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The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

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Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#241

Post by lisasays »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #220
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the unmasked vastly outnumber the masked it's not for social approval. I still mask (N95) in places because I haven't been sick since 2019 and it makes me happy. There's very few people left who mask. The social pressure is very much to take off the mask.

Yeah, simply “social approval” isn’t the right way to put it. What I mean is more nuanced - a feeling of “doing the right thing” and demonstrating that one is “doing the right thing”, as conditioned by one’s own social circle.

Surely those drivers exist. They just don't seem to be the primary factor, for most folks.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#242

Post by lesuorac »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #153
thereisnospork wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educated guess: From its use as an azeotrope breaker in the distillation of ethanol from water. Normally its impossible to achieve greater than ~95% ethanol from an ethanol water mixture, but it is possible to achieve ~100% ethanol from a water/benzene/ethanol mixture[0]. [0]There of course have been methods invented which do not involve benzene.

Makes sense. And benzene is fine for ethanol you’re mixing with gasoline.

Not a scientist but I mean mixing a toxic chemical with something that you burn around people sounds not fine.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#243

Post by lesuorac »

JohnFen wrote: post #54
revelio wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was clear by March 2020 when the passengers on the Diamond Princess were all locked down in their cabins and COVID didn't care at all, managing to infect people all over the ship essentially at random. This is only possible if it is able to spread long distances via the air; if transmission were droplet or surface based that would have ended the outbreak immediately. Please don't cite the CDC for anything, they're…

> they're utterly discredited. I see no reason to think that. Sure, mistakes were made (as is expected), but utterly discredited? That's a bit over the top.

Not utterly discredited but definitely consider their press releases with the same amount of skepticism as a corporate press release.

Like from now on, if they say "its not airborne" assume "it can transmit in the air" (i.e. droplets or by insects). If they say "there's no evidence of X" assume "We don't think X is false".

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#244

Post by ifyoubuildit »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #177
pessimizer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "hindsight" distraction can literally be used to excuse any mistake. It always involves completely dismissing a large group of experts who were right at the time, and for all the right reasons. > how were they supposed to know, by looking into their crystal ball? They certainly pretended that they knew hard enough to react in an extreme way.

The 'hindsight' does come into play. At the beginning of quarantine, they still didn't know what was happening, some countries were having 10% mortality, people were dying, bodies were stacking up. But, oh, so sorry we jumped the gun, next time we'll let it rampage before doing anything.

> some countries were having 10% mortality

Huh? Like 1 in 10 people that caught the virus died? Where do you think this happened?

This may have been true for very tiny portions of the pouplation, like people over the age of 90 (who had a 20% ifr according to https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...) but otherwise the country with the highest ifr seems to be portugal at 2%, and even that would have been heavily concentrated in those who were at risk of death from just about anything due to age and comorbidities.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#245

Post by Raidion »

emodendroket wrote: post #204
tomatocracy wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We knew very early on that plain soap and water were very effective at killing coronavirus (and much, much more so than alcohol gel hand sanitizer). It was even official advice here in the UK to use soap and water instead of alcohol gel for hand washing if at all possible I think. Yet many people still seemed to think the exact opposite. They still have it alongside soap in my office bathrooms for example. It makes a…

As a point of clarification, were they effective at "killing" the virus or just mechanically removing it from one's hands?

It does kill it because the soap breaks up fats in the virus.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#246

Post by lesuorac »

emodendroket wrote: post #210
lynx23 wrote: post #17

TL;DR: If all media tell you the same thing over and over again, just don't do it and you should be safe. Propaganda is propaganda, don't get confused if many people around you fall for it, just stay on your path and trust your intuition and supress the urge to follow the herd.

Yeah, that's why I use a charcoal grill inside. The media keeps saying to use it outside but I can't trust them.

And charcoal always goes on sale going into the winter so its just so economical to heat the whole house.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#247

Post by thatfrenchguy »

gordian-mind wrote: post #231
zvmaz wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The obvious fearmongering and irrationality, especially from so-called "experts", was quite intense and prolific in Canada, too. So much death and suffering and bereavement and sorrow the scale of which I have never witnessed in my entire life and I still read comments like these. Baffling! A more serious take: excess deaths worldwide put us at 20+ millions deaths [1]. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/c…

This is bogus data, they took the officially reported numbers -- which were insane because they reported 'covid deaths' without taking into account comorbidities --, and quadrupled them for 'reasons'. > So much death and suffering and bereavement and sorrow the scale of which I have never witnessed in my entire life and I still read comments like these. Baffling! You should be ashamed of yourself for this hyperbole,…

This is looking at total excess deaths. Those numbers are reliable, esp in middle to high income countries, because you're looking at the total deaths.

See https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... for example.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#248

Post by GeekyBear »

lisasays wrote: post #237
GeekyBear wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A disposable mask with open sides cannot possibly filter particles that small out of the air you breathe. 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.

A disposable mask with open sides cannot possibly filter particles that small out of the air you breathe. 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.

> From basic physics -- of course it can.

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...

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#249

Post by lisasays »

GeekyBear wrote: post #248
lisasays wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A disposable mask with open sides cannot possibly filter particles that small out of the air you breathe. 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.

> From basic physics -- of course it can. 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/cov…

Because not all the air goes through the sides. Some of it goes through, you know, the mask itself.

Just because N95s are clearly better doesn't mean disposables are useless. Because, like, basic logic and stuff.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#250

Post by BitPolice »

acyou wrote: post #58

This issue is a wrecking ball being swung first this way, then the other way, to create division, hatred, polarization, radicalization and the feeling of being marginalized on all sides. Who benefits from consuming this article? Was it not mass media used as a primary vector to create the hysteria in the first place? And will the wheel not again soon turn, so that the criticized can criticize the criticizers from the…

I didn't read the article as playing blame-games or stoking hatred, personally. The author does kind of walk through a timeline from 2020 to now about hand sanitizer; but that felt more like just a timeline. Yeah, we all kind of freaked out about washing early on (I had a UV-C sterilizer in an aluminum foil lined box (!!!)), but each of us was doing our best during an emergency. That, at least, is the sense I got from that part of the article. I realize the article set you off, and I could totally see that happening to me in different circumstances, so just want to say that I get it. But, speaking for myself, I liked this article because it made me think about something I hadn't before so I thought I'd share that perspective.

The article talks about how there's tons of left over hand sanitizer we now have to deal with. I personally just never spared a thought for there now being many millions of gallons of this stuff sitting around. I also hadn't ever thought about how they can't sell or give away or cheaply dispose of it, so it's just sitting there being all haz-matty and stuff. And, I can absolutely see some low-margin operators looking for an out in that situation.

Anyway, I'd encourage anyone who liked the article to read the complaint the county filed in this instance. It's not short but it's a pretty quick read. Start at "Pre-Fire Violations of the Hazardous Materials Laws at the Property" if you just want to read the timeline [according to the Plaintiffs] there's also lots of pictures. It does sounds like the authorities were trying to do the right thing, but the company [allegedly] ignored the repeated citations. See: https://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/lac/1118231_CountyvProlog...

That made me wonder whether there are any other facilities improperly storing this stuff. To be clear, this isn't political code; I'm not saying we need different laws, not drawing parallels to the Beirut or Tianjin warehouse explosions and saying we now suck, or drawing parallels to the Ohio rail fire and how we keep defunding and defanging government safety inspectors... Instead, this is an article talking specifically about an industrial accident and the many Americans who suffered. I had never heard about it previously, found it interesting, and learned something both from the article and by following up and looking into it a bit more myself.

Anyway, while I respect your opinion, speaking for myself I don't see this article creating any sort of division... I mean, between who? You and me and everyone who reads the article versus people who [allegedly] improperly store dangerous chemicals in residential areas despite multiple citations to stop doing that? That's the sort of polarization I don't mind.

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