Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

No matter where I am, probably on the order of 5-10%, the former outside the city, the latter inside the city.

 

The CDC/WHO all had said that masks didn't work prior to 2020. This was total garbage from the beginning. We have had RCT's for decades showing masks don't work. There was a lot of downside especially for children and infants.

 

Masks were never shown to be effective. They were a we have to look like we are doing something virtue signal. They knew from decades of prior knowledge that masks were never going to be effective as they knew exactly what the purpose of masks are. Which is to protect the wearer from splatter. This was known in medicine and science before Covid.

What is infuriating about the virtue push of masks for me is that it was actually damaging to kids. They need to see facial expressions. It is important in their development. Even more so for kids with speech issues. And my middle dealt with really bad speech issues when she was younger. Thank goodness preCovid.

I agree with your point about now and your sentiment about the beginning. But reality is at the beginning...they knew masks were not an effective tool. Just like the made up social distancing. Which I actually like the result of. But it was not based in science or medicine.

 

And more effects of the school lockdowns. Sickening. Totally preventable if people actually followed the data and not the fear being spread.

Chronic absenteeism climbs to record numbers in NYC schools

 

I think any business should be allowed to have their own mask mandates. At this point I’m less inclined to support government mask mandates and mask mandates in schools.

It really depends on the situation though. An early Covid mask mandate may have made sense. Post omicron probably not.

 

Granted, there is/was no Covid, only cases. But ...

 

^ viruses are claustrophobic and need more room than that.

 

I will agree that most cloth masks have little utility as an air filter. At the same time masks could provide protection in terms of coughing or sneezing when moisture projection with the virus is reduced.

 

First sentence starts with an inaccuracy. There are many studies that show they’re effective.

 

Source control. When the virus is leaving the body of an infected person, it is attached to a much larger water droplet.

 

There are not many studies that show that masks are effective against non-existing pathogens. It’s all make believe.

 

Hybrid immunity > NI. And if you have never had COVID, vaccine immunity > nothing. So why wouldn't we advocate for everyone to get the jab? Either way, it will improve your immune response to COVID, and keep more people from having severe reactions, and less people out of the hospital.

Also, we have zero way to track NI. But everyone who got a vaccine has their card. How do you prove NI unless you get a note from your doctor? Get a note from a company that did the test? A little late to start tracking this now. Had we tracked infection and had a way to prove NI from the start, then we could have included NI. As is, proving you took the vaccine was easy to forge. With NI, we're only working on the honor system.

 

No one is or ever will be immune to PCR or Lateral Flow Tests. Diet Coke tests positive.

 

There are degrees of ineffective though, right? What if masks are only 1% effective? While that's almost completely worthless, if 30k people are dying per day then a measure with 1% effectiveness could save 300 lives per day. There were a lot of extremely difficult decisions to be made back in 2020 and it seems like some posters position here is that we should have done nothing. It's hard to fathom that was ever the right approach based on what we knew then and even now.

 

You just won’t look at the facts. Sad. I posted all the RCT’s showing masks don’t work. This is quite comical watching you and others do mental gymnastics instead of admitting the truth

 

Good try but no. And we still have had mask mandates in the past few months believe it or not. I guess some people would rather die on the their hill than admit they were wrong all along. Sad.

 

The data are from 2020. At the time masks were effective at limiting transmission of the virus. Given that the the now dominant Omicron strain and its subvariants are much more transmissible than the earlier strains of the virus mask mandates make less sense now than they did back in 2020 and most of 2021.
Why every state should adopt a mask mandate, in 4 charts

 

I would have said if you can get a medical doctor to sign an exemption due to documented natural immunity or other health considerations that would have been good enough. It just wasn’t worth the fight.

 

Covid just confirmed what we already knew about masks.