heywood on 16/12/2020 at 22:44
Why do you expect people to respond to you with a good argument when you're spouting right wing mask myths? There have been A LOT of studies of mask effectiveness over the course of the pandemic, and there's a great deal of experiential evidence. Nobody wants to waste their time leading you through it by the nose, because most of us have tried that before with someone and it's like beating our heads against a wall.
SubJeff on 16/12/2020 at 23:13
Quote Posted by Thor
To be fair the masks are overall ineffective
No they're not. This is part of the Swiss cheese protective effect of all measures.
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As is well covered by now, the masks let viruses in effortlessly
Incorrect.
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and restrict you from breathing fresh air as well
Not true.
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which isn't going to do your health any favors after doing it daily for a while,
Now this is real nonsense.
I present to you... surgeons. They wear masks for hours a day, every day, for years. Do you really (really?) think they would be doing this if it would adversely affect health?
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the breath is a major way how the body gets rid of its garbage
No it really, really isn't. And the things you do breathe out aren't affected by mask wearing. See point on surgeons, above.
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A 15-30 min trip inside a store isn't going to kill anyone without serious problems going in, so it can be tolerated for the meme value or psychological safety, but pretending it saves a ton of lives is naive.
Incorrect.
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That said I wear my mask where I am closer to people
Well that's something.
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A lot of people think that the masks are retarded but will still wear them for one reason or another.
They're idiots.
I could have summarised this with one word. Oh wait, I did.
Cipheron on 16/12/2020 at 23:31
As for mask effectiveness, here's a pre-Covid article:
(
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/well/live/face-masks-work-healthy-colds-flu-immunity-prevention.html)
This mentions a number of studies, one of which looked at facemask wearing within households where a child was infected with influenza. They found that the not-sick parent reduced their chance of being infected 60-80% by adhering to mask wearing. And that's steeping in the stuff in the same house.
Some would counter that if you touch your face etc then some virus is bound to get through there, but this also misses the point. The extra barrier reduces the amount of viral particles that you're exposed to, giving your body more time to generate antibodies. This is also found in cases where an vaccinated person gets the disease anyway, then the severity of the disease itself is reduced. People don't tend to think like this, they see it as an all or nothing infected/not-infected binary, but it's really not. A partial defense is still effective since it slows everything down.
If a mask reduces your direct expose to viral particles by 50% then that's a big win *even if* you still get sick. So if people say "yes but it's not a 100% seal, some virus will still slip through, so why bother with the mask at all?" then they just haven't thought this through.
Thor on 16/12/2020 at 23:54
Quote Posted by heywood
Why do you expect people to respond to you with a good argument when you're spouting right wing mask myths? There have been A LOT of studies of mask effectiveness over the course of the pandemic, and there's a great deal of experiential evidence. Nobody wants to waste their time leading you through it by the nose, because most of us have tried that before with someone and it's like beating our heads against a wall.
As a no-wing person, why wouldn't I inquire opinions from various places including this left-wing den? To understand that world better. Sometimes I "bait" this place with "right wing myths" because I don't have a refutation to those points (or myths) myself and am curious to see what the left have to say about it.
Suddenly there's A LOT of new studies that prove its effectiveness? I wonder what changed, as I browsed a few studies over the last 2-3 decades of this topic and they all concluded that mask effectiveness is pretty dubious.
Quote Posted by SubJeff
[..]
I could have summarised this with one word. Oh wait, I did.
Well, that's something. So how come there are actual doctors saying the opposite, i.e. masks *do* let the virus in? Are they also right wing conspiracy theorists? Maybe just old uneducated idiots? Those happen, but how does one know. See, in this age of misinformation (and just under 20 years ago this was memed as the information age, sigh...) it's a bit unclear for the layman to get a good foundation on who to trust (and the government has done pretty much everything in its power to discredit itself as a trustworthy source).
If wearing masks all the time isn't bad for your health at all then I wonder - why even take them off? Is human being born without a mask-like nose an evolutionary failure? And why does wearing a mask (i.e. largely recirculating the same air with an only partial flow of new air) feel disgusting and make me want to take a breather every few minutes (
especially if I've had coffee, ew)? I mean, I
could soldier on for hours, probably? If surgeons can do it then so can I. Can we run 10km with masks on? Can't say I've tried, but if yes, then that's probably a pretty good hint that masks are somehow only a hindrance for the senses and not for air circulation & general health.
Quote Posted by Cipheron
As for mask effectiveness, here's a pre-Covid article:
(
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/well/live/face-masks-work-healthy-colds-flu-immunity-prevention.html)
This mentions a number of studies, one of which looked at facemask wearing within households where a child was infected with influenza. They found that the not-sick parent reduced their chance of being infected 60-80% by adhering to mask wearing. And that's steeping in the stuff in the same house.
Some would counter that if you touch your face etc then some virus is bound to get through there, but this also misses the point. The extra barrier reduces the amount of viral particles that you're exposed to, giving your body more time to generate antibodies. This is also found in cases where an vaccinated person gets the disease anyway, then the severity of the disease itself is reduced. People don't tend to think like this, they see it as an all or nothing infected/not-infected binary, but it's really not. A partial defense is still effective since it slows everything down.
If a mask reduces your direct expose to viral particles by 50% then that's a big win *even if* you still get sick. So if people say "yes but it's not a 100% seal, some virus will still slip through, so why bother with the mask at all?" then they just haven't thought this through.
Thanks, those are interesting points.
Though with the non-vaccinated person, isn't the natural immunity lagging based on the amount of virus particles it generates or is it strictly about how fast a person's immune response is? This point makes less sense to me than the vaccinated person catching it on earlier but I'll keep it in mind.
faetal on 17/12/2020 at 00:27
Quote Posted by Thor
As a no-wing person, why wouldn't I inquire opinions from various places including this left-wing den? To understand that world better. Sometimes I "bait" this place with "right wing myths" because I don't have a refutation to those points (or myths) myself and am curious to see what the left have to say about it.
Pretty disingenuous way of discussing - how about you just ask?
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Suddenly there's A LOT of new studies that prove its effectiveness? I wonder what changed, as I browsed a few studies over the last 2-3 decades of this topic and they all concluded that mask effectiveness is pretty dubious.
Priorities shift during pandemics. All of the good research I've seen show masks to be highly effective.
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Well, that's something. So how come there are actual doctors saying the opposite, i.e. masks *do* let the virus in? Are they also right wing conspiracy theorists? Maybe just old uneducated idiots? Those happen, but how does one know. See, in this age of misinformation (and just under 20 years ago this was memed as the information age, sigh...) it's a bit unclear for the layman to get a good foundation on who to trust (and the government has done pretty much everything in its power to discredit itself as a trustworthy source).
You know (or at least are holding the most currently robust guess) by following
consensus, rather than presuming existence of opinion X makes it equal in validity to fact Y.
There are plenty of doctors who are a bit further from science than is useful.
I had a doctor try to prescribe me "(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesotherapy) Mesotherapy" for a cruciate ligament strain a few years back. This doesn't mean that I think all doctors are quacks, or decide that because of one quack, I now have no idea what to believe. Try not to fly around like drunk pendulum every time you hear conflicting information and instead try to learn the consensus.
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If wearing masks all the time isn't bad for your health at all then I wonder - why even take them off?
Ridiculous question. Wearing full waterproof clothing is also not bad for health. Neither is scuba gear, or chainmail gloves. Should we be going about dressed like an RPG character wearing whatever has the highest stats?
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Is human being born without a mask-like nose an evolutionary failure?
We do have pretty advanced protection built in to our noses (hairs, mucous, temperature differentials). We didn't evolve to live in such dens proximity, which has only really happened over the course of a few thousand years (slower than something like an evolved full face mask could surface).
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And why does wearing a mask (i.e. largely recirculating the same air with an only partial flow of new air) feel disgusting and make me want to take a breather every few minutes (
especially if I've had coffee, ew)?
It would only do this is the mask is airtight or close to it - what you are "re-breathing" is condensed liquid vapour from your upper respiratory tract. It's less comfortable / pleasant than not wearing a mask, so I guess you just have low tolerance to mild discomfort. In which case - toughen up - we're in a pandemic, this isn't for fun.
People have endured far worse for far longer. A piece of cloth (which allows air to pass through just fine) on your face for a few hours a day is nothing doing. No one should feel entitled to risk the lives of everyone around them just to avoid mild, temporary discomfort, without being called out for it.
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Though with the non-vaccinated person, isn't the natural immunity lagging based on the amount of virus particles it generates or is it strictly about how fast a person's immune response is?
The immune system tends to only become interested when tissue insult is detected (else risk of developing autoimmune conditions would be vastly higher), so usually the acquired immunity takes about 2-7 days to ramp up, then a few extra days to clear the virus. Many of the symptoms are caused by the immune system clearing the virus (temperature increase, increased mucous production, coughing, destruction of infected cells etc.) rather than the virus itself, so it's not like a better immune response would reduce sickness
per se.
Thor on 17/12/2020 at 02:18
Quote Posted by faetal
Pretty disingenuous way of discussing - how about you just ask?
Fair enough. In the case of masks I was more convinced than I'd like to admit, as I'm generally capable to follow reason and evidence, but fall short on my stamina for research and stop too soon. That said I still find masks to be "overhyped", as I see them worn responsibly everywhere I go (and even if someone doesn't - a store worker nags them and they comply), and yet the numbers have been skyrocketing pretty much since the masks were made mandatory about a month or two ago.
Quote Posted by faetal
Try not to fly around like drunk pendulum every time you hear conflicting information and instead try to learn the consensus.
Consensus is not a scientific word - don't remember who originally said it, but I find it to be a useful thing to remember as the consensus doesn't necessarily mean true.
Quote Posted by faetal
We do have pretty advanced protection built in to our noses (hairs, mucous, temperature differentials). We didn't evolve to live in such dens proximity, which has only really happened over the course of a few thousand years (slower than something like an evolved full face mask could surface).
Doesn't take a dense population to transfer the virus though, but yeah.
Quote Posted by faetal
It would only do this is the mask is airtight or close to it - what you are "re-breathing" is condensed liquid vapour from your upper respiratory tract. It's less comfortable / pleasant than not wearing a mask, so I guess you just have low tolerance to mild discomfort. In which case - toughen up - we're in a pandemic, this isn't for fun.
People have endured far worse for far longer. A piece of cloth (which allows air to pass through just fine) on your face for a few hours a day is nothing doing. No one should feel entitled to risk the lives of everyone around them just to avoid mild, temporary discomfort, without being called out for it.
I don't have a problem wearing the mask myself if I believe in it, e.g. when I'm in a crowded area, I do find it good to not breathe in everyone else's shit,
not when I'm in a store and nobody within 3+ meters is around me. But mainly I have sympathy for store & similar workers who are forced to wear them 8+ hrs a day. Some stores have more decency for their workers and give them viziers, but a lot don't, and I won't be so easily convinced that wearing a mask day-in, day-out 8 hours and more every day is good for you. What pissed me off the most is the government's decision to let the older kids work from home and the little kids smoke themselves in a mask. I don't know if other countries follow similar cretinous rules, but I find it just plain wrong. If I had kids that age, I would most likely pull them out of school and home-school them at this point.
Quote Posted by faetal
The immune system tends to only become interested when tissue insult is detected (else risk of developing autoimmune conditions would be vastly higher), so usually the acquired immunity takes about 2-7 days to ramp up, then a few extra days to clear the virus. Many of the symptoms are caused by the immune system clearing the virus (temperature increase, increased mucous production, coughing, destruction of infected cells etc.) rather than the virus itself, so it's not like a better immune response would reduce sickness
per se.
Does this mean that you'll get a virus through the respective methods of getting it no matter how good your immunity system is? I just wonder about cases like when a company of several people where 1 or 2 (party hosts) had covid (unknowingly), supposedly chilled and shared a water pipe with everyone for an entire evening, but didn't spread it further as their guests' tests showed negative (which they made a few days after, finding out they were in contact with covid infected people).
Personally I've always kept up my hand-washing relatively compulsively, kept my distance from strangers and been annoyed when strangers brush up too close to me or cough around, so I guess you could say I've been preparing for this my whole life.
SubJeff on 17/12/2020 at 04:24
Quote Posted by Thor
I don't have a problem wearing the mask myself if I believe in it, e.g. when I'm in a crowded area, I do find it good to not breathe in everyone else's shit,
Wait, which is it? I thought you said they didn't work.
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I won't be so easily convinced that wearing a mask day-in, day-out 8 hours and more every day is good for you.
Yep, surgeons internationally are ruining their health and they don't care. Just don't care. Those nutjobs!
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If I had kids that age, I would most likely pull them out of school and home-school them at this point.
Thank God you don't then. You'd be teaching them that breathing is a major source of getting rid of waste.
Good job on ignoring all of that dispute re: you're previous nonsense btw.
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Personally I've always kept up my hand-washing relatively compulsively, kept my distance from strangers and been annoyed when strangers brush up too close to me or cough around, so I guess you could say I've been preparing for this my whole life.
Ah ha ha ha, ha ha.
faetal on 17/12/2020 at 08:32
Quote Posted by Thor
Does this mean that you'll get a virus through the respective methods of getting it no matter how good your immunity system is?
Pretty much yeah. Innate immunity is useful for slowing viruses down in a non-specific way, but this whole thing about a "strong" immune system is a myth. Your immune system is tuned to adaptively remove and destroy anything which isn't you and comes with some kind of pathology. As I said, most of the symptoms are
because of your immune system doing its job.
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I just wonder about cases like when a company of several people where 1 or 2 (party hosts) had covid (unknowingly), supposedly chilled and shared a water pipe with everyone for an entire evening, but didn't spread it further as their guests' tests showed negative (which they made a few days after, finding out they were in contact with covid infected people).
Without knowing the details, it is hard to be sure. My guess is that it was blind luck and they weren't shedding the virus at the time they shared the pipe. The existence of a weird scenario which defies easy explanation doesn't invalidate established theories. The problem with people who don't have training in things like statistics & probability is a propensity towards qualitative rather than quantitative mental models of how these things work.
Qualitative: Science says X, but Y happened, therefore X can't be true
Quantitative: Science says X, but Y happened at a rate of 0.00000001%, so X is generally still the sensible standpoint.
SubJeff on 17/12/2020 at 08:45
Also the possibility that whatever they were smoking was hostile to the virus.
Thor on 17/12/2020 at 11:30
Quote Posted by SubJeff
[Blah blah I'm a fuckhead blah]
Ah ha ha ha, ha ha.
You must have a lot of quality friends.