Slide 21
>Given higher transmissibility and current vaccine coverage, universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant
Well that's very sad, if not entirely unexpected. How long will we be living in a masked world?
>Given higher transmissibility and current vaccine coverage, universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant
Well that's very sad, if not entirely unexpected. How long will we be living in a masked world?
There are plenty of experts and health officials who believe that eradicating the pandemic is possible. Including some with experience eradicating other pandemics like Ebola and Zika [1], along with the editor-in-chief of the Lancet [2], among others.
Eradicating a pandemic is not unprecedented, it can and has been done.
> If you've gotten the impression that our public health response is about reaching some future point where Covid-19 is gone and nobody ever has to worry about it, you're being misled.
Clearly our COVID19 response is not currently about that, or no one would have to advocate for it.
[1]:https://necsi.edu/corona-virus-pandemic. (Ebola: https://necsi.edu/ending-pandemics)
I have to concede that he's not a crank, and appears to have meaningful pandemic expertise. I'm now aware of one expert who's confident eliminating Covid is possible. But this has to be evaluated in the context of the overwhelming consensus (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00396-2) that it's probably not, and these sites are structured as grand calls to action more than detailed arguments, so it's hard for me to figure out what the content of the disagreement is. What does Bar-Yam know that immunologists don't?
As for the disagreement, it probably stems from the fact that with other outbreaks like Ebola, with known ~50% mortality rates, there’s unanimous consensus that they must be shut down early, and so they are.
That common cause and singled-minded focus and coordination is a major factor in successfully eradicating the pandemic. And doing it early before it can become widespread is obviously more viable than shutting it down after it’s gone global.
These folks are asserting that the methodologies used for shutting down other pandemics early can still be effectively scaled up to shut down a widespread pandemic like COVID19 that we failed to shut down early. And that’s where the disagreement is with the consensus you linked.
The thing is, global pandemics aren’t over, they’re just beginning, and we could be hit by something worse later. It behooves all of society to use COVID19 as a not-too-deadly trial run for learning how to quickly shut down something worse in the future, rather than fatalistically accepting it.
I think this is the core thing that I've never understood about the zero covid idea. If you look at, say, France or Spain, there was a unanimous consensus that the coronavirus must be stopped early, with strong and severe lockdowns for 5-6 weeks as these sites outline. The consensus didn't break because of laziness or complacency; it broke because it didn't work, because the lockdowns reduced but never eliminated community transmission. If you have a disease that's not that bad in the scheme of things, and you try the best known suppression strategies but they don't get rid of it, what other option is there than to find a way to live with it?
I also think it's important to acknowledge that our efforts to fight Ebola have not generally been this strong, despite Bar-Yam's arguments that they should be. In 2014, some American states imposed mandatory quarantines on doctors and nurses who'd been treating Ebola patients in western Africa, and there was strong pushback - from medical experts, who said that the quarantines were stigmatizing and counterproductive and there's no medical reason to impose such an over-the-top policy. "The Ebola quarantines and other movement restrictions put in place throughout the nation beginning in late 2014 were motivated by fear and by politics, not by medical science", said Doctors Without Borders.
Their critique of most of those cases is the measures were lifted prematurely, before getting all the way to zero infection rate, allowing it to re-spread again. And also the fact that all adjoining countries need the same zero-covid policy, or even ones that get to zero covid can be reinfected by neighbors. It's all (the way to zero), or nothing.
If someone sees mask wearing instead as a joint effort to fight the pandemic, as means to get out of it earlier by limiting the spread of the disease or as a way that they can do something to protect themselves no matter what others might do, then it is absolutely not depressing. Self-efficacy influences mood positively a lot.
People here also walk around with masks during allergy season, or doing flu season even when they’re not sick. In Taiwan and Vietnam I saw (and wore) masks on days when the air was particularly dirty.
I suspect the Venn diagram of people who don't like masks and people who don't like coercively collectivist politics is basically a circle. It certainly is here in the UK, most opposition to masks in Parliament came from the Tory backbenchers which I guess is why their mandatory use was dropped this month; the 1922 Committee (a formal group of Tory backbenchers) can force a vote of no confidence in the Tory leader if 15% of them call for such a vote. Tory backbenchers tend to be more small-c conservative than the Tory frontbench, they're not necessarily anti-authoritarian but they're often anti-collectivist.
Not everything is politically motivated.
A piece of ordinary cloth on your face does not filter smog, does not prevent any airborne infection droplets from reaching you, essentially only lowers the chance of your cough hitting somebody else. You need an N95 or better to really do anything to protect yourself. Also even if you have a high grade mask, wearing it so it actually seals to protect you is hard and most people don't do it well.
Masks do more to protect others than they do you. Which is why we are safest when everyone wears a mask.
https://www.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
> Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids (36). There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
When the checkout queue is moving slowly, some people try to move the queue forward by moving closer tho the person in front, even though the queue hasn't moved. I've noticed that people who do this are always maskless.
My local store is near a homeless shelter; homeless people face much greater threats than what amounts to a nasty respiratory virus. But I like social distancing; it tends to improve my sense of having personal space, as well as making me feel safer.
So I have to accept there's a way of thinking that makes it actually wrong to mask-up.
Incidentally, I walked off the street into a pub the other day, for a straight whisky at the bar - I didn't plan to hang around (nobody was masked, of course, because you can't drink through a mask). Well I was basically called out by this grumpy fella, because I came in masked. I mean, he was joking, but he obviously despised me.
I have one that I use when woodworking / sanding / varnishing, and the difference between a respirator and even a good N95 mask is like night and day. You can pull in a gratuitous volume of air through the respirator and it doesn't have that "there is a disconcertingly noticeable quantity of VOCs getting past this N95 mask" smell to it.
VOCs getting past a well-fitting N95 mask is working as intended, isn't it? N95 filters particulates only.
I have a 6000 series with bare P100 filters installed, and they certainly cut smells, but that's probably not what they're designed for. Amusingly, throughout this entire pandemic I've only worn it for wildfire smoke-- it appears to be completely impossible for people to understand what I'm saying while I'm wearing it.
Not really though.
Masks were not great for mental health, but apparently that doesn’t matter as much as virtue signaling.
Also I don't know how people do it with having to smell their own breath for long. Regardless of how well the oral hygiene is, breath gets bad after eating some food.
Also cloth masks are pretty much useless considering their penetration level of 97%. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/
> Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%. This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
https://www.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
> Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids (36). There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
> We did not consider the use of respirators in the community. Respirators are tight-fitting masks that can protect the wearer from fine particles (37) and should provide better protection against influenza virus exposures when properly worn because of higher filtration efficiency. However, respirators, such as N95 and P2 masks, work best when they are fit-tested, and these masks will be in limited supply during the next pandemic. These specialist devices should be reserved for use in healthcare settings or in special subpopulations such as immunocompromised persons in the community, first responders, and those performing other critical community functions, as supplies permit.
And why not say it. The fact the government is forcing me to wear a mask indoors makes me want to get rid of it asap.
Forever, because too many self-centered people refused to do the few simple things it would have taken to get the situation even remotely close to under control. It's already gone on longer than it needed to, and because of human selfishness it's almost certainly just going to get worse.
We won't be. People will simply be unwilling to do so long term and what doesn't get prevented by vaccines will burn through the population until everyone has antibodies and the disease weakens and "the common cold kills people" becomes the new normal.
There have always been diseases around that killed people, we were lucky for quite a while because the rate was fairly low and now it seems to be permanently bumped up a bit again. Eventually the disease is going to run out of people to infect the first time.
VE for Delta apparently wears off after ~180 days.