Coronavirus: Already In a Neighborhood Near You

[Motown Bombers]

1 hour ago, Biff Mayhem said:

If worn correctly, a cloth mask is mildly effective but let's be real here for just a second: how many people on a plance are wearing them correctly? Optimistically three. Pragmatically none. They're off for meals and drinking. They're constantly being adjusted which will cause the hands (the germ petri dish) to constantly be near the eyes. It's silly and a charade on planes at this point, which, btw, have the best filtration system currently available.

Again, you are always welcome to wear yours. No one is stopping you just like no one is stopping you from driving to your destination instead either.

 

No one is stopping someone who doesn't want to wear their mask from driving to their destination. Just be sure to use your seatbelt or else you could face a financial consequence from the government. 

[Tiger337]

On 4/14/2022 at 3:17 PM, buddha said:

you may have had it already and not even known it.

I may have gotten it in January when everybody was getting the Omicron strain.  A couple of family members (who I didn't have a lot of contact with) tested positive and I got a cold.  I thought it was better just to stay home rather than run around trying to get a test.  

[CMRivdogs]

6 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

No one is stopping someone who doesn't want to wear their mask from driving to their destination. Just be sure to use your seatbelt or else you could face a financial consequence from the government. 

Except they haven't finished that bridge to Hawaii 

[Tigerbomb13]

3 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I may have gotten it in January when everybody was getting the Omicron strain.  A couple of family members (who I didn't have a lot of contact with) tested positive and I got a cold.  I thought it was better just to stay home rather than run around trying to get a test.  

I thought for sure I had it in January, right when Omicron had peaked. Two PCR tests told me otherwise. 

[buddha]

3 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Except they haven't finished that bridge to Hawaii 

or a speed car that can take me to cali in less than 5 hours.

if there is little to no scientific evidence to support a mask mandate on planes, then why have it?  its not just a minor inconvenience to wear an n95 for 4 hours.  its hard to breathe.  if there isnt any point in doing it, then they should rescind the rule.

and in reality, they were going to rescind it.  but the cdc is a bureaucracy and they havent gotten around to it yet.  the courts beat them to it.  the biden administration will wait a couple weeks and see how this goes and test the public's reaction and then decide whether to pursue an appeal.

[Motown Bombers]

If it's hard to breath with a little piece of cloth over your face, you could wear an oxygen mask instead. 

[Motown Bombers]

I drove to California before. I have to say, I wish I had a mask when I drove through Nebraska. The whole state smelled like cow shit. 

[Tiger337]

8 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

If it's hard to breath with a little piece of cloth over your face, you could wear an oxygen mask instead. 

I wear a mask whenever it is required, but I find them uncomfortable.  I never get used to them.  

[Tigeraholic1]

 

I don't agree with Duce Bigalow on most things but this is interesting....

[pfife]

1 hour ago, buddha said:

do you think we should have mask mandates in bars?

Not sure how that's related to whether the tracing of covid transmission in airplanes is efficacious but maybe that's the point of this question

[pfife]

1 hour ago, buddha said:

if there is little to no scientific evidence to support a mask mandate on planes, then why have it?

I asked direct questions about the purported scientific evidence you claimed and you changed the topic to whether I think masks should be mandated in bars.    

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

Of course there is also a counter arg that BA-2 is SO contagious masking is of less value anyway. We certainly are seeing a mini-surge in student cases despite the retention of the mask mandate in classroom, but even that is hard to tease out because mask mandates have been dropped on the rest of campus. And the population will scatter after this week so any more potential to study the population will go with it.

This is certainly true on its face, but on the other hand, how diligent are people these days about wearing masks correctly and in an airtight way when they do? A couple people here have pointed out how the masks come off in public when eating or drinking, and how some people are constantly adjusting their masks for both comfort and to get an unfettered breath of air every once in a while. I'm definitely guilty of that last one myself.

I would guess that, granting how BA.2 is the most contagious strain yet, part of its virality in due in part to people dealing with mask fatigue two years in, even people who are totally in favor of enforced masking, where just one slip of the mask ("Oh, it won't hurt me to get just one nice fresh breath of air") is enough to take in the virus. I assume that people are not keeping their masks as firmly affixed in April 2022 as they did in April 2020, when the novelty of mask-wearing was still palpable and people honestly thought COVID-19 would completely subside within a matter of weeks.

And this doesn't even contemplate that eyes are still exposed to the virus floating around, as well as to your wayward fingers.

 

[buddha]

18 minutes ago, pfife said:

I asked direct questions about the purported scientific evidence you claimed and you changed the topic to whether I think masks should be mandated in bars.    

i mentioned many times about the air filtration systems in planes.

so did edman if you'd rather believe him.

i asked you a separate question about bars, not as a deflection because i already answered your other question. 

so what do you think about masks in bars?

[buddha]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

I wear a mask whenever it is required, but I find them uncomfortable.  I never get used to them.  

me neither.  and they fog up my glasses.

the entire point of mask mandates was that they would stop transmission of a deadly virus that was going to overwhelm the health care system.

the health care system is no longer in any danger of being overwhelmed.  we have treatment options for covid.  we no longer require them in bars or restaurants.  we dont require them at concerts.  we dont require them at ANY indoor gatherings other than on planes and in transit centers.  yet, there is little to no evidence that the virus passes on planes and certainly no evidence that is passes greater on planes than in other indoor spaces.

so why keep the mandate on planes?

i doubt this would even be a discussion among the left members of this board if the cdc had changed its guidelines, which is was going to do soon anyway.

[oblong]

to me the question is why we wear them or don't wear them.  If the answer is we don't wear them because the risk is now small enough that it's not practical, fine.  If the answer is we don't wear them because "I don't like wearing them" or "because freedom" then that's just being a crybaby. Those are different scenarios...

 

 

 

[buddha]

2 minutes ago, oblong said:

to me the question is why we wear them or don't wear them.  If the answer is we don't wear them because the risk is now small enough that it's not practical, fine.  If the answer is we don't wear them because "I don't like wearing them" or "because freedom" then that's just being a crybaby. Those are different scenarios...

 

 

 

when do you think the risk will the risk be small enough?

i think its small enough right now.  especially on a plane.

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, oblong said:

I will because I might be a carrier without knowing it and the 4 year old sitting behind me can't get vaccinated and may be on their way to see Grandma who is immunocompromised.  My mask and her mask provide a great form of protection.  Her mask and my lack of a mask provides less.  I care about other people and will sacrifice a few hours of extremely minor discomfort to do as much as I can to keep people safe.

Once again, 2 year into this fucking pandemic and we still have to teach people it's not about you, its about the person next to you.

 

 

Honest question: how high does the vaccination/immunity rate have to be in order for you to change your thinking on this?

Right now we are sitting around the 66% rate for full vaccination nationwide. Add a few additional points to that for unvaccinated people who have had and recovered from COVID, and in my view, that's high enough for me. Of course, I don't have children under 5, or otherwise vulnerable people in my everyday life that I have to be very careful around, so that's another data point for my feeling that we're far enough along to allow me, specifically, to forsake masking in all but the most necessary places (e.g., healthcare facilities).

I can see where someone might believe this to be not high enough to go back to living as we did in the beforetimes, but my question is, how high would it have to be before you conclude, OK, we're far enough along with vaccination/immunity, time for that small minority who have to deal with unfortunate issues to take their own precautions to protect themselves in public, instead of mandating the vast majority who are themselves in the clear from hospitalization or death from COVID to take precautions to protect them?

I believe we as a society have accepted the idea that we will always have COVID with us, so even in a hypothetical 99% immunity environment, there is still always going to be the possibility of encountering the 4-year-old sitting behind you who can't get vaccinated and may be on their way to see Grandma who is immuno-compromised. Do you still wear the mask in that 99%-immunity situation? Because if that's true, you've basically decided you'll be wearing the mask in public for literally the rest of your life.

I'm not trying to be argumentative about this—I'm trying to understand if you have such a line, and if so, where that line is?

[pfife]

19 minutes ago, buddha said:

i mentioned many times about the air filtration systems in planes.

so did edman if you'd rather believe him.

i asked you a separate question about bars, not as a deflection because i already answered your other question. 

so what do you think about masks in bars?

no one answered the question about the tracing without masks on airplanes being from when the virus was much less communicable.    It's really ok to admit that there actually hasn't been tracing of the more communicable variants of the virus in an airplane full of unmasked people.    

[buddha]

5 minutes ago, pfife said:

no one answered the question about the tracing without masks on airplanes being from when the virus was much less communicable.    It's really ok to admit that there actually hasn't been tracing of the more communicable variants of the virus in an airplane full of unmasked people.    

do you think there should be masks in bars?

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, Edman85 said:

On board filtration systems were optimized after past airborne pandemics on board pandemics. I'm not worried about covid on flights. If they weren't, you would smell every fart everybody on a 200 person flight had.

Concourses are another issue. Some are different from others, and connections that force you onto shuttles are an issue too. Flying through ORD last year, I remember smelling a restaurant from several hundred yards away. I knew then the ventilation there was no good. JAX, DTW were fine.

exactly - the air traveling experience if full of unknown variables in term of architecture, crowding etc. Hard to say any rule holds well across the board. I was on a flight early in covid when they could not get the jetway aligned on landing. We sat in dead air for 20 min. Luckily at that time the flights weren't very crowded. But the highly vaunted in aircraft filtration system had shut down with the engines/APU. They did finally get a ground unit AC hooked up,  but I found that fairly nerve wracking at the time.

[buddha]

https://www.iata.org/en/youandiata/travelers/health/low-risk-transmission/

 quality of supplied air on board an aircraft is much better than most indoor environments. This along with other cabin features including the mandatory usage of masks on board and the requirements around tests and/or vaccination certificates, make the risk of contracting COVID-19 to be very low.

Nonetheless, here are some features about the cabin air quality.

[buddha]

1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

But the highly vaunted in aircraft filtration system had shut down with the engines/APU. They did finally get a ground unit AC hooked up,  but I found that fairly nerve wracking at the time.

that's a good point.

[Tigeraholic1]

We are to a point that "Science" says masks are not needed in MOST places. Yet the argument is arghhh crybaby, selfish etc.... 

[buddha]

the argument FOR masks on planes would probably center around foreign travel, maybe?  that youre bringing in outside variants and viruses from other countries?

but that happens a lot.  where's the end game?  i imagine there are people who will continue to wear masks everywhere for the rest of their lives now.

[oblong]

57 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Honest question: how high does the vaccination/immunity rate have to be in order for you to change your thinking on this?

Right now we are sitting around the 66% rate for full vaccination nationwide. Add a few additional points to that for unvaccinated people who have had and recovered from COVID, and in my view, that's high enough for me. Of course, I don't have children under 5, or otherwise vulnerable people in my everyday life that I have to be very careful around, so that's another data point for my feeling that we're far enough along to allow me, specifically, to forsake masking in all but the most necessary places (e.g., healthcare facilities).

I can see where someone might believe this to be not high enough to go back to living as we did in the beforetimes, but my question is, how high would it have to be before you conclude, OK, we're far enough along with vaccination/immunity, time for that small minority who have to deal with unfortunate issues to take their own precautions to protect themselves in public, instead of mandating the vast majority who are themselves in the clear from hospitalization or death from COVID to take precautions to protect them?

I believe we as a society have accepted the idea that we will always have COVID with us, so even in a hypothetical 99% immunity environment, there is still always going to be the possibility of encountering the 4-year-old sitting behind you who can't get vaccinated and may be on their way to see Grandma who is immuno-compromised. Do you still wear the mask in that 99%-immunity situation? Because if that's true, you've basically decided you'll be wearing the mask in public for literally the rest of your life.

I'm not trying to be argumentative about this—I'm trying to understand if you have such a line, and if so, where that line is?

For me it will be when vaccines are available to everyone.  Contrary to popular belief we haven't gotten there yet.  On an airplane I would because there's probably going to be kids around on the plane and it's an easy thing to do to sit there with a mask on.  It's cost free.  If I can potentially help someone at no cost to myself why not do it?  

I don't wear them to baseball games. I don't wear them to hockey or basketball games because.  I wear them to grocery stores because the one I go to is kind of small and can be crowded and it's as much to do with flu as covid.  I'm going to keep doing that.  I don't wear them at the gym.  That's a risk I've chosen to take.  Others take it too.  

If I were ever to be asked to wear one I'd gladly do it.

I'll never understand the resistance.