Posted on 04/28/2021 5:35:24 AM PDT by Kaslin
For 14 months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended draconian restrictions on Americans' daily lives to combat COVID-19. The CDC made light of the hardships and economic losses the restrictions inflicted. Call the agency the "Centers for Doubletalk and Confusion." Now, evidence is emerging that the restrictions were based on flimsy science or sheer guesswork.
Last week, MIT researchers showed that the CDC's six-foot social distancing rule has no basis in science. If you're indoors, your risk is the same whether an infected person is three feet away from you, or six feet away, or even 60 feet away.
So much for carefully standing six feet apart in the grocery line. It's a joke. On you.
In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the MIT researchers explained that an infected person emits the virus in an aerosol that can waft across indoor space, traveling 60 feet or more. The six-foot rule, which restaurants, churches, schools, gyms and retailers follow, offers no protection. The key determinants are whether you're wearing a mask and how much time you spend in the space.
On Sunday, White House health guru Anthony Fauci pulled the veil off another CDC guideline, wearing a mask outdoors. He admitted the risk of contracting COVID outdoors is "really, really quite low." Scientists have known that for months because outdoor air movement will disperse the aerosol. You'd have to be talking nose to nose with an infected person to catch COVID-19 outdoors.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced that the CDC is eliminating outdoor masking for people who are vaccinated. Truth is, outdoor masking is ridiculous in almost all circumstances. Scientists have known that since they learned how the virus generally spreads.
When the pandemic hit the U.S. in February 2020, scientists suspected the virus was transmitted on surfaces and through droplets emitted when people sneeze or cough. With no knowledge about COVID-19, they applied what they knew about influenza. When a person with the flu coughs, droplets land on the floor or a surface within six feet. That was the origin of the six-foot rule.
It was guesswork. As former Food and Drug Administration head Scott Gottlieb says, the CDC should disclose when they're uncertain about the science behind a recommendation so we can decide "how seriously we want to take it."
By June, "superspreader" events showed that COVID-19 differed from flu. Though COVID can be spread on surfaces and through droplets like flu, it more often floats across indoor spaces and is blown away outdoors.
That's when the CDC should have reconsidered the six-foot rule and the outdoor masking rule. Instead, Americans struggled to comply.
At the Doubletree in Syracuse, New York, hundreds of banquet department jobs depend on hosting big weddings. That's not possible, because New York state is requiring tables be six feet apart, in keeping with CDC guidance.
The same six-foot rule has been "the biggest barrier to getting kids back in school," according to infectious disease specialist Westyn Branch-Elliman. In March, the CDC revised guidelines but only for elementary schools. This week, as New York students return to class, the six-foot rule is still being applied in middle and high school, limiting capacity.
Johns Hopkins' Dr. Marty Makary faults the CDC's "counter-science track record of being late and wrong."
Even less scientific than the six-foot rule is the agency's guidance for the fully vaccinated. The agency tells them to "continue to wear masks, maintain physical distance and practice other prevention measures when visiting with unvaccinated people."
That guidance eliminates a major incentive for getting the shots and will slow America's recovery. Infections among the vaccinated do occur, but rarely, and serious illness is even rarer. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines reduce the risk of developing COVID by 90 to 95%, compared with being unvaccinated. U.S. data show the risk of getting infected after these vaccines is a minuscule 0.008%.
The science is clear: Get vaccinated and enjoy life again.
“She said, nope, and no panties either.”
LOL! Months ago I had the same thing happen. I said...”I’m wearing one. Makes a great jock strap.”
THHWAAAPPP! Blowing big fat razzberry at all this “new” approach from CDC. They are just jerking strings to see the marionettes dance.
And many still do. Apparently of their own volition.
I’ll just keep taking my vitamin D3 and wait for the herd to show up.
If true, big if.......Hope he told you to mind yer own business & F off
100% correct my FRiend!
Muon
They know it. This was always about demanding obedience and training people to enforce the rules on each other. In short, Faucism.
That guidance eliminates a major incentive for getting the shots and will slow America’s recovery. Infections among the vaccinated do occur, but rarely, and serious illness is even rarer. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines reduce the risk of developing COVID by 90 to 95%, compared with being unvaccinated. U.S. data show the risk of getting infected after these vaccines is a minuscule 0.008%.
The science is clear: Get vaccinated and enjoy life again.
I think Betsy forgot her major /SARC tag.
At first, I thought this was another Babylon Bee piece.
I’m already naturally immune. I’ve been enjoying life for a good while already.
“Science” says nothing.
Government FUNDED “scienTISTS” are the ones blabbering this crapola.
Agreed, but there are still plenty of people that refuse to accept that.
Muon? Explain please
I’m enjoying my unvaccinated living just fine.
“The catch is, those aren’t vaccinations.”
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Dagnabbit, those newfangled automobiles are NOT CARS. Cars are carriages pulled by horses and always will be. ;-)
“The science is clear: Get vaccinated and enjoy life again.”
I had to read the article a few times, expecting logical Betsy McCaughy to be ... well ... logical, and give a well-thought-out opinion. It sounds like she’s pro-shot (it’s not a vaccine). Maybe I’m missing something.
If 2020 hadn’t been an election year this would’ve been just another bad flu season in America. (Third world countries might be something else.)
The fear and control was to get you to take the “vaccine”.
The “vaccine” doesn’t prevent you from catching and spreading the virus.
It allows more virulent forms of the virus to exist and spread.
Eventually, no one will live who is not taking the government injections.
I expect, then, that you’ll do as they say. The Communist dream come true, and brought to you by China.
I am only surprised that Putin seems willing to go along with such a dangerous gamble.
I say enjoy life with or without. Your choice.
That’s funny right there!
I haven’t used it, but I am amused with the line “I’m not allowed to wear a mask as a condition of my parole.”
The same MIT study concludes that the two most important factors for reducing the spread of Covid in indoor settings is not social distancing, but the proper use of masks and to a lesser extent, mechanical ventilation:
“In both examples, the benefit of face masks is immediately apparent, since the CET [cumulative exposure time] limit is enhanced by a factor p−2m, the inverse square of the mask penetration factor. Standard surgical masks are characterized by pm=1to5% (73, 74), and so allow the CET to be extended by 400 to 10,000 times. Even cloth face coverings would extend the CET limit by 6 to 100 times for hybrid fabrics (pm=10to40%) or 1.5 to 6 times for single-layer fabrics (pm=40to80%) (75). Our inference of the efficacy of face masks in mitigating airborne transmission is roughly consistent with studies showing the benefits of mask use on COVID-19 transmission at the scales of both cities and countries (22, 33, 83).
Air filtration has a less dramatic effect than face mask use in increasing the CET bound. Nevertheless, it does offer a means of mitigating indoor transmission with greater comfort, albeit at greater cost (22, 72). Eq. 5 indicates that even perfect air filtration, pf=1, will only have a significant effect in the limit of highly recirculated air, Zp≪1. The corresponding minimum outdoor airflow per person, Q/Nmax, should be compared with local standards, such as 3.8 L/s per person for retail spaces and classrooms and 10 L/s per person for gyms and sports facilities (72). In the above classroom example with a typical primary outdoor air fraction of Zp=20% (22), the air change rate λa could effectively be increased by a factor of 4.6 by installing a MERV-13 filter, pm=90%, or a factor of 5.0 with a HEPA filter, pm=99.97%. At high air exchange rates, the same factors would multiply the CET bound.”
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/17/e2018995118#sec-6
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