Is It Okay to Go to the Beach?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Germany is about to get rid of wearing masks in stores. That's like turning off the firewall because the attack is over. It's preventive, so you need to wear a mask before sth happens.
I'd be very happy if there was an experiment, just for 4 weeks everybody should wear the damn mask both in private and public, and see what happens.
How can so many people fail to grasp the concept of prevention?
There were 140 new cases in Germany yesterday in a country of 83 million. In my city of 3,5 million there were 17 new cases. At what point would you say it's safe to not wear a mask in stores?
I don't understand this question at all. As long a there's >=1 case and little immunity the virus WILL spread.
ridiculous huh
No one estimates a vaccine any time remotely soon and even with one it would take years at best to achieve zero cases globally.
No, suppression was the goal. At least, the study that turned the tide on policy concluded that targeting suppression was essential.
There's no guarantee that herd immunity helps. On the other hand, we could be working all hands on deck to arrange our lifestyle AND protect from infection.
Herd immunity by everyone getting infected should _not_ be a goal. That's still going to kill many, many people.
The estimate for the US by that route was around 2.5million dead. You could probably scale that by population size and maybe reduce a bit as we get better at treatment for this disease, but that's still a big number.
I don't think we have much option other than to prevent the spread as much as we can while waiting for something like a vaccine and/or far better treatments than we currently have.
Zero cases globally will indeed be a while, if it ever happens.
We've seen that local outbreaks happen, and that local authorities hesitate to take action.
I think the response in Germany is quite good compared to many others.
My main issue is: we compromise on having some infections and deaths, rather than compromising on wearing a mask.
Stop getting science advice from op-ed magazines! I sympathize with 100% of the Atlantic's political views and completely hate their desperate and misguided attempts to remain relevant.
The business of op-ed and analysis pieces is pretty crappy, and it does not require any moral or intellectual honesty from the authors.
There are worse things than going to the beach, but when hundreds of thousands of people go to them at once, things most certainly get transmitted. I shudder to think how much gets transmitted at Venice Beach on a normal day, let alone in a pandemic.
My impression is that such events have been places like bars, restaurants, meat packing plants, and nursing homes, and not outdoors, but I haven't seen an article or study on it.
Do they need to go to the bathroom? Do they all need gasoline for their cars? Snacks to go home? Are they all overloading the stores on the way out? Do they need to hit an ATM?
THAT'S where all the spread will occur. Especially amongst a bunch of entitled dipshits who also don't believe in wearing masks or washing hands.
Unfortunately the people who feel most comfortable leaving the house are the people who are least likely to take precautions, which seems like a recipe for lots of super spreaders to me.
For everybody who drives to the beach (the vast majority of beachgoers), empirical evidence from California beaches suggests that the answers to all those questions is "yes".
If you want to open the beaches only to those who can walk or bike to them, sure that's probably okay. Now, how do you enforce that?
So, we're back to simply closing the beaches completely because it keeps the idiots at bay and is easy to enforce.