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Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

Malibuflyer wrote:

Wearing good masks is better than wearing not so good ones. And wearing them properly is better than wearing them wrongly.
But even a badly worn simple piece of cloth is better than nothing!

YES. YES. YES.

And that is why I so much detest the lies about the mask effectivity in the first wave just because they did not have enough certified masks to go around. Even a tight scarf could have reduced the numbers, it bloody did inBG where their premier said that, cover your nose and mouth, no matter how. Their first wave had very small figures, as they kept a tight ship, while the rest of Europe went tits up.

Now people do not believe in this anymore because the politicians lied to them in the first place.

T28 wrote:

Anything that reduces aerosol spread is good, even a badly used mask. In an open floor office, on a bus, train etc. chances are low to nil you’ll touch the same things as other people do, however an unmasked infected subject in one corner will very effectively contaminate the whole attendance.

Exactly.

I really hope they will now get tough on people who do not wear masks as prescribed. 50 Euros fine or similar would certainly help.

But what frustrates me immensely is that while it was totally OBVIOUS what would happen, they overslept the 2nd wave worse than the 1st. Everything which had been said about the waves and comparison to previous pandemics were absolutely true yet nobody listened.

In a case like this, politicians need to step aside and let the medical experts take command. Otherwise, this pandemic might proove fatal to the political system we know to day not only due to number of deaths and illnesses but also due to total loss of credibility.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

In a case like this, politicians need to step aside and let the medical experts take command. Otherwise, this pandemic might proove fatal to the political system we know to day not only due to number of deaths and illnesses but also due to total loss of credibility.

The problem is that the medical experts don’t agree with one another.
Here is professor Stadler’s view on masks. (You might as well throw a ping pong ball into the mouth of a football goal.)



Egnm, United Kingdom

@EuroFlyer

Thank you for bringing this excellent graph into the discussion. One can clearly see that private homes, care homes and the workplace are the main vectors of infection. Everything else, notably restaurants which are now going to be closed, comes a distant second.

I agree that it was, for this reason, wrong to close restaurants again, and many other venues where the owners put a lot of effort into hygiene concepts. Instead, working from home should be mandatory in all office jobs. Private homes must be monitored more closely, but this is very problematic from a legal and practical perspective. I am afraid there is no easy solution.

Meanwhile, the mask discussion should really be buried. There is no point in it. Masks do zero harm, and if they help only a little then we should be grateful for that and use them wherever people meet.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

Science have not done themselfs a favour with their behaviour either.

Maybe if in the end we would go out and single out those who were totally wrong and knowing so just wanted their piece of the publicity cake (and money pit) and kick them out of the places of “learning” they infest.

In such cases like Corona we need a single official voice, not a pub drawl and debate. Obviously, if our governments do prefer to put the blame on others instead of displaying leadership and get the people to comply, the vaccum will easily be filled with thousands of air heads who deem fit to put their “opinions” in the hat.

By now I think those who predicted properly and advised properly are known by the merit of their predictions. So maybe we should stop listening to every airhead with or without the semblance of academic justification and listen to those who proved to be right? Only those, as the messenger of bad news, have repeatedly been shot by the media and politicians.

IMHO, politicians are unfit to deal with crisis like that. What you need to lead in such a case is a panel of experts who know what the hell they are doing.But as the sad example of Switzerland shows, this is also not a guarantee. How about stick to the bloody pandemic plans rather than having them thrown out on the first opportunity after some politicians notice it will harm their protegees?

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 29 Oct 13:38
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

The general public is gullible in relation to anything that is “based on science”, as are a lot of scientists in my experience. In reality science does not solve problems, technology does, and scientists can and should question previous conclusions (or dream up new ones) if they think there is a reason to do so, without much immediate effect on the relevant technology. What technology does utilize incomplete science to develop methods that work for a particular purpose and the issue in doing this is that it generally takes time and experience to do the necessary iterative development from which useful technology results. New science is mostly useless. What is going on socially with all the technology related to Coronavirus is desperation, because only the most basic technology is proven: for example we know staying a very long distance from other people works, but we don’t really know how far away and we don’t really know if masks help, or more particularly the mechanism by which they may help reduce transmission of a virus. It’s all guess work with those who are desperate grasping hold of symbols. The guy in the video explains that pretty well.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 29 Oct 14:06

Those whose shoulders do not sag under the weight of a massive chip understand that a barrier that stops aerosol diffusion has positive effects on virus dispersion, as well as the simple physical mechanism involved.

As a quick acid test I suggest spraying deodorant on top of your shirt and see how much of it reaches your armpit.

Last Edited by T28 at 29 Oct 14:14
T28
Switzerland

I think the particles are similar in size to those of cigarette smoke in water. If you exhale cigarette smoke through a simple cloth mask about half of it goes through, the other half exits around the periphery of the mask. What real world effect that has of transmission of a virus, statistically and when compared to a control group, God only knows for sure at this point.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 29 Oct 14:26

Well, God and people who do research. Somewhat unsurprisingly research doesn’t back the “we do not know how it works”. And no, half of it doesn’t go through and half of it around.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083

There’s always a danger lurking in making long-winded explanations to buttress a position not supported by prior knowledge.

T28
Switzerland

There is no data on transmission of viruses in that paper.

Continuing up the hierarchy from Science to Technology to Regulation… I think the latter should be based on a democratically vetted assessment of reasonably proven technology, not autocratic selection of unproven technology. When there is no proven technology, I think the most prudent regulation is generally no regulation or very limited regulation – because the autocrats who want to capitalize on crisis generally get it wrong and many scientists are not too far behind them in that regard. Free people however generally get it right after a period of iterative open development. And yes, in this case lives will be lost in the interim, to a technological deficit that won’t be filled by random regulation. Or maybe more properly may be addressed by random regulation, or not, depending on luck.

Referring back to comments above, I think Germany’s current Federal government structure is a reflection of that lesson.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 29 Oct 15:22

For someone who loudly asks for data you seldom come up with any backing your statements, if ever.

Here’s data, with pretty images.

https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-and-a-class-how-the-coronavirus-is-spread-through-the-air.html

Last Edited by T28 at 29 Oct 15:29
T28
Switzerland
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