781–790 of 837 posts
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wouldn't it be easy for a competent government to identify and control maks suppliers? btw, here in Canada, most notable ppe hoarders were shipping it to China
Not the US government, which gives massive deference to private actors. It would take weeks if not months to do something like that at the federal level, our government doesn't move fast.
How about the biggest dishonesty - lack of admission that not everyone is at the same risk and that lockdowns have significant irreversible costs for low risk individuals and for society? Young children are not getting critical development years back. Healthy 20 somethings only have limited time to date, party and have fun before being saddled with adult responsibilities forever. Most of shattered local businesses ar…
> Young children are not getting critical development years back. This sentence alone is true, but it misses the fact that a) young children suffer from this disease too, b) these young children live with older people that are at more at risk, hence they can bring something back from their schools that may cost the lives of their parents (I don't think losing your parents when you're a kid is great for your developme…
Or you could frame it the other way. Instead of suppressing everyone's freedom, people who are too scared to resume a normal life could watch us live a free life through their window, from the security of their home.
I'm not aware of any country that had a democratic consultation to ask the people which way they wanted it.
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Properly understood, they're on opposite sides of the equation and as mentioned, I'd prefer not to do any punishment at all, because I feel like that cuts off most of the nonsense. So that means giving people masks if they don't have one or making reasonable accommodations where possible and making interventions about safety. But I know it's not quite so easy and especially now a lot of people are hardened and less w…
"Prefer" is pretty woolly, what happens when push comes to shove? "Well thank you for offering me that mask, but masks simply don't work" [hands you a copy of the DANMASK19 paper]. Do you punish the person why defies you or not?
I do feel if things had been like "here's a mask" from the start, though, that there wouldn't be nearly as many people refusing them.
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Properly understood, they're on opposite sides of the equation and as mentioned, I'd prefer not to do any punishment at all, because I feel like that cuts off most of the nonsense. So that means giving people masks if they don't have one or making reasonable accommodations where possible and making interventions about safety. But I know it's not quite so easy and especially now a lot of people are hardened and less w…
> But I know it's not quite so easy and especially now a lot of people are hardened and less willing to work together to smooth things over. The whole point of enforcing public health and safety rules is that a significant percentage of the population is uninformed/misinformed and shows poor decision-making skills based on their personal risk perception and how they value the impact of their own actions on everyone e…
The resistance is proportional to the force used and the polarization of the populace. I'm trying to reduce those factors. Look at all the non-polarized states and you see that people aren't trying to manipulate each other into doing what they want, they're trying to help each other.
This isn't typhoid Mary, you can't just quarantine one person. I hope that we can patch the vaccine escape from Delta with boosters, but even that is unclear.
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The reality still is, if you don’t carefully specify the kind of masks people are supposed to use (or even specify they have to use non-medical masks!) the effect, if any, is so small it isn’t measurable. It’s just such a great virtue signal that people keep clinging to it.
It’s a damn religion at this point. The masks most people wear do basically nothing. Wearing an effective mask (for some value of “effective”) is not comfortable at all!
For me, I had issues with 3M products, but once I switched to Honeywell, I haven't had any issues. In addition to being more comfortable, I have an easier time getting a better seal with Honeywell masks. I think this is in part due to the fact that they have more substantial gaskets.
Higher end masks also tend to work better for me. If you are having trouble with disposable N95 masks, look into N99 or P100 masks or upgrading to a silicone mask. I personally find the Honeywell RU8800 to be very comfortable and I don't have any issues wearing it even on long hikes. This is especially useful when it is smoky.
Another benefit of silicone masks is that it is trivial to test the seal with your face. Poor fit is a common problem with disposable masks and is often cited as a reason why they are ineffective for normal people. Based on my anecdotal experience, roughly 90% of the people I have seen wearing disposable particulate masks in public are obviously wearing them incorrectly. It seems like it would be worth reading the instructions when your safety is on the line.
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If they were open and upfront about limited masks and reserving N95 and other PPE for healthcare workers there was a possibility of a social stigma of individuals buying up and using N95 and PPE. Like how scalpers get the stink eye and angry stares when they take all the toilet paper, hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. Sure the masks might not have all gone to the right place but I imagine it would have been bett…
Toilet paper shortage was caused by shift from commercial to residential purchasing, with different packaging/distribution/purchase size characteristics. It's not a convenient item for scalping due to low value per volume (comparing to hundreds of $1K iPhones easily fitting in a car trunk.
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$35 Non-Electric Bidet Toilet Attachment https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075MMHQX7 Takes a few minutes to install. I recommend it if you don't want to spend $$$ on an electric Toto.
Like mattresses, office chairs, monitors, and other things that will get a lot of use over their lifetime, this is one of those things worth spending a little more on. Unless you're the type of person who also likes the shock of cold showers. The Totos are worth every penny.
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> It's not 'censorship of factual information' for a private service to choose to put health warnings against or delete fact free claims of HCQ as a miracle cure. I'm not going to get into the "it isn't censorship if it's a private company" debate. That's a facile argument. Silencing of speech is wrong. Full stop. I'm not debating semantics. If the only way you can rebut an argument is by silencing it, then you lose…
> And science, as a process, depends on the ability of unpopular opinions to exist. Because sometimes, they're right. Science, as a process, does not depend on the ability of unpopular (or in this case, very popular) opinions to be broadcast to a sufficiently large number of laypeople on a particular channel. HCQ research was carried out despite rather than because Bob from Texas or Luis from Brazil read some drivel…
It would be amusing how confident you are in your pronouncements of who deserves to have speech "for science", if it weren't so scary.
Speaking as a scientist, I want to hear all of it, and I don't need you to help out. The only thing in the realm of speech that can truly hurt me is the risk of misled by moral busybodies who think they know what is true and virtuous, and try to control what I hear "for my own good."
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You’ve got a huge swath of america who doesn’t want the vaccine because they either have superior natural immunity already OR understand that the virus poses little-to-no-risk to them or their family. Covid is essentially equal to the flu in terms of mortality for people under ~55 and children are virtually immune from serious Covid illness.
>Covid is essentially equal to the flu in terms of mortality for people under ~55 and children are virtually immune from serious Covid illness. Previously this would've been "COVID misinformation", but it isn't anymore as the NYT said it this morning. I'd quibble a bit about natural immunity being "superior" but honestly who knows anymore. FTA: >For children without a serious medical condition, the danger of severe C…
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this isn't about your grandma (may she live many more years), but the sanctimoniousness (and misguidedness) of your comments. your chance of death from covid is likely (much) less than 0.2%, an average that's disproportionately (and unfortunately) inflated by the elderly and unhealthy. the elderly and unhealthy are the folks who we should encourage (but not force) to get vaccinated because of the elevated risk. every…
> your chance of death from covid is likely (much) less than 0.2% EDIT: I had to address this, too, but even if I assume that figure we get 15.6M dead people once the world is infected. I agree that I have a low personal risk, it's not making grandma die of not breathing--something we know painfully well because of how grandpa died grasping for every breath--that I'd like to avoid. Yeah, there's a DNR order, but I do…
i do stand by what i said in general however. masks are an insignificant mitigation in most situations (but not for grandma). we can reduce deaths at the margin (like vaccinating the elderly and unhealthy), but without a sterilizing vaccine, many were very likely going to die no matter what else we do/did. it’s ok (better, even) that we don’t all think the exact same things and do the exact same things, since that more completely explores the solution space. in that vein, share information, rather than trying to ‘help’ or convince.