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Face mask or no face mask?

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  • laurenq1991
    laurenq1991 Posts: 384 Member
    The virus may not be eradicated, but so far this strategy seems to have worked out great for New Zealand. They have a death rate of 4 per million. America has lost 532 people per million. New Zealand’s current outbreak had 22 new cases today. America had 43 THOUSAND cases today. We had ten times as many new cases as all of New Zealand in my home town of Memphis alone today!

    Sweden, on the other hand, has ten times as many deaths per capita as Tennessee.

    Yes, so New Zealand is basically where the US was in February. No population immunity. The second they open up cases are going to begin to spread again. All they've accomplished is pushing cases forward by a few months, just like the states in the US that locked down before their initial surge and then reopened. So what's the end game for New Zealand, since obviously they failed at getting to zero cases before and likely will again? Remain on lockdown for years until a vaccine?

    Sweden has, on average, only a few COVID-19 deaths per week now, despite never locking down. You can see from the graphs I've posted that cases and deaths have already peaked. Meanwhile, the outbreak is still ongoing in Tennessee and cases are rising. So it's disingenuous to compare the two. That's why I compared Sweden to an area of the US that's also pretty much done with COVID-19 and is having comparable deaths per week -- NY and NJ, which have much higher deaths per million than Sweden does (around 1500-1700 per million).

    https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/sweden?country=~SWE
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    Sweden, on the other hand, has ten times as many deaths per capita as Tennessee.

    Sweden's stats aren't actually bad compared to some other states, but they are dreadful compared to its neighboring countries, and there are other factors that matter, such as how dense an area is, how early it got significant cases -- notable that Italy, Spain, and France, as well as the UK, seem to have gotten hit much earlier than some other parts of Europe, and the areas of the US that did worse early on have some similar factors. I doubt Sweden has herd immunity, but I think it's way might be workable for IT, with its specific culture and the fact people are doing a lot of things to minimize spread without a lockdown, plus a healthy population and a great health care system and various other factors. I don't think the US is really comparable, unfortunately.
  • laurenq1991
    laurenq1991 Posts: 384 Member
    edited August 2020
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    Based on you saying highest death rate of any state, I'm assuming NJ. NY and NJ were bad (apart from the nursing home disaster in NY), because NYC metro is so dense and a travel hub, and there clearly was lots of community spread before NY/NJ shut down -- it was there in significant numbers before a lot of other areas in the US. There also likely is something to it hitting the north harder when weather was relatively bad and people were indoors more, and the south worse during the heat, when they are indoors more.

    Yes, so, did the lockdown in NY/NJ accomplish anything? Did it even help to "flatten the curve" and slow the spread of cases? Or did the pre-lockdown community spread ensure sufficient population immunity, that the cases were going to peak in April either way?

    Also, why did other areas of the country lock down when the virus hadn't even spread there yet, and there was no curve to flatten? What did they expect would happen once they opened back up?
    At least at first NYC had lots of people who weren't compliant from anecdotal stuff I've heard from people I know there, as well as various articles. Don't know about NJ. From a good friend in Philly it doesn't seem like they are any more compliant than people here (Chicago), and that's only okay, hardly most people being hermits and never socializing and always wearing masks. Indeed, when it was hitting the early states/cities worst, we were still being told not to bother with masks.

    But were they less compliant than almost anywhere else on earth? Because the theory that "if we just behaved we would be done with this" seems to indicate that areas with the most deaths have the lowest levels of compliance. So by that measure, everyone in my area must have been out in March having wild parties every night and spitting on one another.
    The idea that the difference is because AZ didn't lock down as much early, and that helped, needs a lot more evidence, as there are a huge number of obvious differences. (I think we should have handled this on more of a regional basis myself, but I think the idea that most states would have had FEWER deaths if they'd not shut down at all seems inconsistent with what happened in other countries, like many in Europe, as well as Australia and NZ. The problem is we never really did a hard lockdown -- and those places that came closest started way too late, like Italy.

    What would a "hard lockdown" accomplish? Even if we did a "hard lockdown," all it would take is a few undetected cases to cause cases to spike again once everything opened back up. Which is exactly what happened in NZ.
    Are you imagining that the current stats in Australia or NZ are anything close to the US? Yeah, I'm sure NZ thinks their policy was awful.

    They're at the very beginning of the outbreak. Their options are either to never open up again until a vaccine (which could take years), or to open up and get into the same situation the US and Europe are in. The point was that even they haven't been able to eradicate COVID-19 despite being geographically isolated, low-population nations, that did "hard lockdowns."
    And because of good early action many places can return to normal or even never really had to cancel school at all.

    Which places? Certainly not Australia and NZ, where you can't even go outside without being harassed by the police.
    Anyway, this is all really off topic. The question is masks, and in that masks make it safer (mainly for those others you are around, but if we all wear them, even better) to get back to normal life, I don't see why people object to them.

    My original point was, the mask is a minor concern compared to all this other stuff. I'll wear it if it gets people to shut up about "killing grandma," but I also think its efficacy is likely way overstated. And the hard evidence for its level of efficacy is inconclusive so far.
  • laurenq1991
    laurenq1991 Posts: 384 Member
    Gisel2015 wrote: »
    @laurenq1991 Great idea (about the bolded part of your message). What a genius >:)>:)

    The long-term impacts of Covid-19 (Dr. Sanjay Gupta)

    For many Covid-19 survivors, the diagnosis was just the beginning. Since then, their lives have been turned upside down as unexpected symptoms continue to linger. They are known as long haulers. Many were young and healthy, but now, weeks or months later, even getting out of bed is a struggle for some. And doctors don’t know when, or if, they’ll ever fully recover.

    I spoke to several patients who have told their doctors they experience difficulties breathing, nerve pain, or even memory loss and brain fog.

    The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 35% of adults still don’t feel back to normal, even two to three weeks after testing positive and exhibiting symptoms. A study of 143 Italian patients found that 87% reported having at least one lingering effect 60 days after the onset of their first symptom.

    The long-term symptoms are so mysterious that there is now a center for Post-Covid care at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. It’s the first of its kind focusing on recovery.

    Dr. Zijian Chen, the medical director of the center, says one of the tricky parts is figuring out who might have long-term symptoms.

    “I would presume that if you had a pre-existing condition that the infection with the virus can worsen that condition,” Chen said. “But again, we're also seeing patients who are previously healthy ... but their symptoms have also persisted throughout their illness and beyond.”

    [/i]

    Ah, the classic shifting the narrative from deaths to the vague and poorly defined "long-term effects."

    a) Again, how are lockdowns supposed to prevent this? Lockdowns only delay cases.

    b) That's 35% of cases that were both symptomatic and tested positive. A lot of the milder cases never even get tested for, either because they're asymptomatic or the symptoms are so mild as to barely be noticeable. It's estimated the actual case prevalence is 10-12x what is tested, and obviously more severe cases are more likely to be tested. So, no, it's not 35% of all cases...but they're phrasing it that way to make you think it is.

    c) It can take people weeks or months to recover from the flu or pneumonia. That's considered to be normal, in fact. It took me months to recover from the flu (likely H1N1) that I got in 2011. In fact I missed so much class due to the lingering effects, that it affected my GPA. Nobody shut anything down for me. (In fact, a student at my school actually died from H1N1 in 2009, and the school didn't shut down at all.)

    Hey, look, it's an article from 2010 about the "long-term effects" of swine flu! https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2010/03/29/swine_flu_fallout_many_suffer_nagging_symptoms_long_after_h1n1_subsides.html

    d) Psychosomatic illness exists, and we are basically creating an optimal environment for psychosomatic symptoms to flourish, with all the fear-mongering in the media. "Brain fog" and "nerve pain" are classic psychosomatic symptoms, for example.

    One of the women in this article is clearly a hypochondriac...just check out her ridiculous account of going to the hospital, then realizing she wasn't actually that sick, and going home and miraculously not dying: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/06/11/coronavirus-chronic/?arc404=true

    Another lady in that article admits that the doctors keep telling her that "your body took a hit and it will need time to recover," yet she still refuses to believe it for some reason.

    I've also seen those "COVID-19 long-term effects" discussion groups, and some of the people say they never even tested positive!
  • BrustMannEiner
    BrustMannEiner Posts: 360 Member
    Thank you @laurenq1991

    Sorry that you are also receiving the backlash of comments such as "What a genius". Been there, addressed comments like that, thread was closed then reopened after being edited. I guess it's positive that those disagreeing with you, and us, are not stating we should be thumped from a social distance with a 72" 2"x4".

    Every little win is a plus.
  • cgvet37
    cgvet37 Posts: 1,189 Member
    ShredWeek1 wrote: »
    I may have missed it, but did anyone who is anti-mask explain how they would vanquish the virus?

    Hell, we should vanquish the Flu.
  • laurenq1991
    laurenq1991 Posts: 384 Member
    Thank you @laurenq1991

    Sorry that you are also receiving the backlash of comments such as "What a genius". Been there, addressed comments like that, thread was closed then reopened after being edited. I guess it's positive that those disagreeing with you, and us, are not stating we should be thumped from a social distance with a 72" 2"x4".

    Every little win is a plus.

    It's to be expected. And it's pretty mild compared to some of the comments I've gotten in the past. Like, some guy once accused me of "not believing in water fluoridation" because I don't agree with lockdowns. Someone else started mocking me and accusing me of "claiming I was psychic" and spamming me with crystal ball emojis, just because I stated that I accurately predicted certain things about the projected IFR, peak of cases, and policy decisions (which I predicted with research and common sense, not any clairvoyant abilities!) Another person accused me of being a "Nazi who supports eugenics" and said that I wanted her grandparents to die so that I could personally profit off the economy being open (????), simply because I said that high-risk people should be locked down but low-risk people shouldn't, and that the lockdowns cause deaths too. I lost one friend, who I had been friends with for years, because she accused me of "distorting the facts to promote a political agenda" when I stated (with no discussion of politics) that the IFR would turn out to be below 1%, and posted sources supporting that claim. She believed the IFR would turn out to be 4% or higher. Now it's consensus among researchers that the IFR is below 1% and possibly even below 0.5%...still haven't gotten an apology from her for being so hateful.

    I've never gotten so much hate in my life, as I have since March when I discussed being anti-lockdown. I've lost so many friends and acquaintances over it, either because people blocked me once they started losing the argument, or because they got so nasty with their personal attacks once they started losing the argument, that I decided I wanted nothing more to do with them. When people resort to insults, it really signals that they have nothing substantiative to back up their argument. And I find that usually in these situations, I'm the only person posting sources to support my argument.

    The funny thing is that almost everyone who accuses me of being ignorant, stupid, and "anti-science" doesn't even have any formal educational background in science, and hasn't taken a biology class since the 9th grade. They usually majored in some liberal arts field. Meanwhile, as I mentioned, I have a degree in molecular biology (from one of the top research universities in the US), and worked in research labs, including medical research, for a few years.
  • cgvet37
    cgvet37 Posts: 1,189 Member
    Running and hiding is not going to solve anything. Staying locked up is not healthy. We need to be exposed to germs and bacteria. If you are at high risk, then stay home. Our economy has taken a huge hit, I know as I'm an investor. Many people have lost their lives work. People have lost their jobs.
  • Dnarules
    Dnarules Posts: 2,081 Member
    Dnarules wrote: »
    Dnarules wrote: »
    Dnarules wrote: »
    cgvet37 wrote: »
    Dnarules wrote: »
    cgvet37 wrote: »
    Hollis100 wrote: »
    cgvet37 wrote: »
    I don't believe the numbers. We are being lied to. The CDC and the WHO are master manipulators. Even Dr. Fauci himself was seen not wearing his mask, nor social distancing. Yet, people hang on to his every word. You are being programed, if you believe anything the puppet masters say. Unplug yourself.

    There are many reasons why I disagree with this comment. Aside from any facts I could look up and reference, here's the biggest reason why I don't believe in conspiracy theories: human nature.

    We can't even cooperate with our allies and business partners over trade deals and other ordinary things. We disagree with each other over everything, from politics to religion to recycling. Human beings are a mess.

    Yet, a whole bunch of large organizations are supposed to be working together in some shadowy plot to lie to us and program us -- for freaking what reason? People have never been able to organize worldwide over anything for long.

    I wholeheartedly believe people swallow conspiracy theories because:
    (1) it's easier than facing reality, which is not only scary, but shows humans have no control over a lot of things
    (2) you can bond with others who believe in the same conspiracies and feel you're "right" and "know the truth"

    Why has any nation wanted to rule the World? Why have people like Hitler existed? Power and control. If you think this virus is any different, you are blind. This virus was no mistake, it was man made in China. It has been used to spread fear. Is it real, yes. So is the Flu. Lets shut the Country down every Flu season.

    You seriously cannot believe this.

    Let me guess, you believe everything the Government tells you?

    No, I believe science. They are sequencing this virus. It has already been shown that this virus is not man-made. That was months ago.

    Who showed that, exactly?

    I tried to dig back into all this. It goes all the way back to February/March, and its been hard finding the articles again. Much of what I dug into came from This Week in Virology, which is a group of virologists who have been presenting information on this since January/February. I posted a link to one of the early podcasts that discussed the conspiracy theories. I don't have time to listen again to hear their source (but they are good about backing things up with science. These guys are freaking awesome.). I also linked to an episode of TwiEvo (this week in evolution). They have several episodes following the evolution of this virus. If I can I find my more specific stuff, I will come back. I know someone in my facebook friends has what I'm looking for!

    https://microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-588/

    https://microbe.tv/twievo/twievo-52/

    Proof that COVID-19 was deliberately created in a lab is pretty much the definition of "big, if true" news. If the only thing you can find to support the claim is a podcast, I'm going to conclude that it has not, in fact, "already been shown" to be true months ago. I have no doubt that people on podcasts were making the claim months ago, but that is very different from something having "already been shown" in a way that is reliable.

    I have no doubt that your friends on Facebook will support your claim and provide you with lots of podcast links, YouTube videos, and various blogs to support the claim. It's pretty much what Facebook is famous for at this point. It's the throbbing, teeming center of our current crisis of misinformation and conspiracy theories.

    If you ever do find any reputable sources for the claim, I'd love to evaluate them.

    Wow, that's not what I said at all. I said the evidence is strong that it is NOT created in a lab.

    Also, I did say that I can't find the source, but the podcasts covered it well. And I highly recommend the podcasts. They are based on science. They are pretty awesome.

    Yes, I am so sorry. I completely misread your post -- this was on me. Thanks for the podcast recommendation - I love science-based podcasts and I haven't heard this one yet.

    No worries. I love the podcasts, although now that I am teaching from home and not commuting 2 hours, I don't get to listen often anymore. But I know they aren't real proof for either side of the argument. I did agree with you on that part.
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