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Delta a Blessing in Disguise?
Delta a blessing? I am not often accused of being a raging optimist/Pollyanna type. But I really am seeing a bright silver lining around the Indian variant.
Here is what we know:
First, unlike variant alpha which was really fiercely “seasonal” within defined regions, delta is causing a noticeable simultaneous “case” increase all over the US (even more in the southern US because late July-early August is the southern COVID “seasonality” period.) indicating a big difference in contagiousness. That may seem like bad news but…
Second, fatalities per case are extremely low compared to all previous waves.
And a glance at the excess deaths running chart from CDC–much lower compared to this time last year:
Third, hospitalizations remain remarkably low despite the increase in reported COVID-positives cases all over:
Fourth, antibodies are being mass-produced! We are adding lots of new COVID-antibody-possessing Americans at a very low cost in illness and/or death and doing so at a faster pace. Delta and the vaccines are parallel tracks toward broader resistance and immunity. Some real scientists might even step forward and say that while COVID-19 will hang around indefinitely as an endemic nuisance, the chances of another life-threatening dangerous surge are rapidly approaching zilch if not already there.
ADDED BONUS: What little credibility the CDC had left has been squandered over its response to the Delta wave. The CDC decided to base new mask guidance on a weird interpretation of data resulting from an enthusiastic non-socially distanced gathering of tens of thousands of gay guys in P-town MA for “Bear Week.” That should have been the ultimate superspreader event but instead resulted in only 5-7 hospitalizations (some of which may have been for other medical reasons but accompanied by a positive COVID test) and zero deaths. Delta spread widely with minimal or no adverse effects among the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. No big subsequent COVID surge in the surrounding community. The entire state of Massachusetts is still averaging only 2-5 COVID deaths per day.
The CDC/media panic porn addiction contrary to reality, science, and common sense will be their undoing.
So an increasing mild, rapidly spreading variant is rapidly pulling us toward the clear end of the pandemic and hopefully to the dawn of accountability and retribution. Masks off, businesses and schools open, and pitchforks out.
Published in General
Yea but, my countertops are cleaner then they have ever been.
I think this is where the general public stands on this issue, having listened to the debate over the past 18 months. I think that’s why so many people favor masks even though there is some question about whether and/or to what extent they are protective.
There is an innate human aversion to other people’s coughing and sneezing. We are hardwired to recoil in the presence of coughs and sneezes. We have been teaching kids to sneeze into their elbows for several decades now. When my son was in middle school, he and his friends would play the “sneeze game,” where they would stand behind one of their friends who was sitting at a desk and they would pretend to cough, just to watch the victim jump out of his seat. :-)
I assume that God gave us that strong reflex for a purpose.
On the other hand, neither the mask nor coughing into one’s elbow is very protective in reality, so I am with the 50 percent of the public that is grateful for the vaccines.
Staying home is probably the best answer for very vulnerable people who cannot be vaccinated for some reason. When my son was born thirty years ago, there was a bad pneumonia virus in circulation in the community. My pediatrician was adamant that I keep the new baby out of all crowded situations and closed-air-system places for six months. Some of what the CDC and others have been saying has been standard advice for decades.
The pneumonia viruses are microscopic beasts.
@MiMac, this is all lovely. But the question at issue is: WHY DIDN’T MASK MANDATES SHOW ANY MEASURABLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POPULATIONS IN IDENTICAL COVID SEASONALITY REGIONS WHERE THERE WERE DIFFERENT MASK POLICIES IN PLACE?
You keep arguing brilliantly and in-depth about why masks should work but you never provide a cogent answer as to why the mandates did not work anywhere. Why are the case curves and numbers relentlessly similar in comparable jurisdictions with very different NPI policies?
I have seen lots of studies claiming mask effectiveness of 70-80% or higher (@Roderic provided a bunch). And yet, there was no difference between the two groups in the Danish study. Discussing levels of significance is nice but surely if masks are that effective, there should have been at least some noticeable difference before we did any deeper number crunching.
At one time you cited the Kansas study comparing masked versus mask-free counties which we now know with certainty did not hold up–no difference over time. The maskless Swedes wound up with the identical per million incidence of COVID deaths in exactly the same time periods as Germany where mask compliance was reported as being invariably over 90%.
Is the paradigm of lots of droplets and microloogies as the vehicle of transmission wrong? Is that which masks block not the primary means of transmission? I don’t have any answers but the complete lack of curiosity from so many people with the training, skill, and wit to pursue this exact question is frustrating. With more than a year of data from the entire world at hand, why didn’t any NPIs (mask mandates in particular) have any quantifiable effect? Why isn’t that the starting point?
In a nutshell: (1) It is undeniable that masking has been shown to significantly block immediate transmission of exhaled viral particles, especially if contained within larger exhalates (even though viruses are generally much smaller than the fabric openings in most mask materials in general use). (2) It is undeniable that mask-mandates as a general suppression strategy have shown absolutely no quantifiable effect in controlling or reducing the spread of COVID-19.
Therefore, aren’t we clearly missing something about the nature of transmission of COVID-19 precisely because masks should have worked but did not? Now, can we move on to the real question?
This is where I stand. I don’t mind wearing a mask when I’m inside someone’s business shopping, for instance, but as soon as I go outside I take it off because the mask impairs my sense of breathing and makes me uncomfortable. Wear it when necessary don’t wear it when not necessary.
I am with you 100% on that, Bob. You and I are retired. Our mask options are much greater than those folks still working and wearing a mask 9 or 10 hours a day–every day.
I agree that politicians are politically vulnerable if they don’t go along with the guidance of “health experts” but at what point do we acknowledge that our “health experts” have done an abysmal job and don’t appear to have even mastered the basic science.
Roderic, at what point does your quasi-religious deference to raw credentialism give way to an empirical look at actual “expert” performance? Their collective guidance has been one long disastrous farce whose sole purpose is to try to protect failed policy choices and create the illusion of control–and provide cover for the politicians who relied on them. That guidance was not even consistent with accepted pre-existing pandemic-handling protocols.
Such data exists but it is generally for more restricted populations. Large aggregated data from statewide/countywide surveys have too many uncontrolled variables to be very useful-but even some of those support mask use (https://www.pnas.org/content/117/51/32293). Better data is from hospitals-for example during the 1st wave a Boston hospital adopted mandatory masks for personnel and the infection rate for staff DECLINED while the community rate increased (https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/70/8/606/5932361)- you do not expect an uncontrollable pandemic to spare hospital staff in the early phases-you expect the staff to be harder hit (hence one justification for the “flatten the curve” slogan-since abused). Many other studies support the use of masks-https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/70/8/606/5932361. Obviously, proper compliance in the community is a factor in mask effectiveness-but arguing masks didn’t work b/c the virus spread is to create a hypothetical counterfactual that is unverifiable-ie the spread could easily have been worse w/o masks. But masks are nowhere near as important as a successful vaccination program. And mandating community wearing of masks BY the vaccinated to protect those who refuse to avail themselves of the best mitigation strategy is unreasonable. But being reasonable will not restrain the Biden administration since they do not think the constitution nor the Supreme Court should restrain them-see yesterday’s Commentary article Noah Rothman.
Isn’t this just a description of how absolute socialism has failed every time it has been tried?
On that note . . .
Our public health experts are proving to be dangerous to public health.
Florida will be back on the case-numbers downswing within two weeks. Deaths are remaining lower than previous waves. Hospitalizations will likely increase. Articles calling DeSantis a mass murderer will increase and level off by October.
And then skyrocket again for the 2022 election cycle, then even moreso for 2024.
I keep returning in my mind to the larger question concerning masks. The reason the issue became so contentious in the first place is that people don’t like wearing them. There were a hundred counter-virus measures on the table that states and cities and towns considered. They threw out the other 99 because they believed the public either couldn’t or wouldn’t comply with them or implement them. I think at this point, since the efficacy of wearing masks is questionable and most people don’t like wearing them, the public health officials need to put this measure in the “intolerable” column. As Captain Kirk was fond of saying to Scottie and Dr. Spock, “I don’t like those solutions. Bring me another one.” :-)
If there’s anything to learn from the Provincetown outbreak, perhaps the most effective measure is simply reasonable social distancing for a while. Perhaps the CDC can issue “virus reports” resembling weather reports: “It’s going to rain today.” People decide on their own whether or not to carry an umbrella. :-) Or their air-quality reports: “It’s hazy today.” People with asthma decide whether or not to risk going outside.
I’d like to see the CDC clarify their function and relationship to the American public so that it more closely resembles the National Weather Service: Just do the best job on the planet of amassing and processing accurate data. Leave the rest to us.
But who would violate the property rights of landlords, then?
Uh, how about there are more obese Americans than obese in other advanced developed nations. How about some individual responsibility. I thought that was a conservative thing.
I knew I would get the old “but how do you know it would have been worse but for [this or that policy] which is a hell of a lot more of a counter-factual guess than merely asking to see a statistical difference between actual data sets.
All I want was for someone to show me two COVID-similar jurisdictions (the Hope-Simpson “seasonality” model has been vindicated in spades) with different policy choices where any intervention made one different from the other. A general policy applied to a large, entire population but not another is not about uncontrolled variables. If masks are indeed 70-80% effective, it would take a hell of a lot of conflicting variance in other factors not to see a difference in outcomes.
Also, I’m not all that persuaded by that Boston hospital personnel study. What I saw in the graph is that COVID peaked earlier among hospital workers than the general public for obvious reasons of more exposure earlier in the wave. Subsequent decline was more gradual than you might expect from a sudden effective intervention.
I also have issues with studies among medical workers (speaking of variables) whose exposure history and cross-reactive immunity is likely to be somewhat atypical. Not wearing street clothes at work, better air filtration, more education, and instinctive health risk avoidance.. are these the conditions and the sorts of people who are the kinds of primo transmitters the virus is looking for?
But I come back to the fundamental issue as to why the mask mandates have has so little effect: “uncontrolled variables” seems like more of a dodge and a BS response to the fundamental questions.
All the health experts in my office don’t agree about what should be done to protect the public.
Incidentally, I run a solo office.
There are probably dozens of viruses that do exactly this. We’ve only recently discovered a few of them.
You mean to say that neither you nor your shadow can agree? My suggestion…you both better go see a doctor!
Exxcept Masks and Lockdowns don’t work to slow the spread of the virus.
https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/
Masks don’t work. Period.
Lock downs did not work. They did not change the spread
They don’t.
See my post above.
Or don’t, and continue to demand others mask up to make you feel better.
Masks and lockdowns don’t work because they have been tried and not change the trajectory of the virus when compared to others who did neither.
That is fact. From a Friend of Mine in the industry with his quotes on the information:
Finally:
So, folks, no matter that doctor’s wear masks, or that someone in a lab showed they “work”, no matter the models on lockdowns, no matter the in vitro study, the reality is when we compare the mask mandates vs. no mask mandates, and extreme lockdowns vs. no extreme lockdowns, we see there is no difference in effect. None. Nada.
The site isn’t a reliable source of information as per one of my previous posts above….if you wish to be deceived then by all means believe their articles- they misrepresent & misinterpret medical articles on a regular basis.
Somehow, that only works in one direction with you.
Besides, I have my own source, who is reliable, as “in the industry” reliable. See above.
Masks and Lockdowns don’t change things. At all.
And there is nothing you can say to change the facts. Sorry, but your feelings are not facts.
Ah, no. Ask Sweden.
That’s a really broad statement about “all the health experts in all the developed countries”. If they all jumped off a cliff, would you follow? Were they all on board with triple-masking? How about avoiding Trump’s vaccine? How about taking the vaccine, if they turn out to have negative long-term effects?
If we’re going to be talking about garbage, let’s be careful about slinging it.
Hospitals, unlike the pharma companies, are liable. So they’re going to default to something that’s mostly annoying, cheap, and is at best mildly effective, mostly by preventing sneezing from going everywhere.
But that’s not the rest of humanity. I only have casual contact with people. I do not have regular contact, close contact, with sick people, administer to them, etc.
It’s 2 different things. Completely. If all truck drivers wore them, would that mean hospital workers should all wear them? No, for obvious reasons.
Well here you are! (I have posted this above in an earlier response):
Significance
Mitigating the spread of COVID-19 is the objective of most governments. It is of utmost importance to understand how effective various public health measures are. We study the effectiveness of face masks. We employ public regional data about reported severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infections for Germany. As face masks became mandatory at different points in time across German regions, we can compare the rise in infections in regions with masks and regions without masks. Weighing various estimates, we conclude that 20 d after becoming mandatory face masks have reduced the number of new infections by around 45%. As economic costs are close to zero compared to other public health measures, masks seem to be a cost-effective means to combat COVID-19.
The best analysis of the mask issue that I have read was written by our own Dr. Bastiat last May: “It Doesn’t Matter if Masks Work.”
I don’t think they are a trustworthy source ;)
More seriously, the charts I posted above tell me all the story I need for America.
I will not wear a mask to make someone else feel better.
I will not do it. And MiMac, people like you are going to have to put a gun to my head to force me to do it. Are you prepared to shoot me?