Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

This coronavirus might have spread to ~10,000 people and already jumped to Italy before anyone was aware there was a brewing medical crisis.

https://www.econlib.org/great-moments-in-epidemiology/

He did enormous damage in 1983 by speculating about casual transmission of HIV within households even though he admitted to not having read the paper. He was slow to get up to speed on aerosol transmission this time around.

The comment at the bottom of that page also contains this gem from Oprah Winfrey in 1987:

> Research studies now project that one in five—listen to me, hard to believe—one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That’s by 1990. One in five. It is no longer just a gay disease. Believe me.

Obviously that never happened. I was 12 that year and this sort of stuff terrorized us, even though it was based on highly dubious modeling, plus belief by public health officials in the promulgation of nobel lies.

I think we should have learned that groupthink and motivated reasoning can lead to all sorts of ancillary damage not just to psychological health, but to reduced trust in institutions, heightened political polarization, massive misallocation of resources, and putting focus on the wrong places.

We should have learned that being honest about what is known and what isn’t known and placing trust in the public leads to the public placing trust in public health authorities when it really matters. Credibility is extremely important to maintain, and protecting and encouraging a robust debate is paramount to discovering the truth and making better decisions.

Everyone should have been masking up as soon as possible in the pandemic. Case counts were low, we didn't know much about the route of transmission, and we also thought it was even more dangerous than it turned out to be. Precautions were indicated, but health authorities were decrying mask use as late as the end of March.

But it turns out that the primary vector is aerosols, not droplets or fomites. Any mask will mitigate droplet contamination, and the resulting fomites: this is why influenza has practically disappeared, masking is very effective against influenza, where those are the primary vector.

But no mask will do much to filter aerosols on exhalation. That's simply not how they work, positive pressure puts most of the gasses out through the sides of the mask. Even a P100 filter with cartridges won't do it, that's why they have a vent, otherwise the face seal would be broken every time one exhales. To be generous, I'll say that a cloth mask catches 30% of aerosols. It doesn't, but say it does: that's not nearly good enough. Which case counts after universal masking mandates illustrate quite clearly: they rise, and fall, and the masks don't have anything to do with it.

A good mask will filter some aerosols when inhaling: but a cloth mask won't. So once aerosols were identified as the culprit, WHO and CDC should have emphasized air filtration, which is quite effective, limiting the number of people indoors on the basis of how many air exchanges a HEPA or ULPA filter was capable of doing. Messaging should have emphasized that cloth and surgical masks are completely useless, and that at-risk people should stay home, and if they can't, should get a proper mask (KN94, (K)N95, P100) and learn how to use it. COVID doesn't survive on surfaces very long, so reuse is more-or-less ok, and there were plenty of proper masks by June, which is when these facts were available. If WHO and CDC had listened to them.

I vape, so I can illustrate this to myself quite easily: I can hit the vape through a cloth mask, but not a KN94. And with any mask, I can take a hit, put it on, and exhale a visible cloud of, yep, aerosols, around the side of the mask.

I still wear a KN94 indoors, it's the best I can do. But I'm walking around in indoor spaces with no HEPA filters, surrounded by people who are unprotected, just wearing a talisman. This was preventable.

> It's what happens when your public health system is overloaded. Every single thing that requires that system (i.e. more or less any healthcare situation that can't be resolved via teledoc or its equivalent) is now a potentially fatal situation. People die from COVID-19 because of the overload, but they would also die from car accidents, knife accidents, serious bacterial infections and more - all of which may have been successfully treated had the system not been overloaded.

It is believed that SARS-CoV-2 can easily mutate to evade current vaccines, and it is just a matter of time before it happens. People with chronic illnesses, along with the disabled, really need to be thinking in the very long-term, wherever they reside.

I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent). I live in Croatia, and I am culturally American. I hold dual citizenship in the US and the European Union (Croatia). I left for Croatia right at the start of the pandemic. I feel so lucky, and quite guilty, that my health has improved during the pandemic, thanks to Croatia. Many of my chronically ill and disabled American friends have become so much more sick during this pandemic. I am so worried for them, and I am fighting every single day for them.

The fear is real and will never go away: I now use a device that is much better and efficient than an N95 or KN95 mask when I am around people. It is called a PAPR (powered air purifying respirator) and the device filters out 99.8% of impurities. I will probably do this for the rest of my life, as getting sick is just not worth it. For people who have health issues, this is something to very seriously consider. You can easily die from having to defer medical care, and I cannot afford to be in that situation. That is why I decided to get a PAPR. Mine can be worn in a hospital bed, 24/7, including when lying down, and the battery lasts for 14 hours. You can also charge a spare battery while the PAPR is in use, and the PAPR that I have uses a standard USB-C charger, and the spare battery itself is inexpensive. The PAPR I have is called the Optrel Swiss Air [1]. It is a PAPR with a really nice mask form-factor, but it does not require a qualitative fit test (which N95 masks and other tight-fitting masks do) to ensure its seal and filtering capability. It filters 99.8% of impurities. Unfortunately, it does not have any source-control, as it has exhalation valves. But, I got a hoodie-styled balaclava which I put over the mask of the PAPR [2], for source control. This is probably the best PAPR to use if you are chronically ill and need protection long-term.

There is another PAPR worth looking into that is innovative and extremely cool looking, called the CleanSpace Halo [3]. It also has source control features [4][5], which makes it a good choice. However, it requires a qualitative fit test, to ensure proper fit, so filtration occurs at the guaranteed rate. But, the tight fitting mask affords it 99.97% filtration protection. You also have to be more careful when donning (putting on) the mask, to ensure that you have a proper seal, so that its filtration is guaranteed, for your safety, compared to the Optrel Swiss Air. It appears that you can use it lying down (but I am not sure). However, the seal of the mask (it is supposed to be a tight-fitting mask with a strong seal all the time--the Optrel Swiss Air does not have this issue) could be compromised very easily by lying down. So, the Optrel Swiss Air is probably a better choice, especially as it is does not require a tight seal. Also, the Optrel Swiss Air is a very small backpack device, so there is almost no weight on your neck, unlike the CleanSpace Halo. The CleanSpace Halo is extremely neat though!

[1] Optrel Swiss Air: https://optrel.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/swiss-air-folde...

[2] What I use for source control for the Optrel Swiss Air: https://www.etsy.com/listing/911933127/handmade-fleece-hoodi...

[3] CleanSpace Halo: https://cleanspacetechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/...

[4] Official CleanSpace Halo Source Control Apparatus: https://cleanspacetechnology.com/healthusa/wp-content/upload...

[5] DIY 3D Print for CleanSpace Halo Source Control Apparatus: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/various/cleanspace-halo-exha...

The "Murdoch" press includes newspapers such as "The Australian" and "The Telegraph" in Australia, "Fox", "WSJ" and "New York Post" in the US, "Sky" and newspapers such as "The Sun" in the UK. They quote each other, as if they are independent sources (in this case the story in " The Australian" was first published in "The Telegraph"), but in reality they are all one source, with the Murdoch family exercising ultimate editorial control.

That's the background to the use of the term "Murdoch". It's not referring to the person but identifying a group of media companies that are effectively a single source.