Short answer is yes. Even the flimsiest of masks offer some level of protection.
Dr Fauci States That Students Probably Won't Return To Campuses For Fall Semester
- Thread starter Morrischiano
- Start date
Did Don Lemon and Chuck Todd tell you to say that? See how it works?
I don't care for any of the news networks.
Ha. Again. Not about protection. Do they filter anything?? Yes or No? I'll give you a hint. It's NO!
There is zero filtration in these cheap masks. You seriously think the mass produced blue masks provide filtration?? OMG you just can't even admit it can you? Find anything credible online that supports your insane belief on filtration of the typical blue masks everyone is wearing that actually has been proven, as fact, it offers filtration of the coronavirus.
If any moisture of breath is held in the mask then it provides filtration. Breath through a mask, and tell me it doesn't hold moisture.
And I already provided links above, including one from the CDC, and another from the Mayo Clinic recommending home made masks.
I
Well, I'm not sure that using the health related choices of certain individuals in the White House is the best example you could have used to try to prove your point...
But anyway, no, he is not correct.
First, he never said that his use of the term "masks" when he called the use of masks a farce, didn't include N-95 masks. You're assuming that he was only referring to other masks and not to N-95's, but that can't be assumed from his original post.
Secondly, if I cough or sneeze large droplets and I'm not wearing a mask, even a non-N-95 mask on you may prevent those droplets from landing on your face. By covering your nose and mouth and other areas of your face, your'e still decreasing your chances of catching the virus. Viral particles in droplets could easily miss your eyes and be transmitted through the nasal or oral route if you aren't wearing a mask, or land on another area of your face that a mask covers, and later be inadvertently transferred to your nose, mouth, or eyes. And wearing a mask also decreases the chances of you inadvertently touching your face and transferring any virus that you may have touched with your hands to your nose or mouth. Sure, a big reason for wearing masks is to prevent people who may be carrying the virus from spreading it to others, but masks can still protect you from certain types of transmission. And since many people are asymptomatic, or have extremely mild symptoms like my wife had, wearing a mask even when you feel fine can help prevent transmission to others, just in case you're one of the people who don't know they're carrying the virus but who can still infect others.
(My wife never had a fever, never felt really bad, and never had a cough or any bronchial symptoms. She always wore a mask except when she had to eat, long before she tested positive. And before someone says that the mask obviously didn't protect her, my wife is a nurse who for the past 6 weeks has exclusively cared for coronavirus patients on the coronavirus isolation wing of a large nursing home. She contracted the virus after about a month of her treating Covid patients, and prior to her contracting the virus her facility had almost 50 patient cases and almost 20 patient deaths. For the first few weeks of the outbreak nurses were only given 1 N-95 mask each that they had to use over and over for several weeks while caring for coronavirus patients. My wife would bring her mask home after work each day and bake it, hoping that it would be sterilized that way, without its protective properties being compromised, and she would shower, wash her clothes, and then self isolate in her room. All of the nurses and staff had to share the same used and often unwashed personal protective gown when treating the patients in a particular Covid room, and nurses never had a way they could get tested, especially if they didn't have the classic fever and cough but still felt sick... What's going on in our nursing homes because of this disease is truly tragic. Too many elderly patients having to spend their last days with raging fevers, struggling to breathe, and without friends, family or other loved ones being allowed to visit and try to comfort them...The stories are so sad.)
Last edited:
How many people in the general public walking thru the supermarket are wearing a N-95 mask? I am sorry I should have been more specific in my original post. The masks most people are wearing are not preventing them from getting the virus and unless you protect your eyes you are not protecting yourself fully. The masks the general public are wearing are in fact very dangerous, why do I say that, most people are not wearing them to protect others from their breath discharge, but, in fact, most people are wearing them thinking they are being protected from others. They are operating under a false sense of security and therefore they are not altering their public behavior to the extent they should. So yes, something is better than nothing, but if we as a society were really taking the wearing of masks seriously we would require N-95 masks for everyone and that people also wear eye protection.
Both my wife and I are healthcare professionals, and at least from our experiences, the vast majority of the healthcare professionals that we know think very highly of Dr. Fauci.
His job isn't to say things to try to please the public, please the president, please the economists, please the sports fans, etc... His job includes, among other things, providing information and recommendations from a strictly medical point of view, in order to try to get this pandemic under control as quickly, and with the least amount of additional damage and suffering and deaths, as possible. It isn't to weigh the benefits of the best recommendations from a medical point of view against any potential risks to the economy, or to people's convenience, or to anything else. That's the job of the politicians who make the policies based on all of the various information and advice they're given. Fauci's job includes providing informed medical related information and recommendations. By nature many of his comments and answers to questions (and the comments and answers to questions from most other infectious disease experts) probably aren't going to please people who'd prefer to see a quick end to social distancing policies, at least not until there's an effective vaccine or a HIGHLY effective and safe treatment or cure readily available...
The president and other politicians don't have to accept Dr. Fauci's recommendations or advice, so if people don't like the policies, Anthony Fauci probably isn't the one to bash, or to have his words misrepresented when he legitimately answers a question. He's doing the job that he's been admirably doing for years as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It's not always easy to publicly say what you know many people don't want to hear, or to disagree at times with President Trump's medical expertise, but that's what his job requires him to do. I appreciate his medical knowledge and his honesty and dedication. And I also have to admire his apparent unwillingness to sell out and take the easy road.
His job isn't to say things to try to please the public, please the president, please the economists, please the sports fans, etc... His job includes, among other things, providing information and recommendations from a strictly medical point of view, in order to try to get this pandemic under control as quickly, and with the least amount of additional damage and suffering and deaths, as possible. It isn't to weigh the benefits of the best recommendations from a medical point of view against any potential risks to the economy, or to people's convenience, or to anything else. That's the job of the politicians who make the policies based on all of the various information and advice they're given. Fauci's job includes providing informed medical related information and recommendations. By nature many of his comments and answers to questions (and the comments and answers to questions from most other infectious disease experts) probably aren't going to please people who'd prefer to see a quick end to social distancing policies, at least not until there's an effective vaccine or a HIGHLY effective and safe treatment or cure readily available...
The president and other politicians don't have to accept Dr. Fauci's recommendations or advice, so if people don't like the policies, Anthony Fauci probably isn't the one to bash, or to have his words misrepresented when he legitimately answers a question. He's doing the job that he's been admirably doing for years as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It's not always easy to publicly say what you know many people don't want to hear, or to disagree at times with President Trump's medical expertise, but that's what his job requires him to do. I appreciate his medical knowledge and his honesty and dedication. And I also have to admire his apparent unwillingness to sell out and take the easy road.
Okay, but the main reason that people aren't wearing N-95 or the even better N-100 masks is that they aren't available to the vast majority of the public at this time and they haven't been for months, so if society is ever going to require N-95 masks, society will have to make sure they're available....
Most people who want to wear a mask in public now have no choice but to wear a less effective (but still somewhat effective) mask... I'm aware that a surgical mask or a homemade cloth mask doesn't protect us from inhaling aerosols containing the virus like a N-95 mask does... But they can still help protect us against droplet transmission from a sneeze or cough or spit, as well as against some other modes of transmission, and they can help protect others if we carry the virus and sneeze, cough, inadvertently spray when talking, etc... Your point that some people may be operating under a false sense of security while wearing a less effective mask is a good point, but a surgical or homemade mask is still probably better than no mask at all if one will be around others in public and if one cares about decreasing the spread of the disease. We just need to do a better job of educating the people with the false senses of security...There are also a lot of people who know that they're wearing a less effective mask because the preferred N-95 masks aren't available to them, and they do try to practice recommended social distancing.
Not sure if this was mentioned but UC and CSU systems in California expecting to continue online classes through the fall according to this article. On the news this morning I heard UC expects to decide in the summer but Cal State is keeping classes online in the fall.
From the article:
When the fall term starts, students in both the Cal State and University of California systems will likely still be taking most of their classes online, officials said Tuesday.
A UC spokesperson confirmed to CBS2 that it does not expect any of its 10 campuses to reopen fully for in-person classes by the fall.
“At this juncture, it’s likely none of our campuses will fully re-open in fall,” said UC spokesman Stett Holbrook in an email to CBS2. “We will be exploring a mixed approach with some material delivered in classroom and lab settings while other classes will continue to be online.”
Meanwhile, CSU Chancellor Timothy White told the board of trustees during an online meeting Tuesday that most classes at its 23 campuses will remain online, but for a few exceptions.
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/202...online-classes-to-continue-through-fall-term/
From the article:
When the fall term starts, students in both the Cal State and University of California systems will likely still be taking most of their classes online, officials said Tuesday.
A UC spokesperson confirmed to CBS2 that it does not expect any of its 10 campuses to reopen fully for in-person classes by the fall.
“At this juncture, it’s likely none of our campuses will fully re-open in fall,” said UC spokesman Stett Holbrook in an email to CBS2. “We will be exploring a mixed approach with some material delivered in classroom and lab settings while other classes will continue to be online.”
Meanwhile, CSU Chancellor Timothy White told the board of trustees during an online meeting Tuesday that most classes at its 23 campuses will remain online, but for a few exceptions.
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/202...online-classes-to-continue-through-fall-term/
Yes, he adds great value in basically providing the most accurate possible answers to “if you do x, y is what is likely to happen”.
The problem is that in a situation like this those answers often don’t make it clear which X is best. When it gets to that portion of the question, he basically is answering with his personal feelings much like any of us.
That's new info about the U of California system. We already heard about CSU part, but this is new.
Better, but you are disregarding that if a group of people are all wearing masks they are all protecting each other. Whether they know the reason for the protection, the mask they are wearing or the mask of others, is irrelevant, fact of the matter is there is certainly a level of protection in place. The weak link would be a non mask wearer in a group, and that is probably happening in other areas of the country, but where I am it is not, we are at a legit 99.9% of people in stores have on masks. At this point a non mask wearer is looked at as a peraya, and people know to avoid close contact with them.
So you are correct that more simple masks are not as good as N-95, you are correct that without glasses there is a weak link in one's own line of protection, you may possibly be right that people don't fully understand the concept that masks are more a protection of others then they are for one's own protection.
This is all however, miles away from your original assertion, that masks are a farce.
the cloth mask? meh. it will protect you from getting sneezed on and will keep your sneeze inside the mask (and if you sneeze in the mask you really should change it)
the "paper" mask? look at the box it came in. there should be a level written on it. Level 1 is the lowest protection level 3 is the highest other than an n95 mask.
Here's a chart from one of the boxes in my surgery center that explains it all.
n95 masks are supposed to be fitted to each person. In the hospital you get fit tested once a year which includes learning how to put the mask on correctly and having the fitter spray stuff at your face to see if you can smell it. Some hospitals have even more elaborate fit testing mechanisms. The masks come in different sizes to appropriately fit the wearer. Many of the "n95" masks people are wearing out in public are fake knockoffs that do nothing other than keep their sneezes to themselves.
People often point to the coughs and sneezes, but more importantly it keeps normal breathing and talking to one's self as well. Or at least limits the size of the plume.
So this is the answer from my wife who is an ER doctor.
N-95 masks must be properly fit on a medical professional for it to stop CV19. Most of the public doesn’t have a properly fit N-95. So if you are wearing a properly-fit N-95 you would not be able to smell your own fart. That being said, unless you are caring for a CV-19 infected family member you don’t need a N-95.
A cloth surgical mask won’t stop CV-19 particulate. What it will do is limit it to the point where a sick person wearing surgical mask will likely not infect you if you walk past them in the store with your surgical mask on.
I asked if someone was sick on the train and rode into NYC on a 45 minute commute, would the disease spread in the train car if everyone wore surgical masks. She said that if you were in their breathing vector you have a good chance of getting sick but if no one wore masks then a bunch of people in the section of the car would come down with it.
Of course they have a higher rate of infection, that's the point of herd immunity.
Infection rates are also a product of testing. The more testing you do, the larger number of infected you will find.
Look at the Daily Death curves for the only accurate measure. It reflects on what is actually happening.
The Daily Deaths curve in Sweden looks exactly like ours does in terms of shape.
They even peaked on the exact same day as the US (4-21)
The only difference is that their curve seems to be coming down faster as they achieve herd immunity
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Last edited:
As someone mentioned in the Covid thread, but hospitalizations are probably the best statistic for measuring the impact, especially in terms of the present situation.
Hard stat to find though.
Cooper hospital, which is one of the 3 triage centers for Covid in NJ, as of today their total overall numbers:
they have tested 9887 patients and 2267 were positive
481 positive patients hospitalized since March12
339 have been sent home
98 positive patients currently in the hospital
55 on vents
they sent 11 patients home yesterday
they have been able to remove 31 patients from vents since March 12
Do we have #'s of patients currently in hospital compared to previous days? Perhaps when and what has the high?
I go for it once a year when I get my annual physical.
There is no Level on the box. There is a 2 with the crossout circle over the 2 is that a way to say it's Level 1? But it does say it was made in China so we have that going for everyone here.the cloth mask? meh. it will protect you from getting sneezed on and will keep your sneeze inside the mask (and if you sneeze in the mask you really should change it)
the "paper" mask? look at the box it came in. there should be a level written on it. Level 1 is the lowest protection level 3 is the highest other than an n95 mask.
Here's a chart from one of the boxes in my surgery center that explains it all.
April 29th they had 112 in the hospital. I was told at that time that that was the highest they had been. They also had 60 people on vents.
I don't work at Cooper but some of my staff do so I get info from them from the graphic Cooper sends out to the staff every day.
I've said masks are good for "herd protection" everyone keeping their germs to themselves and in their immediate vicinity. That's the main benefit of wearing them imo.
For the wearer, yes your eyes are exposed and it's not perfect in filtering but I take it as any protection is better than none. Maybe it reduces the viral load exposure you may get and you can fight it off as opposed to if you got exposed to a higher viral load without any protection. Just like the annual flu shot I take. Some years it's a good match for the strain and some years only like 10-15%...whatever we still get it. Any protection is better than none is what the "experts" say and I agree with it.
As to the eyes, I'm surprised more are worried about/wear gloves vs eye wear. I've said I view gloves as germ accumulators (most likely don't change them or wash them often compared to their bare hands) and because of that they make things that otherwise wouldn't be high touch become high touch in a sense. The longer and more often people wear them too I tend think they will get used to it and treat them like their bare hands but without the washing/sanitizing which is the worst scenario hygiene wise. I'm probably going to wear my antifog work goggles if I'm out to the point I can tolerate it but not really thinking about wearing gloves. Just wash and sanitize frequently my bare hands.
here's the way to think about gloves:
as a nurse I put gloves on for a procedure, say start an IV, as soon as I'm done I take the gloves off and clean my hands. If I'm starting 10 IV's in a row I'm putting 10 pairs of gloves on.
People wearing gloves all day walking around and touching things are only spreading the germs .
wash and sanitize!
Nurses are in a completely different realm, so yeah, no doubt you are going to wear gloves.
The every day person? And as you say they wear them all day? I feel that is a disconnect between what should be done and what some people are actually doing.
I expect first responders/healthcare etc..to wear and change gloves frequently.
It's the regular joes out there like me or workers in the grocery store or what not I'm talking about who don't change or clean gloves frequently either because they don't think to or they don't have enough anyway if they wanted to do it. Because you're wearing them all day or for very long periods at least, you've just turned everything you've touched into a high touch surface. If you're just bare hands good chance you may have washed or sanitized them multiple times in the day and would likely be more careful of what and how much you touch.
Before this stuff blew up and I was stocking up some groceries, I didn't really wipe down any of the groceries I bought. Just put them away and washed my hands after. Now I get delivery pretty much as long as spots are open but I wipe down the groceries now because I know it's been touched by people wearing gloves that likely haven't changed or cleaned them so my groceries by way of that have become high touch surfaces.
even just wearing the same pair of gloves around Shoprite to shop. Let's assume that someone touched the lettuce and left covid on the wrapper. Along comes someone with gloves on...the pick up that contaminated lettuce, then push the cart with their now contaminated gloves. Then they pick up a package of cheese in the cheese section...no...not that one...they see a better one and put the first one down...so now there is a contaminated cheese in the case. Next up the bread aisle...same thing...touch one take another so now there is contaminated bread...and so on in every aisle throughout the store.
If, instead, they kept a few of those wipes at the front of the store and used them to clean their hands in between touching things, or used hand sanitizer, or spritzed their hands with 70% alcohol after touching items they would not be spreading germs.
we're in agreement. I was using my nurse example as the proper way to use gloves and point out that the normal Joe is not doing that and, in most cases, is just spreading germs and contaminating everything they touch.
I admit I do not do the wipe in between touching items trick. And I do feel such shame and trepidation if I touch something on the shelf and not buy it.
I kind of referenced this above but it's kind of strange to me...if you gave people a choice between gloves and goggles/eye protection...I'd guess 90% or more would go for the gloves. It's the eyewear that's likely offering more protection to you than the gloves. On balance, I think the gloves might actually be a net negative because of all that germ spreading we're talking about.
What you are not taking into account is that people wearing these non N-95 masks are breathing much harder wearing the mask than they normally would be. If they are wearing an inferior mask or something homemade that amount of energy into breathing behind the mask and the amount of air they are pushing thru the mask results in little protection to those around them. I have been in stores where I have witnessed many obese individuals breathing so hard behind an inferior or home made mask that I would not feel safe being within 20 feet of that individual. Wear mask by all means, but understand their limitations, be educated most of all.
I think the eye transmission is really being overstated here. If everyone is wearing a mask, it is very unlikely that you will get virus transmission through your eyeballs. Any virus particles that escape the mask will likely settle on the floor after some time. The virus is not likely remain airborne unless there is a breeze and if you are outside, the breeze is likely to disperse the virus making it less likely that you will come into contact with it.
Sure you can get it through the eyes, if you are wearing a mask and an infected person coughs on your face, which is why social distancing is still important.
But if 100% of people maintained social distance and wore even the cheap masks the transmission rate would still eventually go down to zero.
Sure you can get it through the eyes, if you are wearing a mask and an infected person coughs on your face, which is why social distancing is still important.
But if 100% of people maintained social distance and wore even the cheap masks the transmission rate would still eventually go down to zero.
I haven't noticed anyone's bad breath in months.
Not funny. You seemed like a guy who wanted to engage in a serious discussion, but turns you are just another troll. The facts are very simple and undisputed. People tend to breath harder when they wear a mask. Obese individuals and others with endurance and preexisting breathing conditions have even more difficulty with a mask. If you are wearing a non N-95 mask or homemade mask the virus can spread through the mask and the more intense you breath the further the particles travel. Plus, if you are not wearing protective eye gear you are exposing yourself to the virus even if you are wearing a mask. I am not telling people not to wear masks, but I talk to way too many people who believe a simple mask alone will protect them and those they come into contact with from getting and/or spreading the virus.
It was a funny anecdote, but it was also serious.
Another funny(imo), but serious anecdote, a couple days ago I had leek soup for lunch, and that afternoon I almost asphyxiated myself with some awful breath inside my mask. Which says what? That the spread of my breath, and burps, is greatly limited, it is held close to my face.
And look we can argue the extent to which masks help. MrsScrew posted a pic that said even a basic mask has a filtration level of 95%. But even if we say a home made mask, or an ill fitted basic store bough mask only helps limit the spread to 50%. Then that is far cry from your original assertion.
Last edited:
Similar threads
Latest posts
-
-
With the portal now open, does Gavin Wimsatt enter after the spring game?
- Latest: Nycrusupporter
-
-
