Let’s wait & see about contact tracing.
It could be CT (contact tracing) is utilized where it’s needed most, instead of implemented state-wide or even nation-wide.
Ex: densely populated urban areas & at facilities where there are lots of people.
Just happened in CT:
So if the president’s CV-19 task force highly recommends wearing a mask to help with lessening the spread of the disease, you will disregard this because it doesn’t have a legitimate state interest?
I guess the president’s task force doesn’t read the same medical journals as you do?
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover.html
Let’s be honest hear, you have no intention of ever wearing a mask (in fact, if I recall you basically said that last month).
I watched it also. But I’m question its veracity based on the last slide of the video. It looks like it could be some sort of conspiracy theory website.
Nevertheless, there is an HR 6666. If it does the thing the video says it will on contact tracing apps, it will never pass the Senate or be signed by the president. I don’t think we’d go down the same road India has. That is troubling.
But on the general issue of contact tracing, Americans are extremely loathe to give up their privacy. If contact tracing becomes intrusive, people will refuse to be tested. If the contact tracers start tracking by cell phone GPS, people will leave the phones at home. If someone who tests positive gives another person’s name as a close contact and requires them to quarantine for 14 days, wouldn’t that person say that the other person was mistaken. How would due process apply? Could people lie about their contacts as mischief or revenge or some other motive?
Furthermore, positive cases of COVID are not being forced to quarantine now.
Certainly the potential for too much government control is there, but I’m not too worried at present.
While case fatality rate might tell us something about the quality of medical care received, it has little if any relevance for any individual trying to make an ex ante assessment of the risks posed by COVID.
For that purpose, IFR (infection fatality rate) is the better statistic. But even that statistic will overstate the actual risk. One of course first needs to catch the disease before IFR even comes into play. No virus is going to achieve 100% penetration of the population; there is always a normal epidemic curve in which infections drop off dramatically well before theoretic levels of herd immunity attach (for COVID, assuming average R0 of ~2.5, such immunity would attach at ~60%). Thus, IFR must be discounted even further by the probability that one is in the group that actually becomes infected.
Last, a proper risk assessment for any individual should take account of her idiosyncratic risk. An estimated 0.26% IFR across the entire population looks very different to a healthy 40-year old versus a 85-year old with multiple co-morbidities. And of course, the hypothesized idiosyncratic risk would then also need to be discounted by the probability of being in the group that catches the disease (my estimate for planning purposes was that 40% would be in that group, likely an overestimate).
As I have said multiple times on this and other threads, my early estimate of <0.1% risk of death for my cohort (healthy early 50s, male) was never something I was going to get overly concerned about. If anything, as the data have come in, I am more confident that the risk of fatality was always lower than that, but that is hindsight bias. Reading many comments on here and other threads, I can see that very few people think in these terms, but I was paid for many years to take risk-adjusted bets and this way of thinking just comes naturally for me.
The question each of us needs to answer is how much data do we need in order to think wearing a mask is a good idea.
Both you and I would love to have good scientific data to inform us if cloth masks do a lot of good, or some, or almost none, for covid. We haven’t got that data. How shall we proceed in its absence?
To me, the choice is clear. From anecdotal evidence and from the evidence that mask-wearing societies are doing better than non-maskers at controlling the spread of the virus, I conclude it’s more likely than not that masks have an effect, but it’s uncertain. So I wear a mask.
Suppose mask-wearing has an effect. I’m helping stop the spread of infectious disease. Yay me!
Suppose mask-wearing does nothing. Eh, so what? I’ve worn a mask for nothing. It hasn’t cost me much, just some time cutting up and sewing fabric, and a little time with a mildly annoying mask on my face. If I find out masks don’t work, I’ll stop wearing one and no harm done.
If I think there’s roughly a fifty-fifty chance masks work, I definitely want to wear one. I’d only want to not wear one if I were much surer they didn’t work, because the cost and inconvenience to me is so small and the potential gain so big.
YMMV.
@roycroftmom , this is some isolated data, but might be worth following. Things seem to be less dire than feared so far in Springfield.
The first 42 tests came back negative of customers whose stylists had Covid-19.
“Furthermore, positive cases of COVID are not being forced to quarantine now.
Certainly the potential for too much government control is there, but I’m not too worried at present.”
Are you sure? I’ve heard otherwise.
here’s what your link says, and it is consistent with everything else I’ve read:
The “guidance” here is advising the person to self-isolate, giving them advice on how to self-isolate, talking through it with them how they could self-isolate, and connecting them up with resources to help them self-isolate. Nobody is forced to self-isolate in the US at this point.
More on masks: several reports on countries and a hotspot in the US that decreased spread of covid19 by adopting the wearing of face masks. I especially like the report of mask use in a hospital setting that decreased the spread to health care workers. I don’t really get the attitude of people who want to open things up but are against wearing face masks, seems like as near universal use as possible would help get things moving faster maybe without as much chance for setbacks.
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/25410/20200421/austria-90-drop-coronavirus-cases-requiring-people-wear-face-masks.htm?fbclid=IwAR2txayEFJet0DZgiSNqa9ko2R9WwowVB1PcHfcy_cehjtLx-zayhuU6Kx4
The number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in Austria dropped from 90 to 10 cases per one million people, two weeks after the government required everyone to wear a face mask on April 6.
According to Daily Mail, "Austria seemingly managed to reverse its crisis by making masks compulsory on April 6, following a spike in infections in late March.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/opinion/facemasks-against-covid-19-why-slovakia-became-the-trailblazer/?fbclid=IwAR3zzydiAbrk2gjzwRR6v8jc2z6U_H77zVK6eRgpl4b2A76Mf36DBdQ1jk4
Slovakia remains at the bottom of the EU list when it comes to the number of total cases and, more importantly, deaths per million.
The first place in Europe where facemask wearing became compulsory in public transport was in Slovakia’s largest cities, and the regulation did not come up by chance. In fact, it had been the result of the honest and selfless work of several engaged people who collected and synthesised scientific data, and of the thoughtful assessment by decision-makers.
In the end, it may turn out that Slovakian representatives evaluated the available data on facemask wearing earlier and perhaps even better than many leading health agencies, including the World Health Organisation (WHO) or the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/23/brigham-and-womens-masks-infections?fbclid=IwAR35DdH37uf1ywJIzby4vzR3_pe4nrEAg0DiE5Y7cyzank36TcFaVXfTAk0
Brigham and Women’s epidemiologist Dr. Michael Klompas said the hospital mandated masks for all health care staffers on March 25, and extended the requirement to patients as well on April 6.
“When we first began our universal masking policy, we had 12 to 14 new infections per day among our health care workers,” he said. “And then after we instituted employee masking, that number dropped down to around eight.”
It dropped still further to about six new infections a day once patients had to wear masks, too.
This is by no means gold-plated evidence, Klompas said, and correlation is not causation, but it does suggest that wearing simple masks may help stem the spread of the virus, whether in a hospital or out in public.
Regarding mail: I sent masks to my MIL and SIL about 6 weeks ago by USPS, the ones to SIL finally made it to her about 3 weeks later ( I sent them by priority mail service). the ones to MIL have never been delivered and never started tracking. Sent the same day to the same state. Sent some more by Fed Ex and they got there in 3 days.
I have been getting some very late mail. A payment I sent in March for medical services was very delayed and they referred me to a debt collection agency which notice to me was very delayed by mail. Eventually worked out but yes, mail is very delayed here.
Although we all want non-medical cloth mask data and their effectiveness on covid-19 infection spread, we don’t have any.
We do have some good data showing that surgical type masks (not N95s) are more effective in decreasing the spread of infection than non-medical cloth masks. So, as surgical type masks are more widely available now, hopefully people will swap out their non-medical cloth masks for those.
I guess this is saying that maybe wearing any type of face mask does really help.
The results from the Springfield hairdressers are fantastic! The infected stylists were wearing masks, and so far they don’t seem to have infected their customers. I hope this good news continues. Were their masks surgical-style or were they cloth?
I wonder how the second stylist got infected. Did the first one infect the other? Did they take off masks when no customers were in the salon?
Iirc, the clients also were wearing masks. That is very important, too.
Wear a mask. It works. One doesn’t need to be a brain surgeon or an epidemiologist to understand this.
Don’t wear a mask when inside (or outside where you can’t social distance) and get the virus. Spread it to your friends and family who won’t wear masks, either. Enjoy.
The virus hasn’t gone anywhere. It is still present everywhere.
I think I am finally getting to better understand why some do not want to wear masks.
In their mind, it’s a “states rights” issue and they do not want the federal government to interfere with their individual and state rights. While I don’t agree with this, it now makes sense why there is so much resentment and push back for something that seems so trivial to me as wearing a mask.
Maybe I look at our nation differently, but since this pandemic hit, my main focus was on how best can we control this deadly disease, whether it was in my city, county, state, or the nation. I didn’t once think about if/how my freedoms, either individually or within the state, might be “controlled” by the federal government. Never even crossed my mind or seemed important at all.
I guess we all have a different frame of reference of what’s most important to us in a time of crisis…thanks for helping me understand where people’s beliefs are coming from…
Aren’t the mask wearing edicts coming from the Governors of the States and even local (county, city) officials? There has never been an edict on mask wearing from the Federal government.
There is a much simpler explanation, imo.
Lol, some people are selfish jerks?
My biggest beef was that my state was controlling me in ways that did nothing to prevent the spread of the disease. (Closing parks) But was failing to do things that would prevent the spread of disease (not closing nursing homes to COVID patients). That’s just plain incompetence.
Wearing a mask is a trivial thing and nothing to get my panties in a twist over. I’ll wear one inside public places.
A few pages back, I said the Missouri hair salon situation would be a great little science experiment as to the effectiveness of non medical face masks.
So far, it looks as though wearing face masks actually helps. We’ll need to keep watching this situation as it develops to see if any customers become infected, and if so, how many, and if there were other places these people could have been infected,
If it turns out that the infected stylists protected these customers from being infected by wearing the face masks, then I’m sure the people saying that face masks don’t work will start wearing them…
nah, they’ll come up with some other BS reason for disputing their use. Because at that point, it really comes down to this: wearing a face mask protects others, not me. Since I care about me and not you, I have no reason to wear one… but I’m glad you are because that protects the one I care about…ME!