They work. Let me describe an image from online. If someone pees on your bare leg, you get wet. If someone pees on your leg but you're wearing pants, your leg gets less wet. If someone pees on your leg while they're wearing pants, pretty much only they get wet. Would you rather both of you be naked or at least one of yall be wearing pants? That's how regular masks that are not N-95's work. They can still filter our large particulates and water droplets from things like speaking, breathing, coughing, etc. They vastly decrease the distance that particulates also travel through the air, making closer physical contact less dangerous. Can small particles get through? Yes, they don't have the same filtering ability as N-95's. So, can they 100% guarantee no particulate transmission or that small amounts of the virus cannot pass through gaps in the fabric or surgical mask? No. But I'd much rather only get exposed to 10 virus particles than a million and at 1 foot instead of 5 feet. Respirators and N-95's are great for people working frontline getting exposed to lots and lots of people not all of whom are obeying the recommendations because they may be getting a lot of exposure to covid so protect them more. For average persons without a lot of exposure, non-N95's still significantly reduce the risk. It's NOT pissing in the wind.
Are you suggesting that the CEOs of Houston's top hospitals are purposefully misleading the public? Wow. That's how you are attempting to defend your argument? This may surprise you, but running a successful business requires honesty - misleading people is unwise. Odd that you later speak to the importance of public trust, right after impugning these hospital leaders' integrity... contradicting your own logic in the process... The concern people erroneously have is that hospitals will run out of space and those who need care won't receive it. The people with the most information -- literally the CEOs of the top hospitals -- say there is ample space. Evaluating the space of a hospital requires more than just technical knowledge of medicine. It takes business sense, legal judgment, some economics, a lot of human resources planning, and many other skills that a CEO will possess, but a doctor simply won't. MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE: THERE IS AMPLE HOSPITAL SPACE FOR COVID PATIENTS IN HOUSTON.
I did not say they were trying to mislead the public. I specifically said they are doing their job as the business head of a large organization in reassuring the public and maintaining the public trust. However, they are running a business which is different from being a doctor. If you want the public to trust the business person when he is saying business things then trust the doctors when they are saying doctor things. Essentially all the doctors are saying this is a problem, maybe trust them. Just like what we are seeing in the federal government, the non-medical people are saying one thing whereas doctors are saying something different because they have different interests at stake. A physician would be right to say "The numbers are increasing, you should stay at home as ICU space is getting limited" because their job is trying to protect the public health. That might be more anxiety provoking to the public at large. A CEO would be right to say "The numbers are increasing so take precautions but we can expand to take care of more people as needed" because their job is running a business and reassuring anxious people. Neither is wrong. Neither is saying anything to directly contradict the other. Neither is lying. However, the messages come across very different. I also think it's a pretty, pretty broad assumption to make that business are always working for the greater good of society and not self-serving interests but that's a different topic altogether.
Why not? They are hiding data in Florida. You certainly regard CEO's highly which is pretty sad. You know what personality trait they resemble more than any other? Psychopath. Look it up. It might help convince the the richest people in the room aren't the hardest working or smartest. Just the richest.
Thanks for the well thought out reply. I've got a surgeon that told me medical masks only work for 20 mins. I trust him.
The statements by TMC executives were made because their revenue was being cut. The further they dip into surge capacity, the lower the quality of care will be and the higher the fatality rate will be. There are not an infinite number of trained ICU doctors and nurses. Also, when you're using surge capacity in the first place, things are already pretty bad. On June 24th the Texas Medical Center website indicated that they reached maximum capacity for ICU beds, and that they would reach maximum surge capacity by July 6th. On June 25th, in response this, Governor Abbott issued an order suspending elective surgeries and procedures in Harris County. On June 26th, the Texas Medical Center stopped reporting key metrics on their website and made claims that the reporting data was confusing. On June 27th, reporting key metrics reappeared, but 8 of the 17 original slides had been deleted — including any reference to hospital capacity or projections of future capacity. On June 28th, following a Houston Chronicle story highlighting the missing charts, the Texas Medical Center posted updated data featuring most of the original information with a few cosmetic changes, as well as some additional slides. Houston Methodist CEO Dr. Marc Boom said that the new data was not reinvented, but was reformatted in an effort to make clear that reaching 100 percent of capacity in an ICU is a moving target. TMC hospitals have a combined 373 beds, for instance, that can become ICU beds with a “challenging” but “doable” amount of effort, Boom said, with the reassignment of trained staff and equipment. Doing so would take the TMC facilities’ combined 93 percent ICU capacity as of the Sunday report down to 72 percent, the chart shows.
It's really beyond me why someone would trust politicians and business people rather than healthcare experts and professionals on heath issues.
It's most likely because they have trust or other issues in their personal life and take personal pride in "not being a sheep". They aren't getting the feedback they normally crave in other aspects of their life with the COVID shutdown so they seek out other avenues for attention. Absent in this whole looney discussion is what happens to those who recover after being bedridden at home or hospitalized. Besides concerns about long-term health issues, what about the thousands of dollars in medical bills and lost wages? Surelywe can have compassion for those and use it as incentive to very mildly inconvenience ourselves to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from enduring poor health, debt or death. Why is this so difficult?
Sorry I will take a surgeons knowledge over yours. But let me ask you two things 1. If masks truly work why did they shut the economy down. 2. More people are wearing masks now than ever, yet we have some of the largest transmission of Covid-19 recently since the pandemic began.
1. Because they are not 100% effective 2. Because of exponential growth, also you are confusing cause and effect, people are wearing masks now because of how many cases there are, before they thought it wouldn't affect them, now the CDC is saying there could actually be 10-20m+ cases in the US
Mask work. They aren't 100 percent but they reduce transmission by orders of magnitude. This why densely populated countries in Asia like Taiwan, Japan and Singapore have had relatively low numbers of Covid cases even though they were the first hit. They didn't b**** and moan about masks.
Seriously? Let me ask you two things: 1. If seat belts truly work, why do people still die in car accidents? 2. If seat belts work, why do we still care whether people follow traffic rules? Next time when you get a ticket for not wearing seat belt, tell the officer that he's violating your constitutional right.
Because a regular surgical mask lasts for 20 mins. What has the CDC gotten right in their predictions when it comes to Covid-19? Dr. Faucci?
Explain to me how a surgical mask would lose effectiveness in 20 minutes? Or ask your surgeon friend if he doesn't wear a mask when operating since most operations take over 20 minutes. Or does he change it every 20 minutes? There is simply no factual basis for why a mask would lose effectiveness after 20 minutes. Zero. Zilch. Googling it finds one comment from a physician in Australia who said "masks can lose effectiveness when saturated. That could be as little as 20 minutes" but provided no evidence to actually back that assertion up....it was also said in an article titled "farce masks" from 17 years ago so take that for what it's worth. Dr. Fauci has gotten innumerably more things right about this pandemic than the covid-doubters. His recommendation from the start has been to shut it the **** down and wear a mask. Look at the places that are doing well and ask what they did compared to the ones that aren't. Hint: They're better about wearing masks and shutting it down. To answer your specific questions: 1) Masks work but they are not 100% effective and there was concern for availability. Thus, shutting down the economy to help limit the amount of contact people would have if masks were unavailable or because of people who would refuse to wear them and carry on with their day meanwhile getting infected and infecting others. The seatbelt is a perfect comparison. Do you wear your seatbelt? It's not 100% effective but I imagine you do because it significantly reduces risk. Does that mean we also don't set speed limits? No, because you can do multiple things at once to try to protect people's lives. But let's take a different hypothetical - Say you need to get hit with 100 particles of coronavirus to get infected. Every infected person releases 100 particles. They only release 10 if they wear a mask. Would you rather have to be close to 1 person who is infected or 10 before getting sick? 2) There is a lag time between exposure and infection. it's as simple as that. More people are wearing masks now because they're scared. And guess what? Our rates of infection are slowing down. If people keep it up, these next few weeks will be better for new infections. If people relax, they'll start to go up again. A good several weeks to a month after the increase in masks is when you'll see the downturn in infection rates and it's starting to happen now.
Think of it this way. If a naked man pissed on your leg while you are also naked, you will be fully drenched in piss. If naked man pissed on your leg but you wore pants, you would have piss on your pants with some leakage on your leg. If man pissed toward your leg while you both are wearing pants, man in pants would have pissed mostly on himself. Masks affect range of droplets, if you still do not understand this then there is no hope for you.
