People may rationalize these things because the alternative is to admit that one may have been wrong and/or caused harm to others in the process. People would rather downplay the harms caused by the pandemic to avoid guilt.
What a load of crock. My elderly father, terminal illness, was hit by the lockdown days before coming to visit us. He DOES NOT CARE about covid. He is dying anyways.
Then they wouldn't let our young son go play with friends or play on beach. This is lifetime impact stuff at 2-3.
When I wore an N95 mask I was told over and over it didn't help. Hello, it's an airborne disease, why wouldn't my mask help?
So we can't wear an N95, we CAN go to crowded grocery stores, we CAN'T go outside to the beach (huge volume of onshore fresh air and sunshine) and school is remote only (for a 2 year old this is TERRIBLE).
Worst of all, despite the talk of being "science driven" they have not been releasing age banded fatality rates by variant and a timely basis so folks can make informed decisions.
We got fed so much BS that the hit is going to be very long lasting in terms of credibility of the "establishment".
My father has a phd in a hard science. My wife has a phd in a hard science. If you are losing these folks, you are losing LOTS of folks.
That makes me wonder, what IS the fatality rate for 5 year olds. Seriously give me a table. Is it lower than just random accidents per 100?
Finally, why can't I wear a mask (N95 with ventilator) that is comfortable so easier to wear and protects me. ANd others can make their own decisions. Instead we spent huge amounts of effort trying to force people who may not have believed in mask wearing to wear masks, but these masks (cloth / surgical) were I suspect largely ineffective.
It sounds like you have been dealing with a lot of ineffective health theater. That is unfortunate. But that's a very different thing from "cloth/surgical masks are largely ineffective".
We are told that an N95 with a vent is "ineffective" and prohibited, but someone wearing a bandana is OK. That at least was the guidance for a long time.
So based on this, the cloth masks, bandana's, gators etc need to BEAT an N95 with an exhalation valve to be considered effective.
Of course, it turns out that an N95 with an exhalation valve is VERY good at protecting the wearer, and AS GOOD as all these others at protecting others.
"The findings in this report are based on tests of 13 FFR models from 10 different manufacturers. These findings show that FFRs with an exhalation valve provide respiratory protection to the wearer and can also reduce particle emissions to levels similar to or better than those provided by surgical masks, procedure masks, or cloth face coverings."
"An N95 filtering facepiece respirator will protect you and provide source control to protect others. A NIOSH-approved N95 filtering facepiece respirator with an exhalation valve offers the same protection to the wearer as one that does not have a valve. As source control, findings from NIOSH research suggest that, even without covering the valve, N95 respirators with exhalation valves provide the same or better source control than surgical masks, procedure masks, cloth masks, or fabric coverings."
So, my elderly parents trying to fly United Airlines are BANNED from wearing a comfortable N95 with an exhalation valve that would do a GREAT job protecting them. Instead they are told to wear a surgical mask (which does relatively little by comparison to a well fit N95) especially on INHALATION, where a surgical mask often passes air long the sides. And they sit next to folks barely wearing a light cloth mask that may no almost nothing.
Again, why not let folks make their own decisions? Concerned? At high risk? Let my elderly parents wear an N95 with exhalation valve, they can wear that comfortably for 3-4 hours if needed. Instead it is this theatre just as you describe, but based on so little actual research (and so unwilling to change with new research) that it is crazy.
As I understand it, masks with exhalation valves only exist because that design works fine for masks intended to protect the wearer from spray-paint (and similar industrial hazards). That design was never meant for use in a respiratory pandemic.
There's no shortage of normal (no valve) N95/N99 masks.
> based on this, the cloth masks, bandana's, gators etc need to BEAT an N95 with an exhalation valve to be considered effective
A good point, but it's not the only perspective on this.
If we consider that only some proportion of the population will be wearing N95/N99 masks, it benefits everyone to insist that those masks not have valves. Of course, if people aren't fully aware of the rules ahead of time, this is undermined.
Or a less utilitarian angle: to deliberately build (or buy) a mask with an exhalation valve is to deliberately introduce a feature which increases risk to other people, for no appreciable upside. There should be real push-back against these designs.
Seems to me the airlines/airports would do well to offer a vending machine of non-valve N95/N99 masks at reasonable prices. Do any of them do that?
And this is the issue. Folks like you are fighting a (losing) battle to force people to wear uncomfortable N99 masks on flights.
Heads up, plenty of folks have masks off their nose, off their mouth while eating, are wearing surgical masks, cloth masks, bandanas and other stuff that does nearly nothing.
"it benefits everyone to insist that those masks not have valves."
False. I can wear an N95 with a valve for hours. As a cited, the risk to OTHERS is as low as any of the allowed alternatives. More importantly, compliance is much easier.
And N95 with valves despite your claim that it doesn't work against things like covid DOES in fact do a fantastic job protecting wearer. That is why the CDC itself had to do a total uturn here and now both recommends them and specifically suggests they should not be blocked.
There should be real push back against this totally backwards approach in public health which by the way is not working, which is to try and force places folks in places like Florida and Texas to comply with absolutely over the top requirements (hint, they wont) while at the same not allowing folks like myself who want to wear a high protection comfortable mask (N95 with exhalation) to do so.
The public health folks and scientists truly lost their minds on this. I can go into a resteraunt TODAY and see people with NO MASKS AT ALL. And yet my N95 with an exhalation valve is considered some high crime, despite no actual real science saying it doesn't work or that it increases others risks.
And the upside is comfort, which is real. Why do folks NOT want to wear masks? Public health folks don't stop to ask this. One major reason if you would stop and ask is COMFORT!
I literally cite the CDC on masks with exhalation valves, and this is the "mental version of COVID".
I get it, I've been lectured to by folks like you repeatedly. And this is where public health credibility goes to die.
There seems to be a crazy desire of public health folks to preach and be surprior, put down others, even though their advice has been so wrong, and many of them are wrong on the actual science, the risks, the tradeoffs.
Cloth / surgical masks are largely ineffective. I recommend you listen to the explanations by infectious disease experts Dr. Monica Gandhi and Dr. Michael Osterholm.
> People would rather downplay the harms caused by the pandemic to avoid guilt.
The pandemic had nothing to do with keeping kids out of school for more than a year. That was all humans doing. The virus didn't wake up some morning and tell us to shut down down schools.
Lockdowns and government caused virtually all of the lasting side-effects from the last two years.
It is my strong opinion that history will not look kindly to almost every single thing humanity did the last two years. They were humans at their absolute worst... Making knee jerk decisions based on fear and panic never end up well...
My state in Australia had a lockdown where for a while it was not permitted to go outside for fitness by yourself. I can't imagine the physical and mental health damage this caused.
Had those in Canada too. There seemed to be the medical based rules (distancing, limited occupancy, washing hands) which made sense. And then there were the "me too, more must be better" types. For example, closing down provincial parks seemed odd. These parks are not rabbit warrens; but no, you can't. Going for a walk down a trail in an urban woodland park where distancing is not an issue - nope. What is/was sorely lacking was a common (medical) sense approach to the rules and I think that's what tipped the scale for some (many?) folks that there was overreach with the lockdown rules.
What state was that? I don't think we had that in NSW, or at least I never took notice of it and always just went out by myself for a walk even during the hard lock down days.
South Australia. It was actually only for a few days but they had planned to do it for much longer before they worked out the whole lockdown was based on a lie from one of the cases.
I agree with you, except, generally, when we say the pandemic caused something, we are referring to both the spread of the virus and the human and social response to it, including lockdowns. The lockdowns absolutely were avoidable and more harmful than helpful.
>Fatigue, cough, chest tightness, breathlessness, palpitations, myalgia and difficulty to focus are symptoms reported in long COVID. It could be related to organ damage, post viral syndrome, post-critical care syndrome and others.
Acknowledging the damage done by isolation doesn't mean you have to believe it was the wrong choice. In my country a million people have died of covid even with the isolations.
Was it "worth it"? I don't fucking know and I don't believe anyone else does either. Would it have been better to just let it rip and hope for the best? How many more would have died that way, and would our mental health be better for it? If it was, could we even live with that? If there was a button that would cure my depression and kill a stranger, I wouldn't push it.
EDIT: ok yeah I get it consensus is we should have pushed the button you can stop telling me now.
In the beginning, it was widely accepted that the virus would spread and ultimately infect most people. Yet, two weeks to flatten the curve somehow turned into two years of flailing about aimlessly with ineffective measures.
> Yet, two weeks to flatten the curve somehow turned into two years of flailing about aimlessly with ineffective measures.
1) Whenever someone mentions "flatten the curve" in that way, the implication always seems to be the CDC et. al should have had this novel disease figured out from day one, but that's an unreasonable expectation.
2) A big reason those measures were as not as effective as they could have been was that people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.
> people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.
As they should. I didn't sign up for two years of this nonsense. We didn't know any of it would work but we knew it could cause serious harm to society yet we choose to it anyway. I'm not some lab-rat who is forced into participating in an uncontrolled experiment performed by a few cherry picked "experts" and their political backers.
Most people are absolutely not at risk of serious covid issues. We knew this even in the first month or two of this adventure but it was taboo to discuss. You'd actively be shamed, mocked and humiliated if you ever discussed actual public data showing covid isn't the monster the media and self-appointed "experts" made it out to be.
It scares the crap out of me how many people willingly played along for two years. Do people not question anything?
> And we can thank those people for giving us one of the worse outcomes.
It takes a lot of hubris to suggest these mitigations did a damn thing. And it takes a lot of mental gymnastics and rationalization to completely ignore their very significant costs to society. We fucked kids, fucked small business owners, fucked hospitals, fucked the poor and working class, enriched the wealthy and old while stealing from the poor and young.
Life is too short to obey the orders of a handful of unelected, cherry-picked "experts". None of them could ever say the crap they had us do would work. We still can't say any of it worked in a meaningful way.
People flushed two years of their short fucking lives down the toilet to participate in an uncontrolled experiment... naw... I'll opt out, thanks.
It's no joke, I know people in their early-mid thirties ( they were somewhat late bloomers from career growth being stunted from the recession) who decided just to not have kids all together as a result of the lockdown/drama it's kind of sad
There is a pretty big difference between washing your hands and having the government shut down your means of earning a living, or not being able to take your kid to a playground for more than a year…
And I can label their actions as selfish too. Expecting society to shut down for years because they are afraid. I could also label people who kept kids out of school as incredibly cruel.
Also arrogant and naïve… thinking humans could somehow control or conquer a highly contagious respiratory virus outside of a vaccine. All these NPI’s are nothing more than modern rain dances. Humans tricking themselves into believing they can control Mother Nature… that they even have a right to try…
> And I can label their actions as selfish too. Expecting society to shut down for years because they are afraid
And if you base your labels on BS like your second sentence, people should probably put little stock in your judgement. You don't have any idea what you're talking about.
Oh really? Because that was what was expected by all these “experts”. We were told to focus on Covid spread to the exclusion of literally everything else. And yes, lots of people were afraid. The only reason to support these measures are fear and a blind trust in authority (and a very narrow and cheery picked band of authority, mind you). Every argument for lockdowns and restrictions are ultimately based on one or the other.
Dismiss my argument all you want. I’m arguing from good faith. It is very possible to see what happened in the last two years and disagree with every bit of it. The idea everybody was supposed to just fall in line and agree with “the narrative” is wishful thinking. People should disagree and you should listen to them…
> It scares the crap out of me how many people willingly played along for two years. Do people not question anything?
As one person that played along, my understanding was that by playing along, all of that would end earlier and we could go back to normal faster. This didn't happen, so I have learned my lesson for the next time.
> As one person that played along, my understanding was that by playing along, all of that would end earlier and we could go back to normal faster. This didn't happen, so I have learned my lesson for the next time.
If that's the lesson, it should be formulated: we can't have nice things because those will fuck it up, so I might as well join the assholes and let the fabric of society get a little more tattered.
That is indeed another way to see things. What would be your suggestion instead, keep being exploited by assholes all my life? Unfortunately I can't run solely on moral high ground, so this is not really possible for me.
I am not implying that. The expectation was that there would be a pandemic and that, unfortunately, a lot of people would die. The idea was to avoid preventable deaths stemming from an overwhelmed healthcare system. It then somehow turned into full blown moral panic, attempting to minimize deaths from infections at almost any cost - something that we never did, and still do not do, with any other disease.
> attempting to minimize deaths from infections at almost any cost - something that we never did, and still do not do, with any other disease.
So first off no, not "at almost any cost." The largest, most effective mitigations were never on the table: wind down the entire global economy into "safe mode" and focus only on life-making activities; send all workers home except the truly necessary. Instead we sent home office workers while labeling as essential the food, delivery, and retail workers we forced to continue to serve them.
Second, "we never did, and still do not do, with any other disease" well we fucking should. Every single preventable death is a tragedy of cosmic magnitude, and much disruption is justified in avoiding even one.
> Every single preventable death is a tragedy of cosmic magnitude, and much disruption is justified in avoiding even one.
Couldn’t disagree more. Death is inevitable, and most death is preventable. There is absolutely nothing cosmically tragic about death.
Government imposed disruption is only justified to a very measured extend. Think “seatbelt laws” and environmental and product safety regulations.
We are endowed by our creator with inalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Most choices a human makes along that path will involve a measure of risk of shortened lifespan.
The purpose of life for most people is not to live as long as possible. Certainly a government has no right or moral authority dictating that to anyone.
And the most glaring point is that even if the goal is altruistic (i.e. extend lifespans) the implementation was a ineffective totalitarian shit show than could actually in net total cost more quality adjusted life-years than it saved.
> people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.
This is what actually fucked the US and led to the million deaths there. I live in Ecuador and we had a bad go in the first few months of the pandemic, with near total lockdown and many deaths. Afterwards though, we went very hard with masks and reasonable restrictions on numbers of people in buildings at once and the cases/deaths have been very steady and controlled since then. Yes, masks really do work, if everyone actually wears them, our numbers have proven this. The biggest restriction has been that schools have shut or gone remote during the entire pandemic and only recently have in-person classes started back up. The US seems to have had it much much worse and it seems to be entirely self inflicted. I personally don't understand why the US didn't just give up after a few months once it was obvious that people wouldn't really do what it takes for success. It looks like the US has stayed on a path that everyone hates, but keeps getting no benefit from.
Ecuador had a much higher death rate than other countries which took less extreme measures. Sweden, for example, never shut down primary schools and never had much in the way of mask mandates yet they came through much better.
Pointing to EC as "the" way to handle this is not my point. The fact is, there were many paths available to the US that could have helped keep that million people from dying. We proved that masks work if people use them, that is a fact. Other strategies also can work. My point is, if the US could have gotten its people on the same page and actually done something rather than self sabotaging itself, it would be a completely different story. As it stands, it failed at this, and it has kept its ineffectual policies in place, to the detriment of social cohesion, but sadly not the virus.
Sweden had fewer per capita deaths than many other EU member states. You haven't provided any evidence that extensive pandemic control measures actually helped.
They didn't need to have it figured it out, just recognized that they didn't know what they're doing, were unable of being any help, and stayed quiet instead of blindly making things up.
> They didn't need to have it figured it out, just recognized that they didn't know what they're doing, were unable of being any help, and stayed quiet instead of blindly making things up.
You're basically advocating that they stop doing their jobs, and let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Think of it this way: Imagine you're a general in a war. It would be the most reckless kind of incompetence to refrain from giving any orders until you worked out a surefire plan to defeat the enemy, since that kind of inaction is literally a recipe for defeat. In the real world, to actually solve real problems, it's pretty much a requirement for responsible people to take action based on incomplete information and imperfect understanding.
That is not a useful analogy. Dealing with a public health crisis is not at all like fighting a war. Doing nothing is always an option, and is often a better option than acting on guesswork.
> Whenever someone mentions "flatten the curve" in that way, the implication always seems to be the CDC et. al should have had this novel disease figured out from day one, but that's an unreasonable expectation.
Then they shouldn't act like they have all the answers if they have no idea what is going on. This is exactly what all the "conspiracy theorists" expected, and it's exactly how it played out.
The CDC has seriously destroyed public faith in the government generally by pushing "two weeks to flatten the curve" and "100% effective vaccines" when, in reality, they did not have a handle on the situation.
Health authorities pretty much everywhere have been quite clear about data and conclusions constantly evolving, but people just don't read or process that far. Or only read the "CDC recommends XYZ" headline and then complain that nobody told them that this isn't 100% valid-forever fundamental laws. It's been staggering to see how many people will claim "but they never said this might change" while you can just go back and look at what actually was written at the time and see that it was of course said that things can and will be adjusted as the situation changes.
We all know the conclusions are constantly evolving. That's why all "health authorities" are useless. Being an authority in general doesn't help in a novel situation that they're unable to understand correctly.
> We all know the conclusions are constantly evolving. That's why all "health authorities" are useless.
That doesn't follow. Evolving conclusions are what you get and almost want (even better would be someone who guesses everything correctly beforehand, but ... that's not how it works) in a changing situation. That doesn't mean people drawing the conclusions are useless, nor do their conclusions have to be perfect to be useful - as long as they are better than the ones the people who'd have to draw them instead would. And at least around here, given the choice between politicians deciding with or without the health authorities involved, yeah, it's pretty obvious which one I want.
And besides, that wasn't even the point of the comment chain, but rather people claiming that conclusions are constantly evolving was somehow hidden.
> A big reason those measures were as not as effective as they could have been was that people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.
Communism is a wonderful thing, if only everyone and their dog were on the same page, we'd all live enlightened lives with every need fulfilled. It truly is great, on paper. "Scientific communism" has proven it, being an academic discipline for decades.
A big reason it has not happened as it could was that some people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one. They didn't want to see the light. So the implementors were forced to isolate, expulse or exterminate those people. Just 0.1% of population. And then another 0.5%. And then a few. And then some more.
So in reality, we have to deal with "just a few more bad apples" forever, having Gulags and Holodomors, and the communism itself "just around the corner" permanently.
For me the parallels between that and covid measures are crystal-clear. If something only works with 100% uptake and participation - the in reality it doesn't work. And all the "unintended" negative outcomes are on the conscience of those who pushed for these measures.
Would they have died anyway, or did they die with Covid? It’s the repeated question, together with “Didn’t the flu cause as many deaths”, and even if it was actual death, it’s a transfer of years of life from the young to the elderly.
Curiously the elderly seem to feel the most robbed. In my family, the young locked down while the elderly went about as normal.
Discussing this today, the predominant feeling amongst the over 70 cohort was that they had at best a few more years of health with everyone and didn’t want to spend that in lockdown.
I've used that argument and the counter is: depression due to lockdown can heal once lockdown is over. People dying because hospitals filled up and cases climbed is permanent.
Suicidal ideation among kids in the US is up 100%, suicide attempts are up 50%, actual suicides are up 20%.
Dead kids are also pretty &¤#&%#!" permanent.
And this is the thing that's been missing for the past two years: A sensible cost/benefit discussion. Hell, we haven't even acknowledged that every single pandemic rule and restriction and measure has a cost in human life. Instead, we've been getting shitty platitudes about how "kids are resilient", or "it's just two weeks", or "your surgery is non-essential and therefore postponed".
>> [Column A] People dying because hospitals filled up and cases climbed is permanent.
> [Column B] Dead kids are also pretty &¤#&%#!" permanent.
> And this is the thing that's been missing for the past two years: A sensible cost/benefit discussion.
So, which is higher: Column A or Column B? I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd be astounded if there wasn't at least and order of magnitude more COVID deaths during this pandemic than total number of teen suicides (i.e. all of them, not just the increase due to the pandemic).
These children will never fully recover their formative years. Also, what impact, if any, did the treatment of young people have on the ultimate death toll from this virus? We will never know, but I am afraid if we could, we would not like the answer.
Closig schools has been the core of the US pandemic influenza control strategy since the second Bush administration. There were detailed simulations showing that shutting schools is the only single intervention that can significantly affect R: schools are the best place for spreading influenza due to the very small spacing between seats in classrooms, the number of students who pack into schoolbusses daily, etc. (However, the studies were done before masking everyone was a possibility.)
Most parents with k-8 children should know this first-hand. Memory is fading but as I recall, two weeks after school year started we could pretty much expect a bug to come home. (continuing through out the winter months of the school year)
