131–140 of 177 posts
Imagine the archeologists in the year 100,000, sorting through rock samples and going "oh look, there's the mask pollution from the great 2020 pandemic"
The Master, Douglas Adams, already covered this: https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/s/840887
It’s surprising that after a year, people still haven’t figured out that reusable elastomer respirators with long life replaceable filter cartridges and >99% small particle filtration effectiveness are the best option from the perspectives of safety, overall cost and sustainability. I’ve been using the same pre pandemic 3M P100 industrial respirator with a retrofitted exhalation valve filter for months. It fits with…
I don't know about the estimates, but as an avid hiker/runner, everywhere I go.. on any trail, I'll see more then a few masks lying on the ground. In every parking lot, there are masks lying about. People are definitely losing/tossing masks, and not all of them are going to get swept up by cleaning functions in commercial areas.
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I've thought about it a little. If everything is digital and in deprecated formats then there could be a sort of "dark ages"... even without some kind of end of world scenario to wipe out the evidence. We could simply just forget how to access it. Eg: in yr 3030 will we still know how to open pdfs ,flash files, or say PS4 games?
There’s already “digital dark ages” and it’s a reason archive.org and retro tech collection is so important. From the 70s-90s most consumer tech was thrown in land fill when people were finished with it. There wasn’t yet much of a “collector” mentality because it wasn’t old enough to be cool, and there was such a mad rush to always have the newest developments in that tech-honeymoon period that people threw the old s…
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We have a lot of documentation and clues, so it shouldn't be that bad. There are decades of rants about the shortcomings of the pdf format, at least :) Those formats are also more logical(ish) than human language, so reverse engineering them should be possible in some cases. Also, there will be plenty of 'rosetta stones' around: media that exists in both an obsolete format and a more recent, better understood one.
Very interesting points. Thanks for giving me food for thought
It’s surprising that after a year, people still haven’t figured out that reusable elastomer respirators with long life replaceable filter cartridges and >99% small particle filtration effectiveness are the best option from the perspectives of safety, overall cost and sustainability. I’ve been using the same pre pandemic 3M P100 industrial respirator with a retrofitted exhalation valve filter for months. It fits with…
And you wonder why, after a year, “people” haven’t widely adopted them? Honestly, this is such a prime HN comment I’m not sure you’re not trolling.
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But this assumes some level of knowledge/understanding of the subject at hand. If I read research papers about Covid (assuming I have the time) I doubt I'd be able to follow the arguments or understand the nuances of conclusions, caveats and so on... Time is also a problem as I mentioned above. This approach essentially duplicates the effort needed to analyse and distill the research. To me it kind of reads as "all d…
Not all articles that digest the information some are equally bad about making "all news bad news" for the sake of being an attention whore. "Duplicating" effort to do your own analysis is better than drinking the koolaid on shitty ideas that will royally fuck you over if you believe them and then someday having to deprogram yourself from their shitty ideas if you actually want your life to work. Current research on…
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People throw away trash (empty soda bottles, candy wraps etc) a lot easier than they'd throw away a device meant to protect their (and others) health. The real number has to be waaay below 1%.
Surgical masks are disposable for a reason, they eventually get dirty, damp, and smelly. They can't ordinarily be cleaned, so they go in the trash. It's not at all weird if a single-digit percentage point of a disposable item doesn't make it into a proper landfill.
> They enter oceans when they are littered, when waste management systems are inadequate or non-existent, or when these systems become overwhelmed due to increased volumes of waste.
I was arguing that because of the first reason (litter) face masks are thrown into nature way less compared to other plastics in general. It's unfortunately relatively common to just throw away plastic bottles after use, as well as when eating candy. Those are the two most common pieces of litter I see everywhere. Go have a look at a pile of litter somewhere and try to estimate the percentage of masks among the plastic. That was the point I was trying to make.
For the two latter reasons (mismanagement of waste) the end result would probably be more or less the same regardless of the type.
Ultimately the real percentage of facemasks depends on the ratio between these "means of loss". And even though from my (western) perspective trash doesn't end up in the sea when thrown away, there are countries like India and other developing or poor countries that might make the littering statistic insignificant. On the other hand they are also unlikely to use masks to the same extent as in the western world...
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People who say that masks aren’t the answer frankly mystify me. If you were to tell a child “there is a disease that is spread from our breath. What do you think a good solution would be?” I would be dollars to donuts that their answer would be “what about a mask?” The answer is so obvious that even a child could come up with it. And it takes an adult to convince themselves otherwise. Even science says that masks are…
I live with a serious, incurable respiratory condition. I have many years of experience of managing it by first and foremost not exposing myself to germs rather than cavalierly exposing myself and hoping a little cloth over my face will somehow fix it. But based on this comment and all the downvotes, it seems the decision to not pursue a blog in earnest promoting the idea "That maybe we can find a better-er answer" w…
But having masks and learning how to wear them properly allows people to engage in almost normal social gatherings. This is based on the fractional levels of infections in countries with extremely high compliance like Korea and Japan.
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Not all articles that digest the information some are equally bad about making "all news bad news" for the sake of being an attention whore. "Duplicating" effort to do your own analysis is better than drinking the koolaid on shitty ideas that will royally fuck you over if you believe them and then someday having to deprogram yourself from their shitty ideas if you actually want your life to work. Current research on…
At the risk of appearing cynical or condescending - do you have any links or references to studies about press consumption and it's impact on views/mental health/general wellbeing etc.? I'd be legitimately interested in reading that (I do read research papers when I want to make sure I understand something well - just not all the time)
But here are my first two hits, which both appear to link out to actual supporting studies:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...
https://www.lifehack.org/532866/five-reasons-why-consuming-n...