Posted on 09/21/2020 4:57:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
Our family’s visit to a Virginia restaurant the other day wasn’t particularly unusual in the coronavirus era, although that state’s requirements are more stringent than most. The staff were all wearing masks and, in this case, plastic gloves as well. The iced tea bin was behind the counter where customers couldn’t touch it, and Virginia restaurants are apparently required to give customers a new plastic cup for every refill. (Somehow, the left went from banning plastic straws to probably tripling the amount of plastic waste generated by restaurants but hey, there could be a .000001% less chance of someone possibly catching the WORSTEST VIRUS EVER, so screw the environment, right?)
Anyway, I won't name the restaurant, but it was one of those places where you walk in, place your order, get your drinks, pay, then sit down and wait for your food to come up at the counter, at which point they call your order number. Of course, you had to shout through the giant plexiglass screen, then bend your head just to hear the muffled voice of the cashier, who was asking questions and punching buttons with one ungloved finger on an otherwise gloved hand. From the stains as well as the home-cut finger opening (so he could push the buttons), it was obvious he hadn't changed his gloves in quite some time, and certainly not for the two customers in line before us.
Even more disturbingly, as he spoke to us the cashier adjusted his obviously moist, stained mask with his gloved hand at least five times, at one point putting his thumb and forefinger across his entire mouth and moving the mask farther up the bridge of his nose. Thank God we were ‘spared’ any potential ‘droplets’ from his nose (because we all know how those nose droplets barrel through plexiglass), but it did come at the cost of spreading whatever nastiness was on his mask to pretty much everything else he touched.
We placed our order, paid with a credit card, then then watched the cashier grab our cups from the stack and proceed to put his gloved fingers inside (INSIDE, I kid you not) three of them at once as he made his way to the ice maker and tea bin to get our drinks (COVID restrictions in Virginia apparently do not allow us to get our own tea … you know, for ‘safety’).
Now the last thing I’m trying to do is bash hard-working restaurant employees. I’ve been one myself and I know how hard and thankless the work is. I won’t go into any more detail on the incident above, but suffice it to say I wouldn’t have dreamed of being rude to him. What I am trying to point out, however, is how supposedly well-meaning COVID restrictions - and even restaurants trying to 'help' by going above and beyond, as the gloves seemed to be - have turned our reality into a place where the 'letter of the law' (or mandate) is more important than common sense or actual results.
Indeed, if you had told me in 2019 that there would come a day when virtually the entire world would seriously believe there are absolutely no negatives to wearing a moist, bacteria-laden germ-collector on one’s face and breathing through it all day, I wouldn’t have believed it. Yet, here we are, where even the esteemed head of the Center for Disease Control is telling people with a straight face that masks - yes masks - are MORE protective than a vaccine. At this point, face burqas have become more than simply a talisman to encourage the public to venture out and engage the economy - they have become a religious cult. Dare to question it in any way, and they’ll shut you down - or attempt to - and they typically won’t even bother to try to respond to any of the points you make.
Take last week, for example, when I attempted to post that amazing mask article by Daniel Horowitz I mentioned in last week’s post on my own humble personal Facebook page. (I typically don’t plug this page, but lately I’ve gotten in the habit of posting some great clips and COVID-related news items there, so you’re welcome to visit and follow it if you like.) After a few days, the “fact-checker” bot discovered and flagged the post as “partly false information.” Why, you ask? Because Big Tech has apparently deemed fit to decide that this is “settled science,” or something. “Masks work,” don’t you know, and that’s all there is to it. To ‘refute’ the post, Facebook oddly linked to an article written by healthfeedback.org in May responding to an entirely different anti-mask post. It goes through the usual ridiculous model-based “studies” to ‘prove’ that mask-wearing ‘works,’ but then it also notably says this:
“The post is correct in stating that improper handling of face masks or cloth coverings creates a risk for infection, as infectious droplets may potentially contaminate the external and internal surfaces. However, this is far from an insurmountable obstacle, as this risk can be minimized by exercising caution when removing the mask. The CDC has advised that individuals should wash their hands and avoid touching their eyes, nose and mouth after removing their mask, and that cloth masks should be regularly washed.”
Now let’s put aside the other arguments, many if not most of which I have covered in past posts, and just get real for a second with some gold old-fashioned common sense. Does anyone sincerely think that most of the public, who are non-medical professionals, handle masks correctly? Just take a look at the masks on most restaurant employees or even people you pass in the street. People are constantly touching them and they’re often visibly dirty, which suggests they aren’t being laundered daily or even regularly. Most people I know carry them around in their cars, in and out of their pockets, and leave them lying around wherever with little regard for the biohazards they are. Instead of potentially dangerous droplets falling to the ground where they’ve fallen for the entirety of human history, we’ve chosen to catch them in one ‘convenient’ place so they can then be distributed to surfaces humans touch on a regular basis.
In other words, even IF correctly used masking worked to stop the spread of coronavirus in theory - a goal I’m not even sure we should have in the first place (as long as hospitals aren’t overwhelmed) - the practice and subsequent real-world results are an entirely different thing. This could be why in place after place that has instituted mandatory masking, from California to Israel to Peru to Columbia to India to countless others, the virus continues to spread unabated and seemingly even faster than in non-masked places, only finishing when it runs its course at 15 to 25 percent seroprevalence.
Please consider staying informed with the latest and BEST COVID-19-related information by joining the over 2,100 people already following my brand-new COVID ‘Team Reality’ list. It’s a great first step in the long-haul fight against corona fascism!
bingo
Based on the studies I've read, length of exposure is a significant component of transmission risk, so in the specific scenario described, that's probably pretty low risk. However, there are two caveats to that. First, there appear to be some individuals who are vastly more effective at transmitting than others and there hasn't been any information to date on how to spot such persons. They seem to be a significant risk in virtually any indoor situation. The other caveat is the pooled risk that comes with something like a grocery store or a shopping mall. Each individual you pass in that situation may have a low risk for transmission, but so many are being passed that the overall risk of transmission within that population is high. The risk is also there that during the infected person's time spent in a place like a grocery store or a shopping mall, they may be speaking, clearing their throat, or have a random cough or sneeze - even if unrelated to their infection.
"why does the covid test require a thrust into the nasal passage to capture enough material to formulate a diagnosis?"
Because that's how one particular test was created. Others use saliva (such as this one). Others use blood samples (such as this one.) The US just largely standardized on one particular test type that uses nasal swabs. Others exist.
"if this is such a virulent pathogen, why do we need to be tested to determine whether we have it nor not...?"
Because around 40% of people who have it show no symptoms and another 40% show mild to moderate symptoms which may be confused with a cold, flu, or allergies. The point of testing them is so that if they're infected, they know not to visit grandma in the nursing home because that could kill people. For that matter, they should be self-quarantining entirely since plenty of people with comorbidities (e.g. diabetes, obesity, etc.) still need to access public places such as grocery stores. It's a lot easier to identify the ~1% or less of the country with an active infection and have them take steps to protect themselves than to tell ~50% of the country living with risk factors that they have to stay home indefinitely.
That was the excuse for the shutdowns/lockdowns: if we didn’t do it, we would be in an Italy situation watching people dying in the hallways of overflowing hospitals. I still don’t think the shutdowns/lockdowns were a good move at all. I think it killed a lot of businesses and thrust a lot of people into poverty unnecessarily, and poverty is the absolute biggest killer on Earth.
We still want to slow the spread. Right now, we have somewhere between 204,000 - 250,000 dead from COVID-19 (the upper figure is based on the total excess mortality numbers seen this year, strongly suggesting we’ve been undercounting COVID deaths somewhat) with around 9% of the population previously or currently infected. Herd immunity is around 60% (R0 of 2.5, HIT calculated as 1-1/R0).
We have two paths to reach herd immunity. The first is President Trump’s path: get a well tested, safe, and effective vaccine to the American public as quickly as possible so people get inoculated. The second is to simply let this thing burn through the population unimpeded. President Trump wants the first path because it saves a LOT of lives. The slower the virus moves through the population while we get safe and effective vaccines to people, the fewer vulnerable people die from it. Simple math tells us that reaching herd immunity without a vaccine will cost us over a million American deaths. Some places want to keep everything and everyone shut down for however long it takes to get a vaccine out there, but that’s clearly counterproductive and unsustainable. Masks and social distancing are easy to maintain for a few months. They cost next to nothing. They don’t kill businesses and force people into poverty. And they DO slow transmission, which saves lives.
It’s possible to make a mask at home that’s pretty effective. There’s instructions on how to do so available on the Internet. The studies looking at different types of masks have also shown that even the basic homemade masks are nearly always better than nothing; even if not by a whole lot.
“Masks probably cut transmission risk by 90% for a 15-minute grocery store foray.”
Evidence? ANY?!
Asymptomatic people cause less than 1% of transmissions. And who spends 30 minutes in close proximity to someone in a grocery store? And that assumes a mask can actually DO something!
Masks catch the globs that would fall to the ground anyways. They have no effect on aerosols, although they direct the flow of air up past the eyes instead of down toward the ground.
Have you ever seen what happens when you put a bacterium in an agar plate?
That’s happening in your mask.
That’s why masks are only worn short term in a hospital and are changed out every 90 minutes in the surgery room.
No one in medicine wears the same mask all day. No one.
Replying to: “The purpose of studies is to demonstrate what might not be immediately obvious.”
Your arguments, appear to support the continuance of mandated mask use based on studies that require people to be something other than people. It is exactly the same argument that supports socialism. If it’s done without regard to humans being humans, it just might work. You know, like an ant colony.
In the real world - masks are useless for protecting against covid 19 and they are useless for protecting from covid 19.
” although they direct the flow of air up past the eyes instead of down toward the ground.”
Which allows the aerosol to linger for a longer period of time at eye level...
Something these graphics rarely show is the path of inhalation with a mask -— right past the eyes.
What happens when the aerosolized bacteria lands in the eyes?
I am going to test how much better breathing through the nose is for handling the distribution of particles. My theory is that nose breathing - or masking mouth only - will be far superior to masking both mouth and nose. The velocity and trajectory of the particles expelled through the nose should, with the help of gravity, eliminate the ‘droplets’ and aerosol much more quickly.
And I used to make fun of people who wore masks under there noses back in May...
No they don't, because I've explicitly stated multiple times in multiple threads that I'm very much against government mandates on principle. And they also don't work particularly well. I'm in favor of individuals educating themselves, looking at all the facts, and making their own decisions. And to help with that, I correct misinformation and provide links to authoritative sources of information so people can be better informed.
"based on studies that require people to be something other than people."
Studies require no such thing. They simply test possible courses of action and provide evidence that informs the choices we make. When you come to a red light, you can choose to apply your brakes. Studies say that when you apply the brakes, your car safely comes to a stop.
Or you can declare "I'M NOT AN ANT! BRAKES AREN'T REAL! TRAFFIC LIGHTS ARE SOCIALISM!" and plow into oncoming traffic. That's a choice you can make. But there are consequences to both yourself and others based on the choices we make. If you're okay living with those consequences, then by all means, go right ahead.
Well, capitalizing words is hardly convincing. The duration and universality of these orders is simply unprecedented in human history. I’ve yet to hear a rational explanation for this. However, I’d be okay with mask mandates if all other restrictions on business were lifted. Control freaks can’t have that unfortunately.
I’m glad you don’t support the mandates. Thank you for clearing it up.
Brake use is proven extremely effective in the real world. Mask use is proven completely ineffective in the real world.
Your argument is void.
Of course, for the left, an unborn baby in the womb is merely ‘a clump of cells’. I’ve heard of a feminazi that calls unborn babies ‘parasites’. What an absolutely screwed up world we live in. In what was formerly known as ‘Christendom’, society is getting more vile than I imagined it ever could be. Bread and circuses.
While society in the former ‘Christendom’ turns away from God, those in the ‘third world’ are turning TOWARD God. The number of mohamedans turning to God is phenomenal. The number of Buddhist monks coming to God is also amazing, and it is spreading IN their temples!
Unfortunately, it will likely take a catastrophe (a REAL one, NOT an orchestrated one like the CCP-Coronavirus) for people in the West to turn back to God.
I have a cheesy blue mask
it is not made of agar
Even if you do everything perfectly, it's still not an antiseptic environment. In hospitals they dispose of them in bio hazard containers. Also - those people you see in stores not wearing them right, adjusting them over and over again, putting them in their pockets etc. Not healthy.
Then we should be dropping like flies.
We ain’t.
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