. The false sense of protection is what makes them dangerous.
feed the hysteria keep the country closed.
Idiot.
Sure put millions of people on a medication instead of getting them proper equipment.
I question all the homemade cloth masks people are wearing. Just a false sense of safety.
Even N95 is useless. They’re designed to stop 95% of particles (like in industrial situations), not viruses.
65000 Italians were on hydroxychloroquine for one reason or another before covid 19 hit there.
Only 20 contracted the disease.
Not one was hospitalized or died.
65,000 people safe in the heart of the Italian pandemic.
One of the two of us might indeed be an idiot, but I don’t think it’s me. Hydroxychloroquine has been around since the forties and I was on it as an antimalarial much of my early adulthood.
Crazy not to be using it.
I have been told that there are not enough doses of hydroxychloroquine for existing non-covid19 patients, covid patients, health care workers, and first responders.
I also believe that this is a supply chain problem and demonstrates our dependency on foreign manufactured drugs.
You are assuming that people are wearing the masks correctly, and that they are not re-using them. This is simply not the case. Most people are wearing their favorite masks for days and weeks at a time, like a fashion accessory. A swab of any of them would likely turn a Petri dish into a jungle. And on top of that, the masks are not even fitted properly. Having the majority of the public wearing masks has only helped to deprive the medical community of the resource. It has done close to nothing to protect the wearers.
I’ve not heard any statistics regarding the numbers of medical staff getting sick and dying. We hear about the odd case but if it were a daily occurrence we’d hear a lot more.
...no disrespect to them - quite the opposite, although it gets a bit much when they’re being hailed as though they’re storming the beaches of Normandy.
As of April 23, more than 21,800 health care workers had gotten the coronavirus and 71 had died, according to a House Education and Labor Committee staffer briefed by the CDC.
"Experts". No, on average health care workers outside of New York City, New Jersey, Chicago and New Orleans are bored silly and making stupid videos that they are putting on tik tok.
71 out of 21,800. That's, ummmmm, 0.00326, or 0.3%. Considering that health care workers are not immune to preexisting medical conditions, or old age, that's not an awfully high number.
there is a minor benefit in that it does work to somewhat reduce the spread of infection FROM the mask wearer, but not TO the mask wearer.
To reduce the wearers chance of getting any infection, you really need to ditch masks and upgrade to respirators (full seal, HEPA 13 or N100 level protection)
West Virginia gota factory up and running in March.
A prophylactic dose is relatively small, 400mg per week.
How much production has been ramped up, I am not sure. But I am fairly certain that there is enough for all doctors and nurses.
The mask is a reminder to keep me from touching my face.
The mask is a reminder to keep me from touching my face.
Actually the mask is a symbol to keep the fear of the virus in the forefront.
YES! S Korea just supplied proof. Late Feb they discovered 2 active cases entered a long term care facility in past couple days. They promptly tested all the other residents and staff, no one else yet was positive, but all 200+ had been exposed. They put everyone on HCQ 400mg/d for 2 weeks. Over that time 2 died... of old age, a handful stopped the drug for minor but symptomatic reasons and afterwords all 200+ again tested negative. Let’s smother the meat packing plant hot spots with mass HCQ therapy.
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