111–120 of 222 posts
Not too long ago a headline like this would be absolutely massive news. Now it barely even registers. Crazy times...
I mean, it’s not like it’s because we’re going to war with them. They’re just trying to protect their people. A lot of whom are elderly. If we were smart we would ban people from leaving and entering the US, instead of waiting for another country to ban travelers from here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is currently testing ~100k people each day: https://covidtracking.com/us-daily/ The failure at the beginning was not to have capacity ready. The huge US medical system and its very, very large medical industry has finally gotten pointed in the right direction in regards to testing.
I was tested this past Thursday and came back negative yesterday. Two weeks ago I was exhibiting the classic symptoms. Last week I had five days of noticeable shortness of breath, lethargy, sinus infection and a dry cough. I wanted to get tested a week ago this past Monday but did not meet the criteria. Now I am awaiting the availability of serological tests to see if I have the antibodies. I pulled the kids out of s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know how many times this is going to come up on these page but this is unsupported by any study for the kind of masks people actually wear and for a non-clinical setting, and anyone who has spent any time here will know it's rubbish. Just last night my wife was telling me about a conversation with her work colleagues about masks. She wears one per day, one to work and the same one for the way home - this is a…
Even if a mask doesn't protect a person sneezing into your face from transmitting the virus to you, that hardly means that it is 100% ineffective otherwise... and hospitals wouldn't be clamoring for them if they were ineffective ( https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-would-... ). With just a bit of common sense you can reason that masks absolutely do help prevent the spread of the virus: 1. A strong…
> that hardly means that it is 100% ineffective otherwise
It may not be 100% ineffective for a single event, it needs to be effective over the entire period of use.
Point 1, yes, sick people should wear masks. This is already known. Most people aren't sick.
> 2. The mask prevents you from touching your mouth with your hands, and reminds you to not touch your face.
If you've worn one or watched people on the train in Japan or across Asia you'll know this isn't true at all. People are forever readjusting it.
> 3. Many people in Japan wear masks to prevent stuff from their own mouths going into other peoples' faces, and not for the commonly assumed selfish reasons for wearing one that Americans keep focusing on.
They wear them for many reasons, and they're people so they're just as selfish as Americans or anyone else, and that's certainly my experience.
4b is certainly true. 4a is partly true because if people aren't going to use masks correctly - and they don't - then there really is no point to them other than to deny people access to them by those who really need them, and in settings that studies really have shown a positive effect.
With all these provisions: if you've decided it would be a good idea to do, why not do it now? If it's a good idea now, it's going to be twice as good of an idea in three days. And it's going to be four times as good of an idea in six. Etc. Over and over again the organs of governments announce decisions that would be a good idea today that don't come into effect until a few days from now. Which means that the harm d…
Country of citizenship shut down national airlines but let foreign ones keep flying in and out, banned tourists from flying out, banned foreigners from flying in, instituted a quarantine for people flying in. Absolutely everything they could think to do other than shut the damn border. And they have the gall to have "dont fly" up in a big red notice on all of their travel shit. I didn't want to! You forced me!
Now instead of being at home getting meals dropped off at my closed door and being in complete isolation from the outside world the entire time; I've been in a series of public transports and crowded public locations, stuck in quarantine house sitting for a friend of a friend, with more temporary housing and transportation scheduled to take place in the coming weeks. I'll be more active and in more crowds during this pandemic than I was in the entire previous year. My previous lifestyle was basically "lockdown" anyway. But noooo they have to play games with the borders so some dingus that decided March 10 was a good time to take the wife and kids on vacation doesn't get a chance to kick up a stink in the media.
Kicker is that the country I was living in issued emergency visas to everyone still there a couple days after I left anyway.
With all these provisions: if you've decided it would be a good idea to do, why not do it now? If it's a good idea now, it's going to be twice as good of an idea in three days. And it's going to be four times as good of an idea in six. Etc. Over and over again the organs of governments announce decisions that would be a good idea today that don't come into effect until a few days from now. Which means that the harm d…
>The restriction applies even to Japanese nationals returning from the United States. That's probably the answer. Some amount of heads-up is owed to Japanese nationals. A Taiwanese friend was in a similar situation w.r.t. Taiwan closing borders. Uncertainty of timeline and parameters can be incredibly disruptive for citizens trying to travel back to their home country. They might not have permanent lodging in the U.S…
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> Even an improperly worn mask is better than no mask. You can supply the study for that too. From what I've read, and I've been reading as many as I can, it's not true. > verroq 4 minutes ago | parent | on: Japan set to ban entry from the U.S. as early as n... Even an improperly worn mask is better than no mask. It's not about achieving 100% perfect protection, it's about some protection. > Even if somebody pulled d…
> It's not about achieving 100% perfect protection, it's about some protection. But it might not even be 10% or 1% protection, especially outdoors outside of a sterile hospital environment. Is it worth wearing them for a some small amount of protection, or is the false sense of security they provide more dangerous than their benefit? Surgical masks are pretty leaky compared to N95 masks we wore during crazy bad air d…
>but the latter are so uncomfortable that they cause people to touch their face more
The logic just doesn't work here, you can't touch your face if you have a mask on and N95 respirators aren't as unconformable as you claim, if anything they are often higher quality and the cheap elastic bands on surgical masks are more uncomfortable on the ears.
>That’s why all the videos we see in Asia just have crowds wearing flimsy surgical masks
It's because they can't get N95 masks. No one wears a mask for comfort.
Japan has had a low infection rate because of their strong mask-wearing culture. Western countries are experiencing higher rates of COVID-19 infections compared to Asian countries because of the West's aversion to wearing masks. Please help me spread this message http://www.maskssavelives.org/
I don't know how many times this is going to come up on these page but this is unsupported by any study for the kind of masks people actually wear and for a non-clinical setting, and anyone who has spent any time here will know it's rubbish. Just last night my wife was telling me about a conversation with her work colleagues about masks. She wears one per day, one to work and the same one for the way home - this is a…
They're underpowered and poorly designed. The smart money is on masks working, at least when used in a widespread way by the population as a whole. Benefit to individuals is much harder to show, hence why studies have failed to show it.
The chloroquinine drug, or whatever it's called, I bet that will turn out to be effective as well. Studies so far have been not powerful enough to show it definitively, but have you noticed the stuff has been selling out long before Trump opened his mouth? And it's not just idiots who will eat fishtank cleaner without checking the dose or the other ingredients that are buying it, it's nations, and doctors.
Did you know Parachutes have never had a randomised controlled trial to determine whether they are effective?
There are many things that there are good reason to think are true, that science has failed to show definitively yet.
Masks is one of them. I think people will eat their words on this one, and anyone reading this should take their trust in randomised controlled trials down a notch. They are designed to have a low false-positive rate. But their false-negatives are through the roof.
As a Canadian I think there's a pretty strong possibility that we get the virus under control while it still rages in the US for quite some time. I'm not really sure what that will mean.
I have seen this mentioned, but I'm honestly now sure why Canadians think this. What special measures did Canada take early on? What makes Canada exceptional compared to the US who at least banned some flights? The only difference is that the media doesn't absolutely despise Trudeau, but we're effectively the same. The US is actually surpassing us in testing at this point and some of our most populous provinces have…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have seen this mentioned, but I'm honestly now sure why Canadians think this. What special measures did Canada take early on? What makes Canada exceptional compared to the US who at least banned some flights? The only difference is that the media doesn't absolutely despise Trudeau, but we're effectively the same. The US is actually surpassing us in testing at this point and some of our most populous provinces have…
I don't really understand this either. As someone who's in Seattle, it seemed like BC lagged 2-3 days behind every action taken in Washington (e.g. closing schools). I keep seeing Canadians say their response was magnitudes better but I don't see why.