Has the era of overzealous cleaning finally come to an end? | Hacker News Reader

Has the era of overzealous cleaning finally come to an end?

nytimes.com

95 pointslxm177 comments

"The admission is long overdue, scientists say."

This has been a theme of the pandemic and I hope we have all learned the lesson well. Government agencies and officials will usually be the last ones to update their messaging. Maybe it's an attempt at self-preservation by being overly-cautious, or maybe it's done to compel compliance and basically keep people scared. But the message is clear: the government is not the place to get the most accurate and up-to-date facts in the middle of a crisis.

Unfortunately, the media hasn't done a great job either, which really leaves us with a problem.

Institutions and insititutional practices are powerful and essential to functioning in a modern and complex society.

Even marginal or ineffective practices, and quite probably overtly harmful ones, can have some value and significance.

That said, yes, a key weakness of insitutionalised practices is that they often far outlive their actual usefulness, and are difficult to change. In part because of reasons discussed elsewhere in this thread (see my earlier longer comment), but also out of sheer inertia and the difficulty in coming to a collective agreement on a new standard course of action.

Additive rather than subtractive problem solving bias being a recently discussed case in point as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26727878

In the case of cleaning specifically though, I'd probably argue that, for a long time, the expert opinion was probably something along the lines of "Although there is some theoretical evidence that the virus can spread by contact, we don't believe it's much of a factor in practice." And, given that, I can see leaving a lot of cleaning practices in place even if they're not believed to help much.

The reality I observe is that people have loosened up a lot about obsessively sanitizing and avoiding touching things as much as possible.

This time last year I was washing every item that came from the grocery store, and putting my mail in the oven at 170F for about 10 minutes. Stopped doing all that back in about June 2020.

I feel so stuck because of this. My government previously said anyone outside has to wear a mask. Even if you're standing in a middle of a field, by yourself, with no one within a mile of you - you need to wear a mask.

This is clearly theater, but society is so polarized that if I don't see value in this kind of theater, then I must be some insane anti-masker who thinks COVID is a government hoax.

So there I go, wearing my mask out, hating every minute of it, but hating even more what people might think if I don't. The government has clearly intentionally lied about things (e.g. government telling us early on that masks don't work, maybe to prevent masks from getting sold out for first responders), but I'm not sure what anyone can do about this situation.

They may have deliberately chosen a simple, easily understood, and easily enforced rule. Simplicity is a virtue in public communication. Creating a norm of masks-in-public does the job.

Otherwise, you have the cranks out there litigating endless edge cases and before you know it, the anti-maskers are in the elevator, sneezing on you.

Their intent may have been simplification but they have certainly crossed into the territory of being incorrect.

Nor can one use a slippery slope argument.. while arguing against a slippery slope. It is possible to have clear distinctions: "Are you outside and generally six feet away? Great, you can take your mask off."

The six feet rule is unfortunately exactly the type of rule which results in pushing the envelope. People will stand 5ft away and tell you to measure it. In contrast, masks off at all is easy to enforce.

Then make it seven feet or whatever number works so people pushing the envelope are still doing what you want.

Authority: "To be maskless, you must be more than 100ft from anyone from a different bubble."

Mr Common Sense: "That's a ridiculous rule, just say wear a mask outside."

Mr Epi: "That's excessive, aerosol is only going to travel a few meters."

Mr Defiant: "I didn't see him. How can I see everywhere. I was putting my mask on."

Mr Whatabout: "But I can take my mask off in a barber shop, therefore I should need to take other precautions."

Anyone who has dealt with a 7 year old will know how pointless this argument is.

If police are using this to harass people that is a problem. But the problem is with the police, they can fit you up already with almost no difficulty. You're really complaining that they're doing it to white people now.

I have no idea what your country's racism problem has to do with this. Nor why it's populated by 7 year old strawchildren.

I can see that you don't want to wear a mask outside. Also, that you may be a 7 year old.

If you're far enough away that someone can't see if you have a mask or not, you're fine to remove it...

There's a reason why free societies are reluctant to put arbitrary orders in place. In society that values freedom, it simply feels too much like an authoritarian move. It rankles the populace. Such measures have always been about public education and not enforcement. Probably much greater compliance without the debate. There was no need for this to be politicized.

"masks within n feet of others" is also simple, easily understood, and easily enforced (if any of the enforcers actually care to). it has the added benefit of respecting people's intelligence. requiring people to wear masks while alone in the middle of a park does not increase the average level of trust placed in official guidance.

Is it though? During the early stages of the pandemic I noticed that many people seem to have a pretty poor idea of what a six foot distance looks like.

Meanwhile our government in Germany first told us that masks are useless (paraphrased), then later reversed their stance, and now require FFP2 masks to enter any shop, bus, train and so on. Meanwhile multiple government officials and ministers have been linked to Mask-scandals so they are likely profiting from each FFP2 mask that is sold.

The Belgian government said the same, but I think the message isn't quite as black & white, and should be seen through two pairs of eyes:

1. There's the individual, in which case wearing a mask is not super useful. Wearing a mask isn't very effective at preventing the wearer from getting sick, especially if the wearer is a typical human being who is constantly picking at their face and generally doesn't wear the mask properly. This was oft repeated near the start of the pandemic, mostly by doctors and virologists who deal with infection on the individual level.

2. There's the collective, where reducing the spread even a little bit, can have a definite impact on many people in the long run. Masks mandates are definitely useful there, at least in crowded places. Even if they're not being worn properly by a large fraction of the population, spread will still slow. This may not be useful for any given individual, but it can help "flatten the curve" of hospitalizations, which is sort of what the management of the pandemic is all about. This wasn't really elaborated on in the media, but it's the message that biostatisticians and epidemiologists have been bringing all along.

I think there's been some serious communication issues throughout this whole pandemic. Not just in our respective countries, but pretty much globally. Covering your nose and mouth is super low effort and super low risk for almost everyone. And while staying at home and away from people is even more effective, going about your business with a mask is much easier for many people. I don't know why more effort hasn't gone into trying to convince people of that. Instead we're chasing pipe dreams of cheap respirators and tracking apps. Techno-fetishism at its worst.

> "And while staying at home and away from people is even more effective, going about your business with a mask is much easier for many people."

it's even easier to just distance appropriately in indoor spaces (most are already low density enough to not worry about). if you want to then stuggle up on or sit down and chat with someone, then slap on the mask. much easier than what you're proposing.

This is clearly theater

Worse, it's probably actively harmful. If people are going to get hassled for not wearing a mask outside, then they're more likely to substitute indoor activities which are much more dangerous whether masked or not.

My town "requires" masks at all times outdoors, but I haven't seen any enforcement. (While I have seen police officers talking to each other without masks). An increasing number of people will take them off when not around anyone, and half-heartedly reapply them when passing within 10 feet of others.

> I'm not sure what anyone can do about this situation

You can become a dissident. That’s how things change. But as you’ve identified, bravery in this case won’t be rewarded, unlike what happens in movies.

> The government has clearly intentionally lied about things (e.g. government telling us early on that masks don't work,

Lots of people say this, but it's easy to see that it wasn't a lie.

Please try to find the good quality studies that you think the government should have been using to tell the public that wearing masks works.

Before covid we had lots of studies around mask wearing, mostly in healthcare professionals in medical settings. They really struggle to show a benefit.

Mask wearing (especially if you can't maintain distance, can't meet outside, can't ventilate properly) is important but even now the quality of evidence isn't great.

It definitely wasn't a lie. We know distancing and lockdowns work, and there were some people who were only pushing mask wearing in order to prevent lockdowns. The risk was that people would continue to meet and mix while sort of wearing a mask, and not doing it properly. That would have driven infection up.

> Please try to find the good quality studies that you think the government should have been using to tell the public that wearing masks works.

"Factors influencing the wearing of facemasks to prevent the severe acute respiratory syndrome among adult Chinese in Hong Kong"

Catherine So-kum Tang et al. Prev Med. 2004 Dec.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15539054/

See, that's not a study that shows whether masks work or not. It's a study showing how you persuade people to wear a mask.

You admit yourself this was manipulation.

"The risk was that people would continue to meet and mix while sort of wearing a mask..."

Their job isn't to play 3-dimensional chess with human behavior. It's to communicate public health messages in a way that is both effective and accurate. I agree that the science was (and is) not very clear regarding mask usage. But if the messaging from the beginning had been "everyone wear a cloth mask inside, it might help" we maybe could have skipped this entire insane anti-mask movement.

I'm not sure it's manipulation, rather than large numbers of people who have differing interpretations of the data.

> But if the messaging from the beginning had been "everyone wear a cloth mask inside, it might help" we maybe could have skipped this entire insane anti-mask movement.

Yes, I agree very much with this.

Mainstream media is the gov.

Learning about Terror Management Theory [0] has definitely been an eye-opener. Anecdotally, it seems to me that most people cope with fears of mortal threats either with self-delusion and denial; or, with extreme over-correction and self-soothing "rain dances" that may or may not have any correlation with increased survival odds.

With COVID, we've seen the former play out with anti-maskers and conspiracy denialists, and the latter with over-cleaning and somewhat arbitrary/inconsistent safety precautions, often with little empirical basis. From WW2 isolationism, to McCarthyism, to the Terrorism Panic of the Bush era, I dare say we've seen patterns of simultaneous under- and over-reaction play out repeatedly in history.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

For a pandemic it's probably reasonable to err on the side of caution with the over-cleaning and arbitrary/inconsistent safety precautions, but I do wish we could have found a slightly less restrictive approach than we did.

I have a lot of friends very angry at the anti-maskers for their behavior, showing up in stores unmasked and such. And that's reasonable to be mad I suppose.

But I also know the anti-mask people are just as mad at the rest of us, and from their perspective they are just as justified in it.

Wonder if knowing more about Terror Management Theory could help us navigate this friction better, and find some common ground. Or if we need different approaches altogether

Yes, context matters, and sometimes even irrational instincts can end up being correct, especially under uncertainty, which was definitely true of the first few months of COVID. I'm less concerned about purely useless interventions, than counter-productive ones (or: a useless intervention A, which creates a psychological security blanket that subsumes motivation for high-yield intervention B).

Even stranger, I've also seen individuals under-react and over-react at the same time! ("Sure, I attended $LARGE_PUBLIC_EVENT, but we all wore masks, except while eating, and I've been taking lots of Vitamin D.")

For the over-reactors, I think aligning social norms with the best-science-for-now is achievable with simple rules and consistent messaging (that cohort wants to keep busy with rituals and precautions and social enforcement). For better or worse, our culture got a few simple memes to stick: wears masks in public, six-feet social distancing, outdoors is safer than indoors, limit socializing to "pods".

For those in denial, that's a thornier problem, and I frankly don't have any ideas. Whatever the context, challenging someone in denial tends to result in them doubling-down on it. Sometimes social pressure or law enforcement can cajole someone into adopting a rule they don't like; but it can just as easily backfire into tribal counter-signaling, or individual "bravery signaling" (itself a sort of psychic ward against fear). And in fairness: it's not hard to imagine counter-factuals where the official recommendations really are useless or worse ("duck and cover").

> it's probably reasonable to err on the side of caution

Sure, but it's far from clear what the side of caution is.

Naively, the side of caution would be to not disturb the education of our young, and that preventive care still works, and the other big public health problems we do know how to fix.

Yet, we see country after country opening restaurants while schools are still closed. This with a disease we know is less prevalent and spreads less among the young than other epidemics such as influenza. The side of caution is completely missing from this picture.

So what if anti-maskers feel justified in their own perspective? From the perspective of Jeffrey Dahmer, killing and eating people is justified. What is the point of making that comment, other than muddying the waters with some false equivalency nonsense? Anti-maskers are awful, awful people. It is reasonable to be mad at them because they are killing people; their anger is not based on reason and it is not equivalent.

Influenza kills 250k to 650k people a year [0], year after year after year.

By your logic does that make anyone who hasn't been wearing a mask during flu season for all years past a killer? Or is there something different about flu deaths, but not covid deaths?

Do you hear yourself? Because the flu kills more people, it's OK to drive drunk? It's OK to throw rocks off of highway overpasses and tall buildings? How can you call people who do that killers, when they're causing fewer deaths than the flu!?

There are plenty of countries where people do wear masks during flu season if they feel like they might be sick. Yes, an anti-masker who would berate and assault people on buses for wearing a mask during flu season is fighting for the explicit goal of increasing random, avoidable deaths of strangers and is therefore a killer/terrorist.

I didn't say it was ok to drive drunk. Were your questions rhetorical? I asked a question, and don't understand your answer. I didn't say anything about an anti-masker berating someone not wearing a mask. I don't think it's right to berate other people, or tell other people what to do.

You said earlier that "Anti-maskers are awful" ... "they are killing people". So I wondered if I should consider anyone who hasn't been wearing a mask during every flu season an awful killer, also. The flu kills millions of people every decade. People spread it, sometimes not knowing that they are contagious.

My question again: Do you consider people who don't wear a mask during flu seasons to be killers?

I ask because it's not often I hear someone call people "killers" over not wearing a mask, and thought to explore the topic more, if you're up for it. If not, that's ok.

Some of my thoughts below:

It seems that the number of victims has something to do with this. Perhaps we are used to the flu killing a half million people per year, but covid killing a few million is different? The flu sometimes kills that many people, like in 1968. Perhaps more people wore masks then? I wonder if the numbers matter more, or the fact that we are not used to the numbers?

Or maybe it depends on how one looks at the numbers. Every death is an individual tragedy. It would save lives if we all wore masks all of the time. I guess we don't because it is dehumanizing not to be able to see each other smile? I guess as a society we do have some thresholds to judge these risks. Perhaps we don't all judge these risks the same.

Like I said, I was curious about your thoughts, if you care to share.

>they are killing people

how so?

Are you asking me to educate you on how disease transmission occurs? I'll need help understanding where you're coming from here. Do you know what a virus is? Do you think the Earth is flat? You at least seem to be able to read, so that's a good start -- you're somewhere between the stone age and the bronze age then.

You do not have to make personal attacks.

To enlighten you about nuance, think about this:

- Is driving a car the same as killing people?

- Is selling junk food the same as killing people?

Throughout history the way these pandemics were dealt with was through quarantine. The fact that people were going into stores at all during this thing seems to be an affordance we never had in the past so I'm okay with arbitrary restrictions until it's proven wrong.

We had mandated precautions here that were ultimately meaningless, but could have been meaningful and I can accept those as acceptable in the absence of information.

However, when new information came in and counties all around us were completely removing certain precautions that weren’t helpful, my county merely “eased” some of the same precautions and in some cases did other things that effectively forced the same precautions on us. (For instance when parks were re-opened, they made it difficult to park near them.) We also had precautions here that I suspect wouldn’t have been meaningful even if the virus had been Captain Trips.

I find myself loathe to trust the county with something like this in the future. (The state, on the other hand, did a pretty okay job all things considered.)

I had the same experience with TMT and I think everybody should read their book.

On top of TMT, the Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM) [0] is another theory with TMT could explain 99% of human behavior.

[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1207/s15327957pspr1002_1

The evidence that masks work at a community level (outside of medical institutions) is very questionable as well so that could fall into the 'rain dance' category. https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/ https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577

This kind of reminds me of an infographic at my doctors office about birth control. It shows stats on how many unwanted pregnancies happen when using each form of birth control. It's split into two-columns: How many pregnancies when it is used perfectly, vs how many pregnancies when it used typically.

One could look at it and conclude that most birth control isn't very effective at a community level, which is more like the "typical use" column.

The stat that's missing is the rate of pregnancies caused by not using any birth control at all. I imagine that compared to that stat, even the worst of the typical use stats look pretty good. Then you would conclude that you should probably wear a condom.

Same goes for a mask, in my opinion.

Comparing masks and birth control isn't meaningful until we add enforcement component.

A condom is the perfect example.

A condom is typically used once and has pores small enough to block designated particles.

This is how medical masks in a medical establishment is used.

Cloth masks at a community level are basically wearing the same condom everyday and the condom is full of holes.

Its a 'rain dance', and just makes people feel better, which does have it's benefits, like religion or nationalism.

That's why Fauci is saying to double or triple up on cloth masks, because cloth masks reused daily are minimally effective, which is what the vast majority of the population does.

Here's a real actual scientific article about it.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577

> Cloth masks at a community level are basically wearing the same condom everyday and the condom is full of holes.

That's not an accurate comparison at all, and I think you have completely missed the point.

Using a condom perfectly results in the fewest pregnancies. Using it typically (ie, once in a while you have one break or slip off) results in more pregnancies than perfect use, but still many less than unprotected sex.

The same logic should hold for masks. Using them perfectly (ie single use, medical grade quality) results in the fewest infections. Using them typically (ie, non-medical grade cloth mask, wearing the same one more than once) results in more than the perfect use but still less than being unmasked. It is not a "rain dance"

If you are trying to make an argument that wearing a mask makes you equally as likely to get infected as being unmasked, I don't know what to tell you. You're just straight up wrong.

Edit - because you added your article link after I was already replying: you cannot generalize the usefulness of masks on healthcare workers who are typically very close to patients and breathing the same air as them, touching the same surfaces as them for extended periods of time to the usefulness to a community of people who are supposed to be sticking 6 feet apart.

Yeah if you are standing a foot from a sick person wearing a mask and they cough in your eye, and you get sick, it's gonna seem like the mask did nothing.

Your cloth mask doesn't protect you from others. It protects others from you.

It does also protect you from others. The "it protects others from you" was propaganda to get around public health officials lying that masks didn't protect you unless you were a doctor in which case it worked for some reason.

It doesn't perfectly protect you, but anything helps. A KN95/N95 is more effective and covering the eyes is better yet.

Yeah the idea that masks somehow are one-way is baffling to me. You’re somehow preventing particles from leaving your mouth while simultaneously breathing in those same particles from the outside.

If that were true you might consider flipping the mask inside out.

I think of it this way: if we are both wearing masks, your mask is going to block way more of your particles than my mask is, and vice versa.

The purpose of cloth/lower quality masks, is to reduce, not eliminate spread. When breathing in, air is drawn around the edges. Thus, if the virus is airborne around you, you'll breath it in.

If you have the virus, and are exhaling, the goal is to stop large droplets of moisture, which carry further, from exiting the mask. They are larger, hence, they get blocked and absorbed by the mask.

Further, when breathing out, air is slowed, and also again passes around the edge of the mask. This reduces the spread, and is also why '6 feet' is recommended as a distance to keep from people.

Again, this isn't about protecting you, but protecting others if you're infected, spreading, and per-symptomatic.

FYI, in most non-US countries ... this isn't a debate. It's just accepted. For example in Canada, politicians of all stripes, left/right/whatever, agree on such basic concepts.

We also didn't have weird things with public servants lying about basic mask protocols.

I'll put this another way.

If you're spreading, and wear no mask? Being a few feet from someone, and talking, isn't going to just get the virus in their mouth. Inhaled. It gets it in their eyes, on their face, their clothes, the list goes on and on.

Masks are about reducing that kind of spread!

Do they help you? A little bit, sure. But thaw's not the point. The point is to protect others!

The cynic in me thinks "What an American attitude. It's all about me, screw protecting others!"

Explain the one way valve mechanism of a piece of cloth.

Not to take a horse in this mask-or-no race here, but the "One Way" thing is about air velocity and distance.

The asymmetry comes from the shorter distance of the mask from the source of exhalation, faster/wetter air, when you breath out vs your intake which is ambient air pressures and speeds.

Your air is pumped in an out by your lungs, not ambient pressure. You determine the velocity of the air with your breath - breath in quickly or breath out quickly - that has nothing to do with the mask.

Wetter air leaves your lungs, but air quickly goes to ambient and then takes on ambient air humidity anyways, so not sure how relevant to the people around you.

And again, ambient air pressure has nothing to do with it. you determine the pressure with your lungs. If you breath in as quickly as you breath out, you will have similar air speeds and pressures.

Using a condom that leaks repeatedly results in MORE pregnancies.

Because the biological agent is never disposed of.

And it keeps being applied over and over day after day.

It's why you wouldn't want your surgeon to walk in to your operation with the mask he just used from the previous operation.

It's also basic medical hygiene theory. The same reason that washing hands is effective because germs are transmissable via numerous vectors.

You're doing some serious mental gymnastics here.

Yes, using things that are broken means they don't perform their intended function very effectively.

That doesn't imply that using non-broken versions of those things is less effective somehow. That's not how the transitive property works.

Edit - again because you're super edit happy.

> It's why you wouldn't want your surgeon to walk in to your operation with the mask he just used from the previous operation

No, ideally of course not. But given the choice between "surgeon wearing the old mask" and "surgeon wearing no mask at all" I think I prefer the old mask. Would you seriously just prefer the surgeon to breathe directly into whatever open cavity you have during the surgery?

If the last patient had an infectious disease then yes, no mask is much better than a mask.

Breathing on me > contaminated infectious rag in the O.R.

> It's why you wouldn't want your surgeon to walk in to your operation with the mask he just used from the previous operation.

There is actually no evidence that surgical masks are protective during surgery. Mainly because nobody wants to do the experiment, but still.

There are legitimate studies that demonstrate that masks combined with proper mask usage is at least somewhat effective at preventing disease transmission.

See some of my previous posts for those.

That article doesn't support any kind of conclusion that masks are ineffective. It ranks the effectiveness of masks, but has no "maskless" group to compare against.

"Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%."

How do you test particle penetration in a 'maskless' group?

Isn't it implied that the 'maskless' group would have 100% particle penetration?

Isn’t that direct evidence that medical masks work? Which doesn’t support your assertion that groups all masks together. Thus, your argument appears against cloth masks, not medical grade (surgical, n95).

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/5/4/e006577/F2.large...

Yes absolutly. There is evidence that masks do work if combined with proper usage.

The evidence shows that changing masks frequently combined with using medical grade material is effective.

The current mask recommendations for the USA though... is folk science akin to using leeches or trepanation.

And no one demands any scientific rigour they just follow along blindly trusting whoever is on the T.V.

I wish the US had gone harder on telling people to get quality masks. Personally I use only n95 from US manufacturers that have a tight seal around my face. I understand before that there were supply constraints, but also there are better fabrics than just cotton that are widely available such as chiffon, which block/filter a ton more than cotton and is widely available.

Mask usage is still hugely important.

Masks need to be changed constantly.

Aerosols aren't particles.

Wearing a cloth mask in a community setting is like leaving your pants on while dry humping someone. It will reduce the chance of pregnancy :)

Except in this case your sperm can also get you pregnant and you wear the same ejaculate covered pants day after day that numerous other strangers have ejaculated on as well.

And you put those ejaculate covered pants directly on your face.

well, rain-dancing works against covid. What I mean is that being cautious works, just thinking about masks (which means most probably that you're taking also other measures like keeping a good distance to people) helps.

Keeping a specific distance to people doesn't really matter though. That rule just satisfies a demand for a rule that can be easily implemented at scale, like moving school desks so they're farther apart.

An actual better rule is "don't be inside with other people without masks".

A far more effective rule would be government backed paid sick leave. That might actually do something to slow the spread of covid.

Masks and lockdowns are trivial for politicians to implement. Especially with emergency powers. They don't have to go through any political process to get done. It doesn't even matter if they work at all. It shows they are "taking it serious" and "saving lives". Even if the measures harm society far more than if they did nothing at all.

Actual non-pharmaceutical things that would truly slow covid require 10 or 100x more political willpower than masks or lockdowns.

Masks and lockdowns will very much be looked upon the same way we look at rain dances and goat sacrifices.... it's just humans fooling themselves into thinking they have more control over mother nature than they actually do.

> A far more effective rule would be government backed paid sick leave. That might actually do something to slow the spread of covid.

We did that, it was called PPP and PUA. But many people were "essential workers" or didn't want to quit their jobs just because we were paying them to.

I’m not sure that’s the correct interpretation from the link you provided.

Not sure why you have been down voted, the only recent large-scale study of face masks worn by regular people, did not reach any consensus.

Common sense would say that wearing something covering your nose and mouth is better than nothing at all, but this fails to take into account how the masks are treated by regular people.

I firmly believe that masks do not change anything significantly, at least until a study can prove the opposite.

What matters now is getting back to the pre-corona situation without restrictions.

Those who wants to be vaccinated on a yearly basis should absolutely do so, but those who choose not to should absolutely be free to enjoy all aspects of life without restrictions.

According to "smart people who believe in science" groupthink, masks work. Period. It's settled science. Don't ask questions. Only deniers ask questions.

Despite all the pro-mask science being based on in-the-heat-of-the-moment research done in the middle of a highly politicized pandemic.

Prior to all this, the science on masks was completely inconclusive. And there was literally no research done on the effectiveness of shutting down large swaths of human life for more than a year. Though it shouldn't take an expert to deduce that it has profound negative impacts on economic, social and mental health.

We are in the middle of a massive, uncontrolled experiment with billions participating without any consent.

The idea that smart well meaning people are supposed all just fall in line and agree with the prevailing groupthink is almost despotic. I shudder to think of what would happen if "the experts" even so much as hinted at it being okay for people to use violence against non believers. It's terrifying, honestly.

Unfortunately, by the time we could actually do all the experiments to find the best ways to handle the pandemic, it would already be over. Everybody is just doing the best they can with the knowledge they have.

With any luck, we will learn some things that will help us deal better with the next pandemic.

We have learned, over ages, that quarantining the sick and isolating the vulnerable works about as well as you can expect. Yet we decided to do something different this time.

I believe it was the discovery that people were contagious before they showed symptoms, plus the specter of overwhelmed hospitals in other countries, which led to the restrictions that we are seeing.

> Everybody is just doing the best they can with the knowledge they have.

Then say that. Saying that masks work is a lie. The truth is nobody really knows.

Public health officials are treating the people they work for like children. Public health officials are not our parents. We are their customers and they serve us. Big difference.

I don’t know exactly what you mean by “masks work”, but my best guess based on the evidence available is that masks provide some protection.

If someone told us to wear a pink thong to save our lives and we obeyed unquestioningly and it turned out to be wrong, we would look like fools.

Texas open up fully a month ago, with only a 5-10% vaccination rate and nothing has happened that was predicted. Even Fauci was stumped when asked why the infection rate wasn't increasing. They're at record low infection rate. Norway and Sweden NEVER shut down or required a mask mandate, and the dire predictions never came true.

Quarantine was wrong, hospital overflow was wrong, the infection rate models were wrong, surface infection was wrong, cloth mask usage was wrong.

Everything was wrong but everyone who obeyed unquestioningly will look like fools if they admit it.

We have to play along with this stupid un-scientific hand-wavy narrative until the media and government decides it's enough, and gently let's the unquestioning acolytes off the hook.

Even after an outdoor event with 40.000 spectators Texas is still doing fine, they are at more than 30% who has started vaccination.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/

So much of our early thinking and statements about COVID were wrong. And it was pushed by hysterical media and governments as the truth and you better not think anything else. This is what leads to skepticism and resentment by the public.

At the other end of it there is a rationale for it.

1. it gives people agency to not freak out because they can be proactive about something. the reason nuclear energy is a boogieman is that you can't see it and it can kill you and there's is little you can do as an individual to protect yourself against it.

2. they truly didn't know how the spread of the disease is since it was a novel virus. you do however know that the lipid barrier of it makes it susceptible to soap and 70% isopropyl alcohol.

3. saying "there is no evidence that masks are effective" is true in the scientific sense. they didn't do studies so to talk about the effectiveness would have been backwards (also considering at the time they didn't know if it would actually increase the spread due to touching/collection/whatever) scientific illiteracy is a problem. the words and processes have precise meanings and those ignorant to it will glom onto certain words out of context and use that as evidence for their conspiracy theories. (see isolation of the virus et al)

About number 3, it was a blatant lie to keep the PPE for medical workers. I understand the rationale there, but I don't think it's worth treating people like children and lying to them - even if it temporarily gives a better result. Because now when they say masks work, plenty of people are understandably skeptical - and that makes them vulnerable to believing less credible sources of information on the topic.

I fully believe masks help, despite as you say, there being little specific evidence for Covid19, because we have good reason to think they reduce transmission just based on how masks work, evidence in general to support masks in a medical setting, and the transmission mechanism of the virus.

However, I have zero sympathy for the authorities struggling to get people to take them seriously about masks after they started off by lying about it.

And after an established history of authorities and politicians lying, it's little wonder conspiracy theories proliferate. You reap what you sow.

> However, I have zero sympathy for the authorities struggling to get people to take them seriously about masks after they started off by lying about it.

This is a common argument, but it is honestly kind of ridiculous. Like how can you claim with a straight face both:

a) Authorities lied about masks not working, and

b) Since authorities are known liars (see a), their current claims that masks do work must be untrue.

Do these people really not know there is now broad consensus in what people knowledgeable on the topic believe works, or are they just making bad faith arguments because they don't want to follow it?

Keep in mind I'm not claiming B. I'm saying that the authorities lying gives people a reason to be skeptical about future claims.

The dangers of crying wolf.

The authorities/institutions are always advancing their agenda. truth/lying is irrelevant. In most cases the agenda is consistent over years so it’s hard to notice the changes. During Covid the health agency agendas pivoted so rapidly their agenda changes where more abrupt. First, they needed to keep hospitals from getting overwhelmed so they said stuff about REAL n95 masks not working so healthcare could get them. Then they needed to stop people getting Covid figured masks might work so they said wear a face covering .. it can’t hurt. And then trump conspicuously didn’t wear a mask deep into the pandemic so it became about making trump look stupid and stopping his re-election, so the justification for masks came in full force shortly after trump went around not wearing one. Had trump been one of the first people wearing a mask talking about “China flu” early on. this whole mask policy would have been flipped.

> Do these people really not know there is now broad consensus in what people knowledgeable on the topic believe works

I mean, I don't think there is broad consensus. I think there is a hell of a lot of group think going on. Going against the grain literally gets you ridiculed, mocked, harassed, called an idiot and if you are in the medical industry... probably gets you on the blacklist.

I don't trust a single bit of research generated about masks, or anything, while in the middle of a politically charged pandemic. All of it should be taken with a very healthy grain of salt.

The idea that every intelligent, well meaning person agrees with what we are doing is lunacy. It would be insane to think that. This whole thing went from "go on cruises" to "lock it all down" in literally a week's time. Of course intelligent, well intentioned people might not agree with what is going on. It amazes me that people assume everybody smart has to be for all this.

Going against the grain literally gets you ridiculed, mocked, harassed, called an idiot and if you are in the medical industry... probably gets you on the blacklist.

"The blacklist"? Which one is that?

Google “dr loses job over Covid” to see the examples we are allowed to

Got it, thanks, that was good reading. Where is that consolidated into a black-list? It’s crazy that hiring and firing in the US comes to that list.

Again that missed the point entirely. It certainly wasn't lying. We know and knew that some masks are effective. n95 masks when worn correctly are definitely safer than not having one full stop.

we didn't know then which masks were also going to be effective and didn't know if those masks would be worse than not wearing one at all. there was also the issue of shortages of the effective masks for medical pros that needed them. that informed the speaking at the time and at no point was that a lie. and we do have studies now that masks do decrease the likelihood of transmission so we do know now that those cloth masks are effective.

1. shortage of proper n95 masks(look at toilet paper during the beginning)

2. no evidence of other masks being useful or not harmful at the time so they said socially distance yourself as a primary mode of protection and wash your hands often.

It certainly wasn't lying.

It certainly was: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/face-masks-coronavirus.... That's not a statement that mask effectiveness is uncertain, it's an authoritative statement that they don't help.

one political appointee from an administration that handled it about the worst as it could saying that(which also doesn't say what you think it says) doesn't change the facts of it... the overwhelming messaging at the time was how i noted it and wasn't a lie.

The fact that they ask on one hand not to buy PPE because there is a shortage for medical workers while on the other hand saying they're actually counter productive against covid19 is at least circumstantial evidence for the claim.

It would be difficult to prove they definitely lied without an admission of guilt or leaked internal communications.

it's not a conspiracy theory. fauci admitted as much in this interview: https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...

Thank you. I thought I remembered they admitted it, but I didn't trust my memory. Case closed.

> it was a blatant lie to keep the PPE for medical workers.

Can you post a link to the published studies that you think CDC / WHO should have been using to inform their decisions around masks?

> evidence in general to support masks in a medical setting

We really do have lots of testing for masks in medical settings, and most of them struggle to show benefit.

You're saying masks don't work at all and there is little reason to wear them even in a medical setting?

I don't want to say that's impossible that we're doing something widely despite it being ineffective - because that does happen. But the burden of proof is on you if you want to make such a strong claim against the consensus view, and I reject your attempt to foist it on me.

Probably you'll counter that you're just talking specifically about the public using masks to prevent covid19, and I agree the evidence to support that is thin. But that's to be expected, because it's also new. Again we have good reason to suspect that if masks work at preventing spread of respiratory illness in a medical setting, they should work for the public with covid19 too. So if you want to claim that, again the burden of proof is on you to make a strong case against the consensus view of the general efficacy of masks in preventing spread of respiratory illness.

1. Do you like to be manipulated? I don't.

2. It was't just a novel virus, it was a novel coronavirus and we know all about how those spread.

3. It's the job of government agencies and officials to use communications skills to avoid these issues. If they talk like pedantic scientists then their messaging will fail, and if they don't know that they are in the wrong job.

Rhetorial questions being, of course, one of the very oldest manipulation techniques.

https://people.uwplatt.edu/~ciesield/platovsoph.htm

> It was't just a novel virus, it was a novel coronavirus and we know all about how those spread

But how could one have been sure that a mutation has not changed certain behaviors in dangerous ways. Given potential adverse impact I have no problems overcompensating in the caution department till more light is shed and at that point one needs to dial down.

I don't know that anybody can be 100% sure of anything. But all along there have been experts on coronaviruses who have known what to expect from this pandemic [0]. They know that coronaviruses don't mutate into different strains like influenza. They've studied multiple coronaviruses, some far more deadly than this one, and it's never happened before. They expect this one to weaken, if anything.

Personally I am very disappointed in the media coverage of the science applicable to this pandemic, specifically how much supposition is interjected by non-experts. For the clicks, I guess.

[0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...

As for your point 3: the current article, amusingly, has the following sentence: "There’s really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a contaminated surface."

I was not sure what to make of that, precisely for the reason you mention.

Here we have still the message: there is no evidence of a transmission in trains. (because they don't note the names of the passengers, I presume)

Indeed, "there is no evidence" can just mean "we didn't look very hard." As in, "there is no evidence the attackers accessed PII" (because logging was disabled).

By now, "we haven't had time to look hard" is no excuse not to provide evidence that disinfecting surfaces works. If there is no evidence for that, it's almost certainly not true.

I looked through a few papers, but I couldn't find more than: experts agree now formites are overrated. While saying that lab experiment shows formites can survive for days on surfaces (and then claiming that this experimemt was conducted with artificial high load).

About #3, there's a problem when the message is worded exactly the same way for "we didn't have time to test masks yet" and "we have evidence that those medicines are harmful, but we won't seek confirmation because we are looking for helpful ones instead".

But that is of secondary importance, because early in the pandemics a lot of health organizations made it very clear that not using masks should be the policy. It wasn't a communication problem, they were just lying to people to get to a goal (masks not disappearing from the market, a good goal). That's wrong on many different ways.

What I found deeply troubling was that many healthcare workers who weren’t in on the “noble lie” jumped on the “masks don’t work” bandwagon. They mocked and belittled mask-wearers on social media. They turned into anti-masking fanatics. It was a frightening display of of zealousness from the semi-informed. They just as quickly became pro-mask and ignored their previous stance.

What was really amusing was that Trump and company were busy preaching the use of masks and how they would save us, while the WHO and a lot of medical bodies were busy trying to misrepresent "we don't know" into "masks don't work" so people wouldn't rush into buying them.

Then suddenly we got a few studies settling down that masks worked, and on the 2 or 3 days it took for those studies to be known both camps completely reversed their messages and insisted that they always had that new message and never changed their anything.

> they didn't do studies

No, they did do lots of studies for flu, and they really struggle to find a benefit for masking. Importantly, the quality of evidence for masks as source control (infected people wear masks to prevent transmission) was really bad.

(People should wear masks)

Besides cleaning, another example is strict enforcement of outdoor mask laws. In Poland, the health minister has been criticized by scientists (often the same ones concerned about COVID) for requiring masks to be worn outdoors even in remote places where there are no other people around. Ultimately he admitted that, indeed, there was little scientific basis for the policy like had been claimed previously. He just thought it was more likely that people would have a mask on when entering shops, if they simply had to wear one at all times anyway, but the public was never told that.

It turns out that if you give a public official purview over something and don’t make him or her very answerable to other officials, that public official will get comfortable being heavy-handed and failing to adequately explain things to the citizenry.

Nuance in mass communications, especially in high-consequence circumstances, is itself a major risk factor.

Drawing a very bright, very wide, strongly-enforced safety line well away from any potential hazard has value.

Public health in pandemics is all about consistently breaking transmission chains. And even countries with initial or eventual success can remain at risk of resumed high infection rates, as is evident currently in India (doubling daily infections over a week: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/), Turkey, Brazil, Poland, Germany, and in parts of the US (notably Michigan, at this writing).

Of course, it doesn't mean people will follow rules they don't feel make sense. Where I live in Massachusetts masks are required in all public spaces whether distanced or not. But my anecdotal observation in the state forests, etc. around where I live is that most people don't when they're well-distanced from everyone. And they may pull up a neck gaiter for a few seconds if they're passing someone on a trail (especially if that other person is wearing a mask).

If I were managing public health in a region ... I'd probably be reasonably comfortable with that behaviour.

But in a world in which modest and reasonable requests to wear masks result in angry outbursts to murderous rage ... I could also be convinced to draw a firmer line.

Again: the matter is nuanced.

> But in a world in which modest and reasonable requests to wear masks result in angry outbursts to murderous rage ...

On the other hand, that rage (but not murderous) is justified if the request isn’t based in any reasonable understanding of disease spread and is just an expression of power over that individual. Such as outside in the woods.

There's no real enforcement anyway though. We're talking about large outside recreational areas in exurban/rural areas. And even passing on trails, people are almost always at least 6 feet away. Also, as I say, people are mostly good about pulling something up if approaching a masked group, even if it's mostly theater.

My understanding is that closer to the city, more people are wearing masks outdoors but the walking paths are more crowded as well.

Drawing a very bright, very wide, strongly-enforced safety line well away from any potential hazard has value.

It also has harms: it decreases respect for rules that actually do make sense, and it can encourage people to substitute more dangerous activities. If Alice values taking a walk outside without a mask at 50, walking with a mask at 30, and going to a shopping mall (with a mask) at 40, strictly enforcing outdoor mask mandates is going to make her both less happy and more at risk.

During a worldwide rapidly-evolving public health emergency of (one desperately hopes) limited duration, that arguments loses sufficient legs to be rendered a snake in the grass.

I'll wear a mask outside if I'm in a crowded situation like the farmer's market I go to weekly (masks are required there anyway). But if I'm just out walking around where I'm easily 20 feet from the nearest person I don't bother. Although now that it's allergy season I'm finding maskwearing to be beneficial so now I wear it most of the time outside - to avoid pollen.

When my mayor decided to say that masking outdoors was not necessary if you kept distance, literally that weekend I, immune-compromised, became literally stranded in a public park because a woman decided to have a yoga session at the top of a staircase that happened to be a choke point in pedestrian traffic.

People are quick to make decisions that they consider self-protective, rather than decisions that are protective of the most vulnerable. The goal of public health should be to affect global health good with edge cases considered, understanding the narcissistic way their messaging will be received.

Cleaning became big in the US at least before much of anything was being pushed by media/government. I was at an event just as things were about to shut down and it was lots of handwashing, no handshakes, and I think some effort to better clean surfaces. But no distancing and people weren't even talking about masks at that point.

Somewhere in there, there was also at least one published study that suggested the virus could at least theoretically stay on even surfaces like cardboard for an extended period. Which is how people got to leaving their Amazon boxes for three days and spending two hours to deep clean all their groceries.

> And it was pushed by hysterical media and governments as the truth and you better not think anything else.

This seems more than a little exaggerated. Even in the early stuff I saw about cleaning surfaces expressed uncertainty about it.

Any time a new disease appears, most of the advice you're going to get will be stuff they thought up in advance. Washing your hands and cleaning more aren't normally going to hurt anything, so you'll probably see that every time some new disease pops up.

It was never hard to understand what was known to work, what was unknown but likely to work, what was unknown but possibly beneficial.

Enforcing policy that may be beneficial or neutral in the face of unknowns is perfectly valid. If you felt you were lied to you really just weren't paying attention.

I don’t think this narrative is true.

So much of the early discussion around covid was about how little we knew. I think we were generally adequately informed about the likelihood that our early understanding would change.

Now, of course, there was hysteria and people making overly strong claims. But that’s nothing new or specific to our covid response.

Some people might have problems with the strong recommendations from authorities/experts, given the lack of information. But keep in mind that not recommending action was also a very strong and risky stance, given what we knew. So there was no choice. Guesses had to be made, one way or the other, and of course some of them would turn out to be wrong.

Am I the only one here not finding anything nefarious about this? Seems like they didn't know, advised caution, and now they know. If anyone was hysterical about this, I feel like that has more to do with where they got the information.

I wouldn’t say nefarious but just extremely delayed which leads to bad outcomes. This was known for at least the last 6 months and it then let places hide behind this as being safe (we follow cdc guidelines!). Restaurants saying they clean the tables vs. having a hepa air purifier.. buses cleaning seats vs. mandating windows be open etc. etc.

Yes, people have a limited amount of focus so it's very important to focus on the right things.

Unnecessary cleaning guidelines really do cause problems. I've seen a huge spike in public-facing device RMAs due to cleaning with improper chemicals. General human exposure is likely up significantly as well.

We would all be better off if we focused on airflow and proper air purification.

They also had good reason to think it _might_ be a vector, because it _is_ a vector for some other viruses, notably the flu.

They don't know, they're using models and estimates.

The only way to know is to have sick people cough and sneeze on various surfaces and then have healthy people touch those and monitor them.

It came in everywhere non stop for a while.

Just makes you wonder what else the government and medical establishment were wrong about in justifying massive extreme restrictions on the population.

I feel like you're trying to get at something, out with it if you want to have a conversation about it.

Not at all. What I said was significant enough.

But now that you mention it and now that my post throttle is up you should consider:

Govt was wrong about:

1.flattening the curve. Not a single hospital has overflowed, even after places opened up fully and before vaccinations were widespread or places that had virtually no Covid restrictions.

2.surfaces being infectious

3.The infectiousness of the virus. Wheres the hundreds of millions of dead that were predicted? Why did more people die of car accidents in 2019 than under 55 age group corona fatalities(80% of the population)?

4. The effectiveness of masks. 'dont wear them' or 'wear them'? I can take them off while eating but have to wear them while walking 8 feet to the table, what?

Fanatically following a government without questioning them has never, in the history of humankind, led to good things.

Food for thought my friend.

> Not a single hospital has overflowed

Very many hospitals, and often entire counties and even wider regions, fully exhausted ICU or other key capacities and had to refuse patients. You can probably construct a definition for “overflowed” for which this is true, but not which would have any utility in proving governmemt was wrong.

> Wheres the hundreds of millions of dead that were predicted?

No one predicted anything like that except as a potential in the absence of any behavioral changes. Even the places like much of the US that has weak, inconsistent, or unenforced “lockdowns” saw some government interventions and signidicant, if sometimes largely non-compelled, behavioral changes.

> Why did more people die of car accidents in 2019 than under 55 age group corona fatalities(80% of the population)?

Again, because even the places like much of the US that has weak, inconsistent, or unenforced “lockdowns” saw some government interventions and significant, if sometimes largely non-compelled, behavioral changes.

> I can take them off while eating but have to wear them while walking 8 feet to the table, what?

This is a dumb complaint. Its minimizing avoidable exposure potential. Distancing is more enforceable while seated and eating, but its impossible to wear a mask and eat. Distancing is less enforceable while moving about, but its quite possible to wear a mask.

1. Would love to see some some data from legitimate news or science source for your thinking on this. They were wrong.

Texas was at less than 15% vaccination a few weeks ago..and Abbot opened the state up fully. No hospital overflow. Did they reach natural herd immunity? No. Not a single word about hospital overflow.

2. They absolutely did predict that and they were wrong. Here's a science article about it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7447267/

3. 'dumb complaint' I disagree. If this was a serious disease like the black plague this would kill people. If Covid was serious you would have just sentenced people to their death. But you're fine with it either because you like killing people or Corona virus is not serious.

Peoe are digging their heels in on this narrative because if it turns out not to be true then they look like fools. Science doesn't even matter anymore.

Quoting an article by Ioannidis on this subject is indeed proof that science doesn't matter, after the cherrypicking job he did in Santa Clara.

MD PhD from Stanford with decades of experience and infectious disease and epidemiology?

Can you tell me which experts and scientists are the right ones to believe that don't contradict your narrative?

You might try a few closer to home at Tulane - Mac Hyman (who I’ve had the privilege of taking classes with and who invited Nick Hengartner of Los Alamos who did the R ~ 5.7 paper here a couple months before the pandemic) and Susan Hassig. Or Peter Hotez at Baylor. I am not the only one who is angry with Ioannidis over what he did.

Do you disagree with the swedish epidemiology team Anders Tegnell and his team?

What about Norway, Texas, Florida and all of their epidemiology team?

We have a situation here where people are picking and choosing experts based on their own narrative.

1. Hospitals were most certainly overwhelmed. 2. This always seemed cautionary to me. We know this is a vector for other viruses.It makes sense to sanitize until you have a better understanding. 3. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, but thank goodness the models that made predictions based on no action taken didn't come to fruition. We lost in the US alone a half million people and counting. It could have been worse, but it should have been better. 4. Leadership whiffed big here at the beginning with the whole lying to save PPE for health professionals thing, but they admitted that. As for restaurant protocols that was more or less min-maxing for the situation. Ideally just don't go out to eat, but if that's not a sacrifice you want to make, or you're adamant about supporting a restaurant by in-person dining, then filter as much of your and other's respiration as possible.

And I wasn't frantically following anyone - it seemed like sense to me. A novel virus is/was spreading that's potentially dangerous: wear a mask, wash your hands, avoid contact with people - do these things to the best of your ability for both your own and the community's safety. I live in Arizona, so believe me when I tell you the things I did were of my own volition.

Thanks for expounding.

All of your expounding doesn't avoid the fact that...they were wrong.

1. Would love to see a source on this from a reliable legitimate news source. They were wrong.

Texas was at less than 15% vaccination a few weeks ago..and Abbot opened the state up fully. No hospital overflow. Did they reach natural herd immunity?

2. They were wrong.

3. They were wrong.

4. They were wrong.

Read all about it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7447267/

Youre digging your heels with hand wavy non science.

Of course nobody wants overzealous cleaning, but the correct level of zeal for a novel disease is not possible to pinpoint exactly from the outset. It makes sense for people to risk having too much zeal than too little until all the information is available.

And, honestly, the recommendations that various governments actually made were things like handwashing, use of hand sanitizer, cleaning surfaces that multiple people are touching, etc.--none of which seem unreasonable even at this point. The "overzealous" cleaning that some people were doing was mostly not the response to government guidelines.

And the CDC changed their recommendations and guidelines as knowledge about the virus evolved. Unfortunately too many people interpret these changing messages as: "The CDC was wrong before so they're probably wrong now, so I'm not going to listen to anything they say." So frustrating!

> She added, “There’s really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a contaminated surface.”

This reminds me of "Rubbish bin the likely source of Covid infection": https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/427446/rubbish-bin-the-l...

It’s now assumed to be via air rather than the bin. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/new-zealand-zero-covid-trans...

The image of the spraying of some kind of chemical by people in biohazard suits with a tank on their backs has constantly struck me as very other-worldly this past year. It was (and is) seen often in news footage from many countries though (mostly Asian, African, and South American I think), but it was never adopted here in the Netherlands. Was this all (intended or accidental) theatre or did this actually make sense in some climates? I can imagine it looks reassuring.

I was in China during the initial outbreak, and those guys in biohazard suits were definitely performative in my part of town. They walked through the neighborhood with a "reporter" in tow, who made sure that every squirt of their magical anti-COVID pixie dust could be captured on film for posterity. In the China case, I'm not sure if it was to reassure the public (who are used to seeing this sort of performative busywork) or if it was more a kind of political one-upmanship amongst local officials who all wanted to give their superiors the impression that they were the hardest-working or most serious cadre in the area.

It depends on how it's done. A neighbor of mine works for a golf course owned by the city and said they started out spraying a mix of bleach in water on everything. Unfortunately they found out a few months into the pandemic that it's only active for something like 12-24 hours after mixing with water, and they had been mixing it in big batches to use over the course of several days. They switched to hydrogen peroxide instead, which isn't as broadly effective against bacteria or viruses as bleach, but is effective against coronavirus and has an indefinite shelf-life.

Even if or when the era of overzealous cleaning finally come to an end for Coronavirus, it's not an excuse to ignore good hygiene as there are many nasty diseases that are spread by contact (door knobs, etc.). Frankly, it's madness to suggest otherwise.

Viruses such as measles, and viral gastroenteritis—norovirus and rotavirus are very highly contagious and can be spread by contact (these viruses are so virulent and contagious that just touching something handled by someone with the disease is enough to catch them). In fact, long before COVID-19, norovirus was the scourge of cruise ships—often dozens of people would succumb to the disease in the confined quarters of a ship.

A quick look at the graph in the New York Times article shows that when it comes to contagiousness, COVID-19 is almost a beginner: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/learning/whats-going-on-i.... Even though rotavirus and norovirus are not shown on this graph, when it comes to infectiousness and contagiousness they are up there along with measles. In fact, some studies show norovirus to be one of the most contagious viruses that we know of (i.e.: one person can infect in excess of 15 others).

This Wiki articles further demonstrates the point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

And do does this excellent presentation (PDF): https://www.rch.org.au/uploadedFiles/Main/Content/fracp_reso...

One of the noticeable and significant observations to arise from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and when many people started being hyper-vigilant with respect to their hygiene—using sanitizer and washing their hands, etc.—is the fact that gastroenteritis virus numbers have been way down.

This clearly shows that hygiene really matters. Even bringing the matter into question is stupid as it undermines long-held public hygiene messages.

Hygiene doesn't matter that much. Humans evolved in environments full of pathogens, and most people survived. You'll probably be fine even without obsessive cleaning. There is some evidence that living in overly sterile environments is a risk factor for autoimmune diseases.

I thought it was going to be about an actual era. Basically the modern era, in which our environment may be too clean, and potentially do weird things to our immune system, cus its an environment radically different from the one our immune system was designed to work in.

I was just reading up on "The Hygiene Hypothesis", and it seems like there's little evidence to back up the claim that our environment is "too clean". If anything, I suspect our environment is more likely to be too polluted than to clean. Think lead poisoning up until a few decades ago, or BPA and its ilk currently.

Not to mention VOCs off gassing from all kinds of things we commonly have in our homes. I wouldn’t be surprised if we look back on this era in horror at the chemicals we put in furniture etc

The hygiene hypothesis is about infectious agents, not toxic chemicals.

Quite like the effect of microgravity on the skeletal system, or the effect of rarely exercising on the muscular system, or the effect of rarely elevating your heart rate on the cardiovascular system. Periodic small shocks are necessary for any biological system to remain in good shape, because those small shocks are a form of information about what needs reinforcing. Without those small shocks, the system atrophies and is unprepared for large shocks. True of the immune system as well, I think.

Nassim Taleb wrote a book on this concept called "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder"

At non-obsessive levels there are worse things people could have done (and did do). But it was mostly harmful to the degree it took time and energy away from more effective responses.

(And some people I know were indeed obsessive.)

An intrinsic characteristic of novel threats is that their characteristics are not fully known and understood. Understanding evolves.

Other factors include various forms of denial and seeking of agency, amongst both experts and authorities, and the public.

The fomite hypothesis --- that small viral fragments on surfaces might be transmitted to individuals --- was plausible and had some initial credibility. It's been observed elsewhere.

The alternative hypothesis, that the SARS-COV-2 virus was predominantly airborne and spread readily ... was also plausible and had initial credibility, but also meant that the potential threat and consequences of the disease were far greater, a possibility that numerous entities early in the pandemic seemed eager to play down (and many still do). Notably the first official responses in China, the previous administration's response in the US, and both official and lay/media resposnes elsewhere in the US, Brazil, the Phillippines, throughout Europe, and more.

When faced with a novel, difficult-to-perceive threat, one that does not manifest clearly, whose behaviour and characteristics are unknown, people's first response is often to seek the comfort of some degree of control or agency. Cleaning, or hygiene theatre, is just that.

Mind: it's all but certainly not harmful. It may detract from other interventions, though for the most part (and after some early bobbles that were a mixture of good intentions, poor understanding, and supply shortages), the general public health advice was the triad of "wear a mask, wash your hands, stay home." All sensible and still highy recommended.

Cleaning is also a manifest and tangible signifier of a heightened infection risk environment, and one which might have positive carry-overs to other preventive measures and general awareness.

(Lacquering your premises frequently with Lysol not so much, though again, in a potential benefits vs. potential risks calculus, not an entirely bad call.)

So the frequent cleaning recommendation arose from:

- Initial ignorance of transmission mechanisms.

- An unwarranted hope for contract rather than airborne transmission.

- A general advisability for the measure regardless.

- A sense of agency in the face of an unknown and invisible threat.

You can take those circumstances and responses and see them in many other areas. "Hygiene theatre" has obvious connotations with anti-terrorism air travel "security theatre", and I suspect that various technologists will find that their own development and use practices involve various aspects of development theatre, risk theatre, management theatre, etc. These are inherent to any complex phenomena in which relevant and crucial aspects are not overtly evident, and are what give rise to cargo culting and fad-driven practices.

no, the rational mistake you're making is assuming there is a safe side to fall on, and moreover defending that position. this kind of thinking is endemic to mediopolitical rhetoric, and it's almost always incorrect. in real world conditions, there are multifactorial risks on all sides, and it's a multidimensional optimization problem. there's just no safe side. the obessiveness over cleaning and its ill effects just being one small element in that multidimensionalism.

we need to strive to make the optimal tradeoff, not the mediopolitically mediated safe choice, which we see backfire again and again in practice via unintended consequences, particularly by eroding trust in each other and our institutions, but in many other dimensions as well.

Unsupported presumptions of others' beliefs are exceeding fraught ground.

That may be a logic you encounter in others. It is not mine.

Hygiene practices haven't been harmful, hence, they're a safe choice. They weren't especially useful. As far as misallocated resources, the general disinformation and misinforation campaigns and amplification in various quarters has been vastly more significant.

more chemicals, diversion, stress, and mistrust, to name just a few, are harmful, and none of those practices were useful.

> it's all but certainly not harmful

Fuck yeah it has been. Many gyms around the world have reduced their opening times due to increased cleaning requirements, leading to more crowding.

I can’t go do my lifts at 2AM anymore because it doesn’t make sense to have cleaning staff around at a time when the gym would normally be almost empty.

So, is it a 1 in 10,000 chance from touching a contaminated surface and then rubbing your eyes (or picking your nose)?

https://archive.is/UDpG8

I'm sure bleaching that beach in Spain helped tremendously.

The controversy around how AIDS was transmitted lasted years. There are still arguments around that.

Or even whether it exists at all.[1] From Nobel-laureate scientists.[2]

________________________________

Notes:

1. It does.

2. Not, as it turns out, in medicine. Expertise has domain-specificity. Intelligence may not be general, at least in some cases.

The way I see it, the problem is not the so-called "hygiene theater". It's rather the fact that a large part of humanity (mostly in developed countries) are:

- Living in an artificial urban setting with a disrupted and unbalanced ecosystem. - Eating mass-produced industrial food, both lacking in pro-biotics and a vector for viruses and bacteria. - Getting regularly vaccinated and consume antibiotics. - Leading a physically inactive lifestyle. - Being exposed to pollutants with grave consequences to our digestive, respiratory, cardiovascular and reproductive systems.

It seems to me that had we been leading a healthier way of life, one that is integrated with our ecosystem, an active life that pollutes less, based on healthy, local food production and consumption, the current sanitary crisis would have looked much different.

Given that many people didn't bother washing their hands after using the toilet, didn't wash their fruits and vegetables and considering how e.g. restaurant tables are "cleaned", such overzealous cleaning was long overdue. Once the Coronavirus danger's over we'll be back to being our filthy old selves, if such articles don't already accelerate the transition :-)

That being said, I looked at the resources [#] which the CDC brief is using to make its 1 in 10000 claim and the evidence is pretty thin. One source which claimed a similar number (less than 5 in 10000) swabbed "high-touch surfaces" between March and June 2020 in Massachusets and then correlated that to community infections. Another source was looking at how to reduce risk to 1 in 1.000.000 by using biocidals.

Finally, the Pitol and Julian study uses a model to estimate the risk. This is probably the source of the stat - "The overwhelming majority of interactions with fomites modeled (sic) were associated with risks less than 10^–4". Here are some details:

* the probability of infection was estimated based on a model built on SARS and MHV-1 infections in mice.

* the SARS-CoV-2 concentration on surfaces was taken from a study in Brazil and the already mentioned Massachusets study.

* "Contamination of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces in public spaces (e.g., traffic light buttons, train buttons) was modeled as a function of disease prevalence in the community and frequency of contact with the surface"

I really wish that the people writing these articles would make an effort, look at the studies and highlight the main assertions and conditions of the experiments instead of being so smug. Based on what I've ready myself, the 1 on 10.000 number is dubious.

[#] https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/ten-points-to-remem...

[#] https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-670...

[#] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7605577/

[#] https://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(20)30997-4/fu...

[#] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00966*

Remember when news organization said they weren't going to paywall their coronavirus related content? Did that come to an end?

A 100% effective "behavioural" covid vaccine (which also works for ALL other respitory diseases):

Don't be indoors with other people.

Buddy, that's not a vaccine.

No reason to panic while we milk this crisis.

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