I'll admit - I'm skeptical and think we should take this headline with a grain of salt.
There's plenty of reasons to fear COVID but is brain damage really any more reason to fear it than the standard fever? i.e. are people getting brain damage from COVID itself or as a result of uncontrolled fever?
43 cases and the lack of wider spread makes me want to see more data before trying to sound any alarm bells.
Obviously it is too soon to tell, but this may be more of the same. It is concerning because we expect a large number of people to be exposed to this virus. Even a small chance of long term damage ends up with a lot of cases with the numbers we are expecting.
Additionally, it may change the calculus of so called herd immunity strategies. Though it is a little late for that.
FWIW, blood clotting, strokes, etc are known complications of pathological cytokine release syndrome, and we see these same symptoms occurring in other diseases like Influenza.
Unfortunately there is a huge faction of people who seek to selectively represent facts to promulgate the narrative that SARS-CoV-2 is unusually dangerous, which as far as I can tell is just completely false.
SARS-2 is a great spreader and a very poor killer. Those interested in learning about hoe it spreads might find some of the research findings around interferon-mediated early course immunosuppression interesting. IMO it is a plausible mechanism for why SARS-2 exhibits PRE-symptomatic spread (not asymptomatic).
BTW the above (great spreader, with outcomes overwhelmingly positive) is precisely why I think SARS-2 was the worst possible candidate to respond to with a “lockdown”. It really saddens me to see destructive and unethical measures paraded as “common sense”, when they’re anything but. [/rant]
A preprint I was reading yesterday noted an 8 fold increase in risk of stroke in COVID patients vs severe flu patients. COVID is dangerous, it’s not the flu, but nor is it the Black Death. It’s far more dangerous for the elderly than flu. But more importantly for everyone else, Lock downs are a response not to the individual risk of the disease but to the collective risk of not having a functioning healthcare system.
>A preprint I was reading yesterday noted an 8 fold increase in risk of stroke in COVID patients vs severe flu patients.
The problem I have with these statement is the lack of context. Does the additional risk of stroke in COVID patients meaningfully impact the overall risk profile? If an elderly person has say a X% chance of death from COVID, and a 0.00X% of stroke, news reporting on this for public consumption is just fear mongering.
SARS-CoV-2 has an IFR that's ~5x that of regular flu and spreads significantly faster.
It's worth pointing out that it's killed more people than all natural disasters and terrorist attacks in the US combined. So if COVID-19 is a poor killer, so were Osama bin Laden and Hurricane Katrina.
And that's with the lockdowns. Without them, we'd probably be at half a million deaths by now. The lockdowns also bought us time to develop more effective treatment strategies.
I'm saddened to see people on HN selectively represent facts to try and spread the narrative that SARS-CoV2 isn't very dangerous. Which as far as I can tell is just completely false.
The reality is that it is in fact dangerous. People try to point to the idea that it only kills a low percent of the population and not putting into perspective that a disease killing around 1% or so of all humans would be a rather big deal.
I completely agree. I don’t understand why people aren’t taking this seriously. I have COVID-19 right now and it’s awful. I’m a healthy 32 year old and I’ve been lying in bed for 4 days and I only have what I think is mild symptoms. I can easily see how if I had a pre-existing condition or was unhealthy that it could kill me. I think the problem is that some people don’t believe it until the see or they just don’t care. It’s so sad. I work at a Starbucks and people come in everyday without a mask and are offended when we tell them to wear one, and it’s for their safety!
How can you argue that it's dangerous when the scientific evidence is so overwhelmingly to the contrary?
Your entire post contains many unsubstantiated beliefs:
- Nobody is arguing the death rate is 1% anymore, that number is far, far too high. Apparent IFRs have been constantly falling and even the CDC - quite incentivised to support panic given their actions so far - now say it's around the level of seasonal flu.
- The idea that the virus would infect 100% of all humans alive isn't based on any actual real disease. No disease ever known has infected literally everyone on the planet.
There is huge amounts of data showing the virus isn't dangerous. People aren't "trying to spread a narrative". They're pointing out the real data on things like excess deaths, or the huge number who show mild symptoms.
Na. It's not against the rules, and it would be too much work for the mods if it was. Just point it out, and/or use the buttons. It's also a great source of prediction/assumption data... atleast for non-throwaway accts.
Every year, about 1% of the population in the US dies. The median age of COVID deaths is above life expectancy. If you are elderly, death from pneumonia is quite likely even without COVID.
For a middle aged person, ordinary Influenza is statistically more dangerous than COVID. For a child, Influenza is vastly more dangerous. Efficacy of Influenza vaccination varies seasonally and averages around 50%.
Furthermore, COVID death rates are going down across the board, even while cases are rising.
> Every year, about 1% of the population in the US dies. > The median age of COVID deaths is above life expectancy. If you are elderly, death from pneumonia is quite likely even without COVID.
People using the "they were going to die anyway" argument need to explain why they didn't die last year, or next year, but died this year, and died in huge numbers. Excess mortality is pretty high.
Research tells us people are dying more than 10 years early.
> Results: Using the standard WHO life tables, YLL per COVID-19 death was 14 for men and 12 for women. After adjustment for number and type of LTCs, the mean YLL was slightly lower, but remained high (13 and 11 years for men and women, respectively). The number and type of LTCs led to wide variability in the estimated YLL at a given age (e.g. at ≥80 years, YLL was >10 years for people with 0 LTCs, and <3 years for people with ≥6).
> Conclusions: Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and standardised collection of data on LTCs is needed to better understand and quantify the global burden of COVID-19 and to guide policy-making and interventions.
> People using the "they were going to die anyway" argument need to explain why they didn't die last year, or next year, but died this year, and died in huge numbers. Excess mortality is pretty high.
That's not the argument I am making. A lot of older people indeed died sooner than they otherwise would have. COVID is statistically more dangerous to them than Influenza, but also COVID spreads more rapidly than Influenza in a population with zero immunity.
> Research tells us people are dying more than 10 years early.
This is significantly lower than the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, which averaged above 20 YLL per case:
They didn't give an average per case in this study, I arrived there by dividing the total amount of years lost by the amount of deaths (1,540/72 = 21.39).
That just happens to be close to the years lost per 100k.
"The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited [as influenza deaths] do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates [...] In the last six flu seasons, the CDC’s reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths—that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus—has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts."
> SARS-2 is a great spreader and a very poor killer
Why the hell are you posting this? Your disinformation may contribute to people dying, are you ok with that? I'm all for contrarian views if they are backed up with evidence - so produce some.
Thanks for that. I don't understand the discrepancy between the article and the link you posted, however from your cite of 7,961 flu deaths (in the US) agrees with what the sciam article said.
> Excess deaths are all that really matters. Why not talk about those instead?
Good point, but I don't have them. What my and your posts seem to show is that flu is a heck of a lot less mortal than this covid. Which is the point.
NP. Regarding your last point, my understanding is the pneumonia deaths are on the same pdf because they are end game deaths from getting sick. Likely with one of the flu's. The COVID-19 death stats on the other hand, are inflated: http://v6y.net/1541e03e6cfd1442590bc7b5476f88c30a29a0d881bdb...
While I don't necessarily agree with this post (see below, plus I haven't had time to read your links properly), I don't see why it's downvoted - if there's a reason the downvoter should say why.
Anyway, I don't buy your reason for pneu & flu being on the same page, flu may be a subtype of pneumonia but there are many causes of pneumonia, and I don't expect flus to blow up into pneu. Then again, I'm just guessing.
Your second link is not official government statement - indeed it was so weird I didn't understand what I was reading at first - it's a letter expressing a person's opinion, not a government position. I don't know it's value.
The table's interesting, but the percentage of expected deaths don't make sense (read: I don't understand them). It may be down to time lag on reporting, but it's a big lag.
As you know so far it has killed 133K people (out of 3000K infected) in the US alone, you consider this number not high enough to instate a "lockdown", so the question is what number would have been enough for one to be necessary according to you?
Oops. Missed a zero, classically.
So that does make it look more alarming. However could still be heavily effected by things such as low testing amounts, or vulnerable people front loading the numbers.
Deaths from Covid have already passed 100k, way more deaths than any flu season since those infamous pandemics, and that's despite lockdowns. No amount of fiddling with numbers changes that.
I mean that when we are in the middle of a pandemic most likely deaths are frontloaded in that those that are going to be affected the most, will most likely be the most effected by now. If that makes sense.
So it's more of a thing to keep in mind when comparing mortality statistics of an in progress pandemic to past pandemics.
"It is tempting to surmise that the complicated pandemic definitions used by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States of America involved severity in a deliberate attempt to garner political attention and financial support for pandemic preparedness." [1]
I’m getting a little exhausted with doom and gloom that fails to contextualize exactly how much worse things are than an abnormally bad flu season + pneumonia season. If you tell people that they will have lingering effects from a flu or cold, they are much more likely to report lingering effects. People are quite suggestible and medicine is complex.
Well there are definitely hints of some level of neurologic involvement: loss of taste and smell, very strange presentation where people with low O2 sats aren't in respiratory distress (CNS depression?), and occasional reports of confirmed encephalopathy. SARS and MERS also have shown an ability to be neuroinvasive.
I'd be more skeptical of a claim that it for sure DOESN'T have neurologic involvement.
It's important to note that low O2 doesn't cause a feeling of respiratory distress -- which is why carbon monoxide is so dangerous and why we have carbon monoxide detectors.
What does cause the feeling of respiratory distress, is CO2 buildup. We are used to having low O2 and high CO2 happen together (This correlation is likely why we evolved to detect low O2 through high CO2). Usually respiratory diseases impair both O2 intake and CO2 removal.
What's unusual about SARS-Cov-2 in this regard, is that it impairs O2 intake without harming CO2 removal - and it is unusual when compared to the vast majority of respiratory diseases, but also occurs in e.g. altitude sickness. To the best of my understanding, it has nothing to do with CNS depression in either SARSCov2 or altitude sickness.
I have a lung condition which hampers CO2 removal without hampering O2 absorption. Which means I can be gasping for breath with an O2 stat in the high 90s.
Not saying it's "not neurological" it's more about first order vs second order effects.
Loss of taste and smell are most likely first order effect - a direct result of COVID. You can't avoid this w/o avoiding
My guess (just a guess) for the article is the brain damage is a result of uncontrolled fevers - a second order effect. So if you control the fever, you can avoid the serious brain damage.
To that end, let's not be like OH NO BRAIN DAMAGE COVID screams. That's just not intelligent.
I've seen a number of different studies that indicate that there's more going on than just fever that causes the brain and systemic damage.
I'm not enough of a biologist to understand it very well, but I believe what they were saying was that once the virus damages the lining of the lungs, it then uses that to get into the bloodstream, where, if you're unlucky, it starts damaging your blood vessels. All of them.
This would then explain both the higher incidence of brain inflammation, strokes, etc, in adults, and the COVID-related inflammatory syndrome in otherwise asymptomatic children. Or so the articles I was reading claimed. (Apologies for lack of sourcing; I didn't think to save links.)
Not necessarily neurological and this is the first I heard that the loss of smell is neurological as opposed to physical[1]. But I guess everybody is a doctor now so go right ahead and say anything you like without any evidence. I mean what is the worse that could happen by spreading misinformation as long as it makes people more afraid?
The article doesn't spell it out but it says "Several American patients who have had symptoms consistent with the coronavirus, but who have not been tested or are still awaiting test results, described losing their senses of smell and taste, even though their noses were clear and they were not congested."
That means that there's some non-obstructive issue here going on.
In any case, my point was that you were attacking OP while there were a lot of reports on non obstructive loss of smell.
You said it's the first you heard of it, which made me assume you didn't follow any news. Since without any judgment of the validity of these reports, it's normal to assume this is what a normal person has heard in that time.
Now after your second response I have to assume you're just arguing in bad faith. It's not gish gallop to post a time line of reports from March to June.
> That means that there's some non-obstructive issue here going on.
Maybe you are not clear on what neurological and obstructive means, but non-obstructive is not the same as neurological.
> It's not gish gallop to post a time line of reports from March to June.
It is gish gallop if you say "reporting neurological loss of smell" and the first two things you cite to support that does not make any mention of a single report of neurological loss of smell.
> During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate.
> reports on non obstructive loss of smell.
Gish gallop is not enough, have to move the goalposts also.
> You said it's the first you heard of it, which made me assume you didn't follow any news.
I never said this is the first I have heard of non-obstructive loss of smell.
> I have to assume you're just arguing in bad faith.
You gish-gallop and when I call you on it you lie and move the goal posts. Get a mirror.
There's a vast difference between a) someone stating something in a fairly colloquial way, particularly something they thought was widely known, then having to progressively clarify the specific thing they meant when challenged by someone who didn't have the same facts, and b) someone deliberately moving goalposts.
This is pretty obviously an instance of (a), and aggressively painting it as (b) does, indeed, feel like arguing in bad faith.
> someone stating something in a fairly colloquial way, particularly something they thought was widely known, then having to progressively clarify the specific thing they meant when challenged by someone who didn't have the same facts
"neurological" is not the colloquial phrase for "non-obstructive" and "non-obstructive" is not a clarification on "neurological". They are different things.
So ... I mean are there other options than (a) and (b) here? Because if it those are the only options, and (a) is not an option, then well ... it kinda seems like (b).
You are continuing to make a pedantic argument about semantics, rather than considering the spirit of the other poster's statement.
In this particular case, the fact that the anosmia is non-obstructive strongly suggests that it is neurological. It is not conclusive proof, but, colloquially, in a discussion where it is not yet clear that the minutiae of that particular point will be nitpicked to death, it is perfectly reasonable to read carlmr's earlier statement as "non-obstructive, thus implying that it is most likely neurological".
What is not reasonable is to insist that carlmr not using the absolute most precise language possible is somehow proof of his bad faith in a little no-stakes argument on a tangent in the comments of a HackerNews article.
Seriously, mate, just chill. He wasn't trying to put one over on you, and the more you insist he was, the more you come off as someone looking to start trouble.
I doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is unique in this regard. A lot of people have neurological problems with no clear root cause. My hypothesis is that many of those cases were caused by viral infections. But we've never really looked.
> i.e. are people getting brain damage from COVID itself or as a result of uncontrolled fever?
Covid kills lung and blood vessel cells by depleting their ACE2 receptors. So if you develop a fever as one of your Covid symptoms, whatever inflammation is caused by that may well be only a small fraction of the total inflammation caused by the disease.
I feel like there’s a weird god of the gaps element to covid harm. Instead of recognizing that seemingly an overwhelming majority of people are fine and don’t suffer much adverse effects if any, there’s this automatic dwelling on extremely low probability extreme “invisible damage”. I’m increasingly convinced people are unsettled by the possibility that this could be anything other than civilization ending and the mask averse amongst us aren’t murderers. The desire for moral condemnation is too strong.
"mask averse"? Really? We're talking about people who knowingly risk the lives of others; that's not their risk to take. Even without all the potential complications we're still discovering in survivors, we already know it kills people at a high rate.
I wouldn't go as far as "murder" unless someone actually knowingly had the disease and spread it to others, but "criminally negligent" would not be even slightly unwarranted. You don't point a gun at other people and pull the trigger just because you don't think there's a bullet in it.
It's not always easy to visualize "small probability of large harm", but the longer people keep fighting against steps like wearing a mask or not going out, the longer and more serious this will become, and the more people will die. "mask averse" is one of the major differences between places that have this more-or-less under control for the moment and places that don't.
There is no valid excuse to be anywhere around other people without some form of mask right now. None whatsoever. (Better yet, keep staying home if you possibly can, but that there are certainly some legitimate reasons to not do.)
Arguing against mask is like arguing you should be able to go without vaccination (which people do, but that is rightfully treated as conspiracy-theory-level harmful misinformation) or blow secondhand smoke in people's faces (except with a higher degree of potential harm from short-term exposure).
> A real mask acually protects the person using it.
Specialized medical masks and careful usage can, yes. But even a cloth mask provides some benefit, and much of the benefit is to others: your mask reduces the likelihood of your infecting others, their mask reduces the likelihood of them infecting you. There have been multiple analyses showing that non-specialized masks (e.g. cloth) provide some benefit, even though they're not a complete substitute for medical masks.
For some strange reason, this particular family of misinformation seems to have become both political and conspiracy-adjacent; it shouldn't be. There is little to no value in replaying the same arguments here, nor any value in a prolonged repetitive thread. It really shouldn't be necessary to have mandates to do things that ought to be common sense and basic decency, but such is the current state of the world, even when there's plenty of data to demonstrate the problem.
> This viral class never goes away.
https://ncase.me/covid-19/ - There are many things we can and should do, simultaneously, in a coordinated concerted way, to reduce impact, save lives, and put us on a path to eradicating it.
There's plenty more where those came from. There's valid reason to speculate how long this will take, and we should certainly plan for many scenarios including the worst. But there's no supporting evidence for such a confident assumption of "never", and even if that were true it still wouldn't justify blithely risking other people's lives.
> why not use a mask desinged for viruses instead of making medical decisions for other people
There aren't enough, they require a professional level of skill to use correctly, and in case you haven't seen pictures and videos of people using them, they're multi-layer armor, not just a simple mask. Also, the operative thing being protected against is droplets that carry the virus, not just the virus itself. See also secondhand smoke, vaccination, and other ways in which people are required to put up with minor inconveniences to protect the lives of others. And you absolutely have an option if you don't wear a mask: stay home. If you can't afford or find a mask, there are numerous people and places generously arranging to ensure everyone has access to some. Work towards a solution, rather than arguing why you should be able to be part of the problem.
Eradicating it? Really? It's crazy valuable, our response made it more so. It's only getting easier to engineer viruses.
"some benefit"
So do helmets. And banning smoking as you mentioned, kinda. And mandatory exercise. Heck fasting would offset the death stats in spades. Should I go on? What's your point? From the examples you listed, I must assume you are not for making these masks not desinged for viruses legally required. I dont think it will even remotely withstandand a Constutional challenge, but lets talk in the theoritical. Are you pro forced-medical procedures? If so, will you advocate using violence to do it?
A _really_ interesting angle is when you consider the set intersection of the authortarians with the socalized medicine proponents.
Why not talk about that CDC pdf? This is prob the last comment before I hit my limit, but I'll reply if given the chance when it resets.
Not interested in entertaining conspiracy theories.
If your response to "wear a mask to protect others" is "how dare you infringe my rights" rather than "how shall we work together to solve the problem", there's even less point in continuing this. Stay home.
Plenty of states have banned smoking in public places; it isn't about not harming yourself, it's about not harming others. I'm absolutely in favor of "you must wear a mask indoors / around people / in public", as well as the absolute right of others to kick you out of places for not wearing one, and to otherwise treat you like a walking biohazard.
Helmets aren't an operative analogy; those only protect yourself and have zero impact on others, so feel free to decide how much you value your skull.
Typical escape. It's the class of crime between n>1 people.
Why not address that CDC pdf?
I respect property rights, without them we have no property.
Walking biohazard? You really think that helps your argument? Can you attach a stat to that? What % of unmasked walkers? ----Why not use the masks forever?---- You avoided the first and primary question.
Helmets; why not say if you are for socalized medicine? I dont need to make the connection for you. States banning smoking with law was a mistake, property rights and voting with our $ were more than sufficent. I wont go somewhere if I dont like the enviroment.
Helmets, mandatory exercise, and fasting are all things that improve the health of that single individual. In contrast smoking, vaccines, or masks are about externalities. We are more hesitant to regulate something an individual chooses to do if it only affects himself/herself. But the moment your actions have an effect upon me without my consent or a market transaction dictating it, then it is a market failure and a legitimate case for government intervention. Thus, the pointing a gun at people is an apt parallel.
As for your CDC PDF, is your point that there were 131,858 pneumonia deaths in 2014-2015 as a way to make it seem like the COVID-19 death count is in line with that? Because that is just ludicrous
There have been 133K deaths in the US out of 3.05M confirmed cases. Studies on the disease being asymptomatic have found it is asymptomatic around 20% of the time. This was from situations like the aircraft carrier where they tested everyone onboard or sports leagues. Thus, they were testing those entire populations. In both cases, those were some of the healthiest, fittest, youngest people compared to the broader population. Thus, there is no reason to think that they were underestimates of the level of asymptomaticness. But for the sake of demonstration, let's assume that we are undercounting the number of infections by 5X. Thus, there would be 15M people currently infected (as opposed to the 3M confirmed cases).
With that, the disease would have a fatality rate of 133K/15M, which is 0.89%.
While that might seem low, when you combine that with how insanely infectious this disease is (where any reasonable estimate would have this thing going through virtually the entire population without extreme social distancing). Thus, let's assume in a world without masks and social distancing we would have around 200M people infected.
That would be 1.78M deaths. That is more than the entire death count in your CDC pdf (1,769,940). Thus, more people would die from COVID-19 this year than all regular deaths combined. And this is with that 5X case count adjustment.
No offense, but you sound like a libertarian who never actually took the time to study economics in order to truly understand the nature of externalities. You are just mad are people infringing what you perceive to be your rights yet you are unwilling to acknowledge that you are infringing their rights through these negative externalities.
It would be worth reading Ronald Coase's "The Problem of Social Cost"[1] to perhaps refresh your knowledge of externalities. In it, he describes a situation (first described by Pigou) wherein a train catches a field on fire with sparks. He analyzes how if you force the train to not do this and side with the farmer, you are harming the train. While if you allow the train to do this, then you are harming the farmer. That is the nature of a negative externality -- inherently one person's perceived liberty/rights are infringed by another in either direction. But then if both rights are in conflict with one another, then surely they cannot both truly be rights for each cannot be maintained without the violation of the other. Thus, it is the role of the government to settle this by defining who has what rights.
"about externalities" hence asking if (you now) support socialized medicine. Again, I dont need to make the connection. It's obvious isnt it?
"pointing a gun at people is an apt parallel" parallel to what? Not wearing a fake face mask? The face masks are giving the people that need a real mask[1] a false sense of safety. It's entirely possible, even likely that the effect is negative. Comparing virus transmission to a direct threat to life shows frankly that you are not making a serious argument. Think I'm wrong about that? Why not attach some numbers to your example?
"there were 131,858 pneumonia deaths in 2014-2015 as a way to make it seem like the COVID-19 death count is in line with that?"
Yes. Ignoring the over-counting, it's roughly 2x a normal flu. Note you dont even try to get a # for non-covid flu/pneumonia for the pandemic part of 2019/2020. It's a glaring omission, I pointed it out in my first comment (and many before that) because, nobody will do it. Why is that?
"With that, the disease would have a fatality rate of 133K/15M, which is 0.89%."
Yep. But it's even lower. The error bars on your estimate are easily >20%[2]. People have pre-exising antibodies. Why ignore that video I posted? Or my comment that "The only real measure is excess deaths"?
Why are we not talking about excess deaths? Are you going to argue that all COVID-19 deaths are because of the virus? It's clearly not true, and that is officially acked. I posed that explanation, it's common knowledge.
"how insanely infectious this disease is (where any reasonable estimate would have this thing going through virtually the entire population without extreme social distancing)."
We flattened the curve. I assume agree. Germany is the only country that comes close to our death stats. Now you are going to claim that the virus isnt going to infect most people?
1.78M deaths! Seriously, someone should make a list of forum COVID-19 death predictions.
These predictions of millions dead are 100% incorrect, but some people keep making them. It's not established that anything we did significantly changed the outcome, certainly not using fake masks. There is even a country where the masks were banned.
"no offense"
None taken, it's pretty common to try and label people. If the socialists get their way, we can label everything a negative externality, cant we?
> I’m increasingly convinced people are unsettled by the possibility that this could be anything other than civilization ending and the mask averse amongst us aren’t murderers.
In just the past couple of months, COVID-19 has racked up a body count of 130,000 dead Americans. For perspective, that's forty-five 9/11s worth of dead people. Asking people to wear a mask in public to curtail the spread saves lives. This has nothing to do with "desiring moral condemnation." The "mask adverse" can likely bear the burden of at least 1/45 of the deaths America has had compared to it's less "mask adverse" peers.
I absolutely hate wearing a mask, I'm "mask adverse" like yourself, but I wear one since this is a trolley problem where pulling the lever means I have to be uncomfortable for a few hours.
> I absolutely hate wearing a mask, I'm "mask adverse" like yourself
I'm actually not mask averse! I wear a mask all the time. I'm just interested and unsettled by what seems to be a pervasive, immediate, visceral moral reaction that fits all to well into the moral superiority and virtue signalling zeitgeist.
That reaction to seeing someone without a mask is not an analytical judgement based in evidence - almost no one who feels this way is reading the literature or following the inconsistent scientific position of the effectiveness of mask wearing that's changed 180deg seemingly overnight. They're making moral judgments.
I've seen enough people saying frankly "it's about showing you care."
"The state of Florida has had 82,397 people 34 & under test positive for the coronavirus. Of that number, 28 have died. That’s a coronavirus death rate of .00034. They’ve had 144,210 54 and under test positive. That’s a .0016 death rate." [1]
That is some seriously disingenuous math. Whoever came up with that calculation is deliberately trying to mislead (aka lying) or is utterly incapable of grasping the concept of time.
A month ago, Florida had 66,000 confirmed cases. Now it has over 200,000. With a virus take takes two to eight weeks (or more) to kill, we haven't even begun to see the real death rate.
Yep. Even without accounting for the lagging death metric, the present mortality rate in FL, all ages, is around 1.7% (3.8k deaths/213.8k confirmed)[1].
.. side note, 20452 confirmed cases per million residents of Miami-Dade. 2% of the population, geez.
I can see someone being lockdown averse. Having to stay home all the time is a real drag. IMO it was (and is in many places) necessary, but what's the big deal with wearing a mask? Suppose COVID turns out to be nothing, what have you really lost by wearing a mask for a few months? Heck, if you have some phobia, wear a face shield.
An N95 mask doesn't meet OSHA's deadspace oxygen and carbon dioxide level requirements:
"The FFR dead-space oxygen and carbon dioxide levels did not meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s ambient workplace standards. CONCLUSIONS: In healthy
healthcare workers, FFR did not impose any important physiological burden during 1 hour of use, at
realistic clinical work rates, but the FFR dead-space carbon dioxide and oxygen levels were significantly
above and below, respectively, the ambient workplace standards, and elevated PCO2 is a possibility." [1]
Yes, the mask's dead space has CO2 above OSHA ambient workplace standards. To wit, they were about 3000 ppm. That's because the mask dead space contains your exhaled breath.
However, an N95 mask's dead space is 100-150ml. The tidal volumes they measured were about 1000ml. That means that only 10-15% of the air you're breathing in is from inside the mask. So, for example, if you're outside at 400ppm, you'd see an increase of net CO2 to 660ppm. If you're indoors at say 800ppm, you'd see an increase to 1020ppm.
This is well within OSHA limits and is very unlikely to be noticeable. Crucially, the study did not see a significant increase in blood CO2.
i'm not worried about suffocating, that doesn't mean it doesn't suck-- which is all i was pointing out. mow your lawn in a mask, it sucks. when something sucks you don't want to do it, you resent having to do it.
but i'm not against wearing masks in principal. i do my civic duty. but my civil society isn't doing shit. in washington you now have to wear a mask in public, (well, not really, cops don't want to enforce that, but nonetheless...) this was done by the governor, which is possible because he has special powers because of the state of emergency. what prompted the mask requirement is a hospital in eastern washington was running low on beds. so why not use those special powers to make more beds in yakima? why am i not being pestered to get tested on an ongoing basis? why aren't people being put to work helping those who can't leave the house because they're infected or at higher risk of complications? why aren't masks being mailed out to people and handed out to homeless people?
because that sort of thing requires a government that can do something useful for people, and that's not what we have. it can impose upon people, but it can't do anything good. so we'll all wear masks and it will help with the plague as much as banning plastic straws will help the ocean.
(yes, i know your comment is about n95 masks and osha requirements and maybe i should put this somewhere else, but here we are.)
You're not going to get me to defend the government response to COVID in the U.S. All of those measures sound very reasonable. You're not getting pestered to be tested on an ongoing basis because the U.S. lacks the testing capacity. Even if we did, we're not turning samples around fast enough for them to be as useful as they should be in tracing cases.
I have no idea why the government isn't handing out masks to everyone. That's essentially what Taiwan did and they have approximately zero cases.
That said, wearing masks is a lot more useful than banning plastic straws. If you could get a large fraction of the population to consistently wear masks, and impose comparatively light restrictions (no big gatherings, no bars, no indoor restaurants), I think you could eradicate the virus.
> This is well within OSHA limits and is very unlikely to be noticeable.
Why does the study state, "The FFR dead-space oxygen and carbon dioxide levels did not meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s ambient workplace standards."
Do you have a source that counters this study, or are you just throwing some armchair mathematics out there?
Oh can we coin a term like this for drunk driving? You know, when it’s more convenient to drive home drunk than leave your car out? That’s just being taxi-averse
The pandemic could be over if 100% of the population wears them for just 2 months. That's a way better deal than what the mask averse are going to give us which is 12-15months and probably a few million more US lives over that timespan.
No way. Sure you could get it down to a few cases, but compliance is never 100% and it would flare up very quickly.
The only things masks do is slow the spread (which is obviously a good thing for hospitals). If we don't get a vaccine we'll be maintaining some sort of protection (masks, distancing) but every single person will be infected eventually.
Other countries have managed to get it under control by testing and contact tracing. If we could "get it down to a few cases", as you say, we could do the same thing. In the current environment in the US, that seems impossible.
I'm not fully up to date on the US situation but haven't they effectively shut down all borders as well, or at least have had their borders closed on them?
> Given that the disease has only been around for a matter of months, we might not yet know what long-term damage COVID-19 can cause
Statements like this, are quite disingenuous, especially when taken out of context. Using qualifiers like "Might" and "can" in the same sentence is par for the course for the propaganda I have seen over the past few months. Headlines and reports are repleat with what ifs and every sci-fi pathogen trope you can read.
Coronaviruses are not new to science. Pick any pathogen and take the rare cases of odd symptoms and spread it on every network. See how the public reacts.
Give me science! Few if any of our politicians are going on stage talking up the need for randomized studies. They scare us and we panic.
This is science. It's a review of the clinical data currently available and discussion of the findings as they relate to neurological damage. This isn't an attempt to scare you, it's preliminary steps to understand a new virus. Coronaviruses aren't new, but this one is and there's still much to be understood about how it's spread, what effects it has on the body, and how it can be treated.
Normally this information wouldn't get this kind of exposure, but since we're in the middle of a global pandemic which has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in just a few months data is being shared as quickly and as widely as possible. This paper is nothing but a review of what's already being observed in some people who've been infected and a recommendation for additional research in this area all of which appears be entirely appropriate.
It's not at all disingenuous to caution that the long term damage done by this new virus is unknown. Science isn't about guess work and assumptions, it's about the careful collection and analysis of data and right now we don't have any because not enough time has passed.
There is a LOT of anecdotal evidence COVID affects the neural system (it's even been found there during autopsies). The challenge for scientists is they need to raise the concerns during emergencies before the final 99.999% confidence 3-year double-blind studies are completed.
So they couch their terms in language that allows for understanding the lack of absolutes.
> Neurological and cognitive dysfunction may occur acutely after an episode of hyperthermia and may lead to chronic damage, reported to occur in 50 % of survivors discharged from an ICU after heatstroke [87]. The pathophysiological mechanisms are presumed to be similar to those described above, but, in addition, the integrity of the BBB is disrupted allowing translocation of systemic toxins to enter the cerebral circulation. If neurological symptoms fail to improve after the acute episode, cerebellar dysfunction predominates. This is thought to be a result of the sensitivity of the Purkinje cells to thermal damage.
At this point we can also say that some people will need treatments which can cause long term problems for them, for example those needing lung transplants will be on immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives and can expect at least the same risks/limitations faced by others who've undergone transplant for other reasons.
Classification as fear mongering should depend on the frequency and harm caused.
I tend to think that the reporting on these complications focuses on the fact that it can happen, without sufficient detail on how often, and how bad it is, and how often it happens in the absence of Covid-19. This information is necessary to inform people of how concerned they should be. Without it, readers are left up to their imagination.
If covid has a 0.X% infection fatality rate, and a 0.0X% chance of a less severe complication, how much more concerned should the public be?
Isn't this just the man on the deserted island losing his grip, talking to a volleyball and having delirium / psychotic symptoms? A symptom of lockdown, side effect of the preventive treatment.
Wikipedia:
Solitary confinement has received severe criticism for having detrimental psychological effects[2] and, to some and in some cases, constituting torture.[3] According to a 2017 review study, "a robust scientific literature has established the negative psychological effects of solitary confinement", leading to "an emerging consensus among correctional as well as professional, mental health, legal, and human rights organizations to drastically limit the use of solitary confinement."[4]
"Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis."[21]
"Dr. Raji said, "Gray matter volume is a key marker of brain health. Larger gray matter volume means a healthier brain. Shrinking volume is seen in Alzheimer's disease. Gray matter includes neurons that function in cognition and higher order cognitive processes. The areas of the brain that benefited from an active lifestyle are the ones that consume the most energy and are very sensitive to damage." [1]
But you can experience bad brain health from inactivity.
This is a much more sensationalist piece than it ought to be. When a patient has a stroke, they will obviously develop brain damage. That is the definition of a stroke - a cerebrovascular accident. The title should be "brain injury causes brain damage".
If my comment will make someone think and question narratives, it is worth it. Even if it is getting downvoted heavily or flagged. There is a reason why the Socratic method works.
That proposed title subtly promotes the "covid isn't that bad" theory by hiding some of its worse outcomes. I can't do anything about the proximal cause, I can however protect against the distal.
