Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, has previously said the drug would set "a new standard of care" for Covid-19 patients.
Masks can reduce spread IF the right kind of mask is worn AND it's properly fitted to the face, which nearly none of the masks I've seen in public have been. They all put virons into the air. The virus is still spreading, and people are wearing masks. There was a CDC study that says 85% of infected people say the always or almost always wear a mask. Some are trying to debunk this study saying the sampling was not representative of the real US population. It's funny how sampling method is called into question now, but not when infection rate sampling was done.
About the "85% of infected people say they wear a mask" thing:
Given that most people wear masks routinely in public now, this is not surprising. Masks that we are wearing out and about are not perfect (or even particularly good) protection for healthy people; they are intended to reduce the spread from sick people outward. They are far from perfect at stopping spread but much better than nothing. And there are a lot of ways a healthy person can get infected such as through the eyes and so on.
What's more important would be a comparison of "how many people are getting sick each day versus how many more would be getting sick if we as a population were not wearing masks." While obviously we don't have a maskless control half of the country to compare with the other, masked half, it's pretty clear that masks are reducing the spread dramatically by several fold. This has been explored previously with various references; we'd be having several times the deaths per day we are seeing if nobody was wearing masks.
Even as it is, the recent "let's open up the country in time for the election" push that has been going on is having a pretty severe effect, particularly as combined with more people being indoors as the weather cools. It's going to be a rough winter.
Masks can reduce spread IF the right kind of mask is worn AND it's properly fitted to the face, which nearly none of the masks I've seen in public have been. They all put virons into the air. The virus is still spreading, and people are wearing masks. There was a CDC study that says 85% of infected people say the always or almost always wear a mask. Some are trying to debunk this study saying the sampling was not representative of the real US population. It's funny how sampling method is called into question now, but not when infection rate sampling was done.
Adults should not be worrying about this nonsense unless they have disposable income and are in need of shopping at a Adult Toy Shop for the Holiday Season
The same swiss cheese principle is used with commercial aircraft design and operating procedures, with the theory that if something that could cause an accident leaks through one layer of defense, it will be blocked by a downstream layer of defense.
The reality is that there is nothing upstream or downstream from a mask, especially an ill fitting, improperly worn, mask. A mask is a somewhat effective, single layer, defense at best. I know everyone will say "social distance" and "wash your hands" but that gets pretty tough to do while out and about in the real world. To me it's more like a screen door on a submarine rather than Swiss cheese.
It was feared by many to be the perfect winter storm: the 'twin-demic' of flu, which kills about 10,000 Britons every year, and a second deadly wave of Covid-19.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this system will suspend data collection for the 2020-21 influenza season. Data from previous seasons are available on FluView Interactive.
My conclusion has been that most of the deaths actually caused by covid (as opposed to the phony inflated numbers) have been accelerated and would have happened fairly soon anyway, mostly from influenza. Now the CDC comes along and hides upcoming flu death data, which fits right in to my horrible conspiracy theory. I imagine an alternate theory will be that all of the covid precautions are protecting people from the flu, and I accept this is true to at least some extent. To counter this I'd ask 2 questions:
1) Why is CDC really hiding the upcoming flu death data?
2) If the covid precautions greatly reduce flu deaths, shouldn't they be mandatory and permanent?
I've spent a lot of time following Chris Martensen over the months, and I wouldn't want to give even a hint of suggestion that I know more than he does about covid. Having said that, after at least 6 months I'm starting to feel about his conclusions the same way I feel about weather forecasts, that they can get significantly changed but somehow leave you feeling like the new forecast is what they were saying all along. I don't mean that to slam him, just an observation that his detail and self confidence can leave the impression that he's correct beyond a shadow of a doubt, and maybe that's not always the case.
www.cnbc.com
