Covid-19 pandemic & Fake News - How you can help

Boagrius

Well-Known Member
The point is simple. I don't want to do stupid things my government makes me do.
Fair enough. That said, if a coordinated (but inevitably imperfect) suppression strategy also includes doing a few stupid things for a finite period of time, I'd submit to you that it is a small price to pay for getting this thing under control.
 

cdxbow

Well-Known Member
There are plenty of new strains every day considering how many viruses there are in the world. What is considered a pandemic depends on whether it can be politicized.
What a load of rubbish. A pandemic has a clear definition, nothing to do with politics rather to do with spread eg “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”. Note also the definition includes nothing about severity,
......You claim that us foreigners don't understand the freedoms that you Americans are so fond of claiming, but we actually do and whilst we see the benefits, we also see the fallacies as well, especially at the moment. We cannot understand why you have let 260,000 of your people die from a pandemic when you have the capabilities to have prevented a significant proportion of those deaths. We cannot understand why you let the virus ravage your nation without you doing anything substantive to mitigate it. To us this is not about individual freedoms, but plain callousness on the part of the White House and significant portions of the population in general.
Ain't that the truth, how the most powerful country in the world, with the largest and most expensive health care system,, years of preparation (including the ignored playbook) and the largest medical science establishment do so badly?

Bad leadership.

That's all it took to undo all the other advantages the US had. Nothing epitomises this more than people stupid enough to politicise masks during a once in a century pandemic. If you wrote it as fiction people would not believe it.

Aerosol behavior is very well known to those in the field. As soon as it was known that this virus is aerosol-transmitted they should've taken that into consideration. I am not a medical professional, but from the little I know even the most aggressive viruses require certain concentration to be inhaled to infect. It was known fairly early on what the ball park concentration limit figure for this particular virus was. Linking the two together shouldn't be taking half a year.
Physicman you drill down to all sorts of details but the major management of a pandemic is simple and mainly behavioural. Limit interactions, use PPE, restrict travel, rapid contact tracing are the major big things. Some of the East Asian countries managed these without forced lockdown.

To do this you need clear, coherent messaging from the top, getting everyone on the same page. This is the single most important thing. Instead Mr Trump, as is often his way, spread confusion and doubt. The US response is the worst in the world and will be a case study in bad management for centuries to come. It's not scientist or doctor fault, it is Mr Trump and his enabling minions. It was not inevitable at the start.
 

Todjaeger

Potstirrer
Aerosol behavior is very well known to those in the field. As soon as it was known that this virus is aerosol-transmitted they should've taken that into consideration. I am not a medical professional, but from the little I know even the most aggressive viruses require certain concentration to be inhaled to infect. It was known fairly early on what the ball park concentration limit figure for this particular virus was. Linking the two together shouldn't be taking half a year.
One of the problems is that early on, the method of transmission was not known or understood. It was gradually realized that there was a respiratory component, but that too was thought to be droplet transmission and that the infection could not be aersolized. Also, there are certain parts of how/why the human respiratory system function that we still do not really understand. For instance it is well known and understood that when people exhale, they are not just expelling some of the air in their lungs, but also fine matter. What is known to occur, though the reasons are not known, is that some people, for some reason, tend to expel a greater amount of fine matter than others. This 'greater amount' is usually orders of magnitude greater . One of the early 'superspreader' events in the US, which was a church choir practice in WA state IIRC, mentioned the potential for fine matter to have been circulated during the practice.
 

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
What exactly is it that's doing the suppressing? Sure, locking everyone down China-style is going to work, that will do the supression. But like I said, a civilized society must look at how to approach the problem and minimize the attack on personal freedoms. And that means you go beyond a computer program and examine what it is that actually works. Which government actually bothered to study how infectious the virus is in open air? And if there are studies (which will show what I wrote before), do you think they are being followed by any government? They are not, because no government cares if it's being heavyhanded or not. It's the same everywhere, except the definition of "heavyhanded" is different in China, Korea, Australia, and US, that's all.
This discussion convinces me why the US-CDN border should be closed until an effective vaccine program is underway.
 
For instance it is well known and understood that when people exhale, they are not just expelling some of the air in their lungs, but also fine matter. What is known to occur, though the reasons are not known, is that some people, for some reason, tend to expel a greater amount of fine matter than others. This 'greater amount' is usually orders of magnitude greater . One of the early 'superspreader' events in the US, which was a church choir practice in WA state IIRC, mentioned the potential for fine matter to have been circulated during the practice.
I have a pretty good idea why some people produce that fine matter more than others. I design aerosol generators, and the main requirement for a liquid to aerosolize is to impart enough speed to the liquid flowing though a restriction (orifice) to produce the shearing effect. If a person produces more of aerosol it means they have a narrower restriction in their throat somewhere, and/or they have powerful lungs that expel air at higher speeds.
 

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
I have a pretty good idea why some people produce that fine matter more than others. I design aerosol generators, and the main requirement for a liquid to aerosolize is to impart enough speed to the liquid flowing though a restriction (orifice) to produce the shearing effect. If a person produces more of aerosol it means they have a narrower restriction in their throat somewhere, and/or they have powerful lungs that expel air at higher speeds.
So no masks, no social distancing and let me guess, Jesus will sort everything. Good frigging luck.
 
So no masks, no social distancing and let me guess, Jesus will sort everything. Good frigging luck.
No, what that means is that if you're in a stagnant air room with such a person for a prolonged period of time, you're fucked, pretty much regardless of whether you have a mask or not. Droplets produced when a person breathes or talks are very fine and will negotiate their way into most masks given enough time. It's very hard to face fit a mask, and with facial hair you can forget about it. Only brief exposures can be blocked by masks in such circumstances.
 

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
No, what that means is that if you're in a stagnant air room with such a person for a prolonged period of time, you're fucked, pretty much regardless of whether you have a mask or not. Droplets produced when a person breathes or talks are very fine and will negotiate their way into most masks given enough time. It's very hard to face fit a mask, and with facial hair you can forget about it. Only brief exposures can be blocked by masks in such circumstances.
Agree, prolonged exposure is an important factor but so is disregard of proven procedures that reduce infection rates. Canadian infection rates are not anything to hype but compared the US, significantly better. The only explanation is mask mandates and social distancing along with albeit pi$$ poor enforcement.
 

Boagrius

Well-Known Member
Don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that masks are a panacea, but I suspect they should help as a risk reduction measure:
Cloth does not stop isolated virions. However, most virus transmission occurs via larger particles in secretions, whether aerosol (<5 µm) or droplets (>5 µm), which are generated directly by speaking, eating, coughing, and sneezing; aerosols are also created when water evaporates from smaller droplets, which become aerosol-sized droplet nuclei. The point is not that some particles can penetrate but that some particles are stopped, particularly in the outward direction. Every virus-laden particle retained in a mask is not available to hang in the air as an aerosol or fall to a surface to be later picked up by touch...

...Cloth can block droplets and aerosols, and layers add efficiency. Filtration efficiency for single layers of different types of cotton cloth in a bioaerosol (0.2 µm) experiment was between 43% and 94%, compared with 98% to 99% for fabric from disposable medical masks (2). In a summary of similar observations, single layers of scarfs, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and towels were associated with filtration efficiency of 10% to 40% in experiments using NaCl aerosol (0.075 µm) (3). For tea towel fabric, studied with aerosol-sized particles, filtration efficiency in experiments using a bacterial marker was 83% with 1 layer and 97% with 2 layers, compared with 96% for a medical mask (4). In experiments using virus, 1 layer of tea towel had 72% efficiency and 1 layer of T-shirt fabric 51%, compared with 90% for a medical mask (4). A 2020 study confirms that some fabrics block clinically useful percentages of transmission, even for aerosols and even in single layers; multiple layers improve efficiency (5)...

Outward protection for cloth masks was extensively studied decades ago, and the results are highly relevant today. Compared with bacteria recovery from unmasked volunteers, a mask made of muslin and flannel reduced bacteria recovered on agar sedimentation plates by 99.3% to 99.9%, total airborne microorganisms by 99.5% to 99.8%, and bacteria recovered from aerosols (<4 µm) by 88% to 99% (6). A similar experiment in 1975 compared 4 medical masks and 1 commercially produced reusable mask made of 4 layers of cotton muslin (7). Filtration efficiency, assessed by bacterial counts, was 96% to 99% for the medical masks and 99% for the cloth mask; for aerosols (<3.3 µm), it was 72% to 89% and 89%, respectively.

A single randomized controlled trial of cloth masks studied an unusually inefficient mask and compared it with medical masks rather than no mask. For influenza-like illness, the attack rate in health care workers wearing cloth masks was 2.3%, compared with 0.7% in health care workers wearing medical masks as indicated and 0.2% in the group wearing medical masks continuously (9). This trial has been misinterpreted as showing that cloth masks increase risk for influenza-like illness, but it actually provides no evidence on the effectiveness or harms of wearing cloth masks compared with not wearing cloth masks because it had no comparator group without masks. Furthermore, filtration efficiency for the cloth masks used in this study was 3% (9)...

...When we apply the principles of evidence-based medicine to public policy, there is high-quality, consistent evidence that many (but not all) cloth masks reduce droplet and aerosol transmission and may be effective in reducing contamination of the environment by any virus, including SARS-CoV-2. No direct evidence indicates that public mask wearing protects either the wearer or others. Given the severity of this pandemic and the difficulty of control, we suggest that the possible benefit of a modest reduction in transmission likely outweighs the possibility of harm. Reduced outward transmission and reduced contamination of the environment are the major proposed mechanisms, and we suggest appealing to altruism and the need to protect others. We recognize the potential for unintended consequences, such as use of formal personal protective equipment by the general public, incorrect use of cloth masks, or reduced hand hygiene because of a false sense of security; these can be mitigated by controlling the distribution of personal protective equipment, clear messaging, public education, and social pressure. Advocating that the public make and wear cloth masks shifts the cost of a public health intervention from society to the individual. In low-resource areas and for persons living in poverty, this is unacceptable. This could be mitigated by public health interventions, with local manufacture and distribution of cloth masks based on materials and design informed by evidence.
 

tonnyc

Well-Known Member
Except develop the habit of wearing a mask. Very much of my training as a soldier relied on developing habits which would keep me alive by practicing them whether they were perceived as needed on not
This is a very good point. It's like keeping the safety on even when you know the gun is unloaded and keeping your finger off the trigger and not pointing the gun at anyone. Hey, it's not loaded, right, so we don't need to follow safety rules, right? Except you follow the rules anyway because that's the smart thing to do.
 

OPSSG

Super Moderator
Staff member
Post 1 of 2:
The US concept of individual independence and liberty was
(a) a colonial response to the oppression of the British crown
(b) made possible by the HUGE expanse of land available (for takeover)
ie: your rights, independence and liberty are 100% upheld on your land

BUT once you are in shops, town/cities public areas, hospitals, schools etc.
your rights MUST come 2nd to the groups rights, for better law and order, health and social outcomes

YOUR desire for no masks DOES NOT cancel the next mans rights, for example
YOUR desire for no masks DOES NOT cancel the store owners independence to set his own rules.

This can be demonstrated by looking at the countries that got it (COVID) right

Vietnam, Taiwan, Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, - “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
1. Agreed. @PhysicsMan refusal to acknowledge that mask mandated works and his continued learn from successes in other countries, is a refusal to pluck the low hanging fruit of a basic pandemic control measures to adopt for the general population.
(a) Mask wearing is a simple, painless measure recommended by the US CDC. There is no point is making it a political issue. Wearing a mask does not prevent a person from going out or his freedom of movement; but it does reduce the amount of virus shed to another (in a short encounter).​
(b) Masks tend to reduce the initial viral load, which leads to less severe cases, which is why although the number of active cases is strongly rising, the number of serious cases and deaths is also falling, yet the virus’s lethality remained the same.​
(c) People who wear masks and still get ill, are getting far less sick, and an increasing number of people are now wearing masks. Thus the mortality rate is falling even as the active cases are increasing.​
(d) Choosing not to wear a mask in a mall, or a shop infringes on the freedom of other shoppers to have some measure of protection from an asymptomatic infected.​

2. Likewise, the US CDC and Federal Govt has powers to lock down due to deadly contagious disease out-break (eg. Ebola virus). The legal framework that applies to CORVID-19 is the same.
(a) If this pandemic had the same death rate (about 7.2% to 15%) as SARS, I can tell you that almost everyone working in the US Healthcare system will favour a lockdown.​
(b) I have a family member who volunteered to work in a SARS ward, during the difficult time when nothing was known about the disease in Singapore. Later, she was thanked by the President at the Istana for her work.​
(c) In Singapore, there were 238 cases and 33 deaths from the SARS outbreak. In other words, more people in Singapore died from SARS than CORVID-19. The government learnt from SARS and applied lessons learnt to this pandemic.​

3. The most important thing in managing a pandemic is clear, coherent, consistent messaging of science based measures from the top. None of that has been present in the US response. Given the poor leadership demonstrated by Trump, over the past year, I am surprised that so few health care workers have abandoned their posts, in the periods when PPE was out of stock, in some US hospitals.
A healthy dose of paranoia is never a bad idea when it comes to your personal freedoms being tampered with. And it calls for deeper scrutiny. What you and others posit as the reason for the spread in US is not very obvious to me. The dynamics of infection spreading in population is very complex, even more so than the notoriously difficult to master weather forecast. It is a multivariable problem and anyone claiming that this or that variable is the reason for this or that should be viewed with a grain of salt. I just came back from Florida and Illinois. Two drastically different approaches. One is similar to California's - obey or be punished, the other is the opposite - no one wears any masks anywhere in public (maybe 10%). Guess what, their Covid rates are similar (per population). Now go ahead and explain that.

Am I saying masks are a bad idea? No, but when governments institute sweeping rules that make no sense in many cases ( as I described earlier) it leaves me wondering if it should be left to the public's sense of self preservation backed up by a solid educational effort instead.
4. What I see from your posts is a refusal to learn from demonstrated competence. While I cannot expect the same level of governmental competence from the USA when compared to Australia, NZ, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, or Singapore — I do not expect to have to repeatedly explain, why some arguments, like those you make, are stupid.

5. In a pandemic, laws and rules are imposed to keep the heath care system working at a level it can cope (to avoid a system wide failure, from a tidal wave of hospitalised infected that overwhelms the state’s hospital system)— if you fail to plan, YOU PLAN TO FAIL. Hospitalizations are also up in 35 states (including DC) from 2 weeks ago. In July / August 2020 about 820,000 new tests were being administered in the US per day, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

US Coronavirus Cases on 4 Dec 2020​
14,535,196​

US Coronavirus Deaths:​
282,829​

6. Given that the USA surpasses 200,000 daily infections, by Feb 2021, you will see healthcare systems totally failing in the more poorly managed states. See: Coronavirus Pandemic Bares U.S. Healthcare Flaws. There is also a healthcare disparity crisis in the USA. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed how broken the American system is. This is the reality Biden will inherit on 20 Jan 2021 — and he will be doing something drastic soon.

They do nothing in many situations where they are still mandated.
Except develop the habit of wearing a mask. Very much of my training as a soldier relied on developing habits which would keep me alive by practicing them whether they were perceived as needed on not

oldsig
7. The perfect reply to PhysicsMan’s pointless naval gazing (with regard to using the force of law to enforce sensible precautions like mask wearing to reduce the required social distancing space). Study after study, like the one linked below, will show you how badly America is doing. Why are you ignoring the science of pandemic management in favour of more political bullshit?
(a) A study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, highlighted how poorly the US has managed the Covid-19 pandemic — from its woeful death toll to still-high death rates — compared to other wealthy countries.​
(b) On 19 Sep 2020, the US reported a total of 198,589 COVID-19 deaths (60.3/100,000), higher than countries with low and moderate COVID-19 mortality but comparable with high-mortality countries. For instance, Australia (low mortality) had 3.3 deaths per 100,000 and Canada (moderate mortality) had 24.6 per 100,000. And Singapore’s mortality rate is even lower than that of Australia.​
(c) More importantly, is America doing enough to protect its healthcare workers as a country? American healthcare workers cannot operate in a crisis mode for an infinite amount of time. Is wearing a mask, as an individual, as prevention, too much to ask of you?​

8. There is nothing difficult about following the recommendations of the US CDC — don’t be an idiot, wear a mask, wash your hands and keep a distance. It’s not perfect but it can reduce risk. If you claim that masks alone don’t work in certain scenarios and you want to feel better, feel free to wear eye protection, gloves and a N95 mask.
 
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OPSSG

Super Moderator
Staff member
Post 2 of 2:

9. As others like @cdxbow have noted, how did the most powerful country in the world, years of preparation (including the ignored playbook) and the largest medical science establishment do so badly?

10. Nothing epitomises this more than Americans stupid enough to politicise masks during a once in a century pandemic.

11. If you wrote it as fiction, 5 years ago, people would not believe it.
What exactly is it that's doing the suppressing?

...But like I said, a civilized society must look at how to approach the problem and minimize the attack on personal freedoms. And that means you go beyond a computer program and examine what it is that actually works.

Which government actually bothered to study how infectious the virus is in open air? And if there are studies (which will show what I wrote before), do you think they are being followed by any government? They are not, because no government cares if it's being heavyhanded or not.

...except the definition of "heavyhanded" is different in China, Korea, Australia, and US, that's all.
12. But unlike some parts of the US (where less than 10% wear masks), mask wearing is mandated by laws and ultimately enforced by fines or jail time in Singapore. But this process starts with a request from others to put on a mask. If a person refuses, he or she is often charged with being a public nuisance and other counts of violating CORVID-19 rules. Very often before sentencing, they are given some level of mental health support.
(a) Public education is of course important; but it needs to be augmented by enforceable laws. Building the right culture of compliance (of above 95%) through education, is only one leg of the stool to success in pandemic management.​
(b) Extensive testing, like Korea or Singapore, is the 2nd leg of the stool — which I will explain more in paragraphs 15 to 18 below.​
(c) But the third leg of the stool is the level of compliance with scientific recommendations, to mitigate risk. To get high levels of compliance (above 95%, within 2 to 3 months), you need both laws/rules and public education. Proposing to only rely on public education can only work, if your goal is 95% or greater compliance in 2 to 3 years. That is too slow to stop the coming American Pandemic wave hitting your hospitals in 1Q2021.​
(d) In Singapore, following the recommendations of experts and using epidemiology, the country sought to seek initial results after 11 days, from 7 Apr 2020. As Prime Minister Lee said: “We are working to break the chain of transmission... to reduce the number of new cases,” sharing an article on experts’ stock-take of the measures on Day 11, when it was hoped that positive effects would show. By day 12 — the enhanced measures adopted in Singapore which entailed the closures of non-essential workplaces and schools — saw the first results of success. This was only possible with high compliance levels.​
(e) Lack of compliance in a high risk scenario should be punished. For example, on 13 May 2020, an American commercial pilot who breached a stay order (SHN) in early April was sentenced to four weeks' jail. Brian Dugan Yeargan, 44, who pleaded guilty to an offence under the Infectious Diseases Regulations 2020, arrived in Singapore from Australia on 3 April 2020. He was deported after his sentence.​
Do you have any data to support this? The success of lockdowns/suppression in countries like Singapore, China, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea is not consistent with your view. Simply hand waving the issue away as a multivariate problem ignores the fact that a suppression based strategy involving the temporary sacrifice of personal freedoms has been demonstrably effective in a variety of countries and contexts.

Rather, it strikes me that the failure to implement suppression early, widely and decisively enough is what has gotten other nations (like the US) into trouble. The genie is out of the bottle, hence the difficulty now being faced.
13. @Boagrius also makes an effective argument that PhysicsMan is being difficult — in his posts. In a diverse range of countries that includes Singapore, wearing of masks is mandated. For Singapore, it is mandated in any public transport, in every mall, in every shop and in every hair dresser. The country has come out of our circuit breaker with the pandemic under control and a over strength contact tracing department.

14. With a single digit infection rate, in Singapore, there is little or no contact tracing work to be done (that we have let the extra army manpower mobilised take a step back from this role) and it is fully civilian led. With 1 in 5 residents of Singapore tested, we look at US testing efforts as a shambolic failure to plan of epic proportions.

15. To give you an idea of how science helps, Singapore has coated most lift buttons with a compound that does not allow any virus to linger. Everyone has been given free masks by the government. Before pre-school child care was reopened, the country tested every child care provider before they reopened — to close off a risk, as it was a source of spread. I say again — ALL CHILD CARE staff in the country — was tested. The country took numerous extreme but calculated measures to break the chain of spread. It requires a level of competence that the American state governments cannot hope to achieve.

16. That’s how we moved from over 1,400 new cases a day, at the peak in April to about 1/3 of the numbers in May. The fall to about 500 per day in May was the 1st sign of success and it is almost nothing in December. Mask wearing and increasing testing capacity, is just a small part of the complete picture, for mitigation of spread (reducing the R0).

17. Testing effectiveness is not just about the absolute number of tests but how it routinely is being done for targeted groups, like essential workers, like bus drivers, train drivers, police, fire men, air traffic controllers, harbour pilots, immigration staff, prisons officers, health care workers and so on, in Singapore. So the story is not just about masks in a population of 6.5 million, it’s about onion layers of protection. If one fails, what is the next risk mitigation measure.

Total number of deaths in Singapore as at 3 Dec 2020​
29 out of 58,230 infected
Number of Swabs Tested (as of 30 Nov 2020)​
4,658,858
Average Daily Number Of Swabs Tested Over The Past Week in Singapore​
~30,100
Total Unique Persons Swabbed per million vs Total Population in Singapore​
~213,700
18. From Sep onwards, 95% to 99% of Singapore’s new CORVID-19 cases come from returning Singaporeans from abroad. Upon entry they are tested and serve a SHN in a hotel before being granted their freedom. Singapore manages this risk from our returnees through masks and hand washing, as they come through immigration and are sent to their assigned hotel for 14 days.

19. Things are not like 2019 but it is close to normal in Singapore. Last nite, I went out to drink wine in a restaurant that practiced social distancing between groups of clients and no more than 5 to a group in Singapore. Everyone wore a mask, scanned a QR code to aid contact tracing, and had their temperature taken, to enter the premises. You are not allowed to remove your masks until food is served.

20. And then we discover 1 community case and the contact tracers are working at full speed — to notify and serve SHN to everyone in close contact and affected — in 72 hours, every close contact who shows symptoms are tested. To enter any shop or mall, you scan a QR code to aid contact tracing. As everyone is wearing masks, except at meals or outdoor exercise, the risk of exposure to Singaporeans even in malls and lifts is being managed.
 
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ngatimozart

Super Moderator
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
@PhysicsMan Just to reinforce @OPSSG and others post, we here in New Zealand have gone for eradication in the general population and we have have achieved that. The only cases that we have are imported cases and all of those are in our Managed Isolation Quarantine Facilities. You cannot enter New Zealand unless you have proof of a booking to those facilities before you board your aircraft to fly here. No proof, no flight and I believe Australia has the same rules.


See here in Australia and NZ we actually care about the health and well-being of others besides those outside our families. So in situations like this we knuckle down and do whatever it takes to get the job done because we look out for our mates even if we don't know their names. We might whinge a bit now and again about it, but we get on and do it because it's what we do. We look after our mates and they look after us. We understand individuals freedoms and the rights, but we also know responsibilities that are associated with those rights. Many of our people have died protecting those rights and lie in foreign fields never to return to their home.

So don't you dare come in here preaching your ignorant bullshit about socalled freedoms and what not. You don't have a clue what other people have gone through. For your information Kiwis and Aussies have more freedoms than the much vaunted freedoms of the USA. We also live in more democratic nations, so your claims about freedoms and democracy don't ring quite so true. Pull your head in sunshine and wake up. The world is far greater than the Disuntited States of America and it's time that you and some of your compatriots learned that.
 
First of all, I do not lower myself to emotional ramblings and insults (both personal and nationality based), and I suggest the participants in the conversation do the same. Let's keep the discussion civilized.

Based on these responses, there is confusion about what I was arguing for and against. For one thing, it was repeatedly insinuated that the motives behind my logic are politics driven. I can see how that may be easy to assume given how heavily it is indeed politicised in US (and beyond). There is zero of that in my arguments. I despise politics, I do not have any political affiliations or leanings, and I've never voted in my life.

I realize that there is a tendency (given the nature of the forum) of people on here to lean towards conformism, leading to some differences in mindset with mine. I am, first and foremost, a scientist, and as such I question norms, rules, and laws - especially when my competency allows me to do so intelligently. With that in mind, I want to remind that I never questioned the overall concept of government-led management of the crisis, to which such a large volume of writing was devoted in the responses. I do not have either the knowledge, or the expertise to claim how effective or ineffective overall strategies in any particular place are, the complexity of pandemics is beyond my competence - and for this reason I had to raise my eyebrows reading how confident people get in their conviction that they understand this complexity enough to pass such strong verdicts on here. It may be tempting to draw some strong conclusions based on available data but I caution against that. If you leave aside for a moment the topic of the clearly so intensely despised current US administration, answers to why there are the observed variations in levels of the pandemic througout the world should not be as simple as "this or that government is doing it better". Whether you like it or not, the problem is indeed very complex and not well understood at all. There are so many variables at play. Comparing the situation in a tiny equatorial island to that in a third of a billion population country should be done with a LOT of caution - as an example.

What I do have a problem with is what's repeatedly referred to on here as "sensible precautions" that are used to fight the pandemic. I don't know how different life is in Singapore but it is very much different for me in California. The freedom of movement is restricted - vast varieties of outdoor life are restricted or forbidden, curfews on being outside your home at certain times are instituted, mask wearing mania makes people aggressive towards those that do not follow it. There is talk of following science on here. Well, here is a person of this exact science, telling you that everything just mentioned is complete bullshit. Contraction of virus outdoors in vast majority of outdoors situations cannot happen in statistically relevant numbers (everyone is welcome to provide studies saying otherwise). In central Tokyo? Maybe. But not here. And I don't think people in power make that distinction much when they act "in accord with science".

Everyone is welcome to obediently accept all actions of their governments as "for their own good". I do not. And, yes, it is one of the fundamental things I've learned to do as a citizen of this country, and I am grateful to it for that.
 

ngatimozart

Super Moderator
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
@PhysicsMan You claim to answer as a scientist but if you follow the scientific method your analysis should include that there are other probabilities besides your own narrow hypothesis. You are basing your argument solely on one narrow field, when in fact COVID-19 infection crosses many disciplines, from epidemiology through to geography, through to fluid dynamics. It cannot be looked at in isolation with in one discipline, because if anything that this little bugger has taught us, is that it's very cunning.

Therefore I would suggest that your methodology is flawed because it excludes the meso and macro scale analysis that is required to fully explore your reasoning and whether or not you actually have reached a valid conclusion. If you undertake such an analysis I think that you may find that the possibility exists that your original reasoning was incorrect.

Your complaint that poster's here have resorted to emotional ramblings and are being political about it is somewhat unfounded. We have not bought politics into it, and your dismissal of Singapore will not go down to well with Singaporean Moderator as it hasn't with this Kiwi Moderator.

We have seen posters come and go with similar rhetoric to you. On here we see that as political because of the rhetoric that has been used in the US for the last decade or so. We are an international forum not a US centric one and at the moment only have one active US Moderator, although the Webmaster is US as well. So far you have managed to annoy two of the three grumpiest Moderators on here, so I would step very carefully if I were you.
 
There is no dismissal in what I said. I stated the fact of the island being tiny (and equatorial) - and not with any negative connotations whatsoever but for a reason - to highlight that potentially important factors in a virus spread include ease of managing population, enforcability of rules, cultural coherence, population density - all of which depend on size to varying degrees; and temperature and humidity of the air (aerosol droplet lifetime is highly dependent on those, plus virus survivability also depends on temperature).
And in regards to my analysis (more like a statement based on understanding of aerosols). Yes, COVID19 crosses many disciplines and cannot be looked from only one of those, absolutely. But what I was addressing was very specific - ability to spread it in open outdoor environments by proximity, and this particular threat (one of many to consider) does concern first and foremost my knowledge. The virus is spread through the air only in droplet form (some other viruses can be spread without water), so I can rely on the knowledge of behavior/propagation of droplets as necessary for any air transmission to exist. So unless there is any doubt about the virus spreading through water droplets only (which I am not aware of) my reliance on this knowledge is sufficient to draw conclusions.
 

Boagrius

Well-Known Member
There is no dismissal in what I said. I stated the fact of the island being tiny (and equatorial) - and not with any negative connotations whatsoever but for a reason - to highlight that potentially important factors in a virus spread include ease of managing population, enforcability of rules, cultural coherence, population density - all of which depend on size to varying degrees; and temperature and humidity of the air (aerosol droplet lifetime is highly dependent on those, plus virus survivability also depends on temperature).
And in regards to my analysis (more like a statement based on understanding of aerosols). Yes, COVID19 crosses many disciplines and cannot be looked from only one of those, absolutely. But what I was addressing was very specific - ability to spread it in open outdoor environments by proximity, and this particular threat (one of many to consider) does concern first and foremost my knowledge. The virus is spread through the air only in droplet form (some other viruses can be spread without water), so I can rely on the knowledge of behavior/propagation of droplets as necessary for any air transmission to exist. So unless there is any doubt about the virus spreading through water droplets only (which I am not aware of) my reliance on this knowledge is sufficient to draw conclusions.
If you had cited any relevant scientific literature to support your position whatsoever I would be more sympathetic, but you haven't. Your attempt to vaguely condense the problem down to an issue of aerosol behaviour ignores the role of things like fomites, the capacity for masks to withhold and limit viral shedding from the wearer(s) and the broader issues associated with eliciting disease controlling behaviour from an often uncooperative population.

If your position is "scientific" (as you claim) then by all means start citing some science. In the mean time the US has lost a quarter of a million people (and counting) to this disease, while there are a multitude of other countries that have barely been touched by it even in relative terms. You would have to be an idiot (or just willfully ignorant) not to look to their responses for insight.
 

OPSSG

Super Moderator
Staff member
Post 1 of 3: Poor leadership provided by people like Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts’ via his state’s pandemic policies will get more people killed
...Your attempt to vaguely condense the problem down to an issue of aerosol behaviour ignores the role of things like fomites, the capacity for masks to withhold and limit viral shedding from the wearer(s) and the broader issues associated with eliciting disease controlling behaviour from an often uncooperative population.

If your position is "scientific" (as you claim) then by all means start citing some science...

You would have to be an idiot (or just willfully ignorant) not to look to their responses for insight.
1. Agreed. I can’t wait for 20 Jan 2021, when the adults are in charge once again; and see a mask mandate hopefully implemented at federal level. If @PhysicsMan:
(a) ignores the recommendation of an infectious disease physician, Dr. Jasmine Marcelin, MD, FACP, as a subject matter expert (see para 7 below);​
(b) ignores all medial evidence by peddling a point of view that adopts a political position, contrary to medical advice); and​
(c) favours what Pato called doxa over episteme (which is a poisoned legacy of Trump’s administration for America), then he should be challenged. Episteme is a philosophical term that refers to a principled system of understanding; or scientific knowledge. As a forum, we must value true knowledge over unsourced opinion, and reality over fantasy.​

2. It’s now required that everyone in California must wear a mask or face covering when outside of their home. In a pandemic, what @PhysicsMan chooses to do or don't do affects everyone, in his home state health system, in California. If he refuses to mask-up, at a personal responsibility level, he will eventually get infected; and thus add to the spread of CROVID-19. This is a concern as his state's ICU capacity is starting to run short.

3. On 3 Dec 2020, Los Angeles County reached a tragic record of cases with an astonishing 7,854 new cases reported on that 1 day.
(a) Following the above grim statistic, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new regional stay-at-home order for the state to counter rising coronavirus cases, Los Angeles County health officials said that the looming shutdown could hit the battered region within days.​
(b) “The anticipation is that threshold might be reached sometime early next week,” Dr. Christina Ghaly declared today of the order that kicks in once ICU capacity falls below 15% in specific regions of the Golden State. “It would be the Southern California region that would reach that threshold, not Los Angeles County alone,” added the area’s Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis in a clarification after Health Services Director Ghaly spoke.​
(c) Given the above trends, Southern California will go into lockdown before Biden is inaugurated as President on 20 Jan 2021.​

4. While there are idiotic politicians who refuse to implement a mask mandate, there are others who are sensible, like Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina or Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina, who is sensible but lacks the courage to reimpose earlier measures that expired.
(a) Gov. Roy Cooper released a statement on Twitter over the weekend that said in part the state was examining what additional measures could be taken to slow the spread of the virus. Cooper also emphasized the need for North Carolinians to wear masks and follow the safety measures already in place, most notably the three W's: wear, wait, and wash. On Nov. 10, the indoor-gathering limit was reduced to 10 people.​
(b) North Carolina's new record brings the two-week average daily cases up above 4,000. That means the state is averaging roughly twice the new infections each day that it was during its previous peak viral spread back in July. With 95% of hospitals reporting, the state has hit another record of COVID-19 hospitalizations with 2,191. In total, 5,543 North Carolinians have died from the virus.​
(c) South Carolina's new record brings the two-week average daily cases up above 2,000.​

5. On Nov 2020, Nebraska marked its 9th straight week of record new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. The weekly tally works out to an average of more than 1,500 new cases a day in Nebraska.

6. Not only has the Nebraska Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts, repeatedly resisted calls for mandatory mask-wearing in his state (a position that puts him at odds with the recommendations of CDC and the WHO), in June, he informed local government officials that they will not qualify for federal coronavirus funds unless they do not mandate the wearing of masks while they're inside government facilities.

7. The podcast below with a Nebraska infectious disease physician, Dr. Jasmine Marcelin, MD, FACP, makes the argument to take preventable measures, including following the CDC recommendation to mask up and avoiding large gatherings (as a measure that an individual can adopt) and asks her state leadership to have the courage to do the right thing in a pandemic (aka provide leadership). With the numbers of hospitalisations doubling every 14 to 21 days, no state health system can cope with such increases.

8. Forced to step-in due to the lack of leadership at state level and ignoring Ricketts' stupidity, a slew of Nebraska towns and cities have passed mask mandates this includes the cities of Lincoln, Omaha, Norfolk, Beatrice, Kearney, Wahoo, Grand Island, York, La Vista, Gretna, Columbus, Ralston and Hastings. Nebraska has allocated US$100m for reimbursements to local governments for direct expenses incurred in response to the CORVID-19 pandemic.
 
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