We indeed live in an era where all things are binary.
But what is a thinking person supposed to think when the Surgeon General is saying don’t wear masks in a pandemic caused by airborne viri?
In urban (educated) zones likely to be hotbeds for outbreaks, could the state not do a little nuance and say “hospitals need the N95s and you need a bandana”
Everybody has got a bandana, but if I were to start walking into stores with one before sanctioned, someone would be calling 911. In the meantime, how many weeks go by at R 3...
Hopefully this doesn't come across as pedantic but airborne transmission of COVID-19 is rare. Not ruled out completely but not the main way it is spread. In the initial Chinese study of 75K they said there was zero airborne transmission, I think they've found some exceptions since but it's not a common thing.
The WHO actually has a definition for this, when the droplets carrying the disease are <5μm they spread further and drift around for longer and that's when they start calling it airborne instead of droplets, COVID-19 is not in this category.
It's still good to wear a mask, I've lost count of the number of times over the years that some excited extrovert straight up spit in my face because they were worked up about something. lol.
If your source that airborne transmission is rare is the WHO, then all you have is a worthless source.
Recently I've read an interview with Drosten (the German virologist which came up with one of the Coronavirus tests) say that they're starting to see airborne transmission as an important transmission factor, maybe not a strong as droplets but comparable. This is especially the case in poorly ventilated spaces.
Well, at least in the west we're starting to see it now, but we're late to the party compared to Asian countries.
We already knew for instance that SARS is transmitted through aerosols. Then a new thing comes up which is related to the above and is basically named SARS-2 and we forget about the aerosols and instead think we should wash our hands a lot. Words can't express how stupid this is.
I don't have much, but maybe this contains a hint on the effects of mask usage on the German death growthrate.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157238440973015
(Masks about 25.4 - the effect should be visible around the middle of May)
After looking closely I found a small move into the wrong direction (maybe caused by something else?!??)
There have been studies which have found that the virus can aerosolize, but it hasn't been established that infectious spread occurs this way. For example, it could be that viral concentrations in an aerosolized form aren't enough to cause an infection (or maybe they can get there, in prolonged close quarters, but by then you're being exposed multiple ways, so it doesn't matter or can't be determined). Either way it seems that the protocol for preventing transmission probably won't change much; the current protocols (including ubiquitous mask usage) have been enough for Korea, Taiwan etc. to control the spread.
As far as I have seen, currently people don't use masks for close contact talking situations (family, friends, work, chatting...).
With mask usage in Germany I see only negative trends in the growthrate of both case and death. I think to make them work something has to be changed.
There is a good chance that it now only works as a reverse placebo - it makes people feel confident and pushes them into more risky behaviour - most likely net negative.
Rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
There seems to be a trend to paint people as imbeciles who can't tie their own shoelaces without somebody standing over them, and then on investigation it turns out not to be true.
There was a story a while back about a couple who drank fish tank cleaner (containing chloroquine) after Trump touted chloroquine against the coronavirus. Come to find out the couple were not fans of Trump but were having marital difficulties, so now you've got to weigh the possibility that these two were stupid enough to drink poison against the possibility that the woman discovered a way to intentionally poison her husband and pin it on Trump:
More often than not, when you see someone doing something apparently colossally stupid, it's because you don't know the whole story rather than because they're actually that stupid. People understand nuance plenty when it's important to them.
Wait, you read a NY Post article with rumors about a married couple having marriage difficulties, and you believe you've uncovered the "whole story" that other people are somehow blind to but you can see?
Do you want the same story from a dozen different sources? This is actually a good example of the differences between partisan sources. The New York Post article says this:
> Mesa City police declined to comment on the investigation but told the paper that the probe was “normal protocol” for non-natural deaths and noted that the case has not been ruled a homicide “at this time.”
In left-leaning publications they omit "at this time" and make that the headline.
But the interesting thing about the story isn't the police determination. That hasn't been made yet, so it tells us nothing, and anyway the police would have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The whole point is using that excuse creates a lot of reasonable doubt even if it was completely intentional.
The value of the story is that it gives us some new evidence. The narrative that somebody recklessly drank fish tank cleaner after a Trump recommendation loses credibility when you learn that the person was anti-Trump and thereby not inclined to unthinkingly believe whatever he says, up to and including drinking something with a label on it that says poison. Meanwhile a plausible alternative explanation exists.
But what is a thinking person supposed to think when the Surgeon General is saying don’t wear masks in a pandemic caused by airborne viri?
In urban (educated) zones likely to be hotbeds for outbreaks, could the state not do a little nuance and say “hospitals need the N95s and you need a bandana”
Everybody has got a bandana, but if I were to start walking into stores with one before sanctioned, someone would be calling 911. In the meantime, how many weeks go by at R 3...