211–220 of 404 posts
"Taking full precautions against airborne transmission would require major changes at hospitals" Major changes such as, er, occasionally opening a window to let some fresh air in? That's a basic, obvious precaution that's been known since the dawn of time that wasn't done at all in the UK hospital ward where my mother caught and then died from Covid late last year. I know because I was there. The cluelessness re. vir…
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I think anybody with a feeling to go with the words 'exponential growth' could tell that this virus was going to be a huge problem from very early on. That turned out to be a surprisingly small minority.
Every infectious disease spreads exponentially, but not all of them turn into pandemics.
Certainly, after the outbreak escaped China, the only thing I remember finding surprising about the pandemic was how badly the West handled it. A lot of people had exactly the same takeaway.
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> 2. CDC (I believe) was claiming that N95 masks won't help as much as other masks. Later it turned out they just didn't want to create scarcity for N95 masks because hospitals need them. The messaging IIRC was a little more nuanced, but delivered poorly The US and other countries faced a mask shortage at the beginning of the pandemic. Masks don't provide absolute protection, but they do reduce viral load exposure (a…
> The messaging IIRC was a little more nuanced, but delivered poorly No, there was no nuance here and everyone in this thread is mis-remembering or mis-understood what actually happened. Masks don't work against COVID. They never did. They don't reduce viral load or anything else either. In fact there was no evidence of masks doing much of anything in the scientific literature pre-COVID (post-COVID it's been polluted…
This would be absolutely shredded in a scientific paper, which is why it's a blog post rather than part of the literature.
Early 2020 the Dutch Maurice de Hond, who studies social geography, noticed a pattern in outbreaks. His conclusion at the time also was transmission via aerosols. But because he had no related degree in virology most people ignored him. Now two years later everybody agrees with him. It's sad that people are too proud to cooperate with other people working in other domains (and sometimes even in the same domain).
I have worked in cybersecurity both as a product developer and a bounty hunter / pen tester. One of my sisters is a housewife and former kindergarten teacher. She believes the 2020 US presidential election was “stolen”, partly by being hacked by China (the Mr. Pillow Guy CEO hypothesis). She knows nothing about the details of the domain, but she has a strong conviction opinion on the topic. I spent a lot of time inve…
We have learned that while medical doctors are domain experts in treating diseases, they are not domain experts in how infectious diseases spread around. Some doctors follow the front lines of science, whereas other doctors refuse to update their knowledge, and stick to what their old textbooks say.
And we have learned that when it comes to airborne diseases, even epidemiologists are not domain experts. Epidemiologist are more trained in statistics and abstract mathematical models. With statistics, they know how to observe epidemics. With mathematical models, that can make bad predictions on how the epidemic progresses, but these predictions turned out to be wrong more often than not. Now nobody makes these predictions anymore, they have lost credibility.
But they are not trained in physics to actually understand the physical mechanisms of how the virus can spread from one person to others.
And that public health is also a matter of economics and engineering, and again medical doctors are not good domain experts here. Medical doctors can advice you not to drink dirty water, but population scale water hygiene is a matter of civil engineering. If we want air hygiene, we have to turn to engineers.
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Amazing that in reply to an article about Covid being classified as airborne and transmitted as an aerosol, with specific concern for indoor venues due to wide variation in ventilation, there are still comments like this this about bodily autonomy. As if clothes weren’t already a requirement for visiting your public venue of choice.
"But clothes" isn't an argument.
Go on then, tell us why you feel a mask is an infringement on your bodily autonomy but pants shirt shoes aren’t.
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> Which governments specifically? Erm, the US and UK ? Their handling has been dire. We all remember Boris Johnson going on TV and when asked about the images coming out of Italy said "Well, its nothing to worry about, you'll have to just take it on the chin". Every man and his dog could see the slow car-crash coming. First China, then Asia, then Western Europe... the statistics and TV coverage was all there for ever…
> We all remember Boris Johnson going on TV and saying "Well, you'll have to just take it on the chin". You remember wrongly. He said we considered taking it on the chin, but decided against it. I think Boris has done very badly in his handling of the pandemic; given how many bad decisions he made, it's strange that people seem fixated on this thing he didn't say.
Even if this is true, the very fact that it was even an option that came up in discussion in Cabinet says a lot.
By the time Boris started appearing on TV, COVID was already on the UK doorstep having marched through China, Asia and Europe.
By that time, even a five year old kid could have told you that "taking it on the chin" was not up for discussion.
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> We all remember Boris Johnson going on TV and saying "Well, you'll have to just take it on the chin". You remember wrongly. He said we considered taking it on the chin, but decided against it. I think Boris has done very badly in his handling of the pandemic; given how many bad decisions he made, it's strange that people seem fixated on this thing he didn't say.
> He said we considered taking it on the chin, but decided against it. Even if this is true, the very fact that it was even an option that came up in discussion in Cabinet says a lot. By the time Boris started appearing on TV, COVID was already on the UK doorstep having marched through China, Asia and Europe. By that time, even a five year old kid could have told you that "taking it on the chin" was not up for discus…
Governments who "didn't want to create a panic" just flat-out lied. They broke the public trust and did incalculable, permanent damage to societies' ability to react to crises in the future. It was self-serving, short-sighted, and frankly, the worst possible outcome. They clearly did not avoid a panic, did not avoid massive consequences, but, in the long run, deliberately injected distrust, hatred, and fear, deepenin…
Which governments specifically? Also, you say that they failed to avoid panic but where have you seen some? From what I’ve seen some governments said a few incorrect or misleading things at a time where we had a lot of uncertainty and contradictory information. And then corrected once information became better. Overall western governments (I’m mostly familiar with Western Europe and the US) have been quite good at co…
> have been quite good at communicating in the middle of a global pandemics
Have they? It's a horrible back and forth, not based on any evidence. New rules are announced and rescinded a week later (e.g. Germany not ending quarantine of infected after all this week). During lockdowns, people were allowed to work in the same offices if required, but meeting anyone from outside your household was forbidden. Couples were arrested for sitting at the beach. I personally experienced police harassment for leaving the house. Green pass validity is still jumping back and forth (Austria). Let's not even get started on the endless amounts of lies, inaccuracies and moving goal posts surrounding the disappointing covid vaccines, the blacked out contracts to buy BILLIONS of them and the rejection of natural immunity after infection. Our governments have absolutely failed us and lost the last ounces of our trust they had.
"Taking full precautions against airborne transmission would require major changes at hospitals" Major changes such as, er, occasionally opening a window to let some fresh air in? That's a basic, obvious precaution that's been known since the dawn of time that wasn't done at all in the UK hospital ward where my mother caught and then died from Covid late last year. I know because I was there. The cluelessness re. vir…
i’m sorry for your loss. there’s no doubt that governmental denial and reckless mismanagement - especially prevalent in the early days of the pandemic - is directly responsible for the deaths of many. the whole thing has been utterly shambolic.
honestly though, that’s not the thing that angers me the most. it’s the large number of people that think the government handled the pandemic well.
i think we’re doomed as a country, potentially even a species.
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How many do you think are scared of becoming pariahs by saying anything counter to popular narrative? I'd say it's a significant number. Wouldn't want to lose the chance to ever get a research project funded again.
If they have the data that supports their claims, papers who counter the popular narrative are about the most valuable thing a scientist can publish to further their career. Nobody cites papers that just reproduce existing results.