For those with Apple News+, just visit the URL in Safari on iPad or iPhone, hit the "share" icon, and share with News+ to view the story there. LA Times is included in News+.
This also works with the Wall Street Journal.
Note: this only works in mobile News+. It does not work on a Mac. Sometimes you can just open the newspaper in question from News+ on a Mac and simply find the story, but in this case I didn't see the story.
PS: you have to actually visit the URL in Safari. If you long tap on the link on HN to bring up the actions menu there is a share option there, but News+ is missing. News+ is only an option for sharing the URL Safari is actually on.
Covid is basically the perfect pandemic to hit the US in terms of worst-case scenario.
This is a good example. Many of these people are illegal/undocumented persons who can't get benefits or medical treatment and can't afford to NOT work.
They're still vectors anyway.
The truth is that the US benefits from these workers and our economy would implode without them yet we vilify them and treat them horribly.
Our economy would not implode. That's ridiculous. We would go back to paying what our grandparents paid for food as a percentage of our paycheck.
California created this situation through lax enforcement of immigration laws. It is less cruel to strictly enforce the law, as this prevents people from becoming second class residents.
I don't agree with all enforcement methods, but lets not pretend that California doesn't try to actively impede federal enforcement of immigration laws.
For example, they passed SB 54, which prevents California law officers and agencies from assisting or sharing any information on illegal immigrants with the feds.
> California created this situation through lax enforcement of immigration laws.
It's not for states to enforce federal immigration laws. If enforcement is lax, that's a failing of the federal government. It's also a failing of the federal government that the path to legal immigration for many people is file some paperwork, then wait 20+ years for your turn.
Learn something about farming before you comment on it. You have no clue. Illegal aliens are the backbone of fruit and vegetable farming. Americans don't want these jobs.
Seriously makes me wonder if future generations would be able to garner a relatively objective understanding of everything that's happened. 100 years later, what would make one media source from today be considered more reliable than another from today? What first person accounts would be considered more reliable than another? Would you take the words of people on the street over the words of the president? What of all the people who agree that there's a deep state movement to work against the president in secret? How the heck would a historian be able to figure out what really happened?
Suddenly makes me wonder how skeptical I should be of all our understanding of recorded history.
I wonder where a historian will even be able to read anything at all from this time. Most of the discourse on this has been online, and who will have archived Reddit and Tik Tok?
B) We are recording way more today than at any point in history. It is not like what is currently on Reddit and Tik Tok would have been published in books, with copies stored on slides and archived in libraries around the world. It would have been done in person (or never at all), and never written down in the first place.
I think the “how do I figure out what the heck really happened” part is something most historians care about quite deeply and is an important part of historiography.
Looking at the veracity of previously recorded history is part of historiography as well.
I think skepticism of recorded history is healthy in general. Historians would probably agree.
What scares me is that any large org -- facebook, instagram, AP News, Google, the BBC -- could just delete all of their archives, or get some sort of nasty randsomware that just deletes everything or rewrites everything. And that's just an automated thing; the 1984-syle deliberate rewrites could be done via an automated script or some next-gen GPT-3 thing.
I have a more cynical take that what exactly happened is less important than how we interpret what we believe to have happened. Perhaps there are historians that are so objective as to be robotic in uncovering and disseminating only the facts, but I believe most historical studies are entangled with moral arguments.
Firstly, even if we focus only on the facts, reality is so complex and multifaceted that it is inevitable a historian must selectively omit material in order to communicate a story a public can understand, and this inevitably obscures the facts and pulls in the historian's own moral interpretations of what is worth communicating.
Secondly, although there may be people who study history for the love of uncovering past events without preconceptions or bias, they are funded by those that may not share the same goals. History is used to induce a sense of shared national identity in schoolchildren, demonize others to justify confrontation, and stir citizens into making personal sacrifices for the group. Even if all the events are true, how they are presented, interpreted, and selectively omitted can create wildly different opinions on the same historical event.
Ultimately, I think history is more a tool of social control than any objective study. A person unmoored from history will focus only on his immediate wants and needs. A person with some education in history will call upon historical grudges and pride in the heroism of those long dead to take part in social structures that far exceeds him in numbers and lifespan. Storytelling is what makes us social animals, and history is just a more believable form of storytelling. What really happened isn't valuable in itself but how it adds to the persuasiveness of that story.
It didn't kill 100k, it killed somewhere between 34k and 100k, and did so over a period of well over a year (between December 1968, which is when it became widespread in the US, to end of winter 1970 or thereabouts).
In contrast, the coronavirus has killed at least 150k Americans over just five months.
I ignored everything else because I've learned on HN to not bother going forward unless people agree on numbers. Its useless and we will just talk past each other. Frankly, just as useless as when people add snarky PS and put other's on notice.
and dragonwriter is responding to you and I'd rather not get in his way
It seemed like California took some of the strongest lockdown measures early on, especially compared to Texas and Florida; all three of which are seeing increased fatalities while the rest of the country is plummeting.
I wonder if this a case of lockdowns delaying the inevitable, combined with the fact that many of those affected are in places with high population densities. If we are to learn anything from elderly care facilities in NYC, Sweden and Canada, it's that infected people need to be separated way out away from anyone in their home. The primary vector of infection is still the home, likely due to higher exposure if someone is sick.
> I wonder if this a case of lockdowns delaying the inevitable
Even if it is "only delaying the inevitable", it bought 3+ precious months of gathering PPE, increased testing, and political change.
Yes. Political change. Mr. Trump is now wearing a mask: it took this long to convince people that masks are a good idea. If COVID19 has a 2nd wave, we're far more prepared now than we were back in March.
> The primary vector of infection is still the home
The primary vector of infection has BECOME the home, because we've shut down schools, restaurants and more. I'm not entirely sure if we can push the lockdown any further logistically than businesses / public spaces. The home remains personal responsibility.
You don't hear as much about the rest (they have smaller populations), but things are not going well anywhere. Illinois is getting close to increasing lock downs. Wisconsin should be, but isn't (though they have finally put out mandatory mask orders) . MN is is looking at options. Iowa is barely doing okay, but will probably start getting high numbers soon. Tennessee probably is going to see problems soon but so far has been lucky.
Those are states I have personal friends in and so reason to follow them. I'm sure the rest of the country isnt much better off. For that matter, much of the world seems to be celebrating they are doing better than the US while ignoring signs that thier luck is running out.
But I remember very clearly the period in late February and early March when authorities in every country were making that same claim. "We only have a few dozen patients, which is nothing like the true outbreaks in Iran and Italy, we'll surely be able to get it under control without extreme measures." Is there a reason to expect Vietnam's current outbreak will follow a different trajectory?
And some of these countries made good on the claim. New Zealand has 23 active cases. Taiwan has 27. South Korea has 808 (that's after having a cult church being a hotbed of infection and its members actively hindering government intervention).
Hell, even Italy now has only 12,474 active cases.
We're not even a year into a multiple year pandemic. Yes, it's great those countries have it under control now, but I don't feel comfortable assuming it will stay that way.
The attitude that any country has "already dealt with it" is exactly what's concerning. The history of this year is just an endless sequence of people saying "we've got it, it's under control now" before getting smashed by a huge new spike of cases. Many countries did better than the US, and many of the ones who didn't at least suppressed the virus more - but now a lot of them are following in the US's lead and continuing to reopen as cases rise.
there is an ocean of difference between dealing with a manageable amount of infections that allows contact tracing and an explosion of cases that we are having here in the US and in certain counties in California
The question is whether contact tracing can reliably prevent a manageable amount of infections from turning into an explosion. It's failed to do so in many countries.
Just because there are others doing better doesn't mean it's not luck. One might expect success to be pareto-distributed , so when you are looking at 100+ countries, there are bound to be some that are much better off than others, for innocuous or random reasons (e.g. "luck")
I suspect that, for any given location, the current outcome is some combination of government preparation/policy, people's behavior, luck, density, isolation, and previous number of infections/deaths.
With the benefit of hindsight, it's very easy to cherry-pick factors that can be used to explain why one country seems to be doing well or poorly. But then you have to explain why the country next door seemed to do so differently.
What's happening in Illinois seems to be like a smaller version of what happened in the US. The northern part of the state near Chicago got hit early on in March-May, and that has quieted down a lot. Now the downstate areas closer to St. Louis are getting hit, as well as other more rural areas of the state (and some of the suburban Chicago areas as well which had been spared somewhat initially).
It's nearly impossible to draw firm conclusions (obviously, though so many are trying), but to my non-expert eye it certainly seems like this virus just burns through areas until some threshold level is reached (either due to some form of immunity kicking in, or the local population getting sufficiently scared to take their own measures more seriously, or something else). And it looks more and more to me like there's only 2 kinds of places: those that have been hit already and those that will be hit. It's unclear if the lockdowns really did much beyond delaying the inevitable (which, to be fair, is what we were told they were supposed to do in the beginning - it was "slow the spread", not "stop the spread").
Even looking at other countries, areas that were being scolded for doing a bad job seem to be nearing the end of their curve while areas that were touted as doing successful mitigation measures are flaring up. And of course there's counter-examples to everything that can be found as well.
It's hard to shake the feeling that no one really has any idea and everyone is just guessing. Even mask usage isn't clear - in the US it is getting near universal recommendation from our experts, while quite a few European countries with their own experts are not recommending masks, saying that there's little proof that they help and possibly some evidence they may do harm. It's mind-boggling how little agreement there is, even on something relatively simple to do like wearing a mask (fwiw, we wear ours because intuitively it seems they should help and it's a simple thing to do if it helps in any way).
When evaluated within an evidence-based medicine framework, there isn't yet any high-quality evidence to support mandatory cloth mask wearing in public.
I can't wear masks due to a medical condition. For a while I just drove one state over to get groceries or ordered online for drive-up/pick up.
I went to a restaurant with some friends last weekend. "Do you have a mask" I was asked, a clothes pin holding my t-shirt around my face. The server said, "We'll give you one," and when I said I had a medical condition. He said, "That's fine," and I was glad that was it ... but I still felt so awkward and filled with anxiety and shame, even at our table where they weren't required. I just saw all the wait staff around and it made me my focus narrow and want to panic.
I think they have a negative mental effect and I think there's good scientific evidence they're not very useful:
I probably will just switch to drive-up pickup for groceries and only go to outdoor seating restaurants for the rest of the summer.
We're creating a world of shame and judgement over wearing PPE, and on top of that, there are thousands of people out there with PTSD and Anxiety disorders, with deep, personal, sometimes traumatic reasons, for being unable to wear a face covering. We're making people who refuse feel like they're killing grandma even though there is science that says that's unlikely. We're creating a new religious belief.
A man in a Tim Horton's was pepper sprayed by a cop for not wearing a mask. Another Canadian man was shot by police.
History will not look kindly back on this period of our humanity.
> We're creating a world of shame and judgement over wearing PPE,
I think this would happen anyway, because of psychological dynamics in group/societies (cases of public shaming, drives to and against conformism etc abound throughout history).
However in your particular case the issue is exacerbated by the fact that PPEs effectively became part of identity politics.
It's possible that quite a few people who are shaming you for not wearing a mask are doing so because they don't believe you're honest bout your medical condition and instead you're making this up in order to "stand your ground".
People are kinda silly; we all hope that people from "our side" of the political spectrum are not, but once identity politics dynamics kick in human beings tend to lose quite a bit of their rationality.
>It's hard to shake the feeling that no one really has any idea and everyone is just guessing.
Even more than just being "hard to shake" it's really the only conclusion I can reach now. In the beginning we were told we had to wipe down our groceries and anything else we brought into our homes, and now they're saying that wiping down any surfaces is mostly pointless because it doesn't spread effectively that way.
Strong lockdown measures doesn't translate to people actually following through. In Central Valley and places like Huntington Beach you can go outside and not realize there's a global pandemic. The data is fuzzy and evolving. I doubt the world will have concrete answers for many years.
> it's that infected people need to be separated way out away from anyone in their home
That's not what I got from it. It pretty much showed that separating elderly from anyone else is really difficult. It failed in many countries. This because they're either with families, or they're with people whom take care of them.
> I wonder if this a case of lockdowns delaying the inevitable
Lockdown is to ensure the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. Many countries had to completely stop or delay certain activities. People avoided going to the hospital out of fear of catching anything.
It'll happen eventually isn't very compassionate IMO.
> This because they're either with families, or they're with people whom take care of them.
This was a big reason why things got very ugly in Italy, and to a lesser degree Spain -- a lot of working adults live with their (older) parents. They pick it up and might be able to shake it off or call out of work for a week, but they end up bringing it home to their elderly parents.
The US has this too, doubly so since the millennial generation is more likely to live at home than ever, but compared to places like Italy there are far fewer people living with their 60 year old mother and 80 year old grandpa, all in the same house.
It seems difficult to understand what caused the spike. I didn't even know bars were open. It seems hard to believe opening the bars was the primary cause.
It also seems amazing that despite the nighttime protests/riots in Portland, that there's basically no cases there.
LA seems mostly the same the last 4-months except early on. There's now 100s of people on the street on the weekend eating outside like it's Europe. I've unfortunately been outside everyday since the pandemic started.
I live in a place where I’d loosely characterize people as compliant (at least with re local and state gov). At the beginning people wore masks at every outdoor occasion, now with warm weather things have changed and it’s like a California stop. They wear it if someone’s looking, otherwise many are off.
Yeah I don’t get that. They sit down to eat, where of course you have to take off your mask, but they don’t keep a distance, and, moreover will keep on chatting during and after eating with masks off...
It's still better than nothing if they're avoiding exposing customers and getting directly exposed to customers, but yeah, that's a recipe for spread in the workplace (and we've seen a lot of that). Most break rooms and such aren't really designed for the circumstances, so it's tricky to address this...
Australia tried aiming higher, and now Melbourne is facing 6 more weeks of hard lockdown with record highs. Maybe there were policy choices that could have allowed them and every other country to replicate New Zealand's current situation, but you're going to need more than a pithy comment to demonstrate that.
New Zealand is a small island nation with only 5 international airports. It has 1.4% the population of the United States (4.8M vs 328.2M), and a smaller population than New York City (8.4M). It has 18 people per km², compared to 94 people per km² in the United States.
Part of the problem is that the lockdowns were inconvenient and their effectiveness at slowing the initial spread made it easy for conspiracy theorists and extremists to argue that it was all fake. Now that the government has been pressured (in part by lawsuits from conservatives, business owners and extremists) to open back up, we're seeing aggressive spread combined with people convinced that the lockdown was a scam to begin with. Going to be hard to put together another lockdown when we need it...
They are just high population states with big crowded cities. If you sort Worldometer by cases per million, these three states aren't even in the top 10.
I'm curious about lack of mention of home conditions. How many people per household? What is the community / non-work contact?
It might all be the workplace, but we just had a large jump in cases without the single workplace and we might have some of the same demographics as them.
FTA: "The surge in Central Valley cases has taken a particular toll on farmworkers, in part because they often live in close quarters, share transportation to job sites and have little access to healthcare."
Yeah, that's one line and doesn't tell me a whole lot about the outside life. Are there more than average number of people per household, are there family gatherings, etc. I'm a bit worried they are comparing it to similar population like reservations and concentration a bit too much on the job. Seeing what you want or from the wrong perspective is not good.
Anecdote time: I live in San Francisco, almost everyone wears a mask here. My friend just got back from a road trip through the central valley, he said nobody there was wearing masks and a random stranger called him a coward (in more colorful language) for wearing one while at a gas station. His opinion was that the central valley is going to be hit hard.
We have a friend who is an ER nurse at a hospital on the Central Valley. She had a nasty interaction while buying takeout at a bar in Winters. Another patron said “we don’t need any mask wearing cowards in here” and then proceeded to get physically confrontational until her friend said “are you really going to beat up two nurses over wearing masks” and then he backed off.
I got yelled at for wearing a mask while getting the mail at my apartment. Said I shouldn't scare her kids in their home. (apparently this person considered anywhere in the apartment complex to be "home")
> Are they just projecting their fears of being wrong?
I'd believe this answer if someone told me :). It's the same thing that fuels all of the fanboi-ism in tech. The "I'm insecure about my choice so I need to attack all of the other choices to feel better" behavior.
They believe the virus and masks are part of a conspiracy to deprive them of their freedom (???), so by wearing a mask you're participating in it, somehow. Not that bizarre compared to the (increasingly widespread) conspiracy theories about child trafficking in imaginary tunnels and basements that led at least one guy to storm a restaurant with a rifle.
We've also had incidents of utility workers being attacked by people who think 5G towers are being used to spread the (imaginary????) coronavirus, so that's a thing.
What are the psychological principles that drive people to believe in absolutely insane things that can easily be disproven? Why does this even happen? What do these people get from having these beliefs? Why do they do vehemently defend them to the point of fanaticism?
These aren't hypothetical questions. I genuinely do not understand these people or their behavior on any level and I never see any attempt at an explanation anywhere - here, social media, mainstream media, documentaries - you name it.
I'm no expert, but my guess is lack of education combined with extreme political divide in the country. From what I've observed, one side thinks whatever the "other side" believes in must be wrong and harmful, so they are obligated to take a contrarian view and are willing to die on that hill.
A large portion of pizzagate was focused on Epstein... and arguably was responsible for him finally being arrested.
I think the key for conspiracy theories is that they find a kernel of truth that powerful people don't readily admit, and then fill in the information gaps with their own narrative.
Distrust in authorities is understandable by the less educated, taking into account how the elite lies and takes advantage of the population. The problem comes from the top: their irresponsible and unethical practices led to today's divided country. t.ly/Fb8F
I'm not sure it's (only) an educated vs uneducated thing. I have a friend who is an anesthesiologist who is a (somewhat) anti-vaxxer, and university professor friends (yes, more than one) who are (again, somewhat) conspiracy theorists. Not chemtrail level, but 'yeah but how do we know MH17 wasn't a false flag operation by the Americans' level. (to me, that's already nutjob territory; for others, that's 'healthy scepticism').
In these people, I theorize it's a badge of honor for them to be contrarian, and to be 'independent thinkers'. Which, in the abstract, is a good thing I guess - but where is the line? It's all phrased in a way that there is no 'proof' possible, because there is always an extra layer of 'but that's just what THEY want you to think!'.
I was at a (responsibly socially distanced, thank you) bbq yesterday where several highly intelligent, respected professionals were spouting... let's say... things with dubious intellectual justification. But hey, with some in that company being literally antifa t-shirt wearing activists, at least it's entertaining!
There are quite a number of studies on this in sociology, psychology and psychiatry literature. I don't have any at hand, and as usual it would take a bit of trial and error to stumble upon the right jargon in each subfield to unlock most of it, but it's definitely out there.
A disturbing amount of people believe in flat earth and you are only aware of it because of the internet. Half the world doesn't have to believe in it for it to be alarming.
Surprisingly large numbers of people do believe in absolutely bizarre things. While half of people don't think the earth's flat, some polls show it to be in double digits. And polls often show up to 20-30% for the moon landings having been faked. In polling a couple of years ago, only 25%(!!!) of US Republicans believed that Obama was born in the US (though this was a significant increase from polls taken at the start of last decade, and might indicate a degree of value signaling).
We're hearing about this now because conspiracy theories about covid are _dangerous_ in a way that belief that the earth is flat are largely not. Another worrying one potentially coming up; a lot of people believe various conspiracy theories about vaccines, and this may become a serious issue if a viable covid vaccine becomes available.
My anecdotal experience from discussing these issues with people of many demographics, political pursuations, etc. is that there is a great deal of animosity from people that were more heavily hit by the lockdowns, rules, etc. imposed by the goverment. And people wearing masks is a "signal" that that person is likely on the side that was driving the lockdowns, restrictions, etc. to occur. This includes: people that have lost their jobs, people that have young kids (in schools that were closed), etc.
Yes. The Cold War and the resulting pro-business/anti-government ethos that pervades America creates a situation in which people blame each other for everything that goes wrong instead of blaming their leaders or the ruling class. When they lose their job, they don’t consider that in most countries they would have either not lost their job or they would have began receiving a healthy sustenance from the government.
My anecdotal experience is in line with yours. Some areas that were hit hard by lockdowns also had very few cases, so people were left not knowing anyone who knew anyone who had contracted COVID-19.
Obviously this does not justify boorish behavior, but I can certainly empathize with their sentiments.
Yeah I can sorta see that for some people. There's lots of stress happening at various levels. Lack of uncertainty makes us act out in harsh ways. And it's a easy target with a strong signal
Any precautionary control of physical appearance and conduct gets a reaction in America.
If a school demands a dress code, people go nuts. It's immediately suspected to be unfair, overly broad, racist, sexist, and ableist, probably invented by perverts who think too much about adolescent sexuality. If you tell them the dress code is a courtesy to others, kids and parents will get in your face and protest it. [0]
Masks solve a (big) problem in some (limited) situations -- mostly close contact. But the rules are written to be over-inclusive and inconsistent. It's a protection against the chance you're infected and don't know it. Some municipalities are demanding them outdoors, in sparsely-populated areas, and indoors with your family. You don't get to present your body how you want, and your communication is stifled.
Masks are a dress code for the face. I wear them. But some people are going to get angry.
I think it stretches the meaning of "dress code" to breaking point when the required item is functional. Are seatbelts a "dress code"? Open carry weapons?
But I think you hit the mark closer with that little hedge of "and conduct", at the beginning. This isn't about dress codes per se, it's about rules - many Americans simply hate rules and reflexively rebel against them. Any suggestion that one should make a sacrifice for the collective good is invariably met, from some quarters, with a kind of moral outrage - often accompanied with self-righteous rhetoric giving frequent mention to "freedom" and "liberty", and often "the Constitution" and "founding fathers" as well. The inability to make collective sacrifice is a huge social weakness that interferes with the formation of a civil society, and in my opinion it is, more than anything else, the reason America is handling the pandemic so poorly - not just in terms of the acute response, but also the very structure of society. For example, due to overwhelming distaste for the idea of paying to fix other people's problems even if it's manifestly better for society as a whole, there's no socialized healthcare, or functioning social safety net - both of which cause people in low-paying service jobs to drag themselves to work while fighting COVID-19.
Imagine a place in which open carry weapons were mandatory, though, on the chance you’re able to help someone who is attacked.
Many would be angry about the overinclusive rule. It would be more about the message to others about safety than actual safety. “Let them help themselves, if they’re so risk averse,“ you might say.
In at least some places, “masks all the time” isn’t entirely about function. Do masks really work better in casinos and schools, but not churches and funerals? Or, as in Maryland this week, do they work differently in public schools and private schools?
People sense that the mask in some situations is partly about a certain kind of authority and conformity — and they don’t like to conform with their face and body.
> But in the more general case, people can use moral decisions to signal how moral they are. In this case, they choose a disastrous decision based on some moral principle. The more suffering and destruction they support, and the more obscure a principle it is, the more obviously it shows their commitment to following their moral principles absolutely. For example, Immanuel Kant claims that if an axe murderer asks you where your best friend is, obviously intending to murder her when he finds her, you should tell the axe murderer the full truth, because lying is wrong. This is effective at showing how moral a person you are – no one would ever doubt your commitment to honesty after that – but it’s sure not a very good result for your friend.
Letting people die of disease shows their commitment to "freedom" from ... masks and scientists.
I think this is a big part of it.
In my experience, almost everyone who doesn't wear masks are reacting to compulsory action, and filling in justifications afterwards.
Some people are just inherently reactive to threats, and respond better to request. A governmental recommendation and public awareness campaign would likely be more effective with these people than a law.
Yes like the recommended approach with teenagers isn't to say "don't do drugs because I say so", but "drug sellers are trying to manipulate you into giving them money by making you addicted".
You have to use their natural rebelliousness to your advantage.
Kant would say the only way to be free in this situation is to wear a mask and fulfill your moral duty to yourself and others. But this kind of thinking is way above the heads of the idiots currently not wearing masks. I doubt they even understand the meaning of "moral" and "duty" individually, let alone when used as a phrase. People are incredibly stupid by default. The ones wearing masks never changed their default settings.
When stupid people feel their stupid ideas are challenged, some will get violent. Why? Because they're fucking stupid. They don't have the capability of self control, let alone intelligence to know when to use it. The level of stupidity to not wear a mask in a pandemic is so great that it's really the dumbest of the dumb we are talking about here. The idiots' idiots. These people are nothing more than children in adult bodies. Having no self control and resorting to violence because someone else does something that doesn't in any way affect you is evidence of their stunted minds and inability to function at even the most basic adult human levels.
I'm living in Central Valley right now and I can confirm very few people are wearing masks. Highly considering using grocery delivery now considering that the hospitals are now full in my local county. Pretty much figuring that if I were to catch it and need hospitalization I'm as good as dead here.
When Imperial county hospitals overflowed, patients were transferred to other counties. Stay safe but also know you should still seek care if you need it.
When things get bad enough, this is like people getting caught in a stampede, but one driven by tribal conspiracy theories instead of panic. Your risk ultimately becomes a function of the most extreme behavior (i.e. "Coronavirus house parties") of those around you. These localized "infection events" are often the source of larger regional outbreaks.
This is what has just happened in Melbourne, where private security services were apparently lax in their monitoring of people in COVID19 quarantine hotels, allowing it to spread to the community [1]
I'm very worried about friends and family in the Central Valley who have complicating health conditions.
I don't get angry at people wearing masks. I comply with the local mask mandates where I live.
Having said that, I have a question. Why does anybody think that masks actually help? I've basically been under the impression that masks are health theater that allows people to go on with life without being scared, though it doesn't actually do much of anything. Apparently I'm in the minority in thinking that.
But I put on a surgical mask, twist the side ear loop so that air comes out the side instead of the top (right at my eyes), and I ask myself what in the world it is supposed to be accomplishing. It's not like people are wearing properly fitted N95 masks, and even then, the way people are talking about micro droplets seems like they might get through just fine.
I've read a fair bit now, and I'm left with... questions. I haven't read it all yet, but nothing I've seen so far indicates that masks actually accomplish anything directly.
From the summary of results: "Medical masks were not effective, and cloth masks even less effective." I'm assuming that is referring to in hospital settings, but still... somehow they magically they work "in the community." Has anybody proposed or tested a reason for why they would work in one setting but not the other?
I saw no mention of controlling for how much time the participants (college students) spent with other people. Can we truly assume that wearing a mask had no other effect on the behavior of young people who are incredibly image-conscious and facing intense peer pressure to fit in? If I had to guess, the only thing they proved is that college students asked to wear masks will stay alone in their rooms more often than those not asked to wear masks. Of course, indirect benefits are still benefits. It is possible that something like this could happen when masks are mandated in public today. Meaning, mask mandates lead to people staying home more, which is obviously going to be effective. However, see next paragraph.
Another problem I saw immediately is that they were required to wear masks for long periods when in their dwelling, but not required outside of their dwelling. This, of course, is the opposite of what we are doing. What is the result of inverting the study practices?
They were studies on the flu. Can we assume the same effect on Coronaviruses?
From one study... "Generalizability limited to similar settings and age groups." Ok... so we're ignoring the paper's warnings about what we can learn from it?
In one study they were able to measure a decrease in flu-like-illnesses(ILI) with mask use, but it wasn't statistically significant, and it was only in the second half of the study (weeks 4-6). The summary ends with: "Neither face mask use and hand hygiene nor face mask use alone was associated with a significant reduction in the rate of ILI cumulatively." It then proceeds in the next sentence (the conclusion summary), to say, "These findings suggest that face masks and hand hygiene may reduce respiratory illnesses in shared living settings and mitigate the impact of the influenza A(H1N1) pandemic." Isn't this an example of a study what normally would be lampooned on this site? How exactly does the conclusion follow from the data?
Another study saw statistically significant reductions in ILI, but again, only in the second half of the study, and did not find statistically significant reduction in actual positive flu tests. It is summarized by: "Face masks and hand hygiene combined may reduce the rate of ILI and confirmed influenza in community settings. These non-pharmaceutical measures should be recommended in crowded settings at the start of an influenza pandemic." However, there was no control group that was just hand washing. Doesn't it seem much more reasonable to assume that the benefits are from hand-washing, rather than hand-washing and masks combined, since the mask-only group saw little to no benefit? And if so, why are we using this paper to prove that masks work?
Flu transmission and Covid transmission are not identical. Covid seems to be mainly transmitted by relatively large respiratory droplets. The expiration and transmission of those droplets is greatly reduced by a mask, even if some leakage occurs around the edges. Perhaps because the drops are more likely to just drop as a result.
Most of the studies have been done in high risk, high exposure situations. The high concentration and repeated exposure over extended periods of time greatly increase the chance of infection. This does not reflect the lower concentrations and shorter duration of most civilian exposures. It generally takes more than a single virus to actually result in infection.
Since there are indications that wearing masks does give you some protection and does give significant protection to those around you, why not accept the minor inconvenience and wear one?
"Since there are indications that wearing masks does give you some protection and does give significant protection to those around you..."
This is precisely what I'm trying to find evidence of. So far, I've clicked through to one summary of the research, followed by three papers linked in there, which supposedly support the claim, and found that there is almost no support for those claims.
And as I already said above, I do wear one.
Edited to add: Also, I've been reading more and more articles questioning the claim that Coronavirus is mostly limited to the larger droplets.
You're right, from an evidence-based medicine perspective there is little to no proof that masks work, and some indication that they are counter-productive. There are plenty of people posting links with dozens of papers claiming to prove that they do work, but very few if any of those people seem to have actually read anything on those lists, as none of them claim what the people posting the links claim they claim. (note that I'm not claiming here people should or should not wear them, this is a position-neutral meta observation).
That said, at this point wearing/'believing in' face masks is a political issue, not an evidence based rational choice. It's tribal signaling. Noboby really knows a or b, but choosing to believe a or b has become (yet another) aspect of identity politics. Which is what worries me the most, because now that position has become entrenched, regardless of whether we reach any conclusive findings at some point in the future.
Take a look at this story, where covid-positive hairdressers interacted with over a hundred clients (all involved wearing masks) without infecting any of them: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e2.htm
Masks are tremendously effective. They protect you from others a small amount, but protect others from you a huge amount. They are absolutely not theatrical.
When it comes to stopping transmission, we don't have to get 100% effectiveness. We just need to get the r-value below 1 and the disease will die out. It's a game if probabilities, not absolutes. Masks have a very low cost for the tremendous benefit they confer.
I understand why you would think that given the really poor recommendations and information handling at the beginning of the pandemic. However, take a look at [1], then refer to your choice of studies on this topic via Google Scholar, perhaps [2]. Cheap masks will of course not prevent you from inhaling microparticles, but they drastically cut down on how many particles are pushed into the air and how far they travel. You should think of them as spread limiters rather than infection preventers.
You shouldn't get down-voted for an honest question. Especially since the messaging from our (US) experts was, in my opinion, criminally confused.
There is a lot of theater going on but: 1. masks do help in aggregate 2. theater can also help (I won't address that).
For the record I am a physicist, not a physician or a biologist. Everything I'm writing below are conclusions I arrived at from an understanding of physics, not biology. But it turned out that my conclusions were largely correct.
Let's assume this is, primarily, a respiratory disease. Therefore, the virus is present in the respiratory tract -> let's assume that it will exploit that power of exhalation (to jump out) and inhalation (to establish) to spread itself.
I think my assumptions are fair.
As you point out, there are two types of masks: N95 vs. surgical masks. In fact, there is an important subtype of mask, the N95 with valve. These last ones are great for individuals, but are very dangerous overall.
The cheap surgical masks with wide openings on the sides doesn't protect you very much. It's not meant to. It's meant to protect others from you. It does this by destroying the kinetic energy of the droplets so that they mostly come into contact with you (and you're already sick, so who cares?). Also if the virus needs droplets to survive, the mask will dry them out.
The N95 with a valve only protects you, not others. The N95 mask seals your face and forces all inhaled air through a filter that the virus cannot penetrate. But the valve forces the unfiltered air in am accelerated jet aimed at whoever you are facing.
The N95 mask without a filter protects others and yourself.
Now, there is mounting evidence that the COVID virus is aerosolized, meaning that it doesn't need a droplet. Still, the face coverings are important because the exhaled air is slower and therefore limited in its spread.
I arrived at these conclusions in late January, and was able to buy a few N95 masks in time. I didn't buy many because I didn't want to be an asshole (and I couldn't find them already). I planned to re-use them and I have. In five months my wife and I have lost two to due wear, so at this rate we have enough to last about a year, year and half. I never believed the admonition that you cant re-use masks. You can, if done right, and Dr.s have been forced to do so at work.
A person trying to make a living by being picked up at a Home Depot parking lot or picking fruit has covid-19 rather far down the list of concerns. That person is also living in packed housing that greatly contributes to its spread.
The various underlying reasons that brought these socioeconomic conditions forth (failing countries to the south of the US, exploitation of cheap labor in the US, endemic political infighting in the US, dependence of the countries on these people sending money back) make it unlikely that the US will ever control the virus.
It would require combative parties to come together to fix a whole host of issues that they failed to fix for over 40 years. The host of issues have just piled up and by now are a mile high.
It isn’t just covid-19 that the US is fighting against.
The Californian analogy is that we let the brush grow and grow so by the time someone accidentally started a fire, it became a conflagration instead of a regular small fire.
"ravages" the central valley, how many deaths in the valley? I couldn't find that in the article. Seems like it would be important to mention? Instead the death total given is for the entire state.
Many central valley counties are completely inundated with cases. I'm currently living in San Joaquin, and we hit 100% ICU capacity and are approaching 100% hospital capacity. I'm worried that this will just increase the amount of deaths across the board because help is now much farther away.
According to the latest stats, neither hospitalizations nor ICUs are at 100%, hospitalizations have remained stable, and 17 of the 94 ICU beds are open.
Yeah, it’s not in great shape, but it’s not being ‘ravaged’.
Pet peeve of mine: It's really not the Central Valley as a whole being ravaged, it's specifically the poorer southern part - the San Joaquin Valley. Sacramento in particular is somewhere between the Bay Area and coastal So-Cal. The northern extreme (say Redding) is actually doing a bit better than the Bay Area.
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 274 ms ] threadThis also works with the Wall Street Journal.
Note: this only works in mobile News+. It does not work on a Mac. Sometimes you can just open the newspaper in question from News+ on a Mac and simply find the story, but in this case I didn't see the story.
PS: you have to actually visit the URL in Safari. If you long tap on the link on HN to bring up the actions menu there is a share option there, but News+ is missing. News+ is only an option for sharing the URL Safari is actually on.
This is a good example. Many of these people are illegal/undocumented persons who can't get benefits or medical treatment and can't afford to NOT work.
They're still vectors anyway.
The truth is that the US benefits from these workers and our economy would implode without them yet we vilify them and treat them horribly.
Covid is karma.
California created this situation through lax enforcement of immigration laws. It is less cruel to strictly enforce the law, as this prevents people from becoming second class residents.
For example, they passed SB 54, which prevents California law officers and agencies from assisting or sharing any information on illegal immigrants with the feds.
It's not for states to enforce federal immigration laws. If enforcement is lax, that's a failing of the federal government. It's also a failing of the federal government that the path to legal immigration for many people is file some paperwork, then wait 20+ years for your turn.
Also, you seem to equate being latino with being undocumented, which is not the case.
This is karma for being far too lax on immigration law (to the detriment of the American worker), not "treating criminals horribly".
Learn something about farming before you comment on it. You have no clue. Illegal aliens are the backbone of fruit and vegetable farming. Americans don't want these jobs.
Suddenly makes me wonder how skeptical I should be of all our understanding of recorded history.
B) We are recording way more today than at any point in history. It is not like what is currently on Reddit and Tik Tok would have been published in books, with copies stored on slides and archived in libraries around the world. It would have been done in person (or never at all), and never written down in the first place.
I was told the CCP has the list of every video of skateboarding and memes I liked on the latter.
Looking at the veracity of previously recorded history is part of historiography as well.
I think skepticism of recorded history is healthy in general. Historians would probably agree.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Historiography
What scares me is that any large org -- facebook, instagram, AP News, Google, the BBC -- could just delete all of their archives, or get some sort of nasty randsomware that just deletes everything or rewrites everything. And that's just an automated thing; the 1984-syle deliberate rewrites could be done via an automated script or some next-gen GPT-3 thing.
Firstly, even if we focus only on the facts, reality is so complex and multifaceted that it is inevitable a historian must selectively omit material in order to communicate a story a public can understand, and this inevitably obscures the facts and pulls in the historian's own moral interpretations of what is worth communicating.
Secondly, although there may be people who study history for the love of uncovering past events without preconceptions or bias, they are funded by those that may not share the same goals. History is used to induce a sense of shared national identity in schoolchildren, demonize others to justify confrontation, and stir citizens into making personal sacrifices for the group. Even if all the events are true, how they are presented, interpreted, and selectively omitted can create wildly different opinions on the same historical event.
Ultimately, I think history is more a tool of social control than any objective study. A person unmoored from history will focus only on his immediate wants and needs. A person with some education in history will call upon historical grudges and pride in the heroism of those long dead to take part in social structures that far exceeds him in numbers and lifespan. Storytelling is what makes us social animals, and history is just a more believable form of storytelling. What really happened isn't valuable in itself but how it adds to the persuasiveness of that story.
In contrast, the coronavirus has killed at least 150k Americans over just five months.
The wikipedia page for the H3N2 pandemic also lists reasons as to why the death toll wasn't much higher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu#Mortality
Specifically:
"The pandemic did not gain momentum until near the winter school holidays, thus limiting the infection's spread."
If you think about it, this is the opposite scenario of today: our second wave is gaining momentum, and... we're reopening schools.
I don't think the CDC is lying to me.
That's why the wikipedia page I linked says "between 34,000 and 100,000" -- it cites the CDC.
P.S. The fact that you completely ignored everything else I said is duly noted.
and dragonwriter is responding to you and I'd rather not get in his way
No, it's not..we're still in the first wave. Second wave is an illusion due to NYC’s high and early peak.
I wonder if this a case of lockdowns delaying the inevitable, combined with the fact that many of those affected are in places with high population densities. If we are to learn anything from elderly care facilities in NYC, Sweden and Canada, it's that infected people need to be separated way out away from anyone in their home. The primary vector of infection is still the home, likely due to higher exposure if someone is sick.
Even if it is "only delaying the inevitable", it bought 3+ precious months of gathering PPE, increased testing, and political change.
Yes. Political change. Mr. Trump is now wearing a mask: it took this long to convince people that masks are a good idea. If COVID19 has a 2nd wave, we're far more prepared now than we were back in March.
> The primary vector of infection is still the home
The primary vector of infection has BECOME the home, because we've shut down schools, restaurants and more. I'm not entirely sure if we can push the lockdown any further logistically than businesses / public spaces. The home remains personal responsibility.
Those are states I have personal friends in and so reason to follow them. I'm sure the rest of the country isnt much better off. For that matter, much of the world seems to be celebrating they are doing better than the US while ignoring signs that thier luck is running out.
A large part of Europe (not to mention Asia) already dealt/is dealing with it significantly better than the US. I doubt it's a matter of luck.
Try to have a look at the statistics of Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Norway, Thailand, Denmark: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Seems that some countries manage to _consistently_ keep the spread at a comfortable (for a lack of better word) level.
And Vietnam went 100 days without an new case and are now dealing with an outbreak they can't trace back to a source.
The US has ~60k daily new cases - that is, 642 new patients about every 15 minutes.
Hell, even Italy now has only 12,474 active cases.
We're not even a year into a multiple year pandemic. Yes, it's great those countries have it under control now, but I don't feel comfortable assuming it will stay that way.
My point is Vietnam has been very strict about controlling for new cases and even then, a bunch popped up and they don’t know 100% how that happened.
With the benefit of hindsight, it's very easy to cherry-pick factors that can be used to explain why one country seems to be doing well or poorly. But then you have to explain why the country next door seemed to do so differently.
It's nearly impossible to draw firm conclusions (obviously, though so many are trying), but to my non-expert eye it certainly seems like this virus just burns through areas until some threshold level is reached (either due to some form of immunity kicking in, or the local population getting sufficiently scared to take their own measures more seriously, or something else). And it looks more and more to me like there's only 2 kinds of places: those that have been hit already and those that will be hit. It's unclear if the lockdowns really did much beyond delaying the inevitable (which, to be fair, is what we were told they were supposed to do in the beginning - it was "slow the spread", not "stop the spread").
Even looking at other countries, areas that were being scolded for doing a bad job seem to be nearing the end of their curve while areas that were touted as doing successful mitigation measures are flaring up. And of course there's counter-examples to everything that can be found as well.
It's hard to shake the feeling that no one really has any idea and everyone is just guessing. Even mask usage isn't clear - in the US it is getting near universal recommendation from our experts, while quite a few European countries with their own experts are not recommending masks, saying that there's little proof that they help and possibly some evidence they may do harm. It's mind-boggling how little agreement there is, even on something relatively simple to do like wearing a mask (fwiw, we wear ours because intuitively it seems they should help and it's a simple thing to do if it helps in any way).
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...
To be clear I am not arguing against wearing masks. It's just that issue isn't firmly settled and we need more research.
I went to a restaurant with some friends last weekend. "Do you have a mask" I was asked, a clothes pin holding my t-shirt around my face. The server said, "We'll give you one," and when I said I had a medical condition. He said, "That's fine," and I was glad that was it ... but I still felt so awkward and filled with anxiety and shame, even at our table where they weren't required. I just saw all the wait staff around and it made me my focus narrow and want to panic.
I think they have a negative mental effect and I think there's good scientific evidence they're not very useful:
https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/#masks-...
I probably will just switch to drive-up pickup for groceries and only go to outdoor seating restaurants for the rest of the summer.
We're creating a world of shame and judgement over wearing PPE, and on top of that, there are thousands of people out there with PTSD and Anxiety disorders, with deep, personal, sometimes traumatic reasons, for being unable to wear a face covering. We're making people who refuse feel like they're killing grandma even though there is science that says that's unlikely. We're creating a new religious belief.
A man in a Tim Horton's was pepper sprayed by a cop for not wearing a mask. Another Canadian man was shot by police.
History will not look kindly back on this period of our humanity.
I think this would happen anyway, because of psychological dynamics in group/societies (cases of public shaming, drives to and against conformism etc abound throughout history).
However in your particular case the issue is exacerbated by the fact that PPEs effectively became part of identity politics.
It's possible that quite a few people who are shaming you for not wearing a mask are doing so because they don't believe you're honest bout your medical condition and instead you're making this up in order to "stand your ground".
People are kinda silly; we all hope that people from "our side" of the political spectrum are not, but once identity politics dynamics kick in human beings tend to lose quite a bit of their rationality.
Even more than just being "hard to shake" it's really the only conclusion I can reach now. In the beginning we were told we had to wipe down our groceries and anything else we brought into our homes, and now they're saying that wiping down any surfaces is mostly pointless because it doesn't spread effectively that way.
It's a complete mess.
That's not what I got from it. It pretty much showed that separating elderly from anyone else is really difficult. It failed in many countries. This because they're either with families, or they're with people whom take care of them.
> I wonder if this a case of lockdowns delaying the inevitable
Lockdown is to ensure the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. Many countries had to completely stop or delay certain activities. People avoided going to the hospital out of fear of catching anything.
It'll happen eventually isn't very compassionate IMO.
This was a big reason why things got very ugly in Italy, and to a lesser degree Spain -- a lot of working adults live with their (older) parents. They pick it up and might be able to shake it off or call out of work for a week, but they end up bringing it home to their elderly parents.
The US has this too, doubly so since the millennial generation is more likely to live at home than ever, but compared to places like Italy there are far fewer people living with their 60 year old mother and 80 year old grandpa, all in the same house.
It also seems amazing that despite the nighttime protests/riots in Portland, that there's basically no cases there.
LA seems mostly the same the last 4-months except early on. There's now 100s of people on the street on the weekend eating outside like it's Europe. I've unfortunately been outside everyday since the pandemic started.
I was at a hospital yesterday and the person screening every incoming visitor had their mask under their nose.
Amazing you just assume it's inevitable.
New Zealand certainly proves it's not.
Aim higher.
This is an absurd comparison.
It might all be the workplace, but we just had a large jump in cases without the single workplace and we might have some of the same demographics as them.
;)
What a world we live in.
I sorta "get" why some people don't want to. But why get angry at folks minding their business. Are they just projecting their fears of being wrong?
I'd believe this answer if someone told me :). It's the same thing that fuels all of the fanboi-ism in tech. The "I'm insecure about my choice so I need to attack all of the other choices to feel better" behavior.
We've also had incidents of utility workers being attacked by people who think 5G towers are being used to spread the (imaginary????) coronavirus, so that's a thing.
These aren't hypothetical questions. I genuinely do not understand these people or their behavior on any level and I never see any attempt at an explanation anywhere - here, social media, mainstream media, documentaries - you name it.
I think the key for conspiracy theories is that they find a kernel of truth that powerful people don't readily admit, and then fill in the information gaps with their own narrative.
In these people, I theorize it's a badge of honor for them to be contrarian, and to be 'independent thinkers'. Which, in the abstract, is a good thing I guess - but where is the line? It's all phrased in a way that there is no 'proof' possible, because there is always an extra layer of 'but that's just what THEY want you to think!'.
I was at a (responsibly socially distanced, thank you) bbq yesterday where several highly intelligent, respected professionals were spouting... let's say... things with dubious intellectual justification. But hey, with some in that company being literally antifa t-shirt wearing activists, at least it's entertaining!
We're hearing about this now because conspiracy theories about covid are _dangerous_ in a way that belief that the earth is flat are largely not. Another worrying one potentially coming up; a lot of people believe various conspiracy theories about vaccines, and this may become a serious issue if a viable covid vaccine becomes available.
Also, one man's "animosity" is another's protest.
Obviously this does not justify boorish behavior, but I can certainly empathize with their sentiments.
If a school demands a dress code, people go nuts. It's immediately suspected to be unfair, overly broad, racist, sexist, and ableist, probably invented by perverts who think too much about adolescent sexuality. If you tell them the dress code is a courtesy to others, kids and parents will get in your face and protest it. [0]
Masks solve a (big) problem in some (limited) situations -- mostly close contact. But the rules are written to be over-inclusive and inconsistent. It's a protection against the chance you're infected and don't know it. Some municipalities are demanding them outdoors, in sparsely-populated areas, and indoors with your family. You don't get to present your body how you want, and your communication is stifled.
Masks are a dress code for the face. I wear them. But some people are going to get angry.
[0] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/13/17847542/students-wa...
But I think you hit the mark closer with that little hedge of "and conduct", at the beginning. This isn't about dress codes per se, it's about rules - many Americans simply hate rules and reflexively rebel against them. Any suggestion that one should make a sacrifice for the collective good is invariably met, from some quarters, with a kind of moral outrage - often accompanied with self-righteous rhetoric giving frequent mention to "freedom" and "liberty", and often "the Constitution" and "founding fathers" as well. The inability to make collective sacrifice is a huge social weakness that interferes with the formation of a civil society, and in my opinion it is, more than anything else, the reason America is handling the pandemic so poorly - not just in terms of the acute response, but also the very structure of society. For example, due to overwhelming distaste for the idea of paying to fix other people's problems even if it's manifestly better for society as a whole, there's no socialized healthcare, or functioning social safety net - both of which cause people in low-paying service jobs to drag themselves to work while fighting COVID-19.
Many would be angry about the overinclusive rule. It would be more about the message to others about safety than actual safety. “Let them help themselves, if they’re so risk averse,“ you might say.
In at least some places, “masks all the time” isn’t entirely about function. Do masks really work better in casinos and schools, but not churches and funerals? Or, as in Maryland this week, do they work differently in public schools and private schools?
People sense that the mask in some situations is partly about a certain kind of authority and conformity — and they don’t like to conform with their face and body.
> But in the more general case, people can use moral decisions to signal how moral they are. In this case, they choose a disastrous decision based on some moral principle. The more suffering and destruction they support, and the more obscure a principle it is, the more obviously it shows their commitment to following their moral principles absolutely. For example, Immanuel Kant claims that if an axe murderer asks you where your best friend is, obviously intending to murder her when he finds her, you should tell the axe murderer the full truth, because lying is wrong. This is effective at showing how moral a person you are – no one would ever doubt your commitment to honesty after that – but it’s sure not a very good result for your friend.
Letting people die of disease shows their commitment to "freedom" from ... masks and scientists.
Some people are just inherently reactive to threats, and respond better to request. A governmental recommendation and public awareness campaign would likely be more effective with these people than a law.
You have to use their natural rebelliousness to your advantage.
This is what has just happened in Melbourne, where private security services were apparently lax in their monitoring of people in COVID19 quarantine hotels, allowing it to spread to the community [1]
I'm very worried about friends and family in the Central Valley who have complicating health conditions.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ7qi-Gka4g
Having said that, I have a question. Why does anybody think that masks actually help? I've basically been under the impression that masks are health theater that allows people to go on with life without being scared, though it doesn't actually do much of anything. Apparently I'm in the minority in thinking that.
But I put on a surgical mask, twist the side ear loop so that air comes out the side instead of the top (right at my eyes), and I ask myself what in the world it is supposed to be accomplishing. It's not like people are wearing properly fitted N95 masks, and even then, the way people are talking about micro droplets seems like they might get through just fine.
From the summary of results: "Medical masks were not effective, and cloth masks even less effective." I'm assuming that is referring to in hospital settings, but still... somehow they magically they work "in the community." Has anybody proposed or tested a reason for why they would work in one setting but not the other?
I saw no mention of controlling for how much time the participants (college students) spent with other people. Can we truly assume that wearing a mask had no other effect on the behavior of young people who are incredibly image-conscious and facing intense peer pressure to fit in? If I had to guess, the only thing they proved is that college students asked to wear masks will stay alone in their rooms more often than those not asked to wear masks. Of course, indirect benefits are still benefits. It is possible that something like this could happen when masks are mandated in public today. Meaning, mask mandates lead to people staying home more, which is obviously going to be effective. However, see next paragraph.
Another problem I saw immediately is that they were required to wear masks for long periods when in their dwelling, but not required outside of their dwelling. This, of course, is the opposite of what we are doing. What is the result of inverting the study practices?
They were studies on the flu. Can we assume the same effect on Coronaviruses?
From one study... "Generalizability limited to similar settings and age groups." Ok... so we're ignoring the paper's warnings about what we can learn from it?
In one study they were able to measure a decrease in flu-like-illnesses(ILI) with mask use, but it wasn't statistically significant, and it was only in the second half of the study (weeks 4-6). The summary ends with: "Neither face mask use and hand hygiene nor face mask use alone was associated with a significant reduction in the rate of ILI cumulatively." It then proceeds in the next sentence (the conclusion summary), to say, "These findings suggest that face masks and hand hygiene may reduce respiratory illnesses in shared living settings and mitigate the impact of the influenza A(H1N1) pandemic." Isn't this an example of a study what normally would be lampooned on this site? How exactly does the conclusion follow from the data?
Another study saw statistically significant reductions in ILI, but again, only in the second half of the study, and did not find statistically significant reduction in actual positive flu tests. It is summarized by: "Face masks and hand hygiene combined may reduce the rate of ILI and confirmed influenza in community settings. These non-pharmaceutical measures should be recommended in crowded settings at the start of an influenza pandemic." However, there was no control group that was just hand washing. Doesn't it seem much more reasonable to assume that the benefits are from hand-washing, rather than hand-washing and masks combined, since the mask-only group saw little to no benefit? And if so, why are we using this paper to prove that masks work?
Most of the studies have been done in high risk, high exposure situations. The high concentration and repeated exposure over extended periods of time greatly increase the chance of infection. This does not reflect the lower concentrations and shorter duration of most civilian exposures. It generally takes more than a single virus to actually result in infection.
Since there are indications that wearing masks does give you some protection and does give significant protection to those around you, why not accept the minor inconvenience and wear one?
This is precisely what I'm trying to find evidence of. So far, I've clicked through to one summary of the research, followed by three papers linked in there, which supposedly support the claim, and found that there is almost no support for those claims.
And as I already said above, I do wear one.
Edited to add: Also, I've been reading more and more articles questioning the claim that Coronavirus is mostly limited to the larger droplets.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8583925/The-land-no...
Not remotely surprising. The fake masks are basically dirty sponges stuck in the most important air stream.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24045096
That said, at this point wearing/'believing in' face masks is a political issue, not an evidence based rational choice. It's tribal signaling. Noboby really knows a or b, but choosing to believe a or b has become (yet another) aspect of identity politics. Which is what worries me the most, because now that position has become entrenched, regardless of whether we reach any conclusive findings at some point in the future.
Masks are tremendously effective. They protect you from others a small amount, but protect others from you a huge amount. They are absolutely not theatrical.
When it comes to stopping transmission, we don't have to get 100% effectiveness. We just need to get the r-value below 1 and the disease will die out. It's a game if probabilities, not absolutes. Masks have a very low cost for the tremendous benefit they confer.
If you know of scientific studies that show that masks don't make a significant difference, please share them.
Here's a list of 70 scientific papers (including reviews/meta-analysis and individual studies) on the efficacy of masks: https://threader.app/thread/1279144399897866248
[1] https://twitter.com/vaccinologist/status/1247510457323343874...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016344532...
There is a lot of theater going on but: 1. masks do help in aggregate 2. theater can also help (I won't address that).
For the record I am a physicist, not a physician or a biologist. Everything I'm writing below are conclusions I arrived at from an understanding of physics, not biology. But it turned out that my conclusions were largely correct.
Let's assume this is, primarily, a respiratory disease. Therefore, the virus is present in the respiratory tract -> let's assume that it will exploit that power of exhalation (to jump out) and inhalation (to establish) to spread itself.
I think my assumptions are fair.
As you point out, there are two types of masks: N95 vs. surgical masks. In fact, there is an important subtype of mask, the N95 with valve. These last ones are great for individuals, but are very dangerous overall.
The cheap surgical masks with wide openings on the sides doesn't protect you very much. It's not meant to. It's meant to protect others from you. It does this by destroying the kinetic energy of the droplets so that they mostly come into contact with you (and you're already sick, so who cares?). Also if the virus needs droplets to survive, the mask will dry them out.
The N95 with a valve only protects you, not others. The N95 mask seals your face and forces all inhaled air through a filter that the virus cannot penetrate. But the valve forces the unfiltered air in am accelerated jet aimed at whoever you are facing.
The N95 mask without a filter protects others and yourself.
Now, there is mounting evidence that the COVID virus is aerosolized, meaning that it doesn't need a droplet. Still, the face coverings are important because the exhaled air is slower and therefore limited in its spread.
I arrived at these conclusions in late January, and was able to buy a few N95 masks in time. I didn't buy many because I didn't want to be an asshole (and I couldn't find them already). I planned to re-use them and I have. In five months my wife and I have lost two to due wear, so at this rate we have enough to last about a year, year and half. I never believed the admonition that you cant re-use masks. You can, if done right, and Dr.s have been forced to do so at work.
The various underlying reasons that brought these socioeconomic conditions forth (failing countries to the south of the US, exploitation of cheap labor in the US, endemic political infighting in the US, dependence of the countries on these people sending money back) make it unlikely that the US will ever control the virus.
It would require combative parties to come together to fix a whole host of issues that they failed to fix for over 40 years. The host of issues have just piled up and by now are a mile high.
It isn’t just covid-19 that the US is fighting against.
It was really just a matter of time before this started. They aren’t supplied masks, have to travel to work in crowded vehicles, etc.
https://youtu.be/_VXDqhKGBy8
Yeah, it’s not in great shape, but it’s not being ‘ravaged’.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-case...
All said, even in Sac, you have some pretty dangerous behavior going on (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/churches-return-corona...), so this isn't entirely surprising.