151–160 of 309 posts
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CDC budget for FY '18 was lower than FY '17. Source: https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2018/budget-in-brief/cdc/...
Maybe you should try contacting politifact with the correction? I dont disagree with your source obviously but several major fact checking websites are reporting the opposite.
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Yea this is really frustrating. I bought a box of 10 N-95s in January when I saw what was going on in China and figured they’d be good to have, since I have older people in my family who are in poor health (leukemia, diabetes, heart disease). Now since I’m shopping and cooking for them, I am trying really hard not to get sick so I wear a mask to the stores and I’m getting looks from people like I stole them from a ho…
>How about we blame the government for not ramping up production of masks back in January or not having a strategic reserve of masks, gloves and suits in a giant warehouse somewhere. You could rotate the stock though the marketplace during safe times so it would cost little. Probably less than the CDCs $110 million dollar visitors center. What kind of pandemic was the government preparing for? One that did not need n…
Some "bioterrorism" spectacle that would be localized to a small area, requiring only a small supply sold by a politically-connected middleman, who could mark up the price 30x while having no difficulty sourcing the modest quantity from a commercial supplier.
I think a lot of people in medicine, science, economics, policy and the media think what's happening right now is their shining moment, but if you talk to people on the ground -- this is a catastrophe and no one has any clue what's happening and people see that and they are internalizing it. The experts are f* this up and it is going to have long term implications for already eroded public trust in institutions.
From the casual observer point of view, it appears only some Asian governments have been able to competently handle this crisis. It appears we're going to learn the hard way things that China, South Korea, etc. understood through intuition: (1) Widespread testing is key. Testing symptomatic people is too little, too late. (2) You can't rely on people to self-quarantine. (3) Infected people need to be isolated from th…
The mask guidance is confusing as well. I get they are trying to preserve masks for medical staff. But, they also say it's mainly spread by coughing, sneezing, and resulting spray of bodily fluids. Surely even a scarf around your face would have some benefit? Yes, I get that the virus is small enough to pass through, but some deflection is better than none.
The messaging around masks has been so aggravating to me that I got together with a couple of colleagues to write a detailed, scientific mini-review / commentary:
https://medium.com/@matthiassamwald/promoting-simple-do-it-y...
The benefit of widespread mask usage by the general population is source control [0]. This works even if the person wearing the masks makes mistakes such as touching their face more while wearing the mask.
Also, it should be obvious that there is no downside to wide-spread mask usage by the general population. The countries that have so far the most control over the virus' spread are the ones where wearing masks is normal and often done to protect others when sick.
Importantly, if the goal is source control, then all sorts of makeshift mask designs can work. People in Japan and other countries are already getting really creative [2,3].
Of course, the problem that medical personnel might face even more shortages if everybody starts wearing medical grade masks is real and must be taken seriously. But that's not the only option we have.
[0] One reference amongst many, this commentary in the Lancet: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
[1] Compare growth rates here: https://studylib.net/coronavirus-growth
[2] https://www.cottontimemagazine.com/page/10
[3] https://mobile.twitter.com/nekohnd/status/122368673365439692...
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It's quite likely that in all the scenarios a mask may have a useful effect, N95 or better is the only time it works. For medical professionals in close contact with patients and dealing with airborne-protocol pathogens (which is what a droplet-mediated pathogens like SARS2 becomes classed as once patients are coughing and being intubated) then a bad mask is quite probably worse then no mask (this has precedent: inef…
This is about Influenza but I doubt it’s that different from Corona: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20497389/
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It's very irritating because people don't understand the concept of defense in depth. Are surgical masks going to give you total protection? Of course not, but as you say they provide SOME benefit. Saying "masks don't work because they don't fully stop the virus and users misuse them" is basically equivalent to saying "code review is a waste of time because it won't catch every bug and because devs don't do it correc…
If there are two "mental tools" I wish we could teach every person, they are exponential growth and statistical thinking. Neither is intuitive, but they would help people understand this whole situation (and many others) a lot better.
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Yea this is really frustrating. I bought a box of 10 N-95s in January when I saw what was going on in China and figured they’d be good to have, since I have older people in my family who are in poor health (leukemia, diabetes, heart disease). Now since I’m shopping and cooking for them, I am trying really hard not to get sick so I wear a mask to the stores and I’m getting looks from people like I stole them from a ho…
You did the right thing, don’t let anyone pressure you to feel otherwise. Retail stocks of masks for things like painting or carpentry are not at all related to depriving medical supplies. Also for N95 masks, the filter size is about 3x wider than the size of coronavirus. Meaning it provides _a lot_ of protection. It’s not a way to fully prevent anything, but a door only 3x wide lets in way way way fewer things than…
The mask guidance is confusing as well. I get they are trying to preserve masks for medical staff. But, they also say it's mainly spread by coughing, sneezing, and resulting spray of bodily fluids. Surely even a scarf around your face would have some benefit? Yes, I get that the virus is small enough to pass through, but some deflection is better than none.
It's very irritating because people don't understand the concept of defense in depth. Are surgical masks going to give you total protection? Of course not, but as you say they provide SOME benefit. Saying "masks don't work because they don't fully stop the virus and users misuse them" is basically equivalent to saying "code review is a waste of time because it won't catch every bug and because devs don't do it correc…
Surgical masks aren't about protecting the wearer from everyone else, they're about protecting everyone else from the wearer [1]. They may provide the wearer some protection, but that's not really the point.
The emphasis in the rhetoric about masks needs to change. It should not be about individualist self-protection, but about doing your part to protect the community. I think they should be recommended for that reason [2].
[1] Respirators are devices for protecting the wearer, and the N95 type has been much discussed. Everyone should learn the difference to de-confuse the general conversation in this topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR2uLfEVD2w
https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/956213O/differences-betw...
[2] If there's enough supply. It seems like surgical masks are getting drafted into the role of PPE for medical personnel (which they're poorly suited to) due to the N95 shortage. It's unfortunate that the US hasn't developed a culture where you wear a mask to protect others from your illnesses, so they're not widely available outside of healthcare settings.
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The CDC is letting perfect get in the way of good. If you look at almost all of their actions, they continually clamp down on things that might work because they have not been proven. It seems to me that they are led by academics and theoreticians with very little operational capability at the top decision making channels.
Pretty much. We're seeing the result of institutional decay at every level. "In the middle of the 20th century, a cadre of credentialed experts was created to replace citizens. This was a mistake. The selection mechanism for entry into this cadre selects against bravery and original thinking. Experts should be consulted, but what use is an expert unwilling to consult on a grand vision? The American system of the 2020…
- The CDC (and the US Federal Government in particular) has been understaffed and underfunded for the entire duration of the Trump Administration; to expect the agency that's been gutted for 3 years to rise up to responding effectively to a pandemic seems a bit much. The CDC is not the Center for Pandemic Control; 99% of the time their goal is to optimize tests and 99% of diseases they work with are not pandemics.
- Understanding that the responses to the pandemic by federal agencies would be suboptimal, the pandemic response team was created for this very scenario to provide an "optimal" response to a pandemic. But that too was disbanded by the current administration.
Removing all the ways in which an agency is empowered to tackle a specific problem and then claiming its institutional decay doesn't sound reasonable to me. Federal agencies are hyper-specialized things and deliberately don't have the kind of "leadership" that you're looking for... that power is held by the President, as it should be. Literally any other competent president would have (re-)created the task force and empowered that to lead the response.
The mask guidance is confusing as well. I get they are trying to preserve masks for medical staff. But, they also say it's mainly spread by coughing, sneezing, and resulting spray of bodily fluids. Surely even a scarf around your face would have some benefit? Yes, I get that the virus is small enough to pass through, but some deflection is better than none.
It's very irritating because people don't understand the concept of defense in depth. Are surgical masks going to give you total protection? Of course not, but as you say they provide SOME benefit. Saying "masks don't work because they don't fully stop the virus and users misuse them" is basically equivalent to saying "code review is a waste of time because it won't catch every bug and because devs don't do it correc…
So yes once you've removed all non essential contact masks add another layer. But people are fairly stupid on average and need simple messages right now.