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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

#251

Post by GeekyBear »

lisasays wrote: post #249
GeekyBear wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Because not all the air goes through the sides.

How does that prevent Covid from passing through the sides?

> Just because N95s are clearly better doesn't mean disposables are useless.

They are useless because they cannot possibly filter the virus out of the air that you breathe.

I like the way a member of President Biden's Covid advisory group put it.

If it can't prevent you from smelling cigarette smoke in the room, it cannot filter out Covid, since the smoke particles are on the same order of size.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#252

Post by [deleted] »

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,…

[deleted]

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#253

Post by Amezarak »

hn976827 wrote: post #214
dahfizz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In hindsight, no biggy, how dare they made everybody sanitize their hands all the time. I think you're really underplaying this. If the FDA hadn't suspended the rules about benzene, then fine. No biggy. But the government literally encouraged people to slather themselves with carcinogens on a hunch that it might help with COVID. I would even be fine with it if we had proof that hand sanitizer was the most effective…

When the real thing hits, a few carcinogens here and there will be ok if it saves civilization. The air in the average U.S. city is full of carcinogens, on top of volunteer smoking and drinking. Have you been as upset about that recently? Been out campaigning for more trains and less smoking? And we won't have time for waiting for proof that it does or doesn't work. Of course in hindsight everybody is smart. But when…

Hand sanitizer is almost useless. It’s washing your hands that’s effective.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#254

Post by jethro_tell »

marcosdumay wrote: post #232
jethro_tell wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, also, until we knew that it wasn't transmitted through the air, we should have been recommending masking with high quality masks. That right there could have changed the vector of this whole thing. Instead, 6 months in when we knew it was transmitted through air, we continued to make businesses sanitize their checkouts while people walked around in ineffective cloth masks. Really fucked the dog there.

> That right there could have changed the vector of this whole thing. Keep in mind the disease was already all over the world when it was discovered.

It was but it became more mask resistant over time. Putting on masks in Jan 2020 could have made a huge difference instead of waiting until mid year to say mask, and then say mask with an n95.

Obviously, there's a preparedness issue which is probably the base root of that issue, but early enthusiastic masking instead of trying to send all the construction workers home probably would have gone a lot farther.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#255

Post by lisasays »

GeekyBear wrote: post #251
lisasays wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Because not all the air goes through the sides. How does that prevent Covid from passing through the sides? > Just because N95s are clearly better doesn't mean disposables are useless. They are useless because they cannot possibly filter the virus out of the air that you breathe. I like the way a member of President Biden's Covid advisory group put it. If it can't prevent you from smelling cigarette smoke in the ro…

It doesn't block it entirely of course - it just means that you get somewhat less of it. According to researchers, enough to mitigate the risk by a fair amount.

Unfortunately we're going in circles here, and I'm going to have to bow out. You can believe whatever you want, about basic physics or anything else. It's a free planet, after all.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#256

Post by GeekyBear »

lisasays wrote: post #255
GeekyBear wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because not all the air goes through the sides. How does that prevent Covid from passing through the sides? > Just because N95s are clearly better doesn't mean disposables are useless. They are useless because they cannot possibly filter the virus out of the air that you breathe. I like the way a member of President Biden's Covid advisory group put it. If it can't prevent you from smelling cigarette smoke in the ro…

It doesn't block it entirely of course - it just means that you get somewhat less of it. According to researchers, enough to mitigate the risk by a fair amount. Unfortunately we're going in circles here, and I'm going to have to bow out. You can believe whatever you want, about basic physics or anything else. It's a free planet, after all.

A disposable mask with open sides doesn't 'block" it at all.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#257

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

During the initial lockdowns, I strolled into a Beauty Supply storefront at the mall, and innocently asked for some Barbicide. That's the commercial-grade sanitizer that's blue; barbers drop combs into a branded glass bottle.

The first one or two times they said "gee, sorry, no" and explained the supply chain problems and they haven't seen a shipment in a long time. After that it became sort of a comedy where I would hardly expect them to stock it anymore for ordinary mortals. I meticulously priced out beard trimmers and hair clippers for personal use.

However, the barbers still seemed to sanitize OK. (I did have to switch to one that would trim my beard and not force me to keep a mask on during the service.) On a related note, even during the egg crisis, I've inadvertently ordered food featuring eggs at restaurants and I was not noticeably overcharged.

It all just goes to show you the disparity in the commercial vs. personal supply chains. It was explained to me that commercial food service has extremely different requirements in terms of packaging, volume, pre-preparations, shipping, processing and ingredients, and during the lockdowns, the world feebly attempted a massive shift in those supply chains, and that's partly why they had problems, because they are not interchangeable.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#258

Post by NotYourLawyer »

lesuorac wrote: post #242
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gasoline already has benzene in it. Adding a tiny bit more with the ethanol doesn’t matter.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#259

Post by loeg »

lesuorac wrote: post #242
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Benzene combusts to carbon dioxide and water, which are both relatively harmless.

(Gasoline is also not something you want on your skin.)

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#260

Post by JPKab »

Zancarius wrote: post #211
JPKab wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "BEFORE VACCINES, BEFORE masks, before much at all was known about how the novel coronavirus spread and whether it lived on surfaces (remember wiping down grocery bags with Lysol?)" There is a strong "what were they thinking" behind this because we found out very early on that this virus didn't spread on surfaces, by spring 2020. But the public health apparatus found that keeping people as fearful as possible (even…

I know of people who still won't go to church because of all of the above and are, for all intents and purposes, still deathly afraid to leave their homes. Regardless of what some might say in argument against your point(s), I absolutely do think that part of the public health emergency was the abject panic that ensued following COVID. I stopped exercising caution earlier on in the pandemic, because in my estimation…

Both you and I had similar experiences.

My wife was hospitalized for unknown bacterial infection what the doctors assumed was caused by masks.

I contracted covid in February 2021, before my age group was eligible for vaccine. Like you I had recognized relatively early on that my level of physical fitness and nutrition likely made it low risk for me. Like you I had minimal symptoms except for a total loss of sense of smell. And also like you I encountered a completely irrational response when I would tell people months later I caught it. This included people who should have been educated enough to know better.

The really fun part was then having people pretend like the fact I had caught covid and recovered from it didn't translate into immunity. This despite the fact that only months earlier they had been asking people who had recover from covid to come in and donate plasma to help treat vulnerable patients. And also despite the fact that there had already been studies including millions of data points from Israel and Qatar that showed natural immunity to be robust.

Like most things with covid, the null hypothesis was inverted. Instead of assuming that like the vast majority of viruses, natural immunity was a thing, they inverted it to assuming that natural immunity was not a thing until proven otherwise.

Living in Boulder, one of my favorite things was noticing how the same exact people who refuse to eat genetically modified vegetables for produce of any kind elevated a genetic products efficacy above the organic immunity provided by the human body fighting off the actual virus.

No matter your position on natural immunity from covid, I think we can all agree that a person refusing to eat genetically modified produce having this opinion is irrational and inconsistent.

I think I eventually concluded that the vast majority of the public are mathematically and statistically illiterate, and therefore are incapable of understanding science despite claiming that they "follow the science". In case anyone thinks I'm only picking on one side, I also have a half-brother who is obese and in his fifties who refused to get the vaccine when he obviously should have. He ended up catching the virus and being bedridden for over a week at his house, and then hid this from the family until his wife told us.

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