Our neighborhood is very helpful and good about socially distancing. There are a few loud folks saying open everything up (and having small, unarmed protests driving around the state capitol), but most are going by what science, data and public health are saying, listening to the mayors and governor.
I think anyone in our neighborhood would help others as needed but so far, everyone seems ok.
I agree with your statement. I’m disappointed we don’t have scientific evidence on this. Why aren’t there more studies? If homemade masks don’t work at all, can we stop telling people to wear them?
Also, when are we going to have real data on who is testing positive? Is it so difficult for the government to ask each person tested (in the online “appointment request” ) what they do for a living or some simple checkboxes- work in a hospital? Work at a grocery store? Work in public transportation? Etc… Maybe we’d know where all the new infections are coming from during lockdown and can use that info.
A big hunch of mine (based on anecdotal evidence) is that the majority of these infections are coming from sharing indoor airspace with someone for a longer period of time. Not surfaces. We’ll soon see (hopefully).
the difference with Seul is that they tested very widely and I’m guessing mask usage was pretty high right away when the pandemic became known. They were very good at contact tracing and quarantine. I don’t know what they did with subways and if they shut those down at all.
I’m reminded again that the “ignore” feature is a good one.
‘obedient’ and Korea do not go together in my mind. Have you seen the moltov cocktail throwing students who protest various things fairly frequently over the years in recent decades?
Here is one such video.
Fell ponies… I honestly don’t know much about them other than the name of the breed. I googled and found out they tend to be medium or small ponies by modern show pony sizing. That’s still larger than Shetland ponies (had one of those as my first pony eons ago).
For English showing purposes, ponies are sized. In the US they must stand 14.2hh or less at the withers - point where neck meets back with a hh (hands high) being 4 inches. Many “horses” by most people’s standards are actually large ponies though over the past couple of decades breeding for larger horses has come in style.
I’m not sure in PA if it’s legal to sell mine right now or not. I haven’t looked. We did sell our only foal from last year just before our shut down started. We have one foal due relatively soon. The two year old will give that one some “young” company. I’m hoping to sell both in the fall just keeping my adults (assuming no one wants them) over the winter. My mom’s death and dealing with her estate put the ponies on hold for a couple of years - just took care of their needs really. They probably thought our farm sitters were in charge! It’s been relaxing getting back out with pony school teaching manners and exchanging the pony/human bond.
What I have read is that herd immunity will take years, not months, to achieve if it is possible.
The plans for when to open haven’t changed. They always included wide-spread rapid testing, contact tracing, and quarantine, which is what we would have ideally done in the very beginning when the virus first was known to be here. We had 6 weeks of the testing not getting going and even more than that of it always being behind current need (to this day). This has allowed the widespread spread of the virus. You can’t control it and get things going until you bring cases down and are ready to handle outbreaks so you don’t get more New Rochelle situations. it won’t be perfect but not doing it will be a disaster.
If you read the president’s plan, it calls for these things. If you listen to Bill Gates’ talk from 2015 (TED talk), he talks about these things. The WHO and experts were all talking about this stuff.
I wish we could just open safely now. We need that rapid testing and contact tracing available asap. CT, NY, and elsewhere are working on getting it going asap. That’s good as they need it. Other states are as well. I wish we had this coordinated at the national level and already in place but it is a big, big job and we were behind the spread so far. I hope we get ahead of it.
It isn’t about just opening now and preventing more damage now to the economy but being able to open this winter. If we let this get out of hand again by opening too soon, I think we are going to be in a lot worse situation in terms of being able to stay open, how long we would have to close, etc this coming fall/winter.
I think that in the future, we will prepare a lot better than we did.
I have never been to Korea, only to Fort Lee, NJ and to a few hagwons in the area. Korean children were on their best behavior. Did not see any Molotov cocktails.
I think it is already shown that masks prevent others from getting sick. This video shows people sneezing and the last part shows a sneeze blocked by a simple tissue. If a tissue can do this, I think homemade cotton masks will greatly cut down the virus transmission from coughing, talking, breathing, etc.
https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/best-sneeze-22258478
Here is a study of coughs with and without masks.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843945/
Respiratory virus shedding in exhaled breath and efficacy of face masks
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2
Study showing they are better than nothing
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24229526
and this
https://academic.oup.com/annweh/article/54/7/789/202744
also this
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/risa.13181
Immigrants and their kids are not necessarily representative of the population of their countries of origin.
Even if we lift all of the added government restrictions, the economy may not come back if people are too afraid of the virus to return to anything close to normal activity.
Koreans in Korea are not known as obedient, at least they were not when I lived in Japan and China. They were actually known as quite the opposite and their soccer team was infamous for fighting if they lost in competitions with other nations. You can google search Korean student protests and you will see a lot of such videos.
I don’t know about Ft Lee NJ and if those people were Americans or Koreans who were living here in the States. I don’t think obedient is a good description for Koreans in Korea.
“Umm, a one-second google search will yield this from WHO
“there is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from Covid-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection…’”
And a 2 second search will tell you that WHO issued a “ clarifying tweet” after outcry from many in the scientific community
‘Earlier today we tweeted about a new WHO scientific brief on “immunity passports”. The thread caused some concern & we would like to clarify:
We expect that most people who are infected with #COVID19 will develop an antibody response that will provide some level of protection.”
@Creekland thank you. Good luck in PA! My wife is a Pittsburgher - I love that area.
I agree that making people feel reassured things are safe enough and that there are plans in place for protection will help the economy.
I personally have to err on the side of more caution due to having immune deficiency. I won’t be among those rushing out to stores, restaurants, gatherings, or etc. I wish I could! I have had a hard time lately. Today I feel better but I felt pretty bad two days ago and only a bit better yesterday. I had been doing Ok but the stress started to get to me. I would love to go do something normal in some public place. It would feel very good. But the way things are now, I don’t know if I will feel safe again in my life time being in public places.
Already I have not felt safe in winter due to the cold and flu season. I mostly stay home and avoid public places. I don’t want to have to do this year round or for years or the rest of my life. I will continue working and thus my obsession with finding the most effective self-made masks possible. I think I found some pretty good ones that will actually work well (good suction and will filter well).
eventually immune deficient people who take injections or IV of IgG will probably have partial or good protection from antibodies in the IgG from the general population, so there is that hope, but that’s probably 2 years away.
I do hope that what I had for sickness in March was it, because if it was, that was not at all pleasant, but I survived it. If that wasn’t it, I am afraid of what will happen if and when I get it.
In the end, I will have to relax into this reality and deal with what happens. The same way we put on seat belts and drive, I will go back to work with my mask on and teach. I can only do so much. Whatever happens will happen.
I think there is a lot of wonderful innovation happening now that will help prevent the worst of the worst possible outcomes. People are creative and there are many smart people out there working hard on solutions. I’m both scared and hopeful about the future.
If I act overly emotional or have posted overly political things, i do apologize. It feels very personal to me because I feel truly powerless over this situation as someone with immune deficiency, with family I love who have asthma and other health issues. I don’t trust that decisions over when to open up will be made with people like us in mind so much as the average person. The most I can do is find a good mask for us.
The operative word is “expect”; in other words, they really do not know if, what and when.
This is hardly a ringing endorsement:
I wish there were comfortable and safe mask options for those of us with lung conditions. Masks tend to trap carbon dioxide for us and make our already difficult time breathing that much harder.
I am currently very fortunate both my kids are sheltering with us and doing many of our errands including shopping. Both H and I are very high risk of getting complications if we get covid-19. I will miss our kids when they move back to their rentals 1000s of miles away, even more so since I’m not sure when it will be safe for me and H to fly again.
So many unknowns. Too bad we can’t just he beamed from place to place like StarTrek!
I went and picked up take out yesterday. The restaurant had a notice asking people to only come in one at a time. The first person in line had no mask. The second person directly ahead of me had a mask. I wore a mask.
Neighbor two doors down had a little gathering - easily 4-5 families and their teenagers came over. They were throwing a football in the street, and grilling. I think they have a different level of risk than I do.
Did you watch the link to the video with the sneeze? I have found research that was a ringing endorsement but can’t find it righ this second. There is a group that studied the mechanics of sneezes and coughs with masks and modeled what would happen in societies that had certain percentages of people wearing masks. it was quite convincing to me. There were other studies as well. Why do doctors wear masks? They did the CDC recommend doctors to continue to wear masks if they ‘don’t work’? If we are talking about simple cotton t shirt masks, I think they have limited protective value themselves but will protect society as a whole if we all wear any type of mask. The tighter the seal the better for this. The tighter the weave of the fabric, too.