OT: How effective are masks you ask?
I know this is OT, but just in case anyone is interested, thanks for your time.
Early on before testing and other precautions ramped up in Korea, there were 2 hospitals that both admitted patients with flu symptoms who ended up staying for multiple weeks. It was only after a week the covid19 tests came back positive for these patients.
Both hospitals were in an uproar. Covid19 patient for a week mixing with all the doctors and nurses and patients? Everything was cancelled, everyone was tested, everything was cleaned. To make things worse, multiple patients shared the room as the covid 19 positives, staying together almost 24/7.
Guess how many got infected?
Zero.
Not a single nurse, not a single doctor, not even patients in the same small room.
To further drive the point, one nurse from one of these hospitals later on that week went to a church service without a mask for 90 minutes and get infected
The only thing they did? The patients had masks on the entire time because they had flu symptoms when they were admitted.
The medical professionals concluded they prevented the spread almost completely via masking the patients. And in case you're wondering Korea has some of the best medical systems in the entire world.
The hospital? Back to full workloads, only with mandatory mask requirements. Nobody was fired or furloughed obviously.
Just google translate the following link. In case you're wondering this is one of the most conservative and highly read news sites in Korea.
https://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2020/03/25/2020032500295.html
masks work up to a certain point. They are good for only a few hours. People are not changing their masks every 2 hours. Many are wearing the same masks for days.
That is not true. Not at all.
You're thinking about hospital situations where the masks are intended to protect the medical professionals. We're talking about regular people wearing them in public.
The mask doesn't protect you so much as it protects everyone else from you. Any face covering is better than nothing. Anything that can retain the droplets you expel from your mouth will help slow the spread of the virus.
Either buy a bunch of cloth reusable masks, use a bandana, or take some old tee shirts and cut them into pieces to make masks (there are plenty of directions online on how to make a mask with a shirt and 2 rubber bands). You wear them once, come home, throw it in the washing machine, and next time you go out you wear a new mask. Then at the end of the week, you do your laundry and boom, you have fresh masks
or those who wear their masks, in their cars, alone, while driving!
Masks are not about "screening out airborne virus molecules." They're about keeping the virus in and catching any droplets that could be expelled from your body while breathing, coughing. sneezing, etc. Everyone should be acting and taking precautions like they're asymptomatic. If everyone acts like they're asymptomatic and wears a mask, all of the sudden there is much less covid in the air and it doesn't spread as much
We were first told that masks didn't help much. Just wash your hands...
I'm sure this was done to stop a run on masks and to reserve them for medical workers. It may have been the right thing to do under the circumstances, but it weakened trust. The truth is always the best policy.
As a result, we are now actually debating whether devices specifically designed to stop the spread of germs actually stop the spread of germs. When a patient shows up to the hospital ill, the first step is to put a mask on them. Not to protect them from a virus, but to protect others. This is all really simple.
When you breathe through a face covering, it helps to trap droplets from leaving your nose/mouth and landing on other surfaces.
The politicization of this is disturbing to say the least. I hope that a lesson has been learned. Don't lie to people and then expect them to believe you the next time you speak.
I assure you, no lessons were learned.
Great article on why/how the early mask wearing advice backfired:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html
I can’t read Chinese as well as I thought I could!
A pandemic has killed 75,000 Americans (probably closer to 100.000 if you look at the excess mortality data) and shut down our and the worlds economy. Most Americans have done their part to help. Many Americans have given much more like this paramedic from Colorado and many more.
People are literally giving their lives to fight this but a bunch of assholes can’t be bothered to wear a mask when they go in a store? Who gives a shit if it turns out to be not that effective. It’s not much to ask. Those that think it is are just selfish pricks.
The same group of selfish pricks tend to be the people who claim it’s not really a threat and ignore the clear evidence of the illness and death it’s causing. They really just cowardice. When faced with a threat they claim it’s not real so they don’t have to face it. Weak people
They then wrap their cowardice and selfishness in the flag claiming they are patriots defending freedom. Patriots don’t refuse to help when their country is threatened. Traitors on the other do things to further the threat. In this case refuse to take any precautions which spreads the virus, kills more people and increases the economic pain for everyone.
So there you go anti-masker. You are a selfish coward who is a traitor to your country.
Masks absolutely make a difference. The line about masks being ineffective (told to protect limited supplies) is a big reason why Western countries have had such a hard time with COVID-19. The biggest lesson countries need to take away from this pandemic is that an emergency supply of masks needs to be maintained. Widespread mask distribution back in February would have helped immensely.
I have rocks at the end of my driveway that are smarter than blue by u.
Go Blue