SARS II: Respiratory Boogaloo

Let's just be honest. Masks were still more effective than the TSA is.

In the real world we had a huge number of anti-maskers around transmitting to each other. In reality masks reduce the infection rate, but you also have to use them, and you have to use them properly. Not for nothing, people seemed to take their masks off and end up touching the masks with their hands, and then rubbing their eyes or area around the eyes. It is like taking latex gloves off the wrong way and exposing your skin to what is on the gloves while you are pulling them off.

Anyway, It is not that masks do not work, it is that people are stupid or ignorant. Then you have the idiots who throw the baby out with the bathwater and say if it isn't 100 percent effective why do it. That would be you @Rimjob Bob in case you missed it.

Let's just be honest, selective quoting is selective quoting.

Here's what he says before the part you quoted:

The gist of the article is that there were so many mask exemptions (i.e., eating food on a plane or in a restaurant) that the masking requirements were virtually useless.

So yeah, that part was theatre but proper and targeted mask mandates would have helped slow the spread.

A crisis came out of virtually nowhere and no time to prepare. Experts were pressed for answers they didn't have. The guesses they made in response to frantic appeals for ways to mitigate the spread were wrong as often as they were right. The experts got blamed for not having answers no one could have had.

Would have. Could have. Should have. But didn't.

Oh, if only it were proper and targeted!

Well, it's never going to be. The gist of the article is that real world conditions make masking ineffective, which is exactly what I said.

You wanna be a Covid Karen and a true believer until the end of your days, be my guest.

Well, and they straight up lied about N95 masks being ineffective to (try (and fail) to) prevent a shortage for health care workers. Fauci apologized for that, but he should have resigned over it, once Biden was in office and could have appointed a replacement who wouldn't have immediately ended the world.

But yeah, masks are pointless if you're going to use them wrong. The most common one I see is using them well 95% of the time, then straight up taking them off to eat indoors. COVID doesn't take a lunch break, folks. The worst is when they take them off to sneeze or cough. I want to fucking strangle those people.

The thing to do then, is to get people to use them correctly, not give up entirely.

Me, I've been N95ing it properly* since the beginning, because I don't trust anyone else to get it right. On the rare occasions (2 in the last 2 years, both due to poor planning ahead of time on my part - didn't wake up early enough to eat a big breakfast before a flight with an arrival time after everything is closed) I've had to eat inside I do it as far as possible from other people, and it's: inhale and hold, mask off, bite/sip, mask on, exhale hard to blow out any potentially contaminated air (hopefully - I don't think this has been scientifically validated, but it makes sense to me. I do worry that the airflow isn't turbulent enough to get all the air out of the corners of the mask), chew and swallow and resume breathing. Burned the hell out of the roof of my mouth in the process one time, but didn't get COVID.

*elastomeric mask and clean shave when possible, since I don't have the equipment to do a proper hospital grade fit test for regular mask seal. Plus my nose is pretty big so actually getting a seal on most masks is extremely difficult.

Less theater, more people being ignorant -- lots of people just don't know how to mask properly, and we've done an absolutely shit job educating them -- or dumbasses. And this

is just the absolute epitome of the problem. "Cherished symbols of solidarity" do not prevent the spread of disease when you use them like a cherished symbol of solidarity instead of a physical tool for preventing the spread of disease. Theater still seems like the wrong word, because if people were using them properly, they'd be effective. Unlike the security theater of the TSA.

Due to the fact you could make real world conditions so that masks would be more effective (They were never not effective at all), and your efforts are part of that equation we see that we can eliminate the problem by eliminating your bullshit or your reputation so that everyone knows they are stupid for listening to your advice.

Yesterday was King's Day here in the Netherlands...
Lots of concerts including this one:


Yes, we dropped the covid rules...
Still makes me a bit apprehensive though...

^ Between all that and my 4th shot I basically don't believe in Covid any more

I've had three shots and Omicron. I'm not eligible for a fourth but even if I were I'd be less enthusiastic to get it now. It's still a booster to prevent COVID version 1.0. Get me a vaccine targeted to omicron and I'll jump in line. But it's getting close to the point where have no vaccine again. Just a lot of natural immunity from a less lethal virus.

China got you covered, bro.

https://www.reuters.com/business/he...-vaccine-candidate-be-trialed-uae-2022-04-30/

1 million (officially) dead in the US from COVID. That's more dead Americans than every war combined, excluding the Civil War.

And may well be higher. The WHO have reported they believe the true cost of COVID, when factoring in sparse testing at the start of the pandemic and deaths caused by being unable to access healthcare due to providers being stretched to the limit, is as high as 15 million globally. That's nearly 3x the official numbers but supported by similar studies looking at excess death rates during the pandemic period.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61327778

Not sure this changes much, but I found it interesting.

Does US really have world's highest Covid death toll?

https://www.bbc.com/news/61333847

Variants of 1918 flu likely caused more recent strains of the flu.

Pretty sure it's going to be a fatal case, due to "Covid".

Middle of an interesting thread on Covid.

Yes.

Get the f**k out!': Broadway legend screams at audience members not properly wearing their masks

Video at the link.

Also did not realize that Clare Shaw from Ozark was in this production. Might need to get my ass down to NYC to see the show.

And a couple of days later...


You know what this tells me? People are really dying from COVID in NK. Like in the tens of thousands. It has now reached the point where they can't keep it quiet, so they're just trickling the information out in hopes that they can get a handle on things before the country implodes.

For all those folks saying that COVID’s not a big deal in little kids, you might be wrong about that.

Absolute numbers, yes. Per cap, not even close.

But as the BBC article notes, the official numbers are calculated differently in each country, so excess death count is a better apple-to-apples measure.

Vietnam drops testing and vaccine requirements for visitors, thus returning completely to 2019 immigration procedures. I wish more countries in the region would follow.

https://www.nst.com.my/world/world/...d-19-test-requirement-foreign-arrivals-may-15