Coronavirus General Discussion

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boglerdude
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by boglerdude » Wed Oct 27, 2021 5:21 am

Content dump.

TLDR losers love communism. Thats my summary, read it all if you want to: https://spandrell.com/2017/11/14/biological-leninism/

Internet killed newspaper sales, now NY/LA Times push whatever agenda their owners want:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/co ... ificantly/

Oh, global house arrest has costs? Delayed health care checkups and mental health?:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ems/comments/q ... _patients/

Chomsky lives long enough to become the villain:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownCritic ... rn_of_the/
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Hal » Wed Oct 27, 2021 5:37 am

boglerdude wrote:
Wed Oct 27, 2021 5:21 am
Internet killed newspaper sales, now NY/LA Times push whatever agenda their owners want:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/co ... ificantly/
+1 Not just in the US
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/worl ... WjcnBszQml
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by vnatale » Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:20 pm

What could be the explanations for what we see? The highest and lowest are roughly each contiguous states. But why is one area the highest while the other area is lowest?

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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by flyingpylon » Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:00 am

vnatale wrote:
Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:20 pm
What could be the explanations for what we see? The highest and lowest are roughly each contiguous states. But why is one area the highest while the other area is lowest?

Capture.JPG
One explanation is that people being indoors facilitates the spread of the virus and generates more cases. The red states on that map are places where it’s getting colder and people are spending more time together indoors. The blue states were worse during the summer when it’s hot and people stay indoors. But now it’s cooling off in those states and people are getting outside and/or the most recent wave of cases is burning out.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by barrett » Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:33 am

flyingpylon wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:00 am
vnatale wrote:
Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:20 pm
What could be the explanations for what we see? The highest and lowest are roughly each contiguous states. But why is one area the highest while the other area is lowest?

Capture.JPG
One explanation is that people being indoors facilitates the spread of the virus and generates more cases. The red states on that map are places where it’s getting colder and people are spending more time together indoors. The blue states were worse during the summer when it’s hot and people stay indoors. But now it’s cooling off in those states and people are getting outside and/or the most recent wave of cases is burning out.
Yeah, it's quite striking how the southern states see a big bump up in the summer when we here in the Northeast see our numbers going down at that point. I mean, we have seen this for both 2020 and 2021. I guess we'll see if it holds true again in 2022.

But I do wonder 1) What the source is for that map data, 2) What the date is when the data were compiled, and, 3) If the numbers are even correct. Just a quick look at the Worldometers site shows cases going down by about 50% in West Virginia while the map shows that state as "red". And in Texas the case numbers are down by over 75% since the early September peak and yet that state is not blue either.

Vinny, where did you pull that map from?
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by vnatale » Fri Oct 29, 2021 8:44 am

flyingpylon wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:00 am

vnatale wrote:
Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:20 pm

What could be the explanations for what we see? The highest and lowest are roughly each contiguous states. But why is one area the highest while the other area is lowest?

Capture.JPG


One explanation is that people being indoors facilitates the spread of the virus and generates more cases. The red states on that map are places where it’s getting colder and people are spending more time together indoors. The blue states were worse during the summer when it’s hot and people stay indoors. But now it’s cooling off in those states and people are getting outside and/or the most recent wave of cases is burning out.


That was what first came to mind but aren't some of those red states fairly far south?
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by vnatale » Fri Oct 29, 2021 8:45 am

barrett wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:33 am

flyingpylon wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:00 am

vnatale wrote:
Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:20 pm

What could be the explanations for what we see? The highest and lowest are roughly each contiguous states. But why is one area the highest while the other area is lowest?

Capture.JPG


One explanation is that people being indoors facilitates the spread of the virus and generates more cases. The red states on that map are places where it’s getting colder and people are spending more time together indoors. The blue states were worse during the summer when it’s hot and people stay indoors. But now it’s cooling off in those states and people are getting outside and/or the most recent wave of cases is burning out.


Yeah, it's quite striking how the southern states see a big bump up in the summer when we here in the Northeast see our numbers going down at that point. I mean, we have seen this for both 2020 and 2021. I guess we'll see if it holds true again in 2022.

But I do wonder 1) What the source is for that map data, 2) What the date is when the data were compiled, and, 3) If the numbers are even correct. Just a quick look at the Worldometers site shows cases going down by about 50% in West Virginia while the map shows that state as "red". And in Texas the case numbers are down by over 75% since the early September peak and yet that state is not blue either.

Vinny, where did you pull that map from?


That map was embedded in that tweet.

Below are the followup tweets he had to that one, citing "Worldometers" as a source.

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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by barrett » Fri Oct 29, 2021 9:25 am

Regarding tweet #1, his figure of 8 deaths per million for CT is wrong. Just pointing this one out because it's something that I follow closely.

CT releases Covid data from Monday through Friday. The Monday numbers include Saturday and Sunday as well. BUT, Covid-related fatalities are only reported once a week on Thursday and include all deaths from the previous seven days. Yesterday it was announced that 30 CT residents had passed away from Covid-related illness in the previous seven days. With a population of 3.56 million, eight deaths per million per WEEK is about right. On a per-day, per-million basis for the last week, the number is just about one per million.

Sigh. It takes two seconds to get something out to the masses on social media.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by jalanlong » Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:54 am

In yet another example of Covid hysteria not close to being over, this morning I took my son to school as usual. He felt fine, everything was fine. About an hour or so later I get a call from school that he has been "coughing." Because of that I have to come pick him up. For him to come back I have to take him for a Covid test on Sunday and then a negative test means he can come back Tues. He didnt cough at all on the way home or since he has been home. Has no temperature. He says he had a dry throat and needed some water but they wouldn't listen.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by I Shrugged » Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:05 pm

jalanlong wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:54 am
In yet another example of Covid hysteria not close to being over, this morning I took my son to school as usual. He felt fine, everything was fine. About an hour or so later I get a call from school that he has been "coughing." Because of that I have to come pick him up. For him to come back I have to take him for a Covid test on Sunday and then a negative test means he can come back Tues. He didnt cough at all on the way home or since he has been home. Has no temperature. He says he had a dry throat and needed some water but they wouldn't listen.
Man, imagine how easy it is to get out of a test in school now. "Miss Jones, I can't taste anything, and my throat feels funny". Bang, home for a few days. But I suppose today's kids are too virtuous to do that.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by jalanlong » Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:12 pm

I Shrugged wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:05 pm
jalanlong wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:54 am
In yet another example of Covid hysteria not close to being over, this morning I took my son to school as usual. He felt fine, everything was fine. About an hour or so later I get a call from school that he has been "coughing." Because of that I have to come pick him up. For him to come back I have to take him for a Covid test on Sunday and then a negative test means he can come back Tues. He didnt cough at all on the way home or since he has been home. Has no temperature. He says he had a dry throat and needed some water but they wouldn't listen.
Man, imagine how easy it is to get out of a test in school now. "Miss Jones, I can't taste anything, and my throat feels funny". Bang, home for a few days. But I suppose today's kids are too virtuous to do that.
What is amazing/ridiculous is that they are not waiving or changing the attendance requirements. So he is only given 18 absences in a year before he has to repeat the grade. Well this is the second time that he has had to miss school days not because of any fault of his own but because the school has a "policy" about Covid and pretty much any symptom means you are sick until proven healthy.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by barrett » Fri Oct 29, 2021 2:25 pm

jalanlong wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:54 am
In yet another example of Covid hysteria not close to being over, this morning I took my son to school as usual. He felt fine, everything was fine. About an hour or so later I get a call from school that he has been "coughing." Because of that I have to come pick him up. For him to come back I have to take him for a Covid test on Sunday and then a negative test means he can come back Tues. He didnt cough at all on the way home or since he has been home. Has no temperature. He says he had a dry throat and needed some water but they wouldn't listen.
That's just terrible. What does the school do in a situation where, say, both parents work full time at jobs that don't allow them to just stop everything and drive to the school to pick their kid up? Does your kid have to sit in the nurse's office all day and then not get to ride the bus home? Sounds like there is just no allowing for a dry throat, seasonal allergies or whatever.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Kriegsspiel » Fri Oct 29, 2021 7:31 pm

MangoMan wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:39 pm
Two words: private school
Take him out of all schools! If he's really full-auto, he won't fuck off like other kids might, he'll become a god-tier computer programmer. While avoiding all the stuff he probably doesn't like/is useless about school altogether.

- some childless dude on the internet
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Nov 03, 2021 6:28 am

jalanlong wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:12 pm
I Shrugged wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:05 pm
jalanlong wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:54 am
In yet another example of Covid hysteria not close to being over, this morning I took my son to school as usual. He felt fine, everything was fine. About an hour or so later I get a call from school that he has been "coughing." Because of that I have to come pick him up. For him to come back I have to take him for a Covid test on Sunday and then a negative test means he can come back Tues. He didnt cough at all on the way home or since he has been home. Has no temperature. He says he had a dry throat and needed some water but they wouldn't listen.
Man, imagine how easy it is to get out of a test in school now. "Miss Jones, I can't taste anything, and my throat feels funny". Bang, home for a few days. But I suppose today's kids are too virtuous to do that.
What is amazing/ridiculous is that they are not waiving or changing the attendance requirements. So he is only given 18 absences in a year before he has to repeat the grade. Well this is the second time that he has had to miss school days not because of any fault of his own but because the school has a "policy" about Covid and pretty much any symptom means you are sick until proven healthy.
Peter The Great wrote a post about his son dropping out of school to teach himself at home. It has a bunch of links to educational stuff on a variety of subjects.
Halfway through ninth grade, emboldened perhaps by the taste of freedom that Covid-era remote learning had provided, he realized that the whole system was just too slow and inefficient for him, and was “Getting in the way of his work.” So as it looks now, he’ll probably never return to any sort of in-person schooling, and I will be surprised if he ever attends college.

Yes, he is technically “home schooling” and will still end up with a high school diploma of sorts, but in reality he is pretty much winging it. And needless to say, I have mixed feelings about this.
. . .
Because of the Internet, and to be honest a damned large dose of privilege due to having two educated parents always available because we were retired before he was even born, he has been able to feed his thirst for knowledge with incredible efficiency. This is an advantage that is still not available to most people today, let alone to what people of my generation had to work with in 1989. So he has already gone beyond college level in the standard fields that they cover in school. link
There's also this fantastic SSC article/graduation speech.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Nov 03, 2021 8:13 am

The CDC "added mood disorders to the list of conditions that put people at high risk for severe covid-19" recently (link). This comes on the heels of T-Cow sharing that a cheap anti-depressant lowers the chances of a case of the Wuhan requiring hospitalization.

I think this adds weight to my hypothesis that weak, depressed liberals are at higher risk from COVID, but did we really need more news to drive them further into the depths of insanity?
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by pp4me » Wed Nov 03, 2021 9:57 am

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 8:13 am
The CDC "added mood disorders to the list of conditions that put people at high risk for severe covid-19" recently (link). This comes on the heels of T-Cow sharing that a cheap anti-depressant lowers the chances of a case of the Wuhan requiring hospitalization.
Scott Adams made the interesting observation the other day that all of the therapeutics that have shown some effectiveness in treating COVID but subsequently not proved out in controlled studies have one thing in common. They all have anti-inflammatory properties. Add this one to the list.

On the flip side, the co-morbidities were all conditions that involve inflammation.

Maybe he's onto something. Not bad for a cartoonist.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by pp4me » Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:27 am

Just got back from Hawaii and although a lot of people weren't taking it too serious they were still doing some crazy stuff. Indoor mask mandates were strictly enforced everywhere. You were required to have a working cell phone so they could notify you if you had been in contact with anyone who had COVID in which case you would have to quarantine. I have no idea if they were actually using your cell phone to track your location but there was one restaurant where you had to give all your information including cell phone number and I assumed that was to tell you to quarantine if anybody in the restaurant came down with COVID. I think you were supposed to show your vaccination cards upon entering restaurants but most of them weren't doing that. One just asked if you were vaccinated. Only a couple actually wanted to see the cards.

In the meantime, I read in the news while I was there that Hawaii and Florida are now tied for the lowest case counts per capita in the U.S.

Which just goes to show how pointless all those restrictions in Hawaii were, although I doubt the politicians and/or medical establishment will draw that conclusion.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by jalanlong » Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:28 am

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 6:28 am
jalanlong wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:12 pm
I Shrugged wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:05 pm
jalanlong wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:54 am
In yet another example of Covid hysteria not close to being over, this morning I took my son to school as usual. He felt fine, everything was fine. About an hour or so later I get a call from school that he has been "coughing." Because of that I have to come pick him up. For him to come back I have to take him for a Covid test on Sunday and then a negative test means he can come back Tues. He didnt cough at all on the way home or since he has been home. Has no temperature. He says he had a dry throat and needed some water but they wouldn't listen.
Man, imagine how easy it is to get out of a test in school now. "Miss Jones, I can't taste anything, and my throat feels funny". Bang, home for a few days. But I suppose today's kids are too virtuous to do that.
What is amazing/ridiculous is that they are not waiving or changing the attendance requirements. So he is only given 18 absences in a year before he has to repeat the grade. Well this is the second time that he has had to miss school days not because of any fault of his own but because the school has a "policy" about Covid and pretty much any symptom means you are sick until proven healthy.
Peter The Great wrote a post about his son dropping out of school to teach himself at home. It has a bunch of links to educational stuff on a variety of subjects.
Halfway through ninth grade, emboldened perhaps by the taste of freedom that Covid-era remote learning had provided, he realized that the whole system was just too slow and inefficient for him, and was “Getting in the way of his work.” So as it looks now, he’ll probably never return to any sort of in-person schooling, and I will be surprised if he ever attends college.

Yes, he is technically “home schooling” and will still end up with a high school diploma of sorts, but in reality he is pretty much winging it. And needless to say, I have mixed feelings about this.
. . .
Because of the Internet, and to be honest a damned large dose of privilege due to having two educated parents always available because we were retired before he was even born, he has been able to feed his thirst for knowledge with incredible efficiency. This is an advantage that is still not available to most people today, let alone to what people of my generation had to work with in 1989. So he has already gone beyond college level in the standard fields that they cover in school. link
There's also this fantastic SSC article/graduation speech.
I really hate to be the whole "why are they teaching this, it is unnecessary" old man stereotype. But yesterday my son brought home a social studies worksheet. It has the countries of South America listed and he has to memorize what is the national language of all of the countries, down to Bolivia and Suriname. I see so much work that he does and wonder how it is going to prepare him for a career in the 2030s.

I guess it comes down to what you think the purpose of school is. Is it to get you trained to be a employee in the future workforce in which case you will need to focus on critical thinking skills and problem solving skills (along with some technology classes). Or is it to make you a renaissance person who can point out countries on a globe and what languages they speak, be able to translate Shakespeare into modern language and identify an onomatopoeia?
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:43 am

jalanlong wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:28 am
yesterday my son brought home a social studies worksheet. It has the countries of South America listed and he has to memorize what is the national language of all of the countries, down to Bolivia and Suriname.
Is he in 2nd grade or something? The answers that matter are Portuguese for Brazil, and Spanish for everyone else except French Guiana, the setting for the excellent Rami Malik/Charlie Hunnam remake of Papillon, where I ASSUME they speak French. No google mafakas! I think knowing generally what languages people speak in different areas of the world is useful info to know.

Or are they trying to pretend that the native languages of the different areas are actually relevant (to advance grievance studies no doubt)?
I really hate to be the whole "why are they teaching this, it is unnecessary" old man stereotype.

I see so much work that he does and wonder how it is going to prepare him for a career in the 2030s.

I guess it comes down to what you think the purpose of school is. Is it to get you trained to be a employee in the future workforce in which case you will need to focus on critical thinking skills and problem solving skills (along with some technology classes).

Or is it to make you a renaissance person who can point out countries on a globe and what languages they speak, be able to translate Shakespeare into modern language and identify an onomatopoeia?
All of your questions are covered in Caplan's book.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:52 am

pp4me wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 10:27 am
In the meantime, I read in the news while I was there that Hawaii and Florida are now tied for the lowest case counts per capita in the U.S.

Which just goes to show how pointless all those restrictions in Hawaii were, although I doubt the politicians and/or medical establishment will draw that conclusion.
It's not about rational, evidence-based measures,

Image
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Mountaineer » Wed Nov 03, 2021 1:10 pm

:) I like your current signature, Kriegs.
DNA has its own language (code), and language requires intelligence. There is no known mechanism by which matter can give birth to information, let alone language. It is unreasonable to believe the world could have happened by chance.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by vnatale » Wed Nov 03, 2021 8:01 pm

Read in my today's daily newspaper that the three person selectboard of my town voted unanimously on Monday to immediately lift the mask mandate that had been put in place on September 27th. This was due to several weeks of low number of cases in the town.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by pp4me » Thu Nov 04, 2021 1:59 pm

"I Have Been Through This Before" .... https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts ... fore-bauer

Kind of a long piece but a worthwhile read if you have lots of time on your hands like me.

Author Ann Bauer compares her lifelong experience with an Autistic child to the Covid Pandemic.
In the end, what I believe doesn’t really matter. History will out. Ten or 15 or 25 years from now there will a reckoning, deep research, a spate of biographies and memoirs from the people who spent 2020-21 under the sway of gurus. News media that trumpeted their wisdom and methods will issue brisk, researched, documentary-style reports. People will swarm out of the shadows to claim they didn’t really believe the experts embodied science and were secretly resisting all along; even those who preached their gospel and strong-armed the public’s obedience will insist they actually did not.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Mountaineer » Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:57 pm

vnatale wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 8:01 pm
Read in my today's daily newspaper that the three person selectboard of my town voted unanimously on Monday to immediately lift the mask mandate that had been put in place on September 27th. This was due to several weeks of low number of cases in the town.
I'm reading in to this that your town has decided not to follow, or at least enforce locally, CDC guidelines that were recently issued for the upcoming holidays. Am I correct? Probably not as I think the CDC guidance only recommends, not mandates, being vaccinated and wearing masks indoors when gathering with people who are outside your household.

Observation: I went to the grocery store today. I expect that only 5-10% of the people, customers and staff, were wearing masks. Mask wearing has greatly slacked off in my area recently. I hope we do not see a big increase in illnesses for the upcoming "flu season".

My current thinking on mask wearing:
1. Masks are not perfect but do help; note that medical staff, especially in the OR, have been wearing them for a long time for some reason. My understanding of physics (airflow, particle size, etc.) indicates clean surgical grade masks, e.g. N-95s and maybe just regular surgical grade, have to do some good re. reducing pathogen spreading whether SARS-CoV 2 or influenza or bacteria.
2. It is important to understand why one does not want to wear a mask, is it political or medical based. If it because you just don't like being told what you have to do, it's probably politically based. Try to see a bigger picture.
3. Does love of self take precedence over love of neighbor? It seems that for most people wearing a mask is an inconvenience, or uncomfortable for long periods at worst. Is it really that hard to make another person "feel" more comfortable even if there is a minimal health benefit, e.g. perhaps that other person is immunocomprimised or have other medical issues that make them more vulnerable. Is it really that hard to help small businesses stay open (they do have to enforce government rules if they don't want to get shut down)?
4. Personally, I think mask mandates were not the optimal way to go; we should have built a case on the benefits so people would want to do what is best from a medical point of view but that is probably a 20-20 hindsight perspective. Not a lot was known in the beginning of 2020 about the new disease or how to mitigate it.
5. Most of the people I know, either first or second hand, who have had Covid-19 (the illness, not just a positive test) say this is definitely not something you want to get. My son-in-law's brother got it; he switched from being an avid antivaxer to being a strong "get vaccinated" and "do all you can to protect yourself" proponent after spending several days in the hospital - at least he did not have experience a ventilator.
DNA has its own language (code), and language requires intelligence. There is no known mechanism by which matter can give birth to information, let alone language. It is unreasonable to believe the world could have happened by chance.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by pp4me » Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:21 pm

Mountaineer wrote:
Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:57 pm
My current thinking on mask wearing:
1. Masks are not perfect but do help; note that medical staff, especially in the OR, have been wearing them for a long time for some reason.
She can speak for herself but I think WiseOne posted a long time ago about the efficacy of masks in the OR and I believe it was along the same lines as this article..... https://cnsnews.com/commentary/dr-jim-m ... -wear-them

As for why I choose not to wear a mask it's because I don't believe they work just as Fauci originally stated. As I stated in a post above Hawaii and Florida now have the lowest case counts per capita in the U.S. One has had mask mandates for a long time and still have them while the other (Florida) had them for only a short while at the beginning of the pandemic and no longer do. So that makes my point for me. I believe that when the data is looked at more closely in the future it will be hard to prove that mask mandates made much of a difference. Same with other mandates.

As for why I don't wear them to make other people feel comfortable, there is no end to the things you would have to do to make some people feel comfortable about any number of things. Just look at the wokesters and SJWs.
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