America is giving up on the pandemic? • Hacker News Board

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#821

Post by blub » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:04 AM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #712

gentryb wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first started doing volunteer health assessments and triage at our local homeless shelter, I inquired if facial hair was an issue with PPE. The organization's initial response was no. I sent them a link to the CDC guidance[1] that includes this picture regarding facial hair styles that are ok[2]. I don't think the notice at the top of said article is helpful whatsoever saying that this isn't advice for covid-1…

It’s my understanding — which seems to be congruent with the pages you linked? — that facial hair is an impediment to medical-grade respirators that require a tight seal to be effective. With cloth/paper masks that aren’t intended to be PPE for medical workers, though, that’s not actually what we’re going for, though, right? What we’re trying to do is curtail the spread of droplets. Beards and mustaches really won’t…

It's an impediment with any mask which can form some kind of seal. A surgical mask will stick to your face when you breathe in, which indicates that it does form an imperfect seal.

If one's beard is creating even more space between the face and mask, it's of course going to make things worse.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#822

Post by blub » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:07 AM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #754

rayiner wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget public health officials outright lied and said masks don’t help reduce the spread of the disease, putatively to help conserve masks for medical personnel: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-... > When news of a mysterious viral pneumonia linked to a market in Wuhan, China, reached the outside world in early January, one of my first reactions was to order a modest supply of masks.…

That is simply not true and an awful accusation. The last Sars or Coronavirus illnesses differed from this one, as in those cases asymptomatic people were not spreading the virus very much. So the (reasonable) assumption was that people mostly know when they are contagious and stay at home. In that scenario "community masks" (everything below FPP-2) don't matter much. When researchers found that Covid-19 is different…

"So the (reasonable) assumption was that people mostly know when they are contagious and stay at home."

Too bad this pandemic overlapped with the flu season and with a period of time where many people had colds, thereby rendering the above assumption null and void.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#823

Post by blub » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:08 AM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #797

mirekrusin wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When wearing mask in public you're not protecting yourself - that's ineffective - you're protecting others from your own cough/talking droplets - that's effective.

Exactly. Why do you think you disagree with me there? The point is that when almost all contagious people stay at home, we don't need community masks. We only need them because contagious people are asymptomatic (that's new!), tehrefore don't know about their status and therefore go out in public.

Almost all contagious people never stay at home. Based on my experience, people with colds come to work and go about their business.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#824

Post by blub » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:09 AM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #774

monkpit wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “we need to preserve masks for the medical community” To be fair, I remember looking it up on the CDC website when this all started, and they explicitly stated any masks are not necessary (or useful) unless you are caring for a sick patient.

That's exactly what I wrote: the working assumption was that you wouldn't be contagious (because then you'd be staying at home yourself). That turned out to be wrong. Later.

Given that this assumption doesn't work with something as banal and common place as the flu... why would it apply to a new respiratory virus, especially since people were anyways coming down with colds and the flu and had no clue what they had.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#825

Post by blub » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:13 AM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #688

rayiner wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget public health officials outright lied and said masks don’t help reduce the spread of the disease, putatively to help conserve masks for medical personnel: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-... > When news of a mysterious viral pneumonia linked to a market in Wuhan, China, reached the outside world in early January, one of my first reactions was to order a modest supply of masks.…

[flagged]

I can't speak for anyone but myself, however I now no faith in anything that the WHO, US surgeon general and to some limited extend the CDC and RKI say, because of the way they lied or hid the truth in the past.

I have much more faith in the KCDC for example and otherwise I want to see studies.

And anyway, people are unfairly accused of hoarding masks. It turns out that in the US, Australia, Germany (and probably other countries) China was buying up all the masks.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#826

Post by rayhendricks » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

javagram wrote: post #687

drusepth wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think most protestors would be okay with contract tracing, especially when the most critical times to trace are during protests?

Contact tracing a protest makes no sense anyway. Taking down a list of people who dined at a restaurant during a certain time period is one thing. How are you supposed to contact trace a 10,000 person protest? No one is going to know the random people they happened to be standing next to and chanting at a specific moment. If these protests are super spreading events it blows a huge hole in any attempt at contact trac…

If COVID can’t spread as well due to higher heat and wind that would be great. But literally this evening I saw the same thing again walking around with the thousand protestors in close proximity to the police. According to the CDC the last super-spreader event in this area was 53.3% to 86.7% infected [0] but that was in an enclosed space.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e6.htm

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#827

Post by blub » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:22 AM UTC

GiorgioG wrote: post #642

gridspy wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you do not die, you might have a very unpleasant experience with lasting consequences. Perhaps a better way to frame it would be - 2% (?) of patients have serious life-changing consequences. Those under 49 tend to survive them.

The problem for me is we don't have any way at this time of knowing at an individual level what the consequences are likely to be. I might have no symptoms if I get sick but I may transmit it my son (type 1 diabetic) who might die. Or maybe he'd be fine and I might die, etc. There's just no way to gauge what one's reaction might be to getting the coronavirus. A local, healthy 8 year old girl started having symptoms l…

That's really unfortunate with that young girl.

So far it looks like these are the absolute exception, but it does sadly happen that young healthy people and kids too get seriously sick and sometimes even die.

The German pediatric association publishes some (incomplete) stats about the disease in children (https://dgpi.de/covid-19-survey-update-kw22/) and there were so far 159 hospitalizations, with 21 of those in intensive care. 140 kids were released, 1 died. ~9600 <19yos registered as sick with COVID.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#828

Post by NotSammyHagar » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:23 AM UTC

gbpz wrote: post #629

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #493

There's every reason we should see a good increase in cv19 spreading, because there is no reason for it not to. Washington State's daily number on Sunday, June 7 is 450 new pos cases, [1] which was last seen on the first of April. 2 months later coming back to early April numbers. [2]. We are testing 50% more per day (about 4k/day in early April, 6k/day now). Even though we increased testing by 50%, it was only recen…

The haircut comments drive me up the wall, particularly if you know someone who owns a small business and their accompanying struggles. Economic money movement was stalled, which can have an enormous impact on livelihood. While I can absolutely understand being critical of when protestors wanted things to re-open, it shows a deliberate attempt at being unable to empathize.

I am empathetic with those who will lose small businesses. I have someone in my family personally affected.

I think the potential customers who wanted to get a haircut or their nails done were making a less important request than the person who is losing their livelihood. That is a different issue than the impact on the small business owner who is devastated by this. Someone in my family is facing financial devastation because they work in the wedding industry and all weddings are of course on hold. This person could lose everything. Yet I don't want my or anyone else's old relatives to die because of more spreading. Also my niece has a job in a restaurant that isn't open any more - they tried to open but not enough customers came.

With the people going to protests, we are certain to have increased infections in a week or two.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#829

Post by blub » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:26 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #611

smsm42 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They…

To me, that seems like fairly precise language. They’re saying they do not believe the risk level is sufficiently high to condemn the gatherings. It doesn’t seem much different than saying grocery store visits are not condemned as risky, while music store visits are condemned as risky. The virus doesn’t care about what you’re shopping for either, it’s just that shopping for food is more important (by their estimation…

"They’re saying they do not believe the risk level is sufficiently high to condemn the gatherings."

But that's obviously nonsense, given that not all of the participants wear masks, distance cannot be kept, they stay at the same location for a longer time and some are chanting/yelling.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#830

Post by blub » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 7:28 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #548

smsm42 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission That's a shining example of weasel speak. They don't explicitly say it's not risky - because that would be plain lying, it is obviously risky - but they are saying they are not condemning it as risky. Which most people would take as implying it's not actually risky - even though they are not saying that. They…

This isn't weasel speak at all. They're pretty clear that it's risky. They're just saying that they won't condemn protestors as taking frivolous risks the way anti-lockdown protestors or fun-seekers are. Police brutality, systemic racism, income inequality are all major public health risks in their own right.

Actually that's a good point and damn scary: anti-lockdown protests are very risky, but these are supposed to be fine?

Not being in the US, I hadn't realized the incredible double-standard at play. The US seems to be almost completely paralyzed in trying to deal with this virus, various social dynamics that have been festering for decades are coming to light now.