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Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

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Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#81
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the first proponents for hand washing and hygiene during medical practice wound up dying in a mental asylum. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7240806 What's considered normal socially is not always what's supported by the evidence at hand, and sometimes what that supports is well outside of the acceptable range of discussion or behavior at the time. Are you truly concerned that this person has made…

What you just demonstrated is called Survivor Bias or Survivorship Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias what about all the people who challenged what was "considered normal socially" and actually were proven wrong? One never hears about those.

> what about all the people who challenged what was "considered normal socially" and actually were proven wrong?

There are not many of those, because of herd mentality. (Edit: I mean Normalcy Bias, thanks "notabee")

If a person is unusual enough, they are dismissed as cranks without any sort of proof required.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#82
post #3

I'm surprised this is news after 3+ years. I would've figured this would've been one of the first things to figure out. I'm sure many would've volunteered to be infected and closely studied early on to collect this information.

People have been talking about this for at least two years. It's been a common topic in right-of-center circles, along with the (in)effectiveness of most masks.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#83
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was sick, or if there was a meaningful sickness in the air, I would wear a mask. But I wouldn't say there is zero downside to wearing a mask, atleast the way 98% of people wore one during covid. (The same one all day, if not a week, touching it, putting it in pockets, around your neck, on your greasy forehead, so on). I used to wear a mask because allergies when I mowed the lawn or even dirtbiking during certain…

"It absolutely reduces your ability to take it oxygen easily." This is absolutely false. There is very strong evidence that masks do not effect gas exchange. One example of many: https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/face-masks-may-inc... Masks do make your lung muscles work slightly harder, but there's nothing wrong with that.

This is only talking about low oxygen demand scenarios.

"Each participant performed a six-minute walk test"

I've personally tested (out of curiosity) bicycling performance while wearing a half-face respirator that's barely noticeable during walking. Both measured speed and subjective difficulty were severely affected during high intensity exercise.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort, and yours is no more necessarily right than his :). Some people still wear masks, some people still take booster shots, some people people still wash their hands, some people sneeze into elbows, some people stay inside, etc. Others may not do some or any of those things. "Accept new risk" and "this is the new normal" is as validly execut…

> I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort Yeah I get that, but with him it seems very out of character. He likes to ski and is a general aviation pilot; these aren't low risk activities. I hope he comes to term with the new normal soon because he's still young and spending the rest of his life paranoid behind a mask would be truly sad.

I like to woodwork and walk.

Spending 3 weeks in bed with COVID before the vaccines existed made me super risk adverse to people and especially people coughing. You have no concept of how long a week in bed is, let alone 3 of them. The long nights in pain. The long days just wishing you could get through the enormous headache to rest and sleep. The powerless feeling that you can't even sit up enough to do anything you have previously enjoyed. Heck, I still remember my son bringing in my copy of Cyberpunk that just came out and I didn't even have the energy to turn on my laptop on my lap to install it. Even when I got COVID again 2 years later and it was just a couple days in bed, I get super pissed off when people belittle it and the people who try to stay away from it.

Just last Saturday night, I was out shopping and some lady was walking around with a "smoker's cough". I tried to stay away and not go back into places she had been. When I got in line to check out and got stalled in front from a lady with a huge cartload and the cougher got behind me and started hacking her brains out, I just abandoned my cart and left.

I am not spending that many days of my life being sick again like that if I can ever help it. So when I say that YOU NEED TO REPRIORITIZE YOUR EMPATHY. Take that to mean that if this wasn't on a forum that I need to talk nice-nice, I would not be talking nice-nice.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#85
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is someone a germaphobe if they wash their hands after using the bathroom?

Is someone who argues with false equivalence making himself look like a fool?

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#86
post #3

I'm surprised this is news after 3+ years. I would've figured this would've been one of the first things to figure out. I'm sure many would've volunteered to be infected and closely studied early on to collect this information.

Intentionally infecting people for study isn't something that really fits with our medical ethics, at least as I understand them.

There have been a half dozen challenge studies[1] of influenza in the last 50 years. They're interesting in that there are threshold effects and a dose response relationship. None of the small numbers of test subjects get sick or seroconverted at low doses. Medium doses produce seroconversion without illness. Higher doses produce illness.

Before covid I found a Thai study on the effect of masking nurses in healthcare clinics. Masks reduced infections with some respiratory viruses and not others.

Can't be stated strongly enough is you cannot use the behavior of one virus as a proxy for the behavior of an unrelated one.

[1] Lack of rigorous studies of respiratory infections in the last 70 years caught public health policy makers completely flat footed. Because they were working off out of date textbook knowledge that was low quality.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#87
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort, and yours is no more necessarily right than his :). Some people still wear masks, some people still take booster shots, some people people still wash their hands, some people sneeze into elbows, some people stay inside, etc. Others may not do some or any of those things. "Accept new risk" and "this is the new normal" is as validly execut…

Also. I think it's rational for myself to wear a mask because getting COVID was one of the worst experiences of my life. It's like if I burned my hand on a stove and someone tried to convince me burning your hand on the stove is normal so no need to take precautions.

It was bad for me too. But I assume that the next infection won't be nearly as bad, because of built up immune response, several vaccine injections, and current variants being much milder than the initial one.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#88
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's literally no downside for him to wearing a mask, why do you even care?

People care because it impinges on the mass denial all of all the death and harm inflicted during the pandemic, as well as the ongoing dangers and unknowns of our new, post-COVID reality. This isn’t uncommon in history, but it unfortunately tends to take a few cycles of mass death before humans adapt their culture and social behavior to the world as it exists (vs. how it was before or they wish it could be). We’re st…

Some of the more concerning research this year has been the immune dysfunction showing the same CD4/8 inversions and progression towards immune deficiency. Initially the goal was to look at the immune systems of Covid Long haulers but they had a hard time finding controls as a lot of the people who were apparently well were also developing immune issues. Both of the studies I read had to pay people who have never had Novid and put in substantial mitigations to ensure they didn't catch it to participate in the research.

This might not be all that dissimilar to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in impact on the sufferers other than the immune effects are showing up faster and its airborne and 95% of the population has had it. I sure hope it turns around at some point and it doesn't become C-AIDS, but it explains why Flu and RSV and sepsis et el are going crazy at the moment, immune systems are in bad shape.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if he’s right?

when almost everyone has already had the disease and was able to observe what it did to them -- which is the state we're at -- it's pretty hard to say that everyone needs to protect themselves. I know what COVID will do to me, because I had it already. He's not right. I was vaccinated, and the vaccine didn't work (it didn't prevent me from getting ill, get out of here with the 'better outcomes' bullshit, I'm healthy…

"The Covid vaccine didn't have any effect onbthe severity of my infection" is the most utterly idiotic take if have read given the mountains of evidence that it massively reduces the severity of the infection

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#90

I know a guy who still wears a half-face respirator every time he's in public even for just a second. I think at this rate he'll be wearing it for the rest of his life, unable to accept a new level of risk and move on with his life. I'd like to help him but I see no possible way, he's convinced that I and 99% of the rest of the public are suicidally insane like people who play literal russian roulette.

[flagged]

I’d posit that worrying excessively about someone else’s behavior that does not affect one’s own seems to align well with a neurotic personality type.
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