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Claim: Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks once said during a July 2020 interview, "If you can't wear a mask and wash your hands and social distance, I don't understand. I've got no respect for you man." Rating: In September 2023, users on X shared an old video and claimed that it showed Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks saying he had "no respect" for people who wouldn't wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. The most popular post from Sept. 19 earned millions of impressions. The video upload in the post was attributed to a January 2023 post made by the account @healthbyjames, which...

HONG KONG — Hospitals in northern China appear to be “overwhelmed with sick children” as the country grapples with a surge in respiratory illnesses and clusters of pneumonia, prompting the World Health Organization to ask Beijing for more data.

The American population is looking more like Asians, with voluntary face masking as people go about their daily routines. Rates of COVID-19 are manageable, normal life has resumed and mandates are gone, with few exceptions at discrete businesses or schools. Yet masks have gained a foothold in American society, a remarkable change after face coverings sparked public spats and questions about cultural acceptance. “Masks are at least acceptable, even though they are not widely employed,” said William Schaffner, an infectious diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University. “At the moment, there’s a segment of the population that is very interested in health,...

COVID is on the rise again, with a peak likely over the holiday season. Given this, health authorities in a number of Australian states have recommended people start wearing masks again. In Western Australia, masks have been made mandatory in high-risk areas of public hospitals, while they’ve similarly been reintroduced in health-care settings in other parts of the country. Hospitals and aged care facilities are definitely the first places where masks need to be reinstated during an epidemic. But authorities are differing in their recommendations currently. Calls to mask up, particularly in the wider community, have not been unanimous. So...

One of Australia's top doctors has rejected calls for the return of a mask mandate as COVID-19 hospitalisations rise across the country. Dr Nick Coatsworth told Today it was important to remember that vaccination and booster shots remained a strong defence against COVID-19. It follows media reports that Queensland doctors were calling for the return of the mandate at public gatherings and in hospitals, GP surgeries.

Some hospitals in South Australia have reintroduced face mask mandates to combat a new COVID-19 wave. The Northern Adelaide Local Health Network, which includes the Lyell McEwin and Modbury Hospitals, have reintroduced mask wearing for all staff and visitors. It comes as the state endures another wave of the virus, with reported cases tripling since early October. "Last Friday it was 50 per cent higher than the previous week," South Australia's Chief Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said today. The new mask rules apply in all clinical settings including emergency departments and wards, but not in public areas like hospital cafes...

Masking is now required for staff in long term care homes across Ontario amid a recent rise in COVID-19 outbreaks, cases and resident hospitalizations, the provincial government says. A Nov. 2 memo from the Ministry of Long-Term Care to LTC licensees says the requirement is based on advice from Dr. Kieran Moore, chief medical officer of health. Homes were expected to implement the requirement no later than Nov. 7, it says. The masking requirement also applies to students, support workers and volunteers when they are in resident areas indoors. The ministry further strongly recommends that visitors and caregivers wear a...

The Australian government was left with almost 46m unusable face masks after handing $100m in Covid contracts to an obscure online retailer, who sourced the equipment via companies registered in the low-tax jurisdiction of Cyprus. The Department of Health awarded the contracts in April and June 2020 to Australian Business Mobiles NSW (ABM), a small company whose experience lay predominantly in selling air fryers, robot vacuum cleaners, bedding and massage guns. ABM sub-contracted the supply of the PPE to two companies registered in Cyprus, owned by twins Ricky and Evan Neumann. The Cyprus-registered companies made about $40m on the deals,...

A noxious smoke plume from swamp fires in the marsh is blowing over the New Orleans area, causing air quality to plummet, according to air monitors throughout the metro area. The smoky air from the peat fires, which smells like burning rubber, is irritating to the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. Burning peat, which is the decaying vegetation underground, releases a large amount of carbon and produces tiny particles known as PM 2.5 that are harmful to health.

As you put away those zombie masks and Halloween decorations, it might be a good time to pull out that box of surgical or KN95 face masks again as respiratory virus season gets underway, especially if you are headed to the doctor’s office soon. In Santa Clara County, everyone — patients, caregivers and healthcare providers — will be required to wear face masks in public patient care areas in hospitals, clinics, and long term care facilities for the “winter respiratory virus period,” starting Nov. 1 and lasting five months through the end of March. Alameda, San Mateo, Contra Costa, and...

A review of the studies done so far has concluded that wearing masks really does help prevent the spread of covid-19. It is far from the first paper to come to this finding, so why does the issue remain so controversial? The problem is that it isn’t easy to carry out individual studies of the highest standard during a pandemic. That standard is a randomised controlled trial (RCT), in which people are randomly assigned to either get a treatment or intervention, in this case wearing a mask, or not. Because of the practical difficulties, only two RCTs have looked at...

VIDEOWhy would anybody in 2023 go on a Caribbean cruise with his face completely covered in a ridiculously oversized thick leather mask? It sort of defeats the whole purpose of what it means to relax on a cruise. On our January 2023 Steve Kane Radio Show cruise aboard the Celebrity Apex to the Eastern Caribbean there was ONE passenger aboard ship that wore such a ridiculous mask. I've told the story about that guy several times times. However, today while watching my review of the Apex Ocean View Cafe I noticed the mysterious masked man popping up in the last...

Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) introduced a crime bill on Monday that includes a ban on criminals wearing masks — after she mandated face coverings during the Chinese coronavirus. “We need to act now,” Bowser told reporters about the soaring crime. “And we need to send the strong message that violence is not acceptable in our city — and this perception that people have, that you can commit a brazen crime and get away with it, has got to stop.” “This legislation will change that,” she claimed. In 2020, Bowser issued an edict that forced people to wear a...

For some people, going to hospital may now be more dangerous than staying at home untreated. Many clinically vulnerable people fear, sometimes with good reason, that a visit to hospital or the doctors’ surgery could be the end of them. Of course, there have always been dangers where sick people gather. But, until now, health services have sought to minimise them. Astonishingly, this is often no longer the case. Across the UK, over the past two years, the NHS has been standing down even the most basic precautions against Covid-19. For example, staff in many surgeries and hospitals are no...

Public health agencies that spent the past three-and-a-half years promoting their preferred COVID-19 interventions as "The Science," above the realm of policy tradeoffs, are finally facing sustained skepticism from top American research journals as well as the public. The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is widely cited but not externally peer-reviewed, serially exaggerated the evidence for mask-wearing among 77 such outside studies it published, according to an independent review by epidemiologists at the University of California San Francisco, the system's health sciences campus. None of the 77 was randomized, the strongest form of evidence, and just one study...

Face masks become mandatory in certain UK hospitals. Face masks now required to be worn in area of some UK hospitals. Amid a drastic rise in Covid cases, people in certain areas of Leicester’s hospitals will be required to wear a face covering once again. It now seems like a long and distant memory or even a nightmare for a lot of people, the whole of the UK and large parts of the world were being told they had to wear a face mask when entering public places to help stop the spread of Covid 19. This saw people in...

While Covid-19 rates have been increasing throughout much of the country, the message from many of our public health and political leaders has become one of minimizing and denial. This is happening nationwide, but some physicians at Boston’s preeminent hospitals are more often in the news. We know that high-quality masks work to prevent infection. But Boston area hospitals (among others) dropped masking requirements on May 12. Massachusetts General Brigham went so far as to tell patients they can no longer ask staff members to mask. This has understandably caused an outcry among immunocompromised patients who fear seeking care due...

Santa Cruz Health Officer Lisa Hernandez announces new mask mandate and answers questions about CovidThis week, the latest FDA-approved Covid vaccine is anticipated to hit hospital and providers’ shelves across Santa Cruz County. Scientists and health officials say the new vaccine will better target the latest Covid variant. On Tuesday, county Deputy Health Officer Hernandez announced that the county’s masking mandate will expand starting Nov. 1 to include everyone in a skilled nursing facility, healthcare workers who work in acute care hospitals and surgery centers, and outpatient settings in places like dialysis and chemo infusion centers. In Santa Cruz County,...

After questioning the value of general mask-wearing early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided the practice was so demonstrably effective that it should be legally mandated even for 2-year-olds. A new review of the evidence suggests the CDC had it right the first time. That review, published by the Cochrane Library, an authoritative collection of scientific databases, analyzed 18 randomized controlled trials that aimed to measure the impact of surgical masks or N95 respirators on the transmission of respiratory viruses. It found that wearing a mask in public places “probably makes little or no...

Mandatory wearing of masks in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities in Marin County will return in November to curb an anticipated spread of respiratory diseases, including COVID-19, according to county officials. The masking requirement will take effect from Nov. 1 through March 31, 2024, Marin Health and Human Services officials said Wednesday. Once the measure has taken effect, all individuals within higher-risk health care settings in Marin County, especially in patient care areas, will be required to wear masks. Children below the age of 6 and those with valid medical reasons are exempted from the mandate, county officials said. Under...