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The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

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271–280 of 310 posts

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a thing in red states and areas? Like masking as a "fuck you I'm different?" signal? Because around me in super-liberal-coastal-land practically nobody masks, and the ones I know personally who sometimes do have underlying reasons to be more cautious (e.g. relatives undergoing nasty cancer treatments and such that they don't want to spread anything to). It's been like 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 people at the gym I g…

It's the opposite in red states. People harass strangers in public for wearing masks. Same vibe as the maskers in blue states. It's the never-maskers vs. the ever-maskers.

That’s a bit hyperbolic. I live in a red state and usually see a few masked people each day (typically elderly, minorities, or peacocks). One thing I have never seen is someone harassing someone in a mask.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#272
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious fearmongering and irrationality, especially from so-called "experts", was quite intense and prolific in Canada, too. Even as early as June of 2020, the public health authority in Canada's most-populous city (fourth highest population in North America) revealed that the counting of deaths was being done using a methodology that sounds quite dubious: "Individuals who have died with COVID-19, but not as a re…

> 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…

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Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#273
post #155

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Why did you fight them without medicine? More importantly how did you do it? I have tinnitus and almost all painkillers are ototoxic (I.e. they can make tinnitus worse). So I’m always in a catch 22 when it comes to treating my migraines.

There wasn’t much that worked well especially back then. CGRP blockers are a new thing. Some of that time was college and they don’t really do good healthcare for students. Much of the rest was unemployed and no healthcare. Then there’s the doctors/neuros who told me men don’t get migraines. Have you tried ginger? Maybe triphala (amla, ginger, and turmeric powder altogether). Ginger supposedly acts as a cgrp blocker…

Thanks for your response.

> Tinnitus does sound like quite the curse though.

It’s been about a decade now of constant ringing. Cicadas in my ears. For the most part I’m at peace with it. It’s like emotional quicksand, the more you fight it the worse you feel. I just don’t want it to get worse.

I don’t think silence makes it worse, but I’d does isolate the ringing so that it’s all I can hear. For that reason I prefer we’ll sealed iems to ancs.

I’ll look at that ginger cocktail you mentioned, thank you :). Coffee is a bit of a silver bullet for me. A strong coffee usually makes a huge difference. (Which used to make me think it was a caffeine addiction, but quitting caffeine didn’t stop the headaches).

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#274
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you fight them without medicine? More importantly how did you do it? I have tinnitus and almost all painkillers are ototoxic (I.e. they can make tinnitus worse). So I’m always in a catch 22 when it comes to treating my migraines.

There wasn’t much that worked well especially back then. CGRP blockers are a new thing. Some of that time was college and they don’t really do good healthcare for students. Much of the rest was unemployed and no healthcare. Then there’s the doctors/neuros who told me men don’t get migraines. Have you tried ginger? Maybe triphala (amla, ginger, and turmeric powder altogether). Ginger supposedly acts as a cgrp blocker…

Thanks for your response. For the most part I’m just at peace with it. It’s like emotional quicksand, the more you resent it the worse it gets. I just don’t want it to get worse.

I don’t think silence makes it worse, but I’d does isolate the ringing so that it’s all I can hear. For that reason I prefer we’ll sealed iems to ancs.

It’s been about a decade now of constant ringing.

I’ll look at that ginger cocktail you mentioned, thank you :). Do you take it as a medicine or as a supplement?

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had this pandemic turned out to kill 10% of the global population then it would definitely have been the right move. Turns out, that didn't happen. Because we were lucky regarding lethality, regarding contageousness, regardin speed of vaccine development. In hindsight, no biggy, how dare they made everybody sanitize their hands all the time. I worry about the real thing hitting someday. When the discussions start aga…

COVID-19 was nature giving us an astoundingly generous "dry run," and humanity utterly failed at nearly every step. I doubt we collectively learned anything, either. When the real thing hits, with, say, a 10+% death rate and cutting uniformly across age demographics, we're going to blow it again. We're going to politicize, downplay and ignore it again. We're going to have idiots out protesting it again. We'll eventua…

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Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#276
post #55

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It was very clear from where? https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

Obstinate appeal to authority to shut down dissenters is exactly how it took years for "The Science" to catch up to what had been obvious from the available data since 2020. From the masks to the social distancing, to denial of natural immunity and of vaccine side-effects. I agree with the sibling commentator - to anyone who was actually paying attention and considered the evidence from a variety of trustworthy sourc…

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Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they mask then? It seems a little hard to psychologically disentangle what one does for social approval vs for other reasons. For example, maybe it feels emotionally uncomfortable to not mask. Is it because the subconscious is worried about disease, or because the subconscious is worried about social approval? Probably some of both, but if we removed one perhaps the external behavior would change, hard to tell…

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.

I went by car through town today, own car, masked up since my gf was also in my car (also masked up), while she has a cold. The looks we got for this were ridiculous. We've isolated that way many times bow when one of us had a cold and it's working wonders and gives us a chance to go to places together despite one having a cold.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What amazes me is that some people choose to continue 100% masking for various reasons, but wear ineffective or poor fitting cloth masks or generic flat surgical masks with huge gaps, when comfortable and effective N95s from name brands are readily and inexpensively available. Or they just chin-diaper.

There are lots of reasons I continue to mask that have nothing to do with COVID. 1) To keep the sun off my face. 2) if there is a lot of pollen or dust in the air. 2) If I want to avoid long chats at the checkout counter that waste my time. 3) If I want to avoid having creeps tell me to smile or catcall.

Also one part of avoiding facial recognition, with glasses and maybe a hat.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#279
post #182

In all of these posts there is a strong 'what were they thinking' reaction. - remember hindsight. At the time, how were they supposed to know, by looking into their crystal ball? It was a fast, dynamically changing situation, everyone was getting sick, who a the time could say 'yeah, people are dying, but YOLO, no need to sanitize your hands.' Lot of freaking armchair quarterbacks in the 'lets criticize the medical c…

> "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…

> we found out very early on that this virus didn't spread on surfaces, by spring 2020

No we didn’t and it obviously can. What we found out is that it spreads very efficiently through aerosols, thereby making contact-based infection nearly irrelevant for public health.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#280
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…

> I suspect over-sanitization reduced our baseline immunity to your typical run-of-the-mill pathogens

This is an old wives’ tale, we’re swimming in pathogens at any moment of our lives. Our immune system is always working.

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