Octopus Overlords

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:17 am [Deleted]

LawBeefaroni wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:29 am Maybe "controversial" because the data is largely suspect and most likely motivated by financial gain?

Daehawk wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:49 pm All this reopening is just going to make a new flood of deaths and a new lock down and worse problems. Heck CNN right now has people saying exactly that. Georgia is supposed to have a lot more deaths because of it.

Defiant wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 9:21 pm

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:18 pm
Cite? Because it seems kinda silly and highly unscientific to assume the colossal difference between COVID-19 deaths in New York vs. the most populous state in the union was solely because the state of California was locked down one day earlier than New York.

The dates listed there aren't correct. New York locked down on March 22nd. It was only announced on March 20th.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:18 pm
Cite? Because it seems kinda silly and highly unscientific to assume the colossal difference between COVID-19 deaths in New York vs. the most populous state in the union was solely because the state of California was locked down one day earlier than New York.

Daehawk wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:49 pm All this reopening is just going to make a new flood of deaths and a new lock down and worse problems. Heck CNN right now has people saying exactly that. Georgia is supposed to have a lot more deaths because of it.

Daehawk wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:49 pm All this reopening is just going to make a new flood of deaths and a new lock down and worse problems. Heck CNN right now has people saying exactly that. Georgia is supposed to have a lot more deaths because of it.

Daehawk wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:53 am Been looking at these two.

morlac wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 8:49 am
In my hood I would say 90% of the places that are allowed to open still have not. Longhorns was the only non local spot allowing inside dining. Them and my favorite hole in wall bar....er restaurant were the only ones I saw fully open. No gyms, a third of nail/hair places were open. So despite the Governors best efforts most buisness are staying closed.

noxiousdog wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 1:05 pm

morlac wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 8:49 am
In my hood I would say 90% of the places that are allowed to open still have not. Longhorns was the only non local spot allowing inside dining. Them and my favorite hole in wall bar....er restaurant were the only ones I saw fully open. No gyms, a third of nail/hair places were open. So despite the Governors best efforts most buisness are staying closed.

We are going to be restricted to 25% capacity for a while even on things that are open.

Skinypupy wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 1:44 pm On April 2, I took a picture of my odometer because it was at 44,444 (which I found amusing, for some reason). Had to venture out and pick up some new contacts today, and it's sitting at at 44,460.

I've driven 16 miles total in the past 4 weeks, down from around 30 miles/day.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 9:19 pm Here's an amusing video that sums up much of the various coronavirus advice and recommendations that has been provided

em2nought wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 3:36 am Once there's a smaller pool of susceptible people(i.e. they've died) there should be fewer deaths.

gameoverman wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 5:51 pm
A quick search gave me a number of just over 51 million people in the US age 65 or over. So if we were to consider those people 'susceptible' then the virus would need to kill MILLIONS of people in just that age range to reduce that particular population enough that there would start to be fewer deaths in that age range.

gilraen wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:07 am

Isgrimnur wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:53 pm For when your sickness is as much mental as physical...

LOL, you might laugh but I ordered a set with my hockey team logo today. 'Cause...why not.

dbt1949 wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:49 pm I finally ordered some not as fancy as those masks. Whenever they letup on the lockdown everybody is going to be expected to wear them. <sigh>
At our governor's daily meeting today he says that when restaurants open up people have to wear masks. He left it like that. Finally reporter asked him how people were supposed to eat and he said after they got their food they could take their masks off.
I wonder how long he waited in anticipation for that question?
After the banks open their lobbies how many masked people are going to be robbers?

Dr. John Lee wrote:To think about this in relation to face masks, you first need to have a handle on just how small viruses are. A human hair is about a 10th of a millimeter thick. A typical bacterium (such as the human pathogens E. coli or S. aureus) comes in at about one thousandth of a millimeter, so you could line a hundred up across the width of a hair. A coronavirus particle is about 10 times smaller still, so a thousand would fit across a hair. This extreme smallness was instrumental in the discovery of viruses in the 19th century: they were the infective agents, left in solutions that had been passed through ‘ultrafilters’ which had removed all other known pathogens.

So to filter out viruses effectively you need a filter with a very fine mesh indeed, even assuming that all the air goes through the filter. And you need to think about which way the air is going: breathing in (the idea being to protect you) or breathing out (ostensibly to protect others if you have the virus).

A recent study looked microscopically at pore sizes in low-cost face masks of the types common in developing countries such as Nepal, made from various cloth materials. Here’s a sample they showed in the study.

They found pore sizes of roughly one to five human hair widths — the pore sizes got slightly bigger after washing. So in relation to viruses, these masks are doing little, except possibly reassuring their wearers.

...

What about protecting others? Surgeons wear masks mainly to protect their patients from particulate and potentially infective matter falling out of their noses, mouths, mustaches and beards into a patient’s open. We’re talking about big particles here (human hair width) and bacterial infections, not viruses. Even for this situation, which is universally observed, it is surprisingly difficult to generate watertight scientific data about the effectiveness of surgical masks in preventing bacterial infections. For viral infections there is little data, but again, the pores allow viruses through and much of the air you breathe out goes around the side. When a person is infectious with a virus it is estimated that they may shed one hundred billion virus particles a day — that works out at about 10 million per breath. A mask won’t stop you putting these particles into the air around you. In fact, with a damp mask you’ll be blowing aerosols and larger particles sideways, directly at your socially distanced colleagues six feet away. And if wearing a mask tempts you to feel that you’re not going to infect anyone else, you may also be less likely to observe the six-feet rule. So does wearing a mask protect others if you’re infectious? There’s little direct evidence to say that it does, and quite a lot of straightforward reasoning to suggest it doesn’t.

As you might imagine, you can find an awful lot more detail on all this. A recent, non-peer-reviewed review article concludes with a call for widespread mask use, including regulatory enforcement. But the evidence it presents seems very weak for such a strong call, and conflates laboratory, clinical and community studies. There are mask filtration studies; papers describing small, uncontrolled situations, many of which have heavily qualified conclusions (but nevertheless call for widespread measures on the basis of their slim evidence); speculative sociological studies often based in Asia; and ubiquitous modeling which appears to support the conclusions, but is based on non-real-world assumptions about mask ‘efficacy’ and mask ‘adherence’. A multiplication of inconclusive studies does not enhance the evidence base.

The point is: does any of what is out there add up to a watertight case for compelling people to wear masks in public or at work (outside a healthcare setting)? The threshold for compulsion must surely be higher than ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’. But if it really is the case that the threshold for regulatory compulsion is being approached, it should be a simple matter for our scientific advisers to present it to us and allow time for it to be critically discussed in relation to a real-world setting, before government imposes measures upon us all.

That other countries may have taken action says things about those countries’ attitudes to open scrutiny of evidence-based decision-making, and their populations’ attitudes to compliance and compulsion. It says nothing about the validity of the measures. Coronavirus is not a reason for us to accept arbitrary impositions or abandon our traditions of rational discourse. The West’s record in these matters is one of our great strengths — its preservation allows us to deal better with crises, especially crises like coronavirus, where there is much more to consider than just the virus itself.

noxiousdog wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 9:30 am I call your random opinion piece, and raise you a peer reviewed study.

noxiousdog wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 9:30 am I call your random opinion piece, and raise you a peer reviewed study.

Blackhawk wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:02 am
It's also a morale booster.

ImLawBoy wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:56 am I'm going to go with the medical/scientific consensus over Jeff's concerns.