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Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

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Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#41

Post by oneshtein »

dailykoder wrote: post #14

I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusio…

It's easy: masks helps to avoid infection or/and buys more time for body to fight a virus. Looking at graphs of mortality rate between countries with good mask culture and bad mask culture, it looks like masks reduced Covid19 mortality by 2x at least.

  Country   # of cases   # of deaths
  USA       111,820,082  1,219,487
  UK         24,910,387    232,112
  Japan      33,803,572     74,694
  S. Korea   34,571,873     35,934

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#44

Post by unsnap_biceps »

dailykoder wrote: post #14

I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusio…

Wearing a mask, even poorly will reduce the chances of spreading a respiratory virus. Is that reduction meaningful? That's a really hard question to answer in any sort of binary way. Combined with how bad humans are at processing/understanding probabilities, you will never have wide consensus.

As for the specialists, antidotally, I've never heard a medical doctor claim anything other than a mask is helpful and they all seemed to wear theirs quite happily.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#45

Post by modeless »

dailykoder wrote: post #14

I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusio…

> our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses

This is unequivocally false. There is zero benefit to exposure to almost all viruses that infect humans. At best you would get sick and then have limited immunity to that single strain for a period of time, but getting sick is always worse than not getting it. You're not going to get immunity to the flu by "exercising" your immune system with colds or vice versa.

The only exception I'm aware of is chicken pox, where getting it young had better outcomes than getting it in adulthood so it made sense to seek exposure, but we have a vaccine for that now which is significantly better than ever getting it.

That doesn't necessarily mean we should all go around wearing masks always. There are certainly tradeoffs associated with that.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#47

Post by wkat4242 »

oneshtein wrote: post #41
dailykoder wrote: post #14

I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusio…

It's easy: masks helps to avoid infection or/and buys more time for body to fight a virus. Looking at graphs of mortality rate between countries with good mask culture and bad mask culture, it looks like masks reduced Covid19 mortality by 2x at least. Country # of cases # of deaths USA 111,820,082 1,219,487 UK 24,910,387 232,112 Japan 33,803,572 74,694 S. Korea 34,571,873 35,934

That's of course wayyy oversimplified. There are many more differences between those places than just masking culture. You can't come to a conclusion without evaluating all the other factors.

This is exactly the kind of pseudoscience argument people pull in that muddies the water (on both sides of the debate)

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#48

Post by mwelpa »

ducdetronquito wrote: post #35
dailykoder wrote: post #14

I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusio…

To continue on sfblah's comment (just above mine): in France, before the mask mandate that came after the first covid lockdown, I don't remember a single doctor/nurse* to wear a mask to do their job even during intense period of sickness like in winter or even during previous pandemics. I don't remember anyone wearing a mask either in the doctor's waiting room, even when it was fool of sick people (old and young mixe…

Doesn't it depend on the medical center these days? In Poland everybody was so crazy about it that even police used to go on public transport (trams, buses) to check if everyone have their masks on, but now some doctors ask you to wear a mask (then they provide it as well), some not. Same thing in hospital.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#49

Post by 01100011 »

atorodius wrote: post #28

I skimmed the article but did not find my question answered: what's the current view on whether the political and social response was properly done?

Properly done with what the consensus opinion was at the time the decisions were made, or properly done in hindsight and colored with political bias?

It's weird to me how quickly folks forgot the depth of our ignorance during the beginning of covid. Do you remember when we all started washing our groceries when we got home because we weren't even sure if covid survived on surfaces? Remember when we were desperate to slow the curve because medical staff were overwhelmed and people were dying from lack of services?

Sure, in hindsight we really screwed kids up with lockdowns. We probably kept it all going too far for too long. There was probably politics on both sides and lack of purely rational decisions on both sides.

Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

#50

Post by [deleted] »

Mistletoe wrote: post #40
dailykoder wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did that and clicked through the first 5 links. Doesn't sound that obvious to me. I found this one interesting: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10446908/ > More studies found that masks (n = 39/47; 83%) and mask mandates (n = 16/18; 89%) reduced infection than found no effect (n = 8/65; 12%) or favoured controls (n = 1/65; 2%). Seven observational studies found that respirators were more protective than su…

Do we need them now? Probably not. But if we get another pandemic? Definitely.

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