Science Magazine - "Masks effectively limit the probability of SARS-CoV-2 transmission"

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EdFred said:
Can't make that statement and know it to be a fact. And no, they didn't die just from covid.

Not every wildebeest crosses the Serengeti successfully.
Oh, it was the lion that killed them! You mean the injured leg they had previously had nothing to do with it at all? If that leg wasn't injured it probably would have gotten away.

Someone over 80, someone weighing 400lbs, someone with stage twelve diabeetus, GTFO with "oh it was covid." BS. They were unhealthy or primed to go anyway.


**** happens, and life goes on. My dad would have been one of the 20,000,000 projected deaths had he not had a heart procedure done previous to this whole thing going down. He ended up in the hospital as it was. Guess what it wasn't covid that would have killed him. Would have been that his heart was running at like 30% capacity. Same as if he tried running a marathon. Was it the marathon that killed him? **** no it wasn't. Any other claim is disingenuous.
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Lol! And there are plenty of 80 YT old 400 lb people who had no symptoms from COVID. As people say, “it affects everyone differently.”

You seriously believe that these people with underlying issues and died, would still have died on that exact day without COVID? Pilot at work had both parents die from CoVID within days of one another. You can’t tell me that because they were old, they would have died the exact same timeframe even without COVID. COVID can be the tipping point for people with existing conditions that wouldn’t have passed prematurely.

Now, are there some who die of say a heart attack and stroke and just so happened to have COVID and that gets listened as official cause of death? Sure but that ain’t the norm. We had an unusually high rate of deaths last year in the US. What was the only think different about last year vs previous years? It sure wasn’t because we had an unusual uptick in STEMIs, strokes, cancer, etc.
 
Velocity173 said:
Lol! And there are plenty of 80 YT old 400 lb people who had no symptoms from COVID. As people say, “it affects everyone differently.”

You seriously believe that these people with underlying issues and died, would still have died on that exact day without COVID? Pilot at work had both parents die from CoVID within days of one another. You can’t tell me that because they were old, they would have died the exact same timeframe even without COVID. COVID can be the tipping point for people with existing conditions that wouldn’t have passed prematurely.

Now, are there some who die of say a heart attack and stroke and just so happened to have COVID and that gets listened as official cause of death? Sure but that ain’t the norm. We had an unusually high rate of deaths last year in the US. What was the only think different about last year vs previous years? It sure wasn’t because we had an unusual uptick in STEMIs, strokes, cancer, etc.
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That exact day? No. Within the year, maybe/probably. Nature gonna nature.
 
The mask is a simple risk mitigation strategy. I've been wearing N95s when in public since I returned to the US in March 2020. Even if I'm not going to die from COVID, my sense of smell is too important to me (certified wine judge, etc...) to risk its loss.
 
Everskyward said:
I always thought that analogy was pretty stupid. I would rather have someone pee on my bare leg. That way I can wash it off. Otherwise I would be wearing wet pants all day. ;)

I've given up caring about masks one way or another. I wear one when required or asked, otherwise no. I'm surprised how many people are still scared, though, especially here where the chance of spread is miniscule.
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Wait. We are supposed to wear pants?

Why didn’t someone tell me?

This explains the looks at Walmart...

Totally with ya on the fear thing. Was done with that early last year.

Karen’s hospital removed their internal mask mandate for whenever the staff isn’t around patients as long as the entire staff in an area has been vaccinated. Her team was done with it months ago.

It’s basically marketing wank now for the still-terrified. They’re ripping them off the second they’re out of the room with you, if you’re visiting medical facilities now... since they’ve been vaccinated for months.

She’s so “over it” she’ll actively avoid businesses that still have mask rules — which helps drive the whole thing back to sanity via voting with her dollars. Loss of revenue will be real.

The real problems are now in countries that can’t / aren’t getting vaccines. Was reading the majority of vaccines have gone to 16 countries... which makes sense economically... but it’s gonna be sad when we all hear the stories.

India is a crap show right now. The mold thing. Ugh. A good friend’s dad says 20% of his phone contacts will be dead. (Note: I posted that elsewhere and people got mad saying it wasn’t that bad there and I had to remind them I’m directly quoting him, it’s not a national statistic. Why he knows so many who will die, I do not know. It was just a shocking revelation from him. And they do have multiple extended family members dead.)

Those whining about the first world’s response and complaining it could have been better, ain’t seen nothing yet. Things here truly haven’t been that bad.

It was EASY to get away from this thing here and then get vaccinated — if one wanted to — and wasn’t locked inside a nursing home. Super easy.
 
Where I work, this thing is far from over. The old folks who lost friends during the winter wave were quick to get the vaccine in Feb/Mar and we see very few admissions in that age group. At this time, we are seeing mostly heavy set guys in their 50s who end up admitted. They don't usually die, but a week of sucking down high-flow O2 isnt something anyone should envy.
The other thing we see now are all the lung-wrecks from the winter wave. Again, most recover fully, but there is a good percentage left with some degree of fibrosis.



If you want a stock tip: Anything that caters to the respiratory therapy and home oxygen market. That's good business for the next 20-30 years until the generation of covid lungs dies off.
 
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JD318 said:
Big difference between dying from Covid and dying with Covid.
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If 'dying with covid' (incidental diagnosis of covid in someone with a different UCOD) was a substantial source of mis-classification, we wouldn't have experienced the increase in all cause mortality that we did.
It's actually the other way around. We missed a substantial number of covid deaths. Some of that early when testing was scarce, some of it during the winter wave when people chose not to seek medical attention for whatever reason.
 
Here, stores are rapidly abandoning mask requirements. There are a few holdouts, but I suspect they will change once they realize people are avoiding them.

The traditional local culture revolves around personal responsibility, so it's a "wear a mask if you want to." You're responsible for protecting yourself, not requiring others to respond to your fear.

Plus, the number of cases has been in decline for a month. They say we have around 40% of people vaccinated. But if we include 10% of confirmed cases and 10-20% of unconfirmed cases who have natural immunity, that's 60-70%. I'm thinking it's possible the herd immunity level is well below the 70% that was modeled. I say that because I've become aware of some of the faults of the models, for example, assuming an equal spread from any person to any person. In reality, you can only spread it to people you're in contact with, which is a much smaller number. That greatly lowers transmissibility, which would lower that herd immunity number. Or I could be completely wrong.
 
weilke said:
Where I work, this thing is far from over.

...

If you want a stock tip: Anything that caters to the respiratory therapy and home oxygen market. That's good business for the next 20-30 years until the generation of covid lungs dies off.
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Where ya at again? High population density?

I wouldn’t take that investment advice. Judging by the janky company that brought my stuff — which I didn’t need, but was unrelated to Covid — there clearly isn’t any profit margin in it. Commodity. They barely answer their phone and a very nice Russian immigrant brought the machine out here to the boonies. Looking over what insurance paid them, the gas to drive the thing here ate 20% of their profit.

Nice folks. Aren’t gonna get rich on those machines though. Way too cheap.
 
Since I've been vaccinated I don't wear masks unless required or if the preponderance of folks are doing so. I mostly wear them to mako others feel better. I have a vaccine to protect me. I hope everyone reading this is vaccinated. If you aren't, well, good luck with that.
 
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Velocity173 said:
You can’t tell me that because they were old, they would have died the exact same timeframe even without COVID.
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Why not? Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day, and they didn't have Covid.
 
At this point everyone knows where they stand on this stuff.

The important question is what should the laws and rules be?
 
PPC1052 said:
Why not? Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day, and they didn't have Covid.
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Because they both died of different causes and had nothing medically linking the two, it makes complete sense. Chalk it up to a strange coincidence.

Now, say they both happened to contract Cholera at the same time and died on July 4 1820, that’s not a coincidence. I’d call that dying prematurely from an infectious disease, because they’re supposed to die 6 years later from natural causes.
 
Lots of other people died that same day. That leaves us calculating the chance that it they would both be one of them. That chance is small, but not impossible.
 
20 % more deaths than the previous year? That’s not a coincidence. That’s significant and as I stated earlier, significant enough for me to make changes in my daily routine.

https://usafacts.org/articles/preli...deaths-in-2020-than-2019-coronavirus-age-flu/

I will admit, early on I was in denial because of poor info from the CDC and WHO. I think a lot of us feel indestructible and don’t like change either. Once the situation turned for the worse (late 2020) and I started to see COVID first hand at work, I changed my tune.
 
weilke said:
If 'dying with covid' (incidental diagnosis of covid in someone with a different UCOD) was a substantial source of mis-classification, we wouldn't have experienced the increase in all cause mortality that we did.
It's actually the other way around. We missed a substantial number of covid deaths. Some of that early when testing was scarce, some of it during the winter wave when people chose not to seek medical attention for whatever reason.
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I suppose some people might claim a "substantial source of mis-classification", but others are only pointing out that some of the deaths counted as a covid-19 fatality might not be caused by covid-19. No doubt you've seen the guidance to long-term care facilities to classify the death of anyone who was being actively treated for covid-19 as a covid-19 death.

I'm kind of wondering how Massachusetts had zero influenza-related deaths this past flu season (using CDC data). Zero. Now, Massachusetts doesn't get a lot of influenza deaths, but zero is remarkable. I wonder how many probabale covid-19 deaths were actually caused by influenza. And it isn't limited to probable covid-19 deaths. If a patient presents with flu-like symptoms and tests positive for covid-19, do medical facilaties routinely test for influenza and/or pneumonia? How do you know that positive covid-19 test wasn't due to an asymptomatic covid-19 infection and the symptom being actually caused by influenza?
 
Clip4 said:
Maybe you don’t know many. I know 5 that died of it, and another who was hospitalized for 2 months.
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Yup.....I too know of many that died last year. Bout 4-5.....and none passed from or with COVID. Sorry for your loss. My FIL is one who is no longer with us.

In our county, Frederick county in Maryland, population of +255,000, we had a little over 300 COVID deaths. With 20,000 who tested positive (many never were tested - I and many of my friends were not recorded in that number). Simple division....300/20,000 = 0.015 fatality rate for those who "tested" positive.The majority of those fatalities were sick and elderly. It wasn't all that and a bag-o-chips.
 
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cowman said:
At this point everyone knows where they stand on this stuff.

The important question is what should the laws and rules be?
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I'm curious what the 2119 pandemic will be like and whether all of today's lessons will need to be re-learned.
 
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