A Sense of Doubt blog post #2257 - DON'T BE A MASK-HOLE - slow the re-opening down

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2257 - DON'T BE A MASK-HOLE - slow the re-opening down

And now, a public service announcement.


https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2021/03/premature-reopening-could-bring-another-covid-catastrophe-fauci-warns/

Premature Reopening Could Bring Another COVID Catastrophe, Fauci Warns

British variant spreading fast as Spring Break looms.

• 

  EDWIN RIOS

  ReporterBio | Follow

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens as President Joe Biden speaks during an event to commemorate the 50 millionth COVID-19 shot.Evan Vucci/AP

On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, echoed a warning that rolling back public health restrictions on mask-wearing and mass gatherings too quickly could lead to a spike in COVID cases as the nation races to vaccinate millions of people each day and a more contagious and potentially dangerous COVID variant spreads throughout the United States.

As of Sunday, the United States reported, on average, 60,000 new COVID cases and 2,000 deaths per day. Although the numbers have declined in recent weeks, the decline seems to be leveling off too early. “Historically if you look at the different surges, plateauing at a level of 60,000 to 70,000 cases per day is not an acceptable level,” Fauci said. He pointed to a disturbing trend in Europe, where cases have increased 9 percent in the last week after a plateau.

Decisions this week from states such as Texas and Mississippi to end mask mandates and reopen businesses risk increasing the rate of spread. A British variant of the virus, known as B.1.1.7, is reportedly doubling its share of new US cases every 10 days. Researchers predicted that B.1.1.7 could become the predominant strain of the virus in March. “We do want to come back carefully and slowly about pulling back on mitigation methods, but don’t turn the switch on and off,” Fauci said on Face the Nation on Sunday. “It would be risky to have yet another surge.”

 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to release guidelines for how vaccinated people are supposed to interact with others “within the next couple of days,” Fauci noted. Currently, the United States has so far administered nearly 88 million vaccines, at a rate of 2 million people per day. “You have more and more protection of individuals but also communities. We need to hang in there a bit longer,” Fauci said. “It’s not going to be like this indefinitely.”

Although vaccinations are taking place at a rapid clip, the rollout has proven as uneven as COVID’s impact on communities of color. Black, Latino, and Native Americans have been dying of COVID-19 at twice the rate of white Americans. The disparities are even worse for younger people. A New York Times analysis found that Black and Latino people have been vaccinated at no more than half the rate of white people. Fauci noted that doses would dramatically increase in the coming months, and Biden said on Saturday that the nation would have enough for every adult by mid-May, pushing up his previous timeline.

https://www.wonkette.com/yes-of-course-we-still-need-masks-and-yes-they-really-work

Yes Masks Work, They're Still A Good Idea, Don't Be A Jerk

Doktor Zoom

April 15, 2021 10:03 AM

 

Photo: Anthony Quintano, July 2020. Creative Commons license 2.0

This column is brought to you courtesy of the "pro-life" person who harangued Rebecca about masks the other day, arguing that really, two percent of old people dying is no big deal, and also claiming, wrongly, that "masks and lockdowns saved zero people," and Yr Editrix is still piqued about it.

It's also brought to you by our vague awareness that Tucker Carlson said another stupid Tuesday night, claiming that maybe the reason Joe Biden wants people to keep wearing masks is that the vaccines really don't work after all, and not the more obvious fact that we still haven't vaccinated half of US adults yet, so the virus is still spreading, stupid Tucker. So let's just do a quick roundup that we're calling "Yes Masks Work, They're Still A Good Idea, Don't Be A Jerk."

Aussie Rules Maskball

For starters, let's look at this neat story from ABC — the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the US network — about new research that indicates that last year in Victoria, the state where Australia's not-capital of Melbourne lives, the combination of a mask mandate and a very strict lockdown pretty much shut down what was shaping up to be a second wave of infections. The researchers' computer modeling suggests that Victoria's mandatory mask order, which was widely complied with, was the biggest single factor in preventing the state's hospitals from being overwhelmed, and that when combined with the lockdown, quickly brought overall infection rates down sharply. Also, "Victoria's Mandatory Mask Order" is the single least sexy lingerie shop in Melbourne's District Docklands shopping mall.

The study, which is not yet peer-reviewed, so don't go dressing it in a little cap and gown yet, was done by epidemiologists and public health experts at Monash University and James Cook University.

Lead author James Trauer from Monash University's school of public health and preventative medicine said face masks were "probably the number one effect". [...]

"Prior to July 23rd, we saw that the effective reproduction number [that's the average number of new cases resulting from a single infected person — Dok] was still significantly above one, so that means that the epidemic will be going up.

"As the face covering policy came through, there was this real step change to the proportion of people using face coverings and that brought the effective reproduction number down below one."

Deborah Cromer, a senior research fellow at the Kirby Institute in New South Wales, said that controlling transmission by keeping people apart, by covering up their major face holes, or both, was key to stopping the outbreak.

"In Australia, in New Zealand we saw what was happening with the rest of the world — where they hoped and waited it hasn't worked so well.

"By going hard early it stops it taking hold and it becomes much easier for public health officials to control."

She said Melbourne was one of the only places in the world that effectively managed to "crush a second wave" of the disease.

"It wasn't until they put these measures into place that we saw that turn around in the number of new cases."

Trauer added that Melbourne made for a dramatic case study, because the mask mandate was declared while cases were steadily rising, and because the mandate saw wide, nearly instant compliance, with mask wearing going from 13 percent to 90 percent once it was mandated. And since wearing masks is such a simple thing to do for people who are not Americans glued to Fox News, he said it should be the first measure introduced during coronavirus outbreaks.

"If you can imagine a situation where you didn't mandate masks and … you continued on with life as previous, I think we would have had months of very, very high rates and thousands of deaths.

On the other hand, the pro-life guy on Twitter said the Australian and New Zealand experiences mean nothing in America, because those people over there were OK with "tyrannical rule" and happy to exchange their freedom for safety.

OK, But What If You've Been Vaccinated Huh?

Eve Peyser at New York magazine chatted with Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science, about why Joe Biden is still wearing a mask even though he's been fully vaccinated for a while now. Dr. Rasmussen said she wouldn't presume to know Biden's mind, but she said it makes sense for leaders to model healthy behavior, especially given that we aren't even halfway to full vaccination of the adult population in the US. So even though from a medical standpoint, the CDC data show that vaccines provide very good protection not just from illness, but also from infection, it still makes sense for vaccinated folks to keep masking up, if only for the sake of emphasizing the need for unvaccinated folks to take precautions:

Rather than having a two-tiered society in which vaccinated people, the minority of people, are able to start unmasking and living their lives, I think it's good practice for President Biden to continue wearing that mask and doing his part to model what people should be doing.

But when does Dr. Rasmussen think Biden will stop wearing his mask?

When the CDC makes a recommendation that if you're vaccinated, you can start going unmasked in public spaces, that's probably when I would imagine President Biden will also begin to go unmasked in public spaces because he's been vaccinated.

She also noted that when it comes to Republicans who say they'll never ever get vaccinated or wear masks, it almost doesn't matter whether Biden wears a mask or not — they made up their minds long ago. But for more persuadable non-jackholes, Biden's modeling good behavior is probably still a very good idea. Particularly since the previous guy was such a flaming example of what not to do.

Rasmussen also noted that the CDC has already made clear it's OK for vaccinated people to be with unvaccinated folks in home settings, as long as the unvaccinated people don't have other risk factors, and she thinks as more Americans are vaccinated, CDC guidelines will evolve.

For his part, Dr. Anthony Fauci says he's very comfortable socializing with his neighbors indoors, but it's going to be a good long while before he eats out at a restaurant or goes to a movie theater: "I don't think I would — even if I'm vaccinated — go into an indoor, crowded place where people are not wearing masks."

We're betting he wouldn't like hanging out with the pro-lifer guy much at all. Lots of respiratory droplets probably coming off that guy.

[ABC (the Australian one) / New York / WebMD/ Photo: Anthony Quintano, Creative Commons license 2.0]

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2104.23 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2121 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.