Just one aspect of the huge, tragicomic waste that resulted from the medical establishment's position that airborne transmission couldn't be real because it reminded everyone too much of miasma theory.
>the medical establishment's position that airborne transmission couldn't be real because it reminded everyone too much of miasma theory
In the post they were responding to
The medical establishment believed that (some may still believe). But it is not true.
I remember people talking about wiping down grocery boxes left in front of their door with hand sanitizer and leaving it to sit for 72 hours before bringing it inside.
But just use a proper N95 mask, it's even easier to breath than other masks
Now that masks are no longer required, I still see people doing that. So presumably they're just ignorant.
It's fun to earn internet points by claiming to be astonished at how dumb others are, and how much we have figured things out. Maybe after several years of this, the game is growing old.
Tolerance, understanding, consideration used to be virtues. But not internet virtues I guess.
Just in case you never tried it and the pandemic situation starts warranting mask wearing again; I don't really care whether people mask.
More importantly how did you do it? I have tinnitus and almost all painkillers are ototoxic (I.e. they can make tinnitus worse). So I’m always in a catch 22 when it comes to treating my migraines.
Have you tried ginger? Maybe triphala (amla, ginger, and turmeric powder altogether). Ginger supposedly acts as a cgrp blocker for migraines, and just generally lowering inflammation might make stuff less apt to being triggered. Tinnitus does sound like quite the curse though.
I’ve also wondered whether the active noise cancelling headphones help? Just being used to block noise and not play anything back. The real question there is whether quiet actively helps or hurts the condition. Though it feels a little like a pressure turning on when my ANCs activate and I’ve wondered how that’d interact with tinnitus.
Otherwise I’d probably default to making a painfully tedious diary of my days and log any/all tinnitus events. I’d include noises, foods, time of day, weather, anything/everything. That’d be looking for environmental or similar factors/triggers. Though it’s a hair in your ear drum or something like that and honestly tough to imagine what would help.
> Tinnitus does sound like quite the curse though.
It’s been about a decade now of constant ringing. Cicadas in my ears. For the most part I’m at peace with it. It’s like emotional quicksand, the more you fight it the worse you feel. I just don’t want it to get worse.
I don’t think silence makes it worse, but I’d does isolate the ringing so that it’s all I can hear. For that reason I prefer we’ll sealed iems to ancs.
I’ll look at that ginger cocktail you mentioned, thank you :). Coffee is a bit of a silver bullet for me. A strong coffee usually makes a huge difference. (Which used to make me think it was a caffeine addiction, but quitting caffeine didn’t stop the headaches).
From that, I'd also imagine with tinnitus similar things would help that help with migraines - like proper sleep, a sleep routine, well hydration, low stress, and avoiding triggers. Triggers for migraines can be things like types of food, smells (fake lavender does me in fast/hard and many other smells), bright lights, etc.
My other big one is cocoa. Too much chocolate anything will guaranteed give me a migraine.
Also not exercising. If I'm sedentary for too many days in a row I will get a bad headache.
I don’t think silence makes it worse, but I’d does isolate the ringing so that it’s all I can hear. For that reason I prefer we’ll sealed iems to ancs.
It’s been about a decade now of constant ringing.
I’ll look at that ginger cocktail you mentioned, thank you :). Do you take it as a medicine or as a supplement?
Franlab did a cool video on her handling of tinnitus https://youtu.be/CYKxDGukU0s
The two don't match.
Because around me in super-liberal-coastal-land practically nobody masks, and the ones I know personally who sometimes do have underlying reasons to be more cautious (e.g. relatives undergoing nasty cancer treatments and such that they don't want to spread anything to). It's been like 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 people at the gym I go to, for instance, this year. Or look at the crowds in the recent NBA playoff games.
That was my question! Where is this happening? Cause I'm really having a hard time reconciling people's random online claims with anything I've seen while out and about daily near me...
Is there just an Extremely Online segment of the public that keeps repeating 2020's arguments without actually getting out much to see that basically everyone else has adapted as case counts have died down and people have gotten vaccinated?
("Elder millenial" or whatever the fuck demographic they're calling it now, if that's a factor.)
Just because there's like five videos of it happening back in 2021 on r/publicfreakouts doesn't mean it's a normal occurrence.
But (knowing many people who still mask, under varying circumstances) -- that's not why they mask.
If I had to guess though I'd say most people mask up out of pragmatism, its kind of insane that our previous practice was to just pretend we weren't sick hard enough that we stopped being infectious.
It seems a little hard to psychologically disentangle what one does for social approval vs for other reasons. For example, maybe it feels emotionally uncomfortable to not mask. Is it because the subconscious is worried about disease, or because the subconscious is worried about social approval? Probably some of both, but if we removed one perhaps the external behavior would change, hard to tell.
Also IME it seems to cluster with other appearance related traits (e.g. type of dress, mannerisms, etc).
Disposable/cloth masks that do absolutely nothing to prevent the spread of an airborne disease like Covid do still work with diseases (like the Flu) with a droplet based spread.
> CDC says seasonal flu cases hit record lows around the world
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cold-and-flu/cdc-says-seasona...
The problem was the cult of people claiming that a disposable/cloth mask could be effective against an airborne disease, and being exceptionally hateful to anyone who wouldn't go along with this view.
However, it can catch the comparatively large droplets you produce when someone with the Flu coughs or sneezes.
Which explains why global Flu cases (with a droplet based spread) fell to all time lows while Covid (fully airborne) continued to spread like wildfire.
From basic physics -- of course it can. They don't work particularly well, but they do partly obstruct small droplet flow. In any case, there are easily findable studies about this asserting that even that crap-ola disposable masks have at least some measurable efficacy.
How exactly does physics allow a disposable mask that completely lacks a barrier to entry on the sides filter the air?
> In hospitals, the word “airborne” is associated with a rigid set of protective methods, including the use of N95 respirators by workers and negative pressure rooms for patients. These are resource-intensive and legally required.
https://time.com/6162065/covid-19-airborne-transmission-conf...
Medical professionals are not only required to use at least an n95 mask, they are required to keep it so tightly fitted to their face that unfiltered air cannot leak in through the sides. So tightly fitted that it digs into their skin.
> Exhausted doctors and nurses post images of their bruised faces after long shifts wearing protective gear
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-health-care-bruised...
Just because N95s are clearly better doesn't mean disposables are useless. Because, like, basic logic and stuff.
How does that prevent Covid from passing through the sides?
> Just because N95s are clearly better doesn't mean disposables are useless.
They are useless because they cannot possibly filter the virus out of the air that you breathe.
I like the way a member of President Biden's Covid advisory group put it.
If it can't prevent you from smelling cigarette smoke in the room, it cannot filter out Covid, since the smoke particles are on the same order of size.
Unfortunately we're going in circles here, and I'm going to have to bow out. You can believe whatever you want, about basic physics or anything else. It's a free planet, after all.
The primary reason some people still mask is very simple: For anyone who follows basic science, not what the crowd is doing -- N95 masks in enclosed / crowded situations are still a good idea, especially for those of a certain age.
Many people continue to wear useless (or only marginally) useful masks, and in non-crowded situations (even way out in the open). Which of course ranges from silly to, at best, only marginally useful. However it seems safe to suppose that they're doing so primarily out of strictly rational concerns (however faulty their understanding of better masking practices may be). Some partially, or entirely out of fear (an understandable reaction, if they've experienced a heavy bout of Covid, or have seen its effects in others).
Also, some may remember the temporary shortage of N95s, and still think they're being good, self-sacrificing citizens by wearing less effective (or even basically useless) masks. Or they just don't like wearing N95s because they're too constricting (meaning, "too effective"). However, that is at best a secondary factory, and not the main reason why they choose to mask in the first place.
But to recap: For the vast majority of folks who mask, it's mostly out of a (perhaps flawed) sense of pragmatism -- not because they are superstitious idiots, or primarily motivated by some subconscious desire to make a social statement about "who they are".
Normal people stay home when they're sick, they don't infect others, and the basic science takes care of that just fine. If crazy people want to follow "basic science" and mask up and go out in public while they're carrying an infectious viral load, then I guess we're in Japan or something.
If "basic science" compels the general populace to mask up, even when we're uninfected, unexposed, vaccinated, and asymptomatic, then I feel sorry for basic science because it's jumped the shark.
However everyone is tired of masking now, and prefers to forget this.
Then I saw reality, where a medical professional would politely remove her mask to sneeze.
And there are multitude of folks undergoing treatments that inhibit their immune system, where masking is especially important.
That said, people should stay away from cloth masks or surgical masks and use n95s/respirators.
Otherwise, I do find that weird and I am an ardent masker. Actually, come to think of it, the other day I drove home that way because I just forgot to take it off when I left the supermarket.
So there are non-weird explanations. I doubt they account for all the cases.
I've got a neighbor who wears a mask to move his trash can the 20 feet from the inside of his garage to the pavement just outside. He also wears the mask when driving alone in his car.
COVID definitely broke some brains.
Sometimes I forget the hat or the mask and then I just wear one.
They could have forgotten it when they got in the vehicle from their last destination.
There may be a kid in the back seat you couldn't see that they are trying to protect (or protect themselves from).
I personally don't understand why this is remarkable. In no way are they hurting or affecting you. Why does it matter to you if they mask?
It makes sense to wear a mask when you’re on an airplane or if you’re a service worker in constant contact with the general public.
Now for me personally wearing a mask was almost impossible to ignore because I wear glasses, so my glasses were constantly fogging up and it was a huge hassle and nearly unbearable over the course of a day, so in my mind it’s extra surprising to see people wearing masks when they’re alone and in my mind it doesn’t make much logical sense to do so.
Even without microbial infections of grocery product, you do have to contend with pest insects such as roaches, weevils, and gnats infesting groceries. Quarantining them separately is a good way to carefully inspect to show that you're not bringing new pests into the home.
I remember droplets being the leading theory but do not remember a time when the medical establishment was claiming airborne transmission couldn't be real.
I can remember scientists being accused of spreading "misinformation" for proposing that airborne spread best fit the available data.
For instance, at the beginning of the pandemic, passengers of the cruise ship Diamond Princess continued to spread Covid from cabin to cabin while locked down.
There was also the case of a church choir practice where over 50 people caught Covid.
>If COVID-19 could spread so thoroughly and quickly through a choir, did that mean the coronavirus was airborne? And if the primary route for the disease’s spread was through the air, had our initial response been woefully misguided?
For researchers like Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, the answer was clear: The coronavirus is airborne, and the superspreader choir proved it.
Once agencies like the WHO established the position that COVID-19 was spread primarily through heavy droplets, it was a tall order to change it. “They’ll die defending their view,” one anonymous WHO consultant told the New York Times in July. Even now, “the burden of proof is much higher for aerosols than for any other route, and yet we have more evidence for aerosols in this case than for any other route,” Marr told me.
https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/coronavirus-airborne-de...
This is a much lower bar. You can always find a crank on twitter accusing something of being misinformation.
The original claim I responded to was that the medical establishment claimed airborne transmission was impossible. However, the actual take from the medical establishment was significantly less confident of that claim (emphasis added):
> Airborne spread was “not believed to be a major driver of transmission based on available evidence,” the report [from May 2020] stated.
The WHO literally made a blanket statement that Covid was NOT airborne.
> FACT: COVID-19 is NOT airborne.
The CDC also denied airborne spread for quite some time.
>As the pandemic unfolded last year, infectious disease experts warned for months that both the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization were overlooking research that strongly suggested the coronavirus traveled aloft in small, airborne particles. Several scientists on Friday welcomed the agency’s scrapping of the term “close contact,” which they criticized as vague and said did not necessarily capture the nuances of aerosol transmission.
“C.D.C. has now caught up to the latest scientific evidence, and they’ve gotten rid of some old problematic terms and thinking about how transmission occurs,” said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/health/coronavirus-airbor...
The CDC's flip flopping on the issue did not inspire confidence.
>CDC reverses again, now says Covid-19 is 'sometimes' airborne
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-agai...
If you read charitably and look at their longer, contemporaneous statements, they say things like airborne spread is possible in some limited situations but not believed to be a significant vector of spread at a population level. (Still wrong, but a lot more nuanced.)
March 2020 was the first month the disease was declared a pandemic; it was very early on. We had a broad call to recognize airborne spread by July. It's worth skimming something like https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments... .
I'm not sure why you would make such a misguided claim.
>Two years after the pandemic began, we finally have a good understanding of how COVID-19 is transmitted: some infected people exhale virus in small, invisible particles (aerosols). These do not fall quickly to the ground, but move in the air like cigarette smoke. Other people can get infected when breathing in those aerosols, either in close proximity, in shared room air, or less frequently, at a distance. But the journey to accepting the overwhelming scientific evidence of how COVID-19 spread was far too slow and contentious. Even today, the updated guidance and policies of how to protect ourselves remain haphazardly applied
https://time.com/6162065/covid-19-airborne-transmission-conf...
It’s a lie. There are no excuses. It’s false.
You cannot say “Dreyfus is guilty” if you haven’t studied the subject. If an institution has credit, it’s because they have a proven track of not saying total bullshit.
The same for the president of France who said “Please go to the theaters to fight against the Covid”. He knew it was contagious, so he was giving the order to people to infect themselves, wrapped in a lie.
If they can say the opposite of truth, without having conducted proper studies and acknowledged what was obvious to everyone, then they are directly responsible for harming the public.
The WHO should be dissoluted.
- The WHO
"Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne
Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic."
I mean, I don't believe the WHO actually stated that in those terms. This is probably a paraphrase of a more nuanced statement that erases the nuance.
https://time.com/6162065/covid-19-airborne-transmission-conf...
>FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.
>The #coronavirus is mainly transmitted through droplets generated when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks.
The WHO was unequivocally stating that Covid was not airborne, apparently meaning that they (wrongly) thought it was not spread through aerosols. Instead, they were saying it was spread through droplets. So they were wrong about how it spreads, but did not go as far as saying it wasn't spread through respiratory routes/air at all, which I think might be some people's interpretation of "The WHO said it was not airborne."