CDC mask announcement (a new thread)

[AbcdeDooDah]

5 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Right. There are many reasons for spread. All of them involve exchanging germs. 

Masks don't cause spread. Masks are a mitigation tool for spread. 

Unreliable testing and day-dependent testing are science.

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Unreliable testing and day-dependent testing are science.

I'm not sure what this is referring to. Mind clarifying? 

[AbcdeDooDah]

1 minute ago, Not_a_Number said:

I'm not sure what this is referring to. Mind clarifying? 

30% false negatives. That’s a lot of people who thought they were safe and not contagious. Testing too early or too late. That’s a lot of people who thought they were safe and not contagious. Mixed with dire financial circumstances, they went to work.

Edited May 17, 2021 by AbcdeDooDah

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, AbcdeDooDah said:

30% false negatives. That’s a lot of people who thought they were safe and not contagious. Testing too early or too soon. That’s a lot of people who thought they were safe and not contagious. Mixed with dire financial circumstances, they went to work.

I'm not disagreeing with you about that, I don't think? Obviously, people are the immediate cause of the germs. Masks are just something that cuts risk keeping everything else constant. There are lots of other things that cut risk, too. 

[Spy Car]

18 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Nothing. I don't care who does or does not get the shot. 

Or who does or does not wear a mask.

Science says there are many reasons for spread that have nothing to do with masks.

 

I believe that you don't care. 

Bill

 

[AbcdeDooDah]

20 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I'm not disagreeing with you about that, I don't think? Obviously, people are the immediate cause of the germs. Masks are just something that cuts risk keeping everything else constant. There are lots of other things that cut risk, too. 

Of course they help. But those that say "follow science" want to blame everything on lack of masks, when science has given us unreliable testing.

[wathe]

re efficacy of surgical/medical masks:

We are going to see some decent data out of Canada on this, I think.  Here the PPE standard for HCW providing covid care is a medical mask, not an n95 (n95's strictly reserved for aerosol generating medical procedures).  My hospital uses pleated ear-loop medical masks - essentially equivalent to what you can buy at Costco.  Anecdotally, they seems to work.  Our HCW covid rates are lower than community rates, and have been for the entire duration of the pandemic.  There is at least one head-to-head medical mask vs n95 trail ongoing.

Of course, the question of whether medical or surgical masks are effective in protecting against covid in HCW isn't the same as whether or not mask mandates are effective for the general public, but at least will answer the basic question of whether medical masks actually work or not (I think they do, and much better than the 50% I saw quoted up-thread).  HCW PPE practices are more than just masking, of course.  But if pleated ear-loop masks don't work, then Canada should have had an awful lot more sick HCW.

[KSera]

4 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Of course they help. But those that say "follow science" want to blame everything on lack of masks, when science has given us unreliable testing.

I haven’t seen anyone anywhere blame everything on lack of masks. Who have you heard blame everything on lack of masks?

[AbcdeDooDah]

21 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

I believe that you don't care. 

Bill

 

Nah. Science says there are bigger threats than whether Karen pretends to be vaccinated at the Piggly-Wiggly.

[pinball]

1 hour ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

I’m glad that over 5 million(and probably growing as more people experience bad side effects)people who don’t get the second shot is not a problem, then.

I had read some stuff that said with the rates being so high after just one vaccine that the US would have been better off giving as many people as possible their first dose ASAP instead of holding back the second doses of vaccines for the people had already received one. 

[Spy Car]

1 minute ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Nah. Science says there are bigger threats than whether Karen pretends to be vaccinated at the Piggly-Wiggly.

That actually isn't what science says.

Bill

 

[HeartString]

3 minutes ago, pinball said:

I had read some stuff that said with the rates being so high after just one vaccine that the US would have been better off giving as many people as possible their first dose ASAP instead of holding back the second doses of vaccines for the people had already received one. 

That might be true if we were looking at a tight supply.  But we aren’t.  We have enough supply.  We just need more people to get even the first shot.  Having more shots in cold storage wouldn’t help anything right now.

 
 

[Not_a_Number]

18 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Of course they help. But those that say "follow science" want to blame everything on lack of masks, when science has given us unreliable testing.

... it's more reliable than not having a test. 

Science is a kind of reasoning. It's not a cult and it's not the shortcut to infallible answers. It's the willingness to follow the evidence. 

I've seen people say something like "follow the science" to mean "do what I want you to do." But I don't think that's most people on this thread. 

[Not_a_Number]

14 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Nah. Science says there are bigger threats than whether Karen pretends to be vaccinated at the Piggly-Wiggly.

Why are we evaluating things as separate threats when it's always a confluence of a number of things that gets any one person infected? 

[pinball]

11 minutes ago, HeartString said:

That might be true if we were looking at a tight supply.  But we aren’t.  We have enough supply.  We just need more people to get even the first shot.  Having more shots in cold storage wouldn’t help anything right now.

 
 

 

16 minutes ago, pinball said:

I had read some stuff that said with the rates being so high after just one vaccine that the US would have been better off giving as many people as possible their first dose ASAP instead of holding back the second doses of vaccines for the people had already received one. 

Maybe you missed it, but I used “would have been better off” indicating an event in the past...

this was when the vaccines first started being administered, like months and months ago, when we needed to vaccine the most vulnerable (elderly in nursing homes, for example) as quickly as possible.

there were places that could have used supply much faster than they could get it.

[AbcdeDooDah]

4 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

... it's more reliable than not having a test. 

Science is a kind of reasoning. It's not a cult and it's not the shortcut to infallible answers. It's the willingness to follow the evidence. 

I've seen people say something like "follow the science" to mean "do what I want you to do." But I don't think that's most people on this thread. 

I personally know many people who did not test because they couldn't miss work.

3 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Why are we evaluating things as separate threats when it's always a confluence of a number of things that gets any one person infected? 

🤣 I know you've read the antimask threads. Where is the outrage over high false negatives or countries who have no vax?

[AbcdeDooDah]

8 minutes ago, Plum said:

It seems to me the CDC is putting personal responsibility back on the individual, which I don't see as a bad thing. We should all take responsibility for informing ourselves and making our own decisions even when that means people might lie.

 

I make my decisions based on what risks I'm willing to take and which ones I am not willing to take. I don't expect the world around me to conform to my needs and I would appreciate everyone else not demanding the same from me. 

I think this is what some have been saying right from the start. 

[Spy Car]

2 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

I think this is what some have been saying right from the start. 

That's true.

Unfortunately it is the sort of dangerous nonsense that caused the pandemic to explode in the first place.

Bill

[Kanin]

22 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

🤣 I know you've read the antimask threads. Where is the outrage over high false negatives or countries who have no vax?

A person can be concerned with more than one thing at the same time. I'm concerned about the things you stated above, as well as masks, as well as other things. Simultaneously. This thread happened to be about just one thing of concern. 

[AbcdeDooDah]

1 minute ago, Kanin said:

A person can be concerned with more than one thing at the same time. I'm concerned about the things you stated above, as well as masks, as well as other things. Simultaneously. This thread happened to be about just one thing of concern. 

Science says it's safe for vaccinated people to remove their masks. People don't want to because of fakers. The CDC really neglected to take those people into account?

[Spy Car]

10 minutes ago, Plum said:

What caused the pandemic to explode in the first place was a lack of knowledge about the virus. We may not know everything about it, but we've figured out enough to allow people to decide for themselves. 

No. What spread the virus was people engaging in reckless super-spreading while downplaying the dangers of this illness.

It didn't have to go this way.

Bill

[Kanin]

1 hour ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Unreliable testing and day-dependent testing are science.

Yes. And those cause spread, too. A person with a false negative goes to work, and a person who tested negative today but would test positive tomorrow, goes to work. Spread. 

Nobody here is saying that the tools available to us are perfect. They are tools in the toolbox. The more you use at once, the more protection there is. 

Of course one can debate if it's worth using every single tool (like now we know masks aren't needed outdoors most of the time), but nobody's saying that there is just one perfect tool and the rest are garbage. 

[Not_a_Number]

29 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

🤣 I know you've read the antimask threads. Where is the outrage over high false negatives or countries who have no vax?

What's the point of being outraged over high false negatives? We'd all like better tests, but it's not like it's anyone's FAULT we don't have them. I'm sure they are working on it. 

As for countries who have no vax... what do you mean about outrage about that? Do you mean why people aren't upset about us having vaccines and them not having vaccines? That'd be reasonable. I do know some people who feel that way. 

[Kanin]

2 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Science says it's safe for vaccinated people to remove their masks. People don't want to because of fakers. The CDC really neglected to take those people into account?

I don't think so. I think the CDC is trying to incentivize people to get vaccinated by demonstrating how it's better to have protection of a vaccine than no protection (or less effective protection of masks/distancing). 

[Spy Car]

16 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Science says it's safe for vaccinated people to remove their masks. People don't want to because of fakers. The CDC really neglected to take those people into account?

For sure. The CDC did not adequately factor in the depravity in certain quarters. 

100%.

Giving cover to anti-vaxers/anti-maskers at this juncture--with children still unprotected--was a massive mistake.

Bill

 

 

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by Spy Car

[Not_a_Number]

4 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Science says it's safe for vaccinated people to remove their masks. People don't want to because of fakers. The CDC really neglected to take those people into account?

I'm really not sure what you're saying here. I don't think the CDC's decision is consistent with realities on the ground is the problem. I don't think science or lack thereof comes into it, unless you're talking about something very specific. 

[Not_a_Number]

36 minutes ago, Plum said:

It seems to me the CDC is putting personal responsibility back on the individual, which I don't see as a bad thing. We should all take responsibility for informing ourselves and making our own decisions even when that means people might lie.

Except that unvaccinated people's masks protect MY kids more than their OWN masks. 

Don't you worry. They are keeping their masks on. But the whole point is that the evidence suggests that sick people wearing masks matters more. 

If the only people who were going to unmask were vaccinated, I'd be fine. I just doubt that's how it's going to play out. 

[AbcdeDooDah]

8 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I'm really not sure what you're saying here. I don't think the CDC's decision is consistent with realities on the ground is the problem. I don't think science or lack thereof comes into it, unless you're talking about something very specific. 

Walensky literally said  science was behind the decision and she wished she'd had the science a few days earlier.

 

[wathe]

I see the same shift wrt more emphasis on personal responsibility.

Unfortunately, as we've seen over and over in the past year, a personal responsibility model doesn't work for pandemics, and most especially for this pandemic.

Personal responsibility works when the person who makes the choice, be it wise or foolish, is the one who benefits or suffers the consequences.  In this pandemic, that's not true.  Individuals can make poor choices, and other people suffer the consequences.  A presymptomatic or minimally symptomatice person can make an irresponsible choice, and some other vulnerable person become critically ill or die as a result.  On a broader level, a whole bunch of people make poor individual choices, the healthcare system gets overwhelmed, and the entire society pays the consequences.

Pandemics need collective action, not personal responsibility.

Super hard in the US, where the whole culture and economic system seem to based on individual/personal responsibility model.

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Walensky literally said  science was behind the decision and she wished she'd had the science a few days earlier.

And what do those words mean? Science can't be "behind" anything. You can use scientific reasoning to arrive at the decision, but you can't cite "science" as an authority. 

If you're going to use scientific reasoning, it's best to start with a premise and proceed logically. The most science can say is something like "If all the vaccinated people take off their masks, then according to our best calculations, their risk only goes up by so-and-so." 

But you can't cite science to argue against the fact that people will probably unmask whether they are vaccinated or not. And in that case, the above scientific statement is totally irrelevant! 

[Spy Car]

2 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

Walensky literally said  science was behind the decision and she wished she'd had the science a few days earlier.

 

The science of fully vaccinated people going unmasked, which no one is disputing.

But that's not the problem with the CDC's decision, of which you are fully aware.

Unvaccinated people going unmasked is a direct threat to human life and children are still largely unprotected.

Bill

 

 

[wathe]

I think personal responsibility is especially impossible when there aren't social structures in place to make it easy (or even possible) to make the right decisions, like staying home when sick or staying home when one ought to be in quarantine.  Things like paid sick leave etc.

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by wathe

[Spy Car]

4 minutes ago, wathe said:

I see the same shift wrt more emphasis on personal responsibility.

Unfortunately, as we've seen over and over in the past year, a personal responsibility model doesn't work for pandemics, and most especially for this pandemic.

Personal responsibility works when the person who makes the choice, be it wise or foolish, is the one who benefits or suffers the consequences.  In this pandemic, that's not true.  Individuals can make poor choices, and other people suffer the consequences.  A presymptomatic or minimally symptomatice person can make an irresponsible choice, and some other vulnerable person become critically ill or die as a result.  On a broader level, a whole bunch of people make poor individual choices, the healthcare system gets overwhelmed, and the entire society pays the consequences.

Pandemics need collective action, not personal responsibility.

Super hard in the US, where the whole culture and economic system seem to based on individual/personal responsibility model.

We've seen how "responsible" those who are calling for "personal responsibility" have been.

It curls the hair.

Bill

 

 

[AbcdeDooDah]

8 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

The science of fully vaccinated people going unmasked, which no one is disputing.

But that's not the problem with the CDC's decision, of which you are fully aware.

Unvaccinated people going unmasked is a direct threat to human life and children are still largely unprotected.

Bill

 

 

If they are actually infected. Science says asymptomatic spread has never been a big factor. If they've already had it, we have just as much data, if not a little more, that they, too have immunity.

[Not_a_Number]

3 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

If they are actually infected. Science says asymptomatic spread has never been a big factor. If they've already had it, we have just as much data, if not a little more, that they, too have immunity.

Pre-symptomatic spread is a big factor. Plus, I don't see people who are willing to unmask while unvaccinated being real careful about having a "cold." 

[kokotg]

3 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

If they are actually infected. Science says asymptomatic spread has never been a big factor. If they've already had it, we have just as much data, if not a little more, that they, too have immunity.

What are you basing that on? Here's a summary of a recent study that says the opposite: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/most-covid-19-cases-are-spread-by-people-without-symptoms

[Spy Car]

5 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

If they are actually infected. Science says asymptomatic spread has never been a big factor. If they've already had it, we have just as much data, if not a little more, that they, too have immunity.

Completely false.

 59% of all transmission came from asymptomatic transmission: 35% from presymptomatic individuals and 24% from individuals who are never symptomatic 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774707

 

[kokotg]

2 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Pre-symptomatic spread is a big factor. Plus, I don't see people who are willing to unmask while unvaccinated being real careful about having a "cold." 

My brother walked around (and went to work) for weeks with "just a cold" until he lost his sense of taste and smell and finally got tested for covid.

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, kokotg said:

What are you basing that on? Here's a summary of a recent study that says the opposite: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/most-covid-19-cases-are-spread-by-people-without-symptoms

It's the eternal confusion between presymptomatic (currently without symptoms but will get some) and asymptomatic (will never get any.) 

We had lots of coverage of the fact that Asymptomatic spread isn't a big deal. But that doesn't contradict the study you just linked, because those people are usually PREsymptomatic. 

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, Spy Car said:

Completely false.

 59% of all transmission came from asymptomatic transmission: 35% from presymptomatic individuals and 24% from individuals who are never symptomatic 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774707

 

Interesting. I've never seen a number that large for asymptomatic spread... this one's a model, right?

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, kokotg said:

My brother walked around (and went to work) for weeks with "just a cold" until he lost his sense of taste and smell and finally got tested for covid.

Right. And that is precisely what I imagine anti-maskers doing. They've been doing it already, right? 😕 And now they won't even be grudgingly masking in large indoor gatherings. 

[kokotg]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

It's the eternal confusion between presymptomatic (currently without symptoms but will get some) and asymptomatic (will never get any.) 

We had lots of coverage of the fact that Asymptomatic spread isn't a big deal. But that doesn't contradict the study you just linked, because those people are usually PREsymptomatic. 

It did find 24% of spread was by people who never developed symptoms, though, which is pretty significant if it's correct.

[kokotg]

3 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Interesting. I've never seen a number that large for asymptomatic spread... this one's a model, right?

I think it's the same one I linked--it looked at 8 different Chinese studies (which I assume would mean from very early on in the worldwide pandemic). ETA: and then they developed a model based on those studies.

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by kokotg

[AbcdeDooDah]

3 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

Completely false.

 59% of all transmission came from asymptomatic transmission: 35% from presymptomatic individuals and 24% from individuals who are never symptomatic 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774707

 

You still haven't retracted your statement that 50% of children get long Covid.

[Not_a_Number]

Never mind, lol. The dangers of skimming! 

I am always a bit wary about model-based stuff... 

Edited May 17, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[kokotg]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

It doesn't look the same to me? 

My link is a summary of the full article Bill linked to, I think. 

[Spy Car]

14 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

You still haven't retracted your statement that 50% of children get long Covid.

Wrong. I reported the results of the first Italian study that concluded that half of children sick with Covid had lingering symptoms. I also posted later UK reports that showed either 11% or 14% with lingering symptoms (depending on their age cohort).

That debunked the suggestion that Covid is no worse than the common cold.

I also said that if 1% or 2% (or 0.5%) of children develop a disease that's indistinguishable from ME/CFS that we will face a major public health catastrophe.

Bill

 

[Spy Car]

19 minutes ago, Plum said:

 

Wow. So judgey. I’m calling for personal responsibility. I have been pretty damn responsible through this whole thing. My Dh is on FMLA and STD right now because of long covid combined with a possible vaccine reaction. He was in constant pain for 2 months. He got covid from the hospital...where he works. My current level of responsibility of having a potentially disabled husband while homeschooling high school is off the charts.

please tell me some more how high and mighty you are. 

Your seeming anger with me is misplaced and would be better directed at those who recklessly and wantonly spread this illness.

Bill

 

 

[pinball]

6 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

Your seeming anger with me is misplaced and would be better directed at those who recklessly and wantonly spread this illness.

Bill

 

 

You spelled, “I’m so sorry about your husband, Plum” wrong

[Spy Car]

1 minute ago, pinball said:

You spelled, “I’m so sorry about your husband, Plum” wrong

And I'm sorry for the 586,000 dead Americans and those who have lost loved ones around the world.

And I know where to point the finger of blame at those who recklessly spread this disease without regard for others, you?

Bill