After watching New York Governor Andrew Cuomo insist he’s done a magnificent job despite facilitating the death of more people than any other Governor in the nation, and listening to Dr. Anthony Fauci insist he was against wearing masks to ward off Covid before he was for them (true dat), and having my ears bleed from repeated dire media warnings that COVID is raging out of control (especially in Republican run states), I am starting to wonder if we are living in a Monty Python skit fueled by methamphetamines.
It is “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD” time:
Looks like the guys in this movie are now working on counting the number of COVID cases in the United States. (I am referring sarcastically to the discovery that labs around were declaring everyone tested as positive–see Colonel Lang’s piece.) If COVID existed when the Python gang made this timeless flick, I suspect the last body we see tossed on the death wagon in the clip above probably died of COVID.
Let’s start with the Mask insanity. Despite the incessant religious mantra of the media (including Sean Hannity) on the need to wear masks, regardless of fiber or quality in order to ward off the COVID, the science says otherwise.
Kudos to Laura Ingraham who tackled this thorny topic Wednesday night succinctly and without hysterics. Crazy girl, she just used science and peer reported medical studies.
There is no conclusive evidence that wearing a face covering, especially one made of cloth, is going to keep you or those around you virus free. In fact, it may harm you.
Very little good quality research exists on the use of cloth masks, especially in non-medical settings. One randomised controlled clinical trial of cloth masks, published in BMJ Open in 2015, compared their effectiveness with that of medical masks worn by hospital healthcare workers.2 The study, involving the industry partner 3M (which makes medical masks), reported that healthcare workers “should not use cloth masks as protection against respiratory infection. Cloth masks resulted in significantly higher rates of infection than medical masks, and also performed worse than the control arm.”
In an updated comment on the study (30 March),3 the authors said, “There have been a number of laboratory studies looking at the effectiveness of different types of cloth materials, single versus multiple layers and about the role that filters can play. However, none have been tested in a clinical trial for efficacy.”
Then we have the reporting on almost all of the media outlets warning that a tsunami of COVID is sweeping over Republican run states. Bring out your dead and run, no hide, for your lives. (Also, lock up your kids and keep them out of school).
Do not misinterpret my meaning–COVID is a real disease and some people are getting sick and some are dying. It is contagious. All true. Same can be said for influenza. COVID and Influenza kill people, but not most people.
But you would not know that if you are watching any cable news. The media, with few exceptions, is making no effort to provide context or understanding. Fueling panic appears to be their top priority. People without a background in health care are likely to believe what they hear on TV without asking questions and demanding answers of experts, like Dr. Fauci, who has taken opposite sides on the same issue, such as wearing masks.
Since I live in Florida I’ve been getting calls and emails from concerned friends who are scattered around the country wondering if my family and I are barricaded in isolation to ward off the pandemic holocaust.
At least here, in Sarasota/Bradenton, our life goes on as normal notwithstanding stupid decisions from local officials who are caught up in the fear mongering. I continue to query friends/acquaintances about COVID—i.e., have they tested positive or do they know someone who tested positive. The answer is still no on both counts.
The AP 11am newscast broadcast on WMAL today (Thursday)would leave the gullible listener convinced that Florida is in the midst of something like the bubonic plague, complete with Monty Python morgue carts being pushed through the sunny neighborhoods accompanied by the cry, “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD.” But that’s not the case.
I checked the latest stats for the local hospital. The numbers for Sarasota Memorial tell a less alarming story. Total beds=839. Total number of Covid patients=98. That means only 12% of those hospitalized are there because of COVID. Similar story with respect to the ICU–Total ICU beds=72 (can be expanded to 100). Total Covid patients in ICU=19. I will do the math for you—COVID accounts for 26% of the critically ill patients.
No breakdown on the ages of those who are sick, but other nationwide stats show that if you are under 70 your risk of dying from COVID is 0.04%. I’d play those odds in Vegas.
Florida has some hot spots, such as Dade and Broward counties in the Southeast corner of the state. That outbreak comes courtesy of folks from Andrew Cuomo land (known derisively as snowbirds) who have fled the bleak north for the sunny beaches and swaying Palm trees. But at least in Florida our Governor, Ron DeSantis, is not an idiot like Cuomo. Instead of ordering retirement centers that are filled with octogenarians to accept COVID patients, those with COVID are being kept away from the most vulnerable.
When I am out of the house driving to one of the local commercial establishments to spend money, I entertain myself by counting the number of lone drivers tooling around wearing a mask. They are in a car by themselves but somehow believe that they are so toxic they must mask themselves to protect themselves from their own self. Where is Darwin when we need him?
I am fed up with being lectured to by media and government morons who happily endorse mobs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter running around without social distancing and masks, but melt on the fainting couch at the prospect of peaceful, law abiding folks gathering together to worship or try to run a business that serves the needs of average folks.
One last piece of anecdotal “evidence.” A kid who graduated high school in the Washington, DC Metro area this spring is now practicing on a football team with one of the powerhouses in the SEC. He came down with COVID last week. What happened? He had a headache and felt tired for one day. Two days later he was back on the field working out and mixing it up with his new team mates.
If wearing a mask makes you feel safe, do what you feel you need to do. But leave the rest of us alone and stay six feet away. Oh yeah, wash your hands and don’t pick your nose. By the way, did you remember to change your underwear?
If you’re interested in a pushback on the masks, consider this:
Larry,
Hopefully you didn’t venture out to Longboat Key. They closed the public beach access and made wearing of masks mandatory. As a social conformity measure it works great. Everyone is kneeling in submission to the tv terror. The further away from downtow one gets, the closer to reality people appear to be. At least Bradenton hasn’t succomed to the face burka brotherhood. As I mentioned on another thread, the wife of a friend of mine (age 52) came down with COVID a couple of weeks ago. The symptoms were just like you described, mild fever and headache. She’s back to work after her 14 day home incarceration. If they were in their seventies I’ld be more concerned. The rest of society needs to get back to reality. I certainly hope they remember to vote all these clowns out in November.
Emergency room entrepreneur-physician Jake Deutsch appeared on C Span this morning to discuss “the rise in Covid cases.”
Deutsch said he had had the virus; he used Chloroquinine as part of his cure, but that was before it had been declared unsuitable, even counterindicated for Covid.
Deutsch inserted the instruction, “Wear a mask” in numerous places in his conversation.
He also urged listeners to “take your temperature regularly, at home; and also, buy an Oximeter to check your blood-oxygen levels regularly — Covid manifests by depleting oxygen in blood cells.
Sooo — has anyone done a study of Oximeter readings for persons who wear a mask that restricts oxygen, say for two hours, vs. those who do not wear a mask for the same two hour period?
Does Dr. Deutsch recognize any inconsistencies in his prescriptions?
About social distancing: I imagine this little exercise: Assemble some volunteers; give each person a small pipe or small wand and bubble-blowing liquid. Instruct Vol. #1 to stand on six-foot spot, blow tiny bubbles in the air; advance to next 6 foot spot. Did the bubbles, i.e. your germs, travel with you, or did they drift or hover to POP! over Volunteer #2 who advanced to the 6′ spot you vacated?
Duh.
Well supposedly wearing a mask is to show how much you care about others, not yourself. Under this logic, not wearing a mask is an act of selfishness. As it happens I’ve been in the hotspot of Louisiana since January (Jefferson Parish). But I just don’t see the panic around here that seems to be the case elsewhere (back home in Hawaii there have been like 22 deaths so far in the entire state, yet they are wringing their collective hands. In Hawaii they have an effective way of shaming — mask wearing demonstrates your Aloha.) Now the Parish President (ie mayor) did mandate masks and since then I would estimate mask usage in retail went from 30% (maybe as high as 45-50% at the height of the first onslaught) to about 95% today. How long that keeps up remains to be seen.
It does appear to me that the school issue is one of the NEA doesn’t want its members to work too hard so teaching 10 is much easier than 30. Plus classroom management seems to be passe these days.
In January Fauci said novel coronavirus was “not a major threat to the people of the United States”.
Then he said don’t wear a mask.
March he’s pushing total lockdown.
April: “data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery”
May, it’s: hydroxychloroquine is useless.
“Clearly, the scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy for it, and even the possibility that there could be” Fauci said
Fauci is to medicine what Romney is to politics, Epstein is to virtue, Emmett Sullivan to law, New York Times to Journalism — Milley to honor, Obama to integrity.
Chameleons.
“They strike one, above all, as giving no account of themselves in any terms already consecrated by human use; to this inarticulate state they probably form, collectively, the most unprecedented of monuments; abysmal the mystery of what they think, what they feel, what they want, what they suppose themselves to be saying.”
–Henry James
Bottom line:
Covid has given to the power elite (the davos crowd, DNC, whatever) much of what they wanted. It is used to attack Trump. It slows down carbon production. It is reducing births and maybe population (from hunger). It promotes vaccines and other big pharma (a major DNC contributor) products. It is changing people’s lives in the way they want.
Most (though not all) scientific research concludes masks offer no benefit in reducing spread of respiratory virus and the research that claims a benefit has serious issues which are addressed in meta analysis studies.
Masks are a, maybe the, critical psychological barrier to returning to normalcy. They facilitate extension of the dystopic, freak show that the Davos crowd are forcing on us. It is wise to fight against them and to force a real discussion about their merit.
In California the more people seen wearing masks, the more crazy the next round of Govern Newsom’s demands. He has them where he wants them. They will obey.
Masks here are signs of control and willingness to be told what to do; substituting the total hash “experts” are putting out (easy), for weighing and balancing one’s own personal risks (scary).
Californians now look like those faceless cartoon characters – the ones who play non-essential background roles only but are necessary to fill out the screen. Californians are happy just preening in their masks and being able to say “I care” ……. and You Do Not…….if don’t wear one.
BTW: most wear them under their nose ……….. as if I care.
@Fred, “If they were in their seventies I’d be more concerned.”
I’m in my seventies, 77, and have emphysema and heart issues. Had Covid in February and was moderately uncomfortable for about three weeks. Have been fine since. You can imagine the lack of panic with which I view all of the posturing over this thing.
Sadly, the mask hysteria has now made it’s way to England. From the 24th of July, they will be mandatory in all shops but not pubs, takeaways or restaurants. Just when it started to look like things were creeping back to normality they hit us with this. I am now able to go and get drunk without a mask and afterwards stagger into a kebab house, again maskless, and get a kebab. If, however, I then want to go into a late night shop for something I have to mask up. On what planet does this make sense?
I am increasingly becoming a Corona sceptic.
My company, 15-20K employees (I could get in trouble for posint idenfitiactionable numbers), released how many people with Covid they had. More then 30 and less then 40. All of those are healthy again.
Amusingly, there were less people calling in sick during Corona, and productivity was up.
We did went into 100% homeoffice in march, which allowed me a lot of quality time with my family.
People without a background in health care are likely to believe what they hear on TV without asking questions and demanding answers of experts, like Dr. Fauci, who has taken opposite sides on the same issue, such as wearing masks.
As recently as February this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, Fauci was saying something very different about COVID-19, something now quite taboo:
“This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”
Masks are the new meme battlefield. Either you are a selfish uncaring bastard or you wear a mask. It appears similar to the way cigarette smokers are socially outcasted. The new scarlet letter is not to wear a mask.
I am not even sure the primary spread of the virus is by the respiratory track. Earlier this year I was seeing a lot of coughing and sneezing in my travels. Now not so much.
This guy is not an MD but he feels oral fecal route is the primary spread. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=239726
It makes more sense to me.
from a recent paper
“Earlier evidence suggested that SARS coronavirus viral RNA was detectable in the respiratory secretions and stool of some patients after onset of illness for more than one month but live virus could not be cultured after third week (Chan et al., 2004). Now, recent report also suggests that SARS-Cov2 RNA can be detected in stool of some patients of Covid-19 (Wu et al., 2020). This along with the fact that some patients of this disease have diarrhoea points out towards a distinct possibility of involvement of gut-lung axis and may be the gut microbiota” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7217790/
Frequent hand washing would probably be a good thing in either case.
“Sometimes poliovirus is spread through saliva from an infected person or droplets expelled when an infected person sneezes or coughs. People become infected when they inhale airborne droplets or touch something contaminated with the infected saliva or droplets. The infection usually begins in the intestine.”
If I had covid the first thing I had was diarrhea.
Have you considered that a lone person in a car may be running errands to several close by stores and doesn’t want to repeatedly take their mask off and on? They may not be doing it to offend you, Larry.
My N95 has 2 elastic bands. I wear glasses and a hat. If I’m between stores a few minutes apart, I leave it on.
I agree bandanas or shoddy cloth masks don’t filter the virus and only prevent spittle from circulating. But N95, properly fitted, does filter the virus. If 2 people have masks that are only 90% effective (not the N95, a lesser mask with a 10% failure rate or risk of passing the virus) the probability of failure between 2 people is 1% (0.1 * 0.1= 0.01). These are odds that I like.
Deaths have gone down. That is good. But deaths are not the measure to focus on; personal risks and the residual damage from a symptomatic illness are. I’m 65 and if I get sick and can’t cycle or run, that would really suck for me. Regaining endurance is not easy or could be impossible.
So my advice is people opposing masks demonstrate and civilly disobey the mask rules, particularly where they can get noticed, like a hospital or public health department. Because Darwin always wins in the long haul.
@Upstater,
Does the act of slipping the loops of the mask off of your ear exhaust you? Seriously. If wearing a mask makes you feel safe and protected go for it. If you have your mask on it does not matter that I don’t. I’m 65 too but I’m not quaking in my car with a mask. Man up.
Upstate,
Facts are n95 masks only can filter .3 microbes and higher
Coronavirus is .1
So n95 masks do nothing but create the illusion of security
Fact•
Larry,
Sent a note to the Col. asking him to forward my contact info to you. Hope we can have a beer soon. Hope even more you own a boat! I’ll bring gas money if you do.
Fred
From City AM of the UK
Couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, as the saying goes
A lot of the problems in ‘managing’ the pandemic in England have been due to the way the NHS works (i.e. in the manner of a highly centralized Soviet-style bureaucracy) and also due to the general incompetence of the government (with ministers and advisers appointed on the basis of their loyalty to the Brexit camp, not on merit). But another major factor has been Public Health England (PHE), which is clearly an inept quango.
The article explains what many experts and commentators had pointed out before, i.e. that the stats regarding COVID 19-related deaths in England are totally unreliable. Most countries would try to reduce the death toll by all means possible (to show they were doing ever so well) but, in England, it’s the opposite! And public policy is determined on the basis of such data, obviously. https://www.cityam.com/matt-hancock-calls-for-urgent-review-into-england-coronavirus-deaths-tally/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Midday+newsletter+June+2019
Matt Hancock calls for ‘urgent review’ into England coronavirus deaths tally :
Matt Hancock is to call for an ‘urgent review’ into Public Health England’s coronavirus deaths tally after it reportedly included people who tested positive for Covid-19 but died from other causes …
The very latest “grand rounds” broadcast from UCSF Med School is now claiming mask help reduce the viral load – they no longer claim they prevent anything.
Their premise is viral reduction causes fewer or milder infections. This of course is based on zero research, but it is a way of backing out of the extreme 100% mask demands.
Demanding masks is becoming the equivalent of “saving face” for the medical industry “experts” who got exposed wearing absolutely no cloaks of any expertise about anything. For the past decades when they should have been on the job, they were just phoning it in and cashing heir tax dollar funded paycheck.
Our entire post WWII massively expanding government system does need a thorough house cleaning – not easy and not pretty, but necessary. It will be a rough ride. This is a given.
Fact: masks are a real pain for anyone wearing hearing aids. They are easily dislodged when wearing ear loop masks along with eyeglasses. Quite cumbersome and a n easy disaster when removing the mask for dining or just trying to get some air and use one’s nose for breathing again.
Ask yourself, do you breather through your mouth more than your nose when wearing a mask? The nose is highly evolved as a mucus-rich infection filter, and anti-body builder, also warming air before it enters the lungs. The mouth far less designed to be an airborne infection filter compared to the nose. Yet now I suspect mask wearers are doing a lot more mouth breathing, than nose breathing.
Plus many of us of a certain age had our tonsils removed, which also play a part of the body’s own infection fighting immune system response. There is an interesting “co-morbidity” to explore in the numbers of “elderly deaths” — did they or did they not have their tonsils?
Has mask wearing, which increases mouth breathing, for those with no tonsils led to higher respiratory disease incidence? Is this our “elderly” weak link.
PJ20
Hey! Do what you please. The truth is that this illness is not all that “deadly” except for people like me. You are being trained to do what the TeeVee tells you to do. You do not recognize 1984?
Larry
I think you mean 0.3 microns.
I am continually amazed as to how this issue has been politicized. The virus doesn’t give a shit how manly you are. It is a public health issue. Emphasis on public. The government has an obligation to all, not only to us non-manly types. Fauci is not selling snake oil at the UN to justify the invasion of yet another defenseless country. Only guy in government who has not flinched from his duty despite all the bullshit criticism. When all is said and done, if that ever comes to pass, he should be given a medal.
Charlie
Artemesia,
The whole “blood oxygenation” “oximeter” thing is a hoax, from the health professionals (who should know better) trying to fool the public and fraudulently dismiss legitimate concerns.
Homeostasis means that all healthy people will maintain the same Oxygen level, masked or not. (There are transient states before or after exercise, but anyway.) HOWEVER, the Pulse Rate is measurably different between mask and not-mask. The reason is simple: Masks restrict breathing; that is why they work as filters. Therefore, to get the same oxygen level in your blood volume (ie, same liters of oxygen), you have to breath more often/deeply, and heart pumps more.
This is why you see Pulse Rates routinely go up to 90s and 100s in those stupid “Oximeter Debunking Videos”.
For all healthy people, and even most COPD/etc people, their resting O2 levels will be the same. The O2 levels will not drop until the terminal stages, when the heart no longer can pump fast enough to maintain O2.
Charlie Wilson,
“The government has an obligation to all, ”
Is that why the police stand down repeatedly? As to St. Fauci, I agee, when it is all done he deserves a medal from the CCP. He’s already gotten the provebrial 30 pieces of silver from TPTB.
Larry:
Thank you for this, it was one of your better efforts.
All:
I have often had to wear filtered masks at work when grinding metals and other materials. I was informed years ago that OSHA would issue a fine to any workplace that used the kind of masks that painters typically use, hard shell ribbed masks held on by one or two straps. These masks made you re-breathe the carbon dioxide of your exhalation lowering the oxygen in the blood. Wearing masks without a flap-type valve for exhaled air is dangerous for the wearer over a long period. If you have to wear a mask for a long period in your work you should try to have one with a flap-valve. Protect yourself, it is not your problem to protect everyone else.
Charlie,
I point blank disagree: “The virus doesn’t give a shit how manly you are.”
If you are passive and thus have a weak metabolism or are stressed out and have a weakened metabolism your immune system is weaker.
i often get ‘hints’ of colds or flu’s and i ‘fight them off’ with vigorous exercise ( which can be a stressor ) and good nourishment to recover from this stress. Good relaxed breathing also works wonders.
tin foil hat: “Let’s stress everyone out with ‘no see ums’, keep them locked down and less physically active, deny them routine heath care and let’s see what happens to the mortality rate”
the masters of the universe are so happy, everything they believe has be validated: most are sheeple and easily manipulated.
imagine if this is only a trial run ?
Upstater: If you are so afraid of getting sick or dying you should just commit suicide and save yourself the stress of worrying about it. Better yet, it would save everyone else the stress of listening to you whine.
Faux-cheat politicized the whole HIV thing too. He is a federal bureaucrat survivor and should only be given his pension on the way out the door.
He is the poster child for government incompetence, and only serves to underscore we don’t want Big Government taking over health care. For that starting role, Faux-cheat does deserve a medal.
Artemesia — wrt ways of thinking about distancing….
Easier than bubble pipes, think [remember?? visualize???] exhaled cigarette smoke travel/distribution, particle size [not identical but roughly comparable], deposition, persistence, detection limits
comparative particle size ranges of pure particles. (see links)
* virions: approximately 125 nm with range from 60-140 nm
* tobacco smoke: 100 to 1000 nm with peak at 200-250 nm
all exhaled particles are associated with oral/airway secretions + cell detritus which affect dimensions and density.
How they travel is affected by ambient air temperature/density. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0095852260900374 https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/can-masks-capture-coronavirus/
(sigh) arguments about Covid lethality are irrelevant. What is important is the dynamics of a pandemic. You are in a drag race between the virus overwhelming your hospital system and herd immunity, either by vaccine or the flow of time.
Masks reduce the spread of the virus and are a cheap prophylactic. I am sick of faux arguments against them.
There is a video on BBC of what happens when a hospital system breaks down. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53396057
Walrus,
We already won that race. Too bad for the folks in Port Elizabeth. On a bright note the president of the Republic of South Africa is proving just how corrupt and incompetent the ANC can be, which is why Zuma had to resign. I doubt many will get the point. The democrats will do the same to the US should they win in November. For example see the latest news out of Chicago and indictments (perhaps) leading to the heart of the Chicago political machine that has deep connections to those “organizing for america”: https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/7/17/21328229/feds-file-criminal-charges-against-comed-implicate-michael-madigan-springfield-politics-us-attorney
Larry Johnson: “Facts are n95 masks only can filter .3 microbes and higher”
That is quite untrue.
The fact is that the masks have a filter size around .3 microns, but they are very efficient at trapping particles smaller than .3 microns.
Why? Because they don’t intended to act like a colander i.e. they are not designed to allow *water* to flow through it.
These are designed to trap *particles*, and in the sub-micron range particles exhibit Brownian motion. And that Brownian motion means that a .3 micron filter will be very effective at stopping particles that are .1 micron in size.
Here is a fun fact: N95 masks are least efficient in trapping particles that are .3 microns in size (where efficiency is “mere” 95%). They are actually more efficient both above and below .3 microns.
How do I know that? Because that is what the “95” stands for in the “N95”. It is the measurement of their LEAST efficiency, which happens to be their efficiency at .3 microns.
What do our tonsils do for us? Could this be why covid more easily attacks “older persons”, who often had their tonsils removed. And why younger persons appear to more immune to covid, because taking tonsils out fell out of favor some time ago?
Since there are so few answers, maybe we should keep asking thee questions.
“Daily Mail: So what are the tonsils and why do we need them?
………If you open your mouth you can see them – the tonsils are soft, red areas on either side of the back of the throat, made up of lymphatic tissue. This tissue is involved in the immune system and helps the body to defend itself against infection.
It is rich in white blood cells – the ones that hunt down and destroy viruses and bacteria that invade the body. Because of their location, the tonsils are the front line of defence against infections of the throat and upper airways. ……….”
Yeah Right,
The best thing about N95 masks is that they are 100% effective in trapping our freedom. Those filtering properties you describe only happen if a mask is fitted to one’s face and worn properly the whole time one wears it. Left out of all that is the risk of not wearing one, the risks associated with wearing them for extended periods, and the risk of the actual thing that is being defended against, in this case Trump’s re-election.
In just 2 days I’ll be faced with having to go hungry unless I wear a mask. Now we do have some specialty markets such as German, Italian, Caribbean, and mostly Asian ones available. However, a few days ago I went into a Vietnamese grocer to buy a small item for 95 cents. I went to pay with a dollar bill and was directed by the face mask wearing owner to lay the bill down on the counter instead of handing it to him directly, oh well.
The question I have is how long is this BS going to last? Is it 3 months, a year, a few years, the rest of my life? I’m feeling sorrow for my children, my grand-children and yours as well.
Fred: “The best thing about N95 masks is that they are 100% effective in trapping our freedom.”
You are forfeiting your freedom every time you step out the door with your Tally Whacker snugly secured in your pants rather than flapping defiantly in the breeze.
Yet you accept having your “freedoms” proscribed by the need to have your Meat And Two Veg neatly tucked into your pants as you stride through your front door, without the slightest thought much less even a hint of righteous indignation.
How odd.
“Those filtering properties you describe only happen if a mask is fitted to one’s face and worn properly the whole time one wears it.”
Quite true: It is just as important to wear your N95 mask properly if you are to suppress a pandemic as it is to wear your black mask properly if you are to successfully rob a bank without being identified.
Go figure, heh?
“Left out of all that is the risk of not wearing one, the risks associated with wearing them for extended periods,”…
You’ve lost me there, Fred. Almost all of Asia is wearing N95 masks, with no ill effect. Maybe they are just made of tougher stuff than the average American.
…”and the risk of the actual thing that is being defended against, in this case Trump’s re-election.”
Riiiiiiiight.
So a Vietnamese street vendor is wearing a mask because he wants Joe Biden to be elected President?
And anyone who wants Americans to emulate the Vietnamese do so because they want to engineer the defeat of Trump, and not because they thinks that the Vietnamese were onto a good idea that is well worth emulating?
Well, it’s a theory I guess. Just not a very good one.
Larry,
Hopefully you didn’t venture out to Longboat Key. They closed the public beach access and made wearing of masks mandatory. As a social conformity measure it works great. Everyone is kneeling in submission to the tv terror. The further away from downtow one gets, the closer to reality people appear to be. At least Bradenton hasn’t succomed to the face burka brotherhood. As I mentioned on another thread, the wife of a friend of mine (age 52) came down with COVID a couple of weeks ago. The symptoms were just like you described, mild fever and headache. She’s back to work after her 14 day home incarceration. If they were in their seventies I’ld be more concerned. The rest of society needs to get back to reality. I certainly hope they remember to vote all these clowns out in November.
Fred,
I played golf yesterday on Longboat Key Club. Didn’t wear a mask but shot 90 from the blues. A mediocre course.
Fred, send me your email. You’re a neighbor.
Emergency room entrepreneur-physician Jake Deutsch appeared on C Span this morning to discuss “the rise in Covid cases.”
Deutsch said he had had the virus; he used Chloroquinine as part of his cure, but that was before it had been declared unsuitable, even counterindicated for Covid.
Deutsch inserted the instruction, “Wear a mask” in numerous places in his conversation.
He also urged listeners to “take your temperature regularly, at home; and also, buy an Oximeter to check your blood-oxygen levels regularly — Covid manifests by depleting oxygen in blood cells.
Sooo — has anyone done a study of Oximeter readings for persons who wear a mask that restricts oxygen, say for two hours, vs. those who do not wear a mask for the same two hour period?
Does Dr. Deutsch recognize any inconsistencies in his prescriptions?
About social distancing: I imagine this little exercise: Assemble some volunteers; give each person a small pipe or small wand and bubble-blowing liquid. Instruct Vol. #1 to stand on six-foot spot, blow tiny bubbles in the air; advance to next 6 foot spot. Did the bubbles, i.e. your germs, travel with you, or did they drift or hover to POP! over Volunteer #2 who advanced to the 6′ spot you vacated?
Duh.
Well supposedly wearing a mask is to show how much you care about others, not yourself. Under this logic, not wearing a mask is an act of selfishness. As it happens I’ve been in the hotspot of Louisiana since January (Jefferson Parish). But I just don’t see the panic around here that seems to be the case elsewhere (back home in Hawaii there have been like 22 deaths so far in the entire state, yet they are wringing their collective hands. In Hawaii they have an effective way of shaming — mask wearing demonstrates your Aloha.) Now the Parish President (ie mayor) did mandate masks and since then I would estimate mask usage in retail went from 30% (maybe as high as 45-50% at the height of the first onslaught) to about 95% today. How long that keeps up remains to be seen.
It does appear to me that the school issue is one of the NEA doesn’t want its members to work too hard so teaching 10 is much easier than 30. Plus classroom management seems to be passe these days.
A country of baby sheep (lambs) is quite able, unfortunately,to elect a corrupt career (I repeat myself) politician on the edge of dementia.
In January Fauci said novel coronavirus was “not a major threat to the people of the United States”.
Then he said don’t wear a mask.
March he’s pushing total lockdown.
April: “data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery”
May, it’s: hydroxychloroquine is useless.
“Clearly, the scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy for it, and even the possibility that there could be” Fauci said
Fauci is to medicine what Romney is to politics, Epstein is to virtue, Emmett Sullivan to law, New York Times to Journalism — Milley to honor, Obama to integrity.
Chameleons.
“They strike one, above all, as giving no account of themselves in any terms already consecrated by human use; to this inarticulate state they probably form, collectively, the most unprecedented of monuments; abysmal the mystery of what they think, what they feel, what they want, what they suppose themselves to be saying.”
–Henry James
Bottom line:
Covid has given to the power elite (the davos crowd, DNC, whatever) much of what they wanted. It is used to attack Trump. It slows down carbon production. It is reducing births and maybe population (from hunger). It promotes vaccines and other big pharma (a major DNC contributor) products. It is changing people’s lives in the way they want.
Most (though not all) scientific research concludes masks offer no benefit in reducing spread of respiratory virus and the research that claims a benefit has serious issues which are addressed in meta analysis studies.
Masks are a, maybe the, critical psychological barrier to returning to normalcy. They facilitate extension of the dystopic, freak show that the Davos crowd are forcing on us. It is wise to fight against them and to force a real discussion about their merit.
In California the more people seen wearing masks, the more crazy the next round of Govern Newsom’s demands. He has them where he wants them. They will obey.
Masks here are signs of control and willingness to be told what to do; substituting the total hash “experts” are putting out (easy), for weighing and balancing one’s own personal risks (scary).
Californians now look like those faceless cartoon characters – the ones who play non-essential background roles only but are necessary to fill out the screen. Californians are happy just preening in their masks and being able to say “I care” ……. and You Do Not…….if don’t wear one.
BTW: most wear them under their nose ……….. as if I care.
@Fred, “If they were in their seventies I’d be more concerned.”
I’m in my seventies, 77, and have emphysema and heart issues. Had Covid in February and was moderately uncomfortable for about three weeks. Have been fine since. You can imagine the lack of panic with which I view all of the posturing over this thing.
Sadly, the mask hysteria has now made it’s way to England. From the 24th of July, they will be mandatory in all shops but not pubs, takeaways or restaurants. Just when it started to look like things were creeping back to normality they hit us with this. I am now able to go and get drunk without a mask and afterwards stagger into a kebab house, again maskless, and get a kebab. If, however, I then want to go into a late night shop for something I have to mask up. On what planet does this make sense?
I am increasingly becoming a Corona sceptic.
My company, 15-20K employees (I could get in trouble for posint idenfitiactionable numbers), released how many people with Covid they had. More then 30 and less then 40. All of those are healthy again.
Amusingly, there were less people calling in sick during Corona, and productivity was up.
We did went into 100% homeoffice in march, which allowed me a lot of quality time with my family.
As recently as February this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, Fauci was saying something very different about COVID-19, something now quite taboo:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387
Masks are the new meme battlefield. Either you are a selfish uncaring bastard or you wear a mask. It appears similar to the way cigarette smokers are socially outcasted. The new scarlet letter is not to wear a mask.
I am not even sure the primary spread of the virus is by the respiratory track. Earlier this year I was seeing a lot of coughing and sneezing in my travels. Now not so much.
This guy is not an MD but he feels oral fecal route is the primary spread.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=239726
It makes more sense to me.
from a recent paper
“Earlier evidence suggested that SARS coronavirus viral RNA was detectable in the respiratory secretions and stool of some patients after onset of illness for more than one month but live virus could not be cultured after third week (Chan et al., 2004). Now, recent report also suggests that SARS-Cov2 RNA can be detected in stool of some patients of Covid-19 (Wu et al., 2020). This along with the fact that some patients of this disease have diarrhoea points out towards a distinct possibility of involvement of gut-lung axis and may be the gut microbiota”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7217790/
Frequent hand washing would probably be a good thing in either case.
“Sometimes poliovirus is spread through saliva from an infected person or droplets expelled when an infected person sneezes or coughs. People become infected when they inhale airborne droplets or touch something contaminated with the infected saliva or droplets. The infection usually begins in the intestine.”
If I had covid the first thing I had was diarrhea.
Have you considered that a lone person in a car may be running errands to several close by stores and doesn’t want to repeatedly take their mask off and on? They may not be doing it to offend you, Larry.
My N95 has 2 elastic bands. I wear glasses and a hat. If I’m between stores a few minutes apart, I leave it on.
I agree bandanas or shoddy cloth masks don’t filter the virus and only prevent spittle from circulating. But N95, properly fitted, does filter the virus. If 2 people have masks that are only 90% effective (not the N95, a lesser mask with a 10% failure rate or risk of passing the virus) the probability of failure between 2 people is 1% (0.1 * 0.1= 0.01). These are odds that I like.
Deaths have gone down. That is good. But deaths are not the measure to focus on; personal risks and the residual damage from a symptomatic illness are. I’m 65 and if I get sick and can’t cycle or run, that would really suck for me. Regaining endurance is not easy or could be impossible.
So my advice is people opposing masks demonstrate and civilly disobey the mask rules, particularly where they can get noticed, like a hospital or public health department. Because Darwin always wins in the long haul.
Here in Charlotte county we were about 50/50 split on masks until the recent megaphone announcements of positive covid tests (certainly as genuine as that Rolex picked up in Bangkok a few years back), we’re now about 70% wearing them, I’m in the minority and my wife is in the majority.
I’m thinking about ordering one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rubies-Mens-Black-Bandit-Zorro-Lone-Ranger-Foam-Fabric-Eye-Mask/291817751039?hash=item43f1b181ff:g:MAQAAOSw7XZXhk-j
@Upstater,
Does the act of slipping the loops of the mask off of your ear exhaust you? Seriously. If wearing a mask makes you feel safe and protected go for it. If you have your mask on it does not matter that I don’t. I’m 65 too but I’m not quaking in my car with a mask. Man up.
Upstate,
Facts are n95 masks only can filter .3 microbes and higher
Coronavirus is .1
So n95 masks do nothing but create the illusion of security
Fact•
Larry,
Sent a note to the Col. asking him to forward my contact info to you. Hope we can have a beer soon. Hope even more you own a boat! I’ll bring gas money if you do.
Fred
NBC suit anyone?
From City AM of the UK
Couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, as the saying goes
A lot of the problems in ‘managing’ the pandemic in England have been due to the way the NHS works (i.e. in the manner of a highly centralized Soviet-style bureaucracy) and also due to the general incompetence of the government (with ministers and advisers appointed on the basis of their loyalty to the Brexit camp, not on merit). But another major factor has been Public Health England (PHE), which is clearly an inept quango.
The article explains what many experts and commentators had pointed out before, i.e. that the stats regarding COVID 19-related deaths in England are totally unreliable. Most countries would try to reduce the death toll by all means possible (to show they were doing ever so well) but, in England, it’s the opposite! And public policy is determined on the basis of such data, obviously.
https://www.cityam.com/matt-hancock-calls-for-urgent-review-into-england-coronavirus-deaths-tally/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Midday+newsletter+June+2019
Matt Hancock calls for ‘urgent review’ into England coronavirus deaths tally :
Matt Hancock is to call for an ‘urgent review’ into Public Health England’s coronavirus deaths tally after it reportedly included people who tested positive for Covid-19 but died from other causes …
The very latest “grand rounds” broadcast from UCSF Med School is now claiming mask help reduce the viral load – they no longer claim they prevent anything.
Their premise is viral reduction causes fewer or milder infections. This of course is based on zero research, but it is a way of backing out of the extreme 100% mask demands.
Demanding masks is becoming the equivalent of “saving face” for the medical industry “experts” who got exposed wearing absolutely no cloaks of any expertise about anything. For the past decades when they should have been on the job, they were just phoning it in and cashing heir tax dollar funded paycheck.
Our entire post WWII massively expanding government system does need a thorough house cleaning – not easy and not pretty, but necessary. It will be a rough ride. This is a given.
Fact: masks are a real pain for anyone wearing hearing aids. They are easily dislodged when wearing ear loop masks along with eyeglasses. Quite cumbersome and a n easy disaster when removing the mask for dining or just trying to get some air and use one’s nose for breathing again.
Ask yourself, do you breather through your mouth more than your nose when wearing a mask? The nose is highly evolved as a mucus-rich infection filter, and anti-body builder, also warming air before it enters the lungs. The mouth far less designed to be an airborne infection filter compared to the nose. Yet now I suspect mask wearers are doing a lot more mouth breathing, than nose breathing.
Plus many of us of a certain age had our tonsils removed, which also play a part of the body’s own infection fighting immune system response. There is an interesting “co-morbidity” to explore in the numbers of “elderly deaths” — did they or did they not have their tonsils?
Has mask wearing, which increases mouth breathing, for those with no tonsils led to higher respiratory disease incidence? Is this our “elderly” weak link.
PJ20
Hey! Do what you please. The truth is that this illness is not all that “deadly” except for people like me. You are being trained to do what the TeeVee tells you to do. You do not recognize 1984?
Larry
I think you mean 0.3 microns.
I am continually amazed as to how this issue has been politicized. The virus doesn’t give a shit how manly you are. It is a public health issue. Emphasis on public. The government has an obligation to all, not only to us non-manly types. Fauci is not selling snake oil at the UN to justify the invasion of yet another defenseless country. Only guy in government who has not flinched from his duty despite all the bullshit criticism. When all is said and done, if that ever comes to pass, he should be given a medal.
Charlie
Now this one meet the criteria of ‘mad mask hysteria’.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fatal-haliburton-shooting-siu-1.5650761
Artemesia,
The whole “blood oxygenation” “oximeter” thing is a hoax, from the health professionals (who should know better) trying to fool the public and fraudulently dismiss legitimate concerns.
Homeostasis means that all healthy people will maintain the same Oxygen level, masked or not. (There are transient states before or after exercise, but anyway.) HOWEVER, the Pulse Rate is measurably different between mask and not-mask. The reason is simple: Masks restrict breathing; that is why they work as filters. Therefore, to get the same oxygen level in your blood volume (ie, same liters of oxygen), you have to breath more often/deeply, and heart pumps more.
This is why you see Pulse Rates routinely go up to 90s and 100s in those stupid “Oximeter Debunking Videos”.
For all healthy people, and even most COPD/etc people, their resting O2 levels will be the same. The O2 levels will not drop until the terminal stages, when the heart no longer can pump fast enough to maintain O2.
Charlie Wilson,
“The government has an obligation to all, ”
Is that why the police stand down repeatedly? As to St. Fauci, I agee, when it is all done he deserves a medal from the CCP. He’s already gotten the provebrial 30 pieces of silver from TPTB.
Larry:
Thank you for this, it was one of your better efforts.
All:
I have often had to wear filtered masks at work when grinding metals and other materials. I was informed years ago that OSHA would issue a fine to any workplace that used the kind of masks that painters typically use, hard shell ribbed masks held on by one or two straps. These masks made you re-breathe the carbon dioxide of your exhalation lowering the oxygen in the blood. Wearing masks without a flap-type valve for exhaled air is dangerous for the wearer over a long period. If you have to wear a mask for a long period in your work you should try to have one with a flap-valve. Protect yourself, it is not your problem to protect everyone else.
Charlie,
I point blank disagree: “The virus doesn’t give a shit how manly you are.”
If you are passive and thus have a weak metabolism or are stressed out and have a weakened metabolism your immune system is weaker.
i often get ‘hints’ of colds or flu’s and i ‘fight them off’ with vigorous exercise ( which can be a stressor ) and good nourishment to recover from this stress. Good relaxed breathing also works wonders.
tin foil hat: “Let’s stress everyone out with ‘no see ums’, keep them locked down and less physically active, deny them routine heath care and let’s see what happens to the mortality rate”
the masters of the universe are so happy, everything they believe has be validated: most are sheeple and easily manipulated.
imagine if this is only a trial run ?
Upstater: If you are so afraid of getting sick or dying you should just commit suicide and save yourself the stress of worrying about it. Better yet, it would save everyone else the stress of listening to you whine.
Faux-cheat politicized the whole HIV thing too. He is a federal bureaucrat survivor and should only be given his pension on the way out the door.
He is the poster child for government incompetence, and only serves to underscore we don’t want Big Government taking over health care. For that starting role, Faux-cheat does deserve a medal.
Artemesia — wrt ways of thinking about distancing….
Easier than bubble pipes, think [remember?? visualize???] exhaled cigarette smoke travel/distribution, particle size [not identical but roughly comparable], deposition, persistence, detection limits
comparative particle size ranges of pure particles. (see links)
* virions: approximately 125 nm with range from 60-140 nm
* tobacco smoke: 100 to 1000 nm with peak at 200-250 nm
all exhaled particles are associated with oral/airway secretions + cell detritus which affect dimensions and density.
How they travel is affected by ambient air temperature/density.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0095852260900374
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/can-masks-capture-coronavirus/
(sigh) arguments about Covid lethality are irrelevant. What is important is the dynamics of a pandemic. You are in a drag race between the virus overwhelming your hospital system and herd immunity, either by vaccine or the flow of time.
Masks reduce the spread of the virus and are a cheap prophylactic. I am sick of faux arguments against them.
There is a video on BBC of what happens when a hospital system breaks down.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53396057
Walrus,
We already won that race. Too bad for the folks in Port Elizabeth. On a bright note the president of the Republic of South Africa is proving just how corrupt and incompetent the ANC can be, which is why Zuma had to resign. I doubt many will get the point. The democrats will do the same to the US should they win in November. For example see the latest news out of Chicago and indictments (perhaps) leading to the heart of the Chicago political machine that has deep connections to those “organizing for america”:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/7/17/21328229/feds-file-criminal-charges-against-comed-implicate-michael-madigan-springfield-politics-us-attorney
Larry Johnson: “Facts are n95 masks only can filter .3 microbes and higher”
That is quite untrue.
The fact is that the masks have a filter size around .3 microns, but they are very efficient at trapping particles smaller than .3 microns.
Why? Because they don’t intended to act like a colander i.e. they are not designed to allow *water* to flow through it.
These are designed to trap *particles*, and in the sub-micron range particles exhibit Brownian motion. And that Brownian motion means that a .3 micron filter will be very effective at stopping particles that are .1 micron in size.
Here is a fun fact: N95 masks are least efficient in trapping particles that are .3 microns in size (where efficiency is “mere” 95%). They are actually more efficient both above and below .3 microns.
How do I know that? Because that is what the “95” stands for in the “N95”. It is the measurement of their LEAST efficiency, which happens to be their efficiency at .3 microns.
What do our tonsils do for us? Could this be why covid more easily attacks “older persons”, who often had their tonsils removed. And why younger persons appear to more immune to covid, because taking tonsils out fell out of favor some time ago?
Since there are so few answers, maybe we should keep asking thee questions.
“Daily Mail: So what are the tonsils and why do we need them?
………If you open your mouth you can see them – the tonsils are soft, red areas on either side of the back of the throat, made up of lymphatic tissue. This tissue is involved in the immune system and helps the body to defend itself against infection.
It is rich in white blood cells – the ones that hunt down and destroy viruses and bacteria that invade the body. Because of their location, the tonsils are the front line of defence against infections of the throat and upper airways. ……….”
walrus
Our hospital systems are NOT approaching overload. This is Dem/marxist agitprop.
Yeah Right,
The best thing about N95 masks is that they are 100% effective in trapping our freedom. Those filtering properties you describe only happen if a mask is fitted to one’s face and worn properly the whole time one wears it. Left out of all that is the risk of not wearing one, the risks associated with wearing them for extended periods, and the risk of the actual thing that is being defended against, in this case Trump’s re-election.
In just 2 days I’ll be faced with having to go hungry unless I wear a mask. Now we do have some specialty markets such as German, Italian, Caribbean, and mostly Asian ones available. However, a few days ago I went into a Vietnamese grocer to buy a small item for 95 cents. I went to pay with a dollar bill and was directed by the face mask wearing owner to lay the bill down on the counter instead of handing it to him directly, oh well.
The question I have is how long is this BS going to last? Is it 3 months, a year, a few years, the rest of my life? I’m feeling sorrow for my children, my grand-children and yours as well.
If masks are useless why are all those people in other countries wearing them? Do they know something we don’t?
jus’thinkin’
Why would you think they are right on this rather than just deluded? The world is mostly filled with fools.
Fred: “The best thing about N95 masks is that they are 100% effective in trapping our freedom.”
You are forfeiting your freedom every time you step out the door with your Tally Whacker snugly secured in your pants rather than flapping defiantly in the breeze.
Yet you accept having your “freedoms” proscribed by the need to have your Meat And Two Veg neatly tucked into your pants as you stride through your front door, without the slightest thought much less even a hint of righteous indignation.
How odd.
“Those filtering properties you describe only happen if a mask is fitted to one’s face and worn properly the whole time one wears it.”
Quite true: It is just as important to wear your N95 mask properly if you are to suppress a pandemic as it is to wear your black mask properly if you are to successfully rob a bank without being identified.
Go figure, heh?
“Left out of all that is the risk of not wearing one, the risks associated with wearing them for extended periods,”…
You’ve lost me there, Fred. Almost all of Asia is wearing N95 masks, with no ill effect. Maybe they are just made of tougher stuff than the average American.
…”and the risk of the actual thing that is being defended against, in this case Trump’s re-election.”
Riiiiiiiight.
So a Vietnamese street vendor is wearing a mask because he wants Joe Biden to be elected President?
And anyone who wants Americans to emulate the Vietnamese do so because they want to engineer the defeat of Trump, and not because they thinks that the Vietnamese were onto a good idea that is well worth emulating?
Well, it’s a theory I guess. Just not a very good one.