Vox.com: "Oh, and face masks? You can pass on them. Masks are only useful if you have a respiratory infection already and want to limit the risk of spreading, or if you're working in a hospital in direct contact with people who have respiratory illnesses." Deleted and sent down the memory hole today

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[–]yetanotherone_sigh 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Not my job to do homework for you. I will expend an hour doing real research and you will call it fake news. Played this game before.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

I have also looked and looked, my guy. You are falling for psychological BS.

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Okay, then, debunk my science. You have to use real, repeatable science to do it. I have over 100 years of empirical evidence on my side. The burden of proof is on you, or GTFO.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

What science am I trying to debunk?

I'm saying everyday people all over the world do not use masks the way doctors use them. They are inefficient, unless used exactly how doctors use them, appropriately. All that science you're saying supports you? Yeah, it supports what I am saying too. If a doctor did surgery without gloves, people would be upset, right? Why aren't you upset that they aren't mandating wearing protective gloves at grocery stores and taze the gloveless? Are you some sort of science-denier?

edit: fixed some wording

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Okay, let's go over that.

Gloves are used to protect the patient with sterile technique. Before gloves, Semmelweiss and Pasteur taught to wash hands in freshly boiled water for similar reasons. As long as your skin isn't broken, it's a very effective barrier against bacteria and viruses. So we are trying (a) not to get infected ourselves, and (b) not to spread the virus to others if we are infected.

As Semmelweiss and Pasteur taught (and this was VERY controversial at the time), there are bacteria and viruses smaller than you can see that can infect you and kill you. Handwashing was found to be extremely effective at getting rid of them. That is why it is taught today as part of the pandemic response.

(a) Wash your hands frequently

(b) Don't touch your face

Have you seen any of these instructions posted anywhere lately, say in the last year? I have, probably thousands of times. It works.

The reason they don't push the use of gloves is that most people don't know sterile technique to put them on and take them off. They'd screw it up and break sterility, rendering their efforts useless and wasting more gloves which were already in short supply. And for the general public, gloves (probably) are not any better of a barrier than their skin is. It's easier to sterilize skin with 30 seconds and hand sanitizer for an untrained person. Having 300 million people change their gloves 5 times a day is definitely going to run us out of gloves in like 10 seconds. (Unprepared FEMA all over again.) So they are shooting for risk reduction, not 100% perfection.

Like I said several times, no methods are going to be 100% effective for disease prevention, especially methods you give to untrained masses of people. This is just intended to be "good enough". Epidemiology just says that, in general, you have to get R0<1.0. If one single person doesn't wash their hands, then they touch their face and get sick, that doesn't take out an entire continent worth of people. But if 10,000,000 people refuse to wear masks or do any kind of social distancing or anything at all, it does.

Medicine and epidemiology are kinda messy, like chemistry. You never get all your reactants to react in an experiment. You never get 100%. But with this type of pandemic, you try for "as good as we can get it" in order to mitigate total disaster. And they have completely failed at most of that.

Edit: My own take is that we should have had a very brief shutdown in heavily infected areas of the country, and taught everyone the basics while we were at it. Been honest about the shortfall of emergency supplies. Geared up and had grandmas all over the country make masks while we were in lockdown. Then put up those plastic barriers and everything and practiced social distancing and worn masks. Contact tracing for infected persons. Encouraging people to quarantine if they felt sick. Those are reasonable responses. You don't have to shut down the country forever. BUT Trump weaponized anti-science deniers and refused to endorse masks early on. That was the exact wrong thing to do and it got out of control, fast. All he had to do was say "Here are some experts, listen to them. And buy my MAGA masks on my website for $20." He could have turned into a wartime president by saying "It is your patriotic duty to protect your fellow Americans by wearing a mask and social distancing." He would have easily won the election and he would have saved sooooo many lives.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

What I am saying is that everyday people across the world do not wash their hands often, or avoid touching their face. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people touch their face, adjust their mask, so on, in public, then touch something in the grocery store. This has happened so much that I have made it a game to go to stores and count how many people do not properly follow the guidelines. Sometimes, it is everyone in the store. I have seen people pull crumpled masks out of their pockets, probably unwashed after many days of use. Is that proper guidelines?

I never tried to say any of the stuff you are saying doesn't exist. I'm saying no one is following it in a way that would actually make a difference. YOU, along with every corrupt official and government, claims that the places where people do follow it are fine and safe, and oh my god look at how great they are. I have not seen it, and neither have any of the people I am close to. I trust my eyes, you trust GovCorp. edit: you made a joke about an entire continent of people dying. Dude, you are a buffoon.

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Regarding my joke: I have a bunch of family that works in EMS. All my family were firefighters, paramedics, ambulance drivers, nurses, and search and rescue crew. I grew up around "graveyard humor". All people in EMS use it to get by, otherwise all the death and suffering gets overwhelming. It doesn't excuse it, and if I offended you, I apologize. I'm not above making a tasteless comment. Other people would tell you to "Suck it up, Buttercup", because you are on an uncensored and anonymous board. I would like to think that I'm trying to be better than the average Poalock or Voatard. I fail sometimes.

Just so that we're all on the same page: I did not vote for Biden. I will never vote for Biden. I hate Biden and I think he has a really serious boundary problem with underage kids, and maybe worse than that. I hate neoliberals. I think they are dangerous authoritarians.

I've had people here and on Poal and Voat call me a libtard. I usually write in candidates or vote for third parties. I am NOT a democrat. But I am also NOT a republican or a Trump supporter in any way. I call it out where I see it, republican or democrat. He dropped the ball 100% on the pandemic and there is a reason it is worse here than anywhere else on earth.

I do totally agree with you about the untrained masses not following protocol. There should have been way better training on that. The way I teach other people is to put glitter somewhere innocuous, like on their steering wheel or a doorknob. Then at the end of the day, examine closely where all the glitter went. It gets everywhere.

Just so that you know where I'm coming from, I caught Covid-19 back in the early days in March and April. I am otherwise healthy and under 50. I was sick for months, I have permanent lung damage, and it gave me a stroke due to a blood clot in my right lung. I still have not fully gotten back to normal. So that's why I really, really want for this to be over. I don't want to be right. I don't want to see unnecessary death and suffering. I just want to bite the bullet, get through the hard part, and get done with it all. I hope that someday soon we can all go to Disneyland again and there will be puppy dogs and ice cream. When Trump and company dropped the ball (or worse, deliberately underplayed this) I got up in arms. When people say it's no worse than the common flu, it makes me angry. When people refuse to wear masks or even try anything, I get pissed. So that's where I'm coming from, just so that you know. This is a dangerous and terrible disease and I don't want anyone else to get it.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I'm not offended, that joke was just stupid. I didn't call you a libtard.

The lockdowns are killing people. Kids who live with abusive parents? They are trapped with their parents. Domestic abuse has gone up. Suicide has gone up. People who I know with longterm problems are suffering because they can't get the meds they need because of weird covid protocols. People are dying from these lockdowns. My grandfather was killed because of it. He died surrounded by masked strangers.

Last year, my whole family got sick with it. We don't talk about it often IRL, because people are fucking weird about it. I don't mention it online, because people would call me a liar.

It was so mild, I am shocked that people are freaking out over this. Just so you know, when I was ten, I had a flu that lasted for two months where I developed walking pneumonia. It was hell. I wouldn't wish it on anybody else. I lost ten pounds.

I would never force draconian lockdowns on people just because of these fears and tribulations. It is wrong to enforce this shit on people.

John Locke in 1689 in his treatise ‘A letter Concerning Toleration’: ‘No man can be forced to be healthful, whether he will or no.’

When people say this is some horrible disease, it makes me angry. This is a seasonal disease, and you reacted poorly to it, just how I reacted poorly to the flu when I was ten and almost died. Get some salt.

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Did you happen to see the leaked report from the White House about Covid? I'm trying to remember but I think it may have leaked out around April or so. This was the Administration's own analysis. If they didn't do lockdowns, they expected 2.2 million deaths in a year. They kept that information secret, but the NYT got ahold of a copy and published it in its entirety. I read it. It's 400 pages long.

Not to denigrate what you and your family went though... I'm more worried about the long term health complications. It is looking like somewhere around 1/3 of all people who get this will have all kinds of things go wrong, from blot clots and strokes, to heart and lung and kidney damage, even innocuous things like never being able to smell or taste again. Imagine 100 million Americans with those complications when everyone has had a chance to be infected. It would collapse the healthcare system in the US just by itself. Not to mention the path getting there during the pandemic, just trying to keep people alive. People don't seem to realize that this kind of thing can collapse civilizations. It has happened a bunch of times in the past. It will certainly end in an economic collapse in the US, no matter if we lock down or not. The US is done. Likely, our healthcare system will collapse no matter what. That's my take.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Honestly, at the end of the day, I support liberty, you support draconian totalitarianism. That is what is happening across the world. You don't want to support this evil, I know you don't.

They have no good reason to believe that the numbers of cases are accurate. The PCR tests are bunk, the dude who made them even said they should be used for research, not diagnosis. The antigen tests are bunk, they can't prove that you are sick with that exact virus at that exact moment. They have no good reason to support this. What about the Belgium doctors in their open letter, saying this is blown-out of proportion? Or the Swedish open-letter? Or the german one?

Liberty over safety, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Edit: also, about the side-effects, the flu has some horrible side-effects. We don't know if the covid-19 side-effects will last forever. We simply do not have the data like we do for the flu.