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Comment by blindriver | Hacker News Reader

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What is fear-mongering? And what is this need to stop fear-mongering about? I'm suspicious of it, because it seems to often lead to suppression of truth.

1. I haven't seen any credible studies prove the total ineffectiveness of masks. Don't forget two things: preventing spread is never a binary issue, it is and always has been about slowing it down enough to give health services a break. Only a handful of countries made it their ambition to totally stop the spread, and even then its a matter of slowing it enough so it dies out rather than spreads. Masks are not hazmat suits.

2. There's a small percentage that reacts really bad, but it was large enough to bring health services to its knees and cause tens of millions of deaths globally. Then there is a much larger percentage that got it quite bad, people that didn't need to be hospitalized but were totally handicapped for months and months (or years).

Your last remark hints at a conspiracy, and with that you are the one who is fear mongering.

Hey I just wanna say that I'm really glad that you personally haven't had to go through the hell of cardiovascular/heart damage from this, but you also shouldn't use your anecdote to undermine others' extreme sickness. You are ignorant to experiences not your own.

> especially given the new studies that show that masks didn't prevent spread at all, even according to Fauci

It would help your cause if you at least provided an example of such a study..

You’re calling a scientific article unscientific? I think there’s a difference in not liking the direction or application of science and whether something is science or not.

Edit: Hm, the article is more of a summary/fluff piece. But I still think your argument is more appropriately disagreeing with the direction of science than it is a lack of the application of science.

What makes something scientific are falsifiable statements supported by careful observation and tests in controlled conditions. Not titles. Not affiliation with institutions. Recognition by the press or government is irrelevant to the truth value of research.

I think the whole scientific edifice is or is about to become a bad caricature of the medieval Catholic Church, and is just as in need of a Martin Luther to remind everyone that integrity and a return to principals is long overdue.

This is a somewhat ironic analogy, as Martin Luther was a deranged anti-Semite who called for the mass dispossession and murder of Jews. So, as about as irrational as the church he criticized. Protestant factions subsequently won a Europe-wide war, so he’s not remembered this way in the popular consciousnesses, but this is exactly the kind of person I would expect to decry the “scientific edifice.”

That your only criteria for judging a historical figure is whether or not he's an unconditional supporter of your favorite ethnic group doesn't come off as very objective.

Age is the main factor affecting outcome. The risk of death in the 70+ cohort was quite high before vaccination, but the risk in the 50+ population was also unacceptably high. Vaccines basically had the effect of shifting the curve to the right by 15-20 years, i.e. 70 years old vaccinated has the same risk as 50 years old unvaccinated.

After age, yeah, genetics, use of ACE inhibitors, coagulopathy, etc., account for a lot of the remaining risk of death.

> The real problem is that scientists aren't studying the thing that really matter now for 99% of the population, which is:

> 1) When is someone with COVID no longer contagious so they can return back to school/work?

From September 2023 paper linked below:

...numbers of exhaled SARS-CoV-2 RNA copies during COVID-19 infection do not decrease significantly until day 8 from symptom-onset. COVID-19-positive participants exhaled an average of 80 SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA copies per minute during the first 8 days of infection, with significant variability both between and within individuals, including spikes over 800 copies a minute in some patients. After day 8, there was a steep drop to levels nearing the limit of detection, persisting for up to 20 days.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.06.23295138v...

> fearmongering

Should catching COVID in a 20 seconds elevator ride concern anyone?

Our findings can be used to demonstrate future feasibility of estimating the amount of time it takes for an individual to exhale an infectious dose of SARS-CoV-2: For example, assuming a conservative estimate of infectious dose for COVID-19 of 300 virions (35, 36), a person exhaling 900 viral RNA copies per minute (as did peak shedders in our study) could be conservatively estimated to exhale an infectious dose in around 20 seconds (not safe for an elevator ride), whereas a person who is exhaling 10 viral copies per minute could be estimated to exhale an infectious dose in over 30 minutes (probably ok for an elevator ride) (37). Along these same lines, once the relationship between exhaled viral RNA and replication-competent virus is established, if combined with rapid SARS-CoV-2 detection methods, our device could be used to assist in development of an at-home infectiousness test.

Of course, it depends.

So the key takeaway is that a device that would help with your first question seems possible.

>> Right now it's "Quarantine for at least 5 days and wear a mask for 10 days."

Who says this? My current understanding is do lateral flow tests. When your symptoms are gone and that is negative you're not very contagious anymore. Typically 3-7 days are the onset of symptoms in my experience.

1) This small study seemed to indicate people were highly contagious 8 days after initial symptom onset. It would be helpful to have more studies to confirm. https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/09/covid-patients...

2) Yeah, knowing why some people suffer more than others would be great to know. It probably is like trying to answer why some people get cancer. Genetics, circumstance, age, etc.

> That's ridiculous, especially given the new studies that show that masks didn't prevent spread at all, even according to Fauci.

Those studies are flawed. They make no distinction between N95s, surgical coverings, cloth masks, and fit testing. Those are all huge factors. Properly fitted, high quality respiratory protection is effective.

One big failing on the messaging to the general public is not making these distinctions.

The other problem is that consistency of use matters a lot but is hard to capture in surveys. People say “I always wore a mask” and sometimes that meant “I wore a well-fitted N95 every time I was indoors” and other times it meant “I wore a loose surgical mask when grocery shopping and work but also ate out 5 nights a week”.

This kind of work is like trying to find effective strategies for reducing alcoholism or obesity rates when you know that many people will fill out a questionnaire with the answers shifted out of optimism or shame. Simple random controlled trials are challenging in those situations.

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