Slide 2 has the Ohio R in different zones across the state from a press conference last week calculated through June 7th. Slightly less than 1 statewide. Gov frequently says we are balancing on a knife’s edge. https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/static/slides/06-16-20-Presser-Final.pdf
The Third Reich. That’s what people are thinking of. You can’t do experiments on humans that can kill people like that. It’s not ethical.
I hope the numbers of the tri-state areas stay the same or going down, but it could go up like CA, FL, Texas…as the states are opening up. I am worried we may jynx it by speaking too soon. Don’t criticize other states we may be in the same boat in a few weeks. Not directing at any post in particular, but the talk of this state vs. that state makes me nervous.
I agree that anyplace could be in a bad place if we get super spreaders and/or people aren’t being careful, do things where they are crowded together and not wearing masks, especially indoors, etc, and if those states are not doing enough to catch and track and control asymptomatic spread. I wish our whole country were doing all those things and controlling the outbreak well. We could open up so many more things if we had that everywhere.
Really suteiki77? Godwin’s law proves itself every time. You do realize as recently as March, the Surgeon General of the United States was claiming wearing a mask could increase your odds of contracting SARS-CoV-2, unless it was a N95 mask and had been properly fit tested.
I mean, we can’t have studies that could result in people dying as a result of participating in our study. That’s is what it sounds you are proposing be done. That’s not considered ethical research. We had things like that in this country and it’s banned now. Others who have replied above appear to know much more in detail about this than I do, but I know that much.
There is mask-related data predating the Surgeon General’s warning. Dr. Fauci was interviewed in the past few weeks and quoted as saying that the reason for the earlier warnings against wearing masks were out of concern for lack of PPE for medical professionals. Once there were more reports of asymptomatic spread that same Surgeon General recommended masks. The data sited then was from a 2014 MIT study, so not new data or information regarding viral spread. N95 do not work nearly as well if not worn properly but even a tissue will block a lot of viral particles from getting in the air, so an ill fitting mask will do so as well.
Being Jewish I’m kind of sensitive to the idea that unless you do experiments in a way that will result in actual human fatalities (as what you proposed almost certainly would) that it isn’t real science, my mind naturally went there. I haven’t ever brought up that type of thing prior to this on a message board discussion. But, yes, that is what it made me think about. What right would anyone have to do something that could kill not only participants, but people not participating in the study?
The Surgeon General’s position in March was masks don’t work unless they’re both N95 and fit tested. Effectively, he was saying his review of all the research before March 2020 showed cloth masks to be of zero benefit.
There is no reason to imagine that advice shouldn't change though, this petty approach is really nonsense when we see this is a rapidly moving situation, just because the gen pop has ADD and can't keep up doesn't mean we do the same. If your issue is with general leadership, there is going to be a big vote in November.
There’s quite a few unethical studies performed by the US government as well. Tuskegee is probably the most infamous, but there’s plenty more. The pandemic flu virus experiment mentioned below seems eerily on target.
“Shocking as it may seem, U.S. government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.“
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41811750/ns/health-health_care/t/ugly-past-us-human-experiments-uncovered/#.XvGe28oiehA
Anyway, back on topic I suspect there’s studies on mask efficacy in Japanese, Korean, or Chinese, but nobody’s bothered to translate them yet.
I understand @roethlisburger’s point here. But, @roethlisburger, do you yourself believe that masks are completely ineffective at preventing transmission?
Not roethIisburger, but while I certainly don’t think masks are ineffective, I do have questions about whether or not requirements that demand that they be worn for many hours at a time (outside of obviously high-risk settings like old age homes) are doing any good, given the likelihood of improper usage by even well-intentioned people.
Wearing a mask properly during a 15 minute/half hour shopping trip? Reasonable. Expecting children or, frankly, most of the members of any large group, to wear masks properly for a six hour stretch, especially in a hot classroom? Not going to happen, and not just because of people who scoff about the efficacy of masks. People are going to unconsciously touch masks to adjust them. They are going to go home and leave the mask out in a non-sterile environment. They aren’t going to switch them out frequently enough.
And that’s not even considering people who are more skeptical about or cavalier about masks, and are deliberately taking them off, or putting them under their noses, or when they get really hot and just need to breathe for a minute, or elementary-age kids who aren’t known for their ability or willingness to stringently follow difficult-to-enforce rules that make them uncomfortable.
Since wearing a mask improperly not only decreases effectiveness, but may actually be counterproductive, I think questions about the extent to which they are helpful under real world conditions are fair.
Maybe my suspicions are wrong, but the point is we just dont’know. I tend to think face-shields, even if they aren’t as effective in theory, might well be more effective in practice, assuming they confer even partial protection.
I didn’t know there are vented cloth masks. It seems they would take away the protection to others. I will have to google to see what one of these even looks like. I want to know who to get away from quickly!
That study design will only work in areas where the virus is circulating, the enrolled subjects are leaving their homes, and there is no mask wearing requirement.
Some would argue having a no mask arm is unethical…which after I read more posts has been pointed out repeatedly.
I wear vented cloth mask because it fits very tightly around my face - from under my chin to around my cheeks and nose. I also wear it with a PM2.5 filter, which filters air going out too. When I am wearing the mask I can’t blow out a candle. I have to admit that I have a harder time breathing when walking (fast).
This is exactly what is happening in the vaccine clinical trials. There are placebo arms and vaccinated arms. Assuming the vaccine is effective, enough people in the placebo arm have to get infected, enough so that the vaccine proves to be statistically significantly superior. If enough people in the placebo arm don’t get infected, the trial will fail.
So these vaccine trials have to be in areas where the virus is circulating (several vaccine companies have already expressed concerns about declining levels of virus in some locations, and have quickly added study sites in places like Brazil and South Africa). Then, the enrolled subjects have to go forth into the world…because the trials would also fail if the subjects are not leaving their homes.
In a country as unique as the US it’s hard to believe we ever stood any chance of keeping out this pandemic. With our massive international travel, our freedom of movement, our general lifestyle it was coming here and it was coming here with a vengeance from many areas of the globe.
And apparently it’s been here in large numbers well before it was thought to be. If that’s the case we’ve done pretty good against it in my opinion.
Early predictions showed this thing taking over areas of the country near the coast and spreading from there. In the end it will reach every corner in time. I think that’s why some areas are hit more at first then other areas become the next hot spot.
Here’s the article about how it was here in big numbers earlier.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article243721007.html
I picked up library books via curbside pickup the other day and they were giving out two masks with your books. People here wear them everywhere already.
@cap - what state / general area is this?
Mask wearing in my part of CT is just about 100% in public indoor places like stores, and the like. Outdoors, it’s only if people who one doesn’t know are closeby.
In cheerier news…three of our CT DMV offices (finally) opened yesterday fully, with the rest to follow! Yay hooray since we have a kid who moved here from another state and needs to change that driver’s license, car registration and register to vote…all to be done at the DMV. I told her to learn to knit and take a project…and a meal.