Coronavirus thread

[nalesq]

Sadly, things like face mask are becoming politicized and a sort of tribal virtue signaling.

If you don't wear a mask, you must be one of those Deplorables who want Grandma to die; but if you do, you must be one of those Communist who want the government to lock us all up forever.

And as is usual with these sorts of thing, neither kind of Karen really understands the actual facts or science.

I have a hard time apprehending the angst of anti-maskers. Maybe it’s because I had a sadistic platoon sergeant back in the day who had a thing for promask PT, but I don’t think wearing a simple fiber mask while shopping for groceries or whatever is burdensome.



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[Balisong]

Is there any performance differences between a regular surgical/procedure type mask (not N95) and a cloth one? I have access to both and I've been using procedure type out in public assuming it's slightly better than cloth, but hadn't actually seen anything scientific about it.

[Wingate's Hairbrush]

I have a hard time apprehending the angst of anti-maskers. Maybe it’s because I had a sadistic platoon sergeant back in the day who had a thing for promask PT, but I don’t think wearing a simple fiber mask while shopping for groceries or whatever is burdensome.

After considerable observation and some back-and-forth on many forums, friendly and otherwise, what has emerged to my observation is that for the hardcore anti-maskers it's virtue-signaling of the "I'm not sheeple" mentality...which is just a different kind of being sheeple, but don't mention that.

There's a strain in our nation's ethos -- not altogether unwelcome under some circumstances, just not these particular ones -- that makes "won't be learned and won't be told" an essential point of pride.

[TDA]

After considerable observation and some back-and-forth on many forums, friendly and otherwise, what has emerged to my observation is that for the hardcore anti-maskers it's virtue-signaling of the "I'm not sheeple" mentality...which is just a different kind of being sheeple, but don't mention that.

There's a strain in our nation's ethos -- not altogether unwelcome under some circumstances, just not these particular ones -- that makes "won't be learned and won't be told" an essential point of pride.

I think you're exactly correct here. It's not about the mask's efficacy so much as it is about the mask as a visible signal that one is with the program.

Shaving your beard and wearing a proper OSHA fitted P100 respirator is out and out paranoid David Icke space lizard kind of behavior, bandannas and homemade cloth masks are what good people do, and surgical/N95 masks are for selfish people who are stealing resources from our front line health care heroes, except now in addition to being rarer than hen's teeth they're also ubiquitous litter that I see everywhere.

I now return to STFU mode.

[AKDoug]

Sadly, things like face mask are becoming politicized and a sort of tribal virtue signaling.

If you don't wear a mask, you must be one of those Deplorables who want Grandma to die; but if you do, you must be one of those Communist who want the government to lock us all up forever.

And as is usual with these sorts of thing, neither kind of Karen really understands the actual facts or science.

In my little anecdotal world of seeing 300+ customers a day, Grandma and Grandpa are the second highest group of non-mask wearers we have at my business. I have a cashier that loves numbers and is curious about stats. He kept a running tally the last two Saturdays. Since he's obviously not going to ask the age of customers, there is quite a bit of guessing going on. His numbers show that it's a 50/50 split of mask wearers in the 30 to 50 range. Younger than that are about 70/30 and older than that are in the 60/40 range. Oddly enough, he says we have a different subset of customers on Saturdays vs. Thursday and he's doing that count next. His general observation is that mask wearing on Thursdays is way lower than on Saturdays. We have a lot of out of town traffic on Saturday coming from areas that see a higher percentage of mask wearing in the city they are from.

Wearing a mask for 10 hrs straight as an employee is damned uncomfortable. I honestly don't know how the medical world is doing it. I imagine, but cannot confirm, that there is likely an area that folks go to and unmask to take a break. Wearing a mask for a quick dash into the store for a customer isn't a big deal, wearing one most of the day doing physical labor is taxing. We already have two employees developing skin conditions because of mask wearing. My son is at the point that his eczema is flaring up so badly that he's been reassigned to a job that doesn't require a mask.

I have one female that is a survivor of domestic violence and gets debilitating anxiety when forced to wear a mask. I thought it was just a lame excuse, but when that person sat down and told her story to my wife I can see exactly where she's coming from. Being nearly killed a couple times by asphyxiation probably changes someone.

Our store policy is to wear a mask when addressing or assisting customers that are wearing masks. If the customer is not wearing a mask, the employee can make their own decision to wear or not wear. I see the same policies, whether formal or not, at every business I go to. I witness dozens of ways to pass this virus every day that mask wearers commit. The biggest one is digging through products with their bare hands that other customers have touched, then taking their hands and adjusting their mask without washing their hands first. When you really start to think about it deeply, the masks are just security theater, with a VERY small amount of people doing it correctly. Spit talkers, sneezers and coughers aside, the masks are doing very little if you keep your distances.

On a final note, while much of the world seems content to label someone politically based on their wearing of a mask, what I've seen doesn't bear that out in my small part of the world. In my small town I pretty much know everyone's basic politics. Not wearing a mask seems to transcend political parties; as is evidenced here on PF as well.

[RoyGBiv]

Is there any performance differences between a regular surgical/procedure type mask (not N95) and a cloth one? I have access to both and I've been using procedure type out in public assuming it's slightly better than cloth, but hadn't actually seen anything scientific about it.

It depends entirely on how the two masks you're comparing are constructed and how they fit.

If someone sews you a good multi-layer fabric mask that covers well (from bridge of nose to under chin) and uses 3 layers of appropriate fabric, maybe even has a bendable strip around the nose, I've read about intake filtration over 90% (no link, sorry). A poorly constructed sewn mask is only good to stop your sneeze from spewing everywhere and provides little respiratory protection from others. Similar story with hospital masks... they are intended to stop the wearer from spreading their own germs to others, not vice-versa, but, some are better than others at filtering intake, especially if well fitted.

[RoyGBiv]

After considerable observation and some back-and-forth on many forums, friendly and otherwise, what has emerged to my observation is that for the hardcore anti-maskers it's virtue-signaling of the "I'm not sheeple" mentality...which is just a different kind of being sheeple, but don't mention that.

There's a strain in our nation's ethos -- not altogether unwelcome under some circumstances, just not these particular ones -- that makes "won't be learned and won't be told" an essential point of pride.

I have a hard time comprehending why anyone would fail to wear a mask in public, especially inside buildings. Maybe if you've had it and recovered. Even then, I'd wear a sign saying that. If I see someone at the grocery not wearing a mask, I avoid them. Mostly because I expect them to violate social distance guidelines as well, and I'd prefer not to have to confront them about it while armed.

[TheRoland]

Our store policy is to wear a mask when addressing or assisting customers that are wearing masks. If the customer is not wearing a mask, the employee can make their own decision to wear or not wear.

I'm down that Alaska has, like, fewer cases than the street I live on, so you do you. But this policy is basically the signaling that others in the last few posts are talking about, because:

they are intended to stop the wearer from spreading their own germs to others, not vice-versa...

I don't think there's really anything wrong with that, because Alaska.

But the more we argue the more I realize that there are really two pandemics going on; the one in states with dense populations (where we're screaming about cooler trucks filled with bodies) and the one in states without dense populations, where this all seems like an overreaction.

[TheNewbie]

When do we stop wearing masks?

It must have helped with the Wuhan Virus, now do we do it with the flu? Common colds?


Are there costs to societal costs to wearing masks?


If people want to wear them, wear them. If you don't, then don't. Leave people alone.

[TC215]

I am a programmer.

A little while back, Neil Ferguson, the author/maintainer of the UK Imperial College code said he was not going to release it because it was 1,000s of lines of undocumented C. This is the model that grabbed early headlines, projecting 2.2 million deaths and alarming the UK government.

He proudly announced Microsoft was going to revise it.

I read last night a revised version of the code has been released. I also read comments from a reviewer. My opinion of the reviewer's comments is she knows her stuff.

The code is a disaster. Using the same data, it produces different results with different processors. It produces different results if it runs multithreaded on the same processor. The College seems to think this is a feature because of its pseudo-randomness, yet the randomness was not an intended behavior of the code. This is so clueless as to be dangerous. That's not how software works.

There are apparently no test cases or ways to validate it.

It is littered with bad practices.

Everything I read indicated the code would never be accepted by any organization with a clue how to make software. Yet entire governments made decisions from it. This has scared the crap out of me.

There is a part of me that actually hopes her review is a hoax. It's that bad. But, again, I know how to write and review this stuff and the reviewer hit my usual checklist points.

At least with this model, what happened may be discussed in computer science courses and technology ethics papers for many years to come. It should be.

This article came out today and seems to back-up what you’re saying.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/imperi...ess-unreliable