Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, Merkel herself is in quarantine because her doctor is tested positive. Why did German think that social distance was not okay, or even harmful, when it was clear that covid-19 was highly contagious? And why are people so resistant to wearing masks? How do I know for sure that people around me are not contagious? How do I know for sure that myself is not contagious, under the current pandemic situation? Yet people freak out when they see a person wear a mask.

Just saw this paragraph in the article "The politics of pandemics" in The Economist: "To see what is to come look to Lombardy, the affluent Italian region at the heart of the covid-19 outbreak in Europe. Its hospitals provide world-class health care. Until last week they thought they would cope with the disease -- then waves of people began turning up with pneumonia. Having run out of ventilators and oxygen, exhausted staff at some hospitals are being forced to leave untreated patients to die". So, this article is telling people that Italians thought that they were so good that exponential contagion was no big deal?

An honest question: isn't what the Europeans have been doing a classical example for the quote "Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is"?

>And why are people so resistant to wearing masks?

In the US, there is a severe shortage of masks. Even hospitals are struggling to get enough masks for health-care workers.

I’m sure way more people would be wearing a mask if they had one. It’s going to be a common household item soon the way it already is in Asia.

The only reason I was able to get one is because I know people who live in China and already had boxes of them before COVID-19.

Yes, that's a perfectly good reason. What I was asking about is people's general attitude toward wearing masks, when shortage of the supply is not in the equation.

Everyone could wear a bandanna over nose and mouth.

If it reduces transmission by 20%, that would be a fantastic win due to reduction in exponential growth.

This is pretty much how most people implement the rule in Czech Republic for mandatory masks in public - anything that covers you mount and nose is fine, including self made cloth masks and even scarves. The government even said they are find with that at multiple ocasions.

So "I don't have a mask" is really no argument, as long as you have at least one piece of clothing on you, you can wrap it around your mount & nose. There, you have a mask.

I like the Czech pragmatism. Obviously it is not perfect, but anything that obstructs droplets even a bit is helping to flatten the curve, and that's what you want right now. This is one of the most reasonable and easy and pragmatic rules I have seen so far. It seems clearly superior to telling people, because there is a shortage, that masks are not preventing an infection, implying that they don't help.

Czech people have common sense.

The US Surgeon General told the public masks don’t work[1]. Doctors and nurses are being told they’ll be disciplined for wearing masks because it would alarm patients and visitors [2].

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/surgeon_general/status/1233725785...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-n95-fa...

[2] https://twitter.com/wendellpotter/status/1241371042020392961...

https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/03/i-have-never-been-so-...

> Doctors and nurses are being told

The passive voice is doing a lot of work here with only one anecdote cited.

> Health care workers on front lines of coronavirus battle discouraged from wearing masks

https://eu.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2020/03/26/cor...

In Australia, lots of households have pretty good masks to cope with the recent bushfire smoke. And they were wearing them then. But now, hardly anyone is wearing them. It is completely irrational. It seems clear the herd isn't going risk looking weird until it is too late, in a week or two when people are obviously symptomatic.

>And why are people so resistant to wearing masks? How do I know for sure that people around me are not contagious?

Judging from my own personal feelings I think you're kinda answering your first question with your second one. Being one of the few people wearing a mask in public signals that you think everyone around you might be contagious. People worry that they might be seen as rude.

I'm not saying this is a logical behavior, and things might be different in the current situation if masks were in wide supply.

I got carryout at a Chinese restaurant today. The staff (Thai) said her friends are afraid to wear masks because of fear of assault. So that would most certainly be a factor outside of Asia for Asians.

Personally I'm not wearing a mask yet as I am strict about only going outside for exercise and essential shopping, I am staying very mindful about keeping distance (which I think many people are being lax about), and I don't own reusable masks yet. I have ordered cotton reusable masks though and plan to buy additional ones (from a friend who is starting the process of sewing them - taking nothing from medical personnel) so I can change to keep them effective as needed. And then when (probably not if, I speculate) I need to go out more before this pandemic is over, I plan to wear them in public. Both to avoid spreading to others if I am an asymptomatic carrier and to do my very tiny part in normalizing mask wearing in this case. My thinking has gone from buying into to the current conventional wisdom in the west not to wear them to believing that they are a relatively low cost way to slow both this and possible future epidemics.

> And why are people so resistant to wearing masks?

I don't know if this is the reason, but they're not exactly comfortable to breathe through.

Masks are equally uncomfortable no matter what country you happen to be in, so I think a different explanation is needed to explain why people are wearing masks more in some countries than others. (Availability is the obvious answer.)

They're easier to breathe through than pneumonia.

Great, I'll go let the US population know.

There is a group of thought that believes that we should simply allow people to get sick as soon as possible so that the herd immunity forces the virus to burn out, and only quarantine those who are vulnerable (those over 65 and those with high-risk conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and leukemia).

That group of thought has not yet managed to prove to anyone that if you catch it now, you'll be immune to a mutated strain.

Nor have they explained how we are going to a handle a situation where ~5-20% of the under-65 people who will catch it all at once will require hospitalization.

Hospitals in affected areas are currently overwhelmed, with people under 65 alone. Italy has stopped treating people under 60. And this is when the vast majority of people under-65 are not infected!

Somehow, I doubt their situation would improve if people over 65 stopped getting sick, while people under 65 started getting sick at 4x or 5x the rate.

Research had now shown that you do develop immunity once infected and recovered.

For this to have not been the case it would have been a very novel strain of covid indeed.

You can do it in phases, preemptively. If your area isn't overrun with the virus right now and isn't close to one that is (e.g. my area, with four hospitals and ~2 total confirmed cases), ask for volunteers to be infected, preferring those with a high likelihood of transmission (e.g. health care workers, bus drivers, grocery store clerks, etc) to less risky individuals (e.g. people who can work from home or have relatively solidary jobs, like sanitation workers).

It only really works if you act decisively and can infect enough of the population before the virus really gets started in your area. I would sign up for that, provided I didn't just father a child, if only to get it over with.

This would also allow us to study the virus under controlled conditions. Maybe the way of infection (or some other controllable aspect) has influence on the severity of the disease.

>That group of thought has not yet managed to prove to anyone that if you catch it now, you'll be immune to a mutated strain.

Isn't our current approach of social distancing also vulnerable to mutated strains? Except, of course, we keep social distancing forever. Possible mutations affect all strategies in the same way and can't be used as an argument against a strategy.

This is the absolutely worst way to go: they are essentially telling nature to take its course, killing what it has to kill. We might as well stop vaccinating people and stop taking any drugs - the 10 people left alive will surely have herd immunity.

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