100% on the fume extractor. Avoid the cheap little "carbon filter" models though. You need particulate filtration and a bit of organic vapour extraction, so HEPA +/- carbon if you are going to recirculate it within your work environment.
Don't take my word for it, it's all explained in the NIOSH and OSHA handbooks.
You don't get the same exposure from working in a shop soldering all day than from the occasional hobby project. And if you have a simple fan, you are already doing more than most hobbyists.
Safety is not priceless. Regulators carefully calculate how much impact various safety equipment and practices have relative to their cost. And you too should consider how much you need it. Solder for hours a day, get the best fume extractor you can find, do a hobby project every other month, you can go cheap.
Anyways, I wonder if a simple small desk fan fitted with a surgical mask you probably have too much of would be a good compromise of simple, cheap, and better than nothing for hobbyists.
I have never bothered, personally, even when I built more of my own prototypes myself. Hobbyists should consider their personal risk and go in increments. If you are not in a situation where setting up monitoring for exposure to flux per the NIOSH handbook is appropriate, you probably don't need much mitigation either. Putting solder assemblies at a level where flux smoke won't go up into your face is a good idea and practically free. A fan is a good idea, especially if you have one already.
If you're fixated on getting yourself a fume extractor... well, to each their own.
Do you think an Australian Emporium might do okay in SF?
Australian in that context could include a very wide range of Greek, Italian, Croatian, and Lebanese, goodies to pad out a small goods shop with more traditional Australian fare.
It could probably be a successful add-on to an already existing "world" store of some sort, the kind you find in Little Italy or Chinatown. It might take some time to grow but it would eventually be known to those who wanted it.
As a note - if you're ever looking for a foreign product, you can write the US distributor (or the main headquarters if there doesn't seem to be one) asking if there are any retailers in your area; there often are but they can be small and hard to find (no web inventory, etc).
If YouTube put as much effort into addressing the pandemic of health misinformation as they do into making your life difficult, the world would be a better place.
Thank you for spreading such good information on masks.
I actually have the opposite experience with my exercise-induced asthma.
It's quite dry and cold where I am currently, due to winter. Wearing a cloth mask increases the temperature and humidity of the air I breathe when working hard, and makes it less likely that asthma will be triggered.
It's a significant enough effect that I will sometimes wear a cloth mask specifically for this effect when doing something strenuous outdoors.
That would probably be true if we lived somewhere with actual winters. My daughter's PE class is in the afternoon, and the lowest high-temperature we've had all winter is 63.
It turns out a good fitting mask is essential for comfort. I had a problem with masks being hard to breathe in and fogging up my glasses. Then I found a good set of N95 masks that have a real solid fit. It's loose and flexible enough to be breathable, and has a solid seal across the nose so moisture doesn't get near my glasses. You can tell it's a good fit because it deflates/inflates likes a balloon when you breathe.
I did manage to find sports masks I wear when I got the gym that do make it much easier to breath, although they fog up my glasses still so I take those off when I'm there.
She switched from cloth to paper and it did improve things somewhat; I think a lot of the effect is that it seals less on the side though, so the results of them requiring masks outside is that my daughter is wearing a less effective mask inside.
Was that a cup style one? Depending on your facial shape, they can be very uncomfortable. Try a 3M Aura flat fold. Life changing for most healthcare workers.
> Mouth-to-mouth is not deemed particularly necessary these days (since the act of correct CPR will draw oxygen in anyway), better to focus on proper CPR and wait for the ambulance to turn up with high-flow oxygen from a tank.
Not exactly. More precisely, for the “average” out of hospital cardiac arrest in an adult, chest compressions are more important than expired air resuscitation (mouth to mouth). The guidance to the public was watered down because there was recognition that members of the public were not enthusiastic about starting mouth to mouth resuscitation with a stranger. Mouth to mouth definitely helps.
You need a patent airway for any type of CPR to have any chance of working. Chin lift and jaw thrust are important for both compressions only and compression with breaths.
Source: I’m an attending anaesthesiologist and have resuscitated more people than I would like to count.
Have you heard of Fritz!box from AVM? That’s what I have setup for a few friends, with good success. Personally I use a Mikrotik hap ac 3 in my apartment. They have a ‘mesh’ product in the Audience line.
Vaccines prevent infection, as evidenced by the drastically lower COVID case numbers in the vaccinated. You can’t spread it if you don’t have it. If you do contract it, you are less infectious.
This is no different to instituting lockdowns before vaccines became available.
> Vaccines prevent infection, as evidenced by the drastically lower COVID case numbers in the vaccinated.
Vaccines suppress symptoms, which may result in infected people being unaware they are infected or transmitting to others. That's why the CDC recommends (as of October 15) that vaccinated people be tested after exposure, since lack of symptoms != lack of infection, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vac...
> Based on evolving evidence, CDC recommends fully vaccinated people get tested 5-7 days after close contact with a person with suspected or confirmed COVID-19.
The problem with this “record” is that people may come to incorrect conclusions from the way the information is presented.
Do these headlines represent revisions to the initial effectiveness? Or do they represent the waning effectiveness over time? What is the point of having Fauci in the video?
There’s the problem right there. No conclusions should be drawn from watching that YouTube video, yet it has been created specifically to fool people who will do no further reading. The creator doesn’t care of course. YouTube doesn’t care either.
I don't think the "Please stop spreading misinformation." boilerplate is necessarily always hostile and provocative.
In situations where the comment is only aimed at correcting a factual mistake, for example, it can be okay, if still bad style.
It always feels as if it prematurely implies evil intention, which is a move that does not belong in any intellectually honest conversation, neither casual nor scientific.
I don't think the boilerplate should be used in comments that then continue with highly questionable, very radical statements. Especially if heterodox opinions are stated as if they were well established positions.
For example:
"This is no different to instituting lockdowns before vaccines became available."
The idea that conditional lockdowns are identical to non-conditional lockdowns from legal, medical or political perspective is not just wrong, but also unnecessarily radical. The radicalism just makes the wrongness trivial to spot.
The position that actually justifies conditional lock-downs (like the new Austrian policy) is one where the discriminatory treatment is acknowledged and justified, not simply denied.
...which should not surprise anyone who somewhat followed the discourse on the issue.
I know that's not as attractive as just denying the existence of differences between two obviously different policies.
Naming a difference is not an argument in favour of sameness.
The availability of a vaccine is one of the several ways in which the current Austrian policy is different from earlier lockdowns.
This alone already has direct consequences for the political justification of the policy: In the article OP linked they specifically name vaccination nudges as one of the effects they expect from their conditional lockdown. Which is something that would not have made sense in the absence of vaccines.
Pedantry can have it's upside though, so I'm not complaining! :)
Covid vaccines cannot 100% prevent infection like polio vaccine. There are papers that talked about vaccinated people with higher load virus for the initial infection. Given vaccinated people tends to display even less symptoms and more asymptomatic, they are able to spread more because more "infectious". If one is severely down with Covid, one will be confine at home or hospital. Hence the OP claims of more infections is correct and it is not spreading misinformation. This is why now healthcare professionals have opt not to use the word "herd immunity" confer by vaccines. Ironically you are actually more inline with spreading misinformation by not clarifying the vaccinated can still be infected and move around way more than severely unvaccinated people. Having say this, I am pro vaccinations. It is still the right and responsibility thing to do.
They did here a month or two ago. They now apply only in areas where vaccinated and unvaccinated people mingle and enforcement would be too much bother.
Don't take my word for it, it's all explained in the NIOSH and OSHA handbooks.