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No, Just No…New Rules of Social Distancing on Reopening
Per the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday:
As states across the country reopen and several report fresh outbreaks of the [Wuhan] coronavirus, many people are unsure how to navigate this confusing time. We asked experts about resuming a near-normal life while minimizing the risk of getting the virus that causes Covid-19.
Here is what some of those so-called experts said.
About how the virus is spread:
Health agencies like the CDC and WHO have long focused on preventing transmission of the virus through droplets, largely through coughing and sneezing. Now, many experts say, there is increasing evidence that it can be spread through smaller droplets, called aerosols, which are released and inhaled through breathing, talking, singing, and other activities. …aerosols can linger in the air for hours. Preventing transmission through these invisible particles is trickier and underscores the importance of face coverings and distance, air filtration and proper ventilation.
About optimal social distance:
Six feet is good, but 10 feet is better, says Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, who has warned about airborne transmission of the new coronavirus for months. …More space around people is always better.
About expanding our social circles:
Yes [expand social circles], particularly if you are gathering outside and taking the proper precautions in terms of distance and masks. …”The fewer contacts we have, the better“, Dr. Allen says….”I think you can start to expand your circle but it depends on how serious the other family is taking their precautions and if they have quarantined and locked down.”
About elevators:
If you can, take the stairs. If you can’t, don’t board a crowded elevator–unless the lobby is more crowded. Don’t touch buttons if possible, though it is fine to use your elbow or even fingers as long as you avoid touching your face before cleaning your hands.
About that summer vacation:
Yes! “We need to get out and about in the world for our mental health,” Dr. Allen says. “We should take advantage of the summer when we can be outdoors because we don’t know what the winter is going to bring.”
Choose destinations where it is easy to practice social distancing…can include national parks and beaches if not crowded. …places where you can bring your own food and supplies, or where there are options that make it easy to avoid crowded restaurants or grocery stores.
About camping:
If camping with people outside your immediate family, maintain the 6-feet distance even when outside, don’t share food and drinks, and try not to touch each other’s supplies (or wash and sanitize your hands before and after if you do).
If people actually try to observe all these rules, what families or friends would even want to get together at all? Yes, let’s all go outside, in our masks, maintaining a 6-10 foot distance from our friends (good luck talking with them, behind a mask from six feet away). No talking, singing, or breathing, for fear of spreading the virus. Who is going to sing from behind a mask? Who even believes anything out of the CDC/Deep State or (China-aligned) WHO these days? Going to that restaurant? How are you supposed to communicate your order to the server if you are both wearing masks and 6 feet apart? Outdoors is noisier than indoors, making communication even more difficult.
It seems to me that all these rules for avoiding contagion take most, if not all, of the fun out of life. Going outdoors would seem like an ordeal, not an excursion.
How will we be able to have a Ricochet meetup in the future? What will the Black Hills meetup look like in September, if everyone is masked and six feet apart? Will the group be able to go out anywhere to eat or drink, or be confined to the vacation house that Randy has already rented?
The rules for reopening are depressing, and enough to make me wonder if there will ever be a return to normal (what was normal in December 2019). Are people doomed to never getting close to their friends again? Is this what the so-called experts really want society to look like? I sure hope not.
Published in Healthcare
I don’t know that I haven’t. I got pretty sick back in December after a 36-hour trip through Japan to the East Coast.
But I do know this, just about every bit of the mainstream medical reporting has been contradicted from one week or two to the next, and the medical advice givers are part of the political establishment, and often have unsavory biases toward commercial interests. In fact, Fauci was partly responsible for funding the research that spawned the Wuhan flu. So by default I trust any other source than the pharmaceutical-politcal complex.
Yes. Reliable sources say…
If I’m going to be skeptical about vague, insufficiently explained “studies,” I’m going to be doubly skeptical about any assumptions about the origins of Sars-Cov-2. As for mainstream reporting, just say no. We don’t need it, and it’s politicized and sensationalized to the max. I have enough trouble keeping up with more reliable sources of information without getting into that cesspool.
Exactly. (I do consider banned reporting to have extra weight.)
I might as well go full CT (Conspiracy Theory) and post my fuller thoughts.
I consider banned reporting to have extra weight. Such as the early, successful Thai treatments. And highly-detailed scientific reporting, which doesn’t fit the vague and conflicting public narrative, and which the Press doesn’t readily report. Most specifically I’m thinking about descriptions of the virus by people who are in the field, and who give experienced opinions about the likelihood of such and such genetic changes happening in the wild.
Once, and if, you accept the possibility that this is a man-made virus, and that neither the US nor China want to report it as such, this opens up a powerful new reason for increased skepticism. And concurrent with this is what I see as the deliberate bad-mouthing, and the suppression of any “acceptable” scientific studies on, the efficacy of HCQ (with or without Zn).
And personally, if masks are the answer then everyone is eventually going to get the virus, because they are by nature and usage, minimally preventative; and they will just spread contracting the disease out over a couple of years. And in that time period, if this is a near-extinction level event that can be remedied only by a vaccine, my guess is that talk of the vaccine is a psychological placebo for the masses; because coronavirus vaccines have never? been produced that were effective.
And so if one is rushed to development within, say, two years, my guess is that it will be less than a 1% possibility of it being effective (let alone safe). In which case, masks will be mandatory for years, with concomitant business slow-downs, and blocks-long lines, until in a few years the virus has run its course on humanity.
Masks are a placebo.
And there’s this, from American Institute for Economic Research:
I don’t consider banned reporting to have extra weight. Some of it is genuine crap. I am suspicious, though, of institutions whose reporting is favored by Google. It took a while, but I blocked all of their YouTube videos from being recommended to me. Doesn’t mean I won’t look at a study that they cite when I find out about it through other people. But anymore, I don’t believe anything anybody says unless I have a citation and have a chance to study the paper. I don’t study them all thoroughly, and there are some for which I don’t have the background needed to study them thoroughly. But I can at least get the gist of the methodology, and discard from consideration those that are sketchy.
As I used to tell the people at my workplace back when I was working, and after I got too many decades away from their fields of research, I could generally tell the bad research from the good, but I was no longer able to tell the good from the really, really good work. But weasel talk is weasel talk no matter what the field.
You’re right that it is based on asymptomatic spread. You’re wrong that the evidence points to asymptomatic spread being a significant factor. Quite the opposite.
The only possible efficacy of masks is as a permanent option. Even then, it spreads deaths out but does not save lives. At a very high cost. But that is dubious. Asymptomatic spread is very unlikely, and is certainly not the primary mode of transmission.
That said, the curves all seem to look virtually the same, and it also appears that this thing is becoming less deadly, which means curves may peak lower. Far from being something that will be with us for years, this will likely take the path of other coronaviruses and become the next cold. Masks, if at all effective, will slow that while providing no benefit. The only possible legitimate use of masks is for the compromised, but likely not even then.
For the record, I have zero problem with anyone who chooses to wear a mask. I have long since stopped making a habit of taking offence to the personal decisions that people make.
My governor just criminalized NOT wearing masks, and for that he should be tarred and feathered. Do as you please, but be so kind as to allow me to do as I please.
Never has there been a more nonsensical mantra than “I wear a mask for you, you wear a mask for me.” What magical one-way masks! No, it is demagoguery in it’s purest form. Wear a mask for yourself, and leave me the hell alone!
Link? I’d love to read the full article.
Found it. What a fantastic article!
http://www.aier.org/article/smart-society-stupid-people/amp/
Read it twice. Then go out and buy Hayek. Just today, I said to my wife (re: blm, not covid, but the same applies): “this can only happen as a result of the fact that we long ago stopped educating our children.”
And Charles Bronson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eclyJUvXLGs
@Hammer, The
https://www.aier.org/article/smart-society-stupid-people/
That’s interesting and possibly important, but I don’t believe anything unless I’m provided with a citation for it.
We have no cures for viruses such as we have antibiotics which actually kill bacteria. The most antivirals can do is help, but not cure.
Yes, vaccines for viruses don’t attack or kill the virus directly, they just pre-program your own immune system on what to look for.
I was talking about cures, not prevention. And I don’t believe that they have found a vaccine for any coronoviruses in the many decades that they’ve been working on it. A vaccine will more than likely be a year and a half away, will be likely 10% effective at best, and in some way hurt at least 10% of those who are given it. Because there will be no effective vaccine, and they will have to come up with something.
There are some antiviral drugs. Not many, and not especially effective. They are not vaccines, though.
I’m disappointed that it has taken over a day to get a citation for an assertion made on Ricochet, and that I had to find it myself, but here is one. It’s in today’s MedCram update (#87):
This update reviews, among other things, a paper from NatureMedicine that compares virus shedding in asymptomatic vs symptomatic patients. I didn’t read the paper, as the MedCram update explained it about as well as I’d want it explained (starting at 8:44).
The research was done in a district in China, where asymptomatic patients were sent to the hospital. I haven’t heard of that being done here in the U.S.
Asymptomatic patients in this study were found to shed the virus for 19 days, vs only 14 days for symptomatic patients.
Also, on a worrying note for those of us who have been hoping for an easy path to herd immunity, it was found that 8 weeks after discharge from the hospital, that 40 percent of asymptomatic patients had no sar-cov-2 antibodies, vs 13 percent for symptomatic patients. That isn’t all there is to immunity, so this is not conclusive, but it doesn’t go in the good news column.
But there is also a reference to other data showing that immunity may not be long-lasting.
Many important antibiotics are not bacteriocidal but rather are bacteriostatic- yet are important in therapy.
There is a 2nd edition of the book (2020) for $2.00 more.
My prediction is that whether or not it is effective, if they can show by trials a vaccine is safe, they will sell it as compulsive or you lose some of your freedoms. Because socialism must control, and to retain authority and legitimacy, they must have produced something that they can say will save you, even if based on phoney science and if it doesn’t keep you from getting sick. This is a way they think they can command your allegiance to The Experts. Because, let’s face it, they don’t have any accomplishments so far, and they had to have HCQ forced down their throat because it wasn’t a money-maker for the pharmaceutical industry.
Name a vaccine that performs that poorly.
The politicization of the need and the speed for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine makes the testing results in both safety and efficacy questionable. Look at how Gardisil was rolled out.
We know that:
Studies can be made to say anything. And the ethics, and morals of the pharmaceutical companies can easily be overshadowed by economics.
Well, our governor in WA has just mandated face coverings statewide. From ST today: (subscriber link)
I hate to break this to the governor, but the tool doesn’t work. He essentially is wishing the virus to go away.
I wonder what the people of say, Walla Walla think of this.
That is an example of 3rd world corruption not an ineffectual vaccine- tetanus vaccine is widely known to be effective-just like corruption is endemic to the 3rd world & the institutions it controls.
This wasn’t third-world corruption, it was a regimen of first-world preplanned sterilization, administering a vaccine with an unlabeled component which had a different purpose, to test it’s efficacy. This was done by world-wide NGO in conjunction with the manufacturer. It was some obstreperous Catholic priests who figured it out and (IIRC) notified the government, and the government had the vaccines tested, noted the sterilizing ingredient added, and had the program stopped. But however it happened this was not the government buying knock-off vaccines for a kick-back. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
And I doubt this was a one-off. There is conflicting (mostly sanitized, I think) reporting of Bill Gates’ involvement in causing tens of thousands (or more) of cases of paralysis and death in children in India via testing a new polio vaccine.
And even with the flu vac, every other year or so I hear that the flu vaccine manufacturers guessed wrongly which upcoming strains would be prevalent that season, and were largely ineffective. But still millions of doses were sold and administered regardless.
At that level, not everyone cares about the patient.