What’s notable is that the mask recommendations this time aren’t just about avoiding the coronavirus. Masks are advised to protect against what is being called the “tripledemic” — a confluence of influenza, coronavirus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that already is straining hospitals and forcing parents to miss work in record numbers.
Respiratory syncytial virus? I learned a new disease — and a new word. Syncytial... but I'm cynical.
And "tripledemic" too?
Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, noted earlier this week that the agency encourages everyone “to wear a high quality, well-fitting mask to help prevent the spread of respiratory illness,” particularly on public transportation and during airport travel.
Masking is especially important in counties with high covid-19 community levels, she said. Walensky said in an interview Wednesday that while the CDC’s mask guidance is “largely based” on the coronavirus, and not flu and RSV, “it is the case that the mask works against those as well.”....
Public health advocates said they were pleased to hear Walensky talk about masks, an issue that was politicized throughout the pandemic and a subject about which the CDC has been notably silent of late.
“It’s good she brought it up,” said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research. “We had a really good reason to wear a mask with covid, and now we have even more of a reason. It’s a three-fer — you get protection from flu, RSV and certainly from covid.”...
Was politicized? Is the pandemic over?
Are we being told both that it's over and that we should still wear a mask because they've combined the post-pandemic covid with 2 other diseases and, with 3 ingredients, made a pandemic substitute substitutes that equals the old pandemic?
Only a few communities are reconsidering mask mandates, especially if the CDC identifies them as having high levels of covid. The most notable is Los Angeles County.... The Sacramento City Unified School District has warned it would require masks indoors....
Oh, California....
Then there's New York governor Kathy Hochul: "“We’ve gone through a period where people are tired of being told what to do, but...."
ADDED: The top comment over there:
I don’t have to “return” to masking. I never gave it up....
Many similar comments:
- Ditto. Wearing a mask is not that difficult for me.
- Same here. I live in Austin, TX and still can’t fathom why over 90% of people I see in public places like grocery stores are not wearing masks. I just don’t understand it.
- Same same. Going to restock my preferred n95s soonest.
- Ditto. I have no idea why masking is a big deal to some people. Face masks may return? I never stopped wearing mine....
And on and on.
Posts
90 comments:
What would we do without experts? Live our lives that's what.
Masks on buses never stopped on LA.
"Wolf! Wolf! It's real this time!"
Not that Covid-19 wasn't real. But the politicians and the health experts have lost all credibility. A virus that can kill you if you go to a funeral, or keep your business open, or send your kid to school, but will become dormant if you go downtown to protest social injustice and scream. Don't let the virus interfere with your arson and vandalism.
It could very well be that masks might be beneficial under the circumstances. I thought that science had proven they were ineffective against microscopic viruses, but I'm no expert. It simply feels like they are telling us to "stay afraid, dammit!" Too late. That ship has sailed.
I'm OK with people wearing masks voluntarily. It makes it easier to pick the idiots out in a crowd.
See the analysis of child psychologist Erik Erikson regarding "Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt":
https://www.verywellmind.com/autonomy-versus-shame-and-doubt-2795733
https://springridgeacademy.com/eriksons-stage-2-autonomy-vs-self-doubt/
This normally happens during childhood. Learn to use the potty by yourself. The pandemic and its resulting unreflective, disproportionate fear seemingly pushed many people back from autonomy and into grossly excessive self doubt.
The old generation of (overwhelmingly leftist) academics played it straight with often tough facts for functional and pragmatic living. The new generation and bullying strong-arm politicians and the CDC...no so much...
There is no doubt now that mask-wearing has become a largely political act. Our grandchildren live in San Francisco and Seattle and outdoor mask-wearing will clearly never end. Our recent return flight from SF to Atlanta was about 50% masked. Atlanta to Cincinnati(home) less than 5%. All our children, grandchildren and friends have had Covid. Masking or not masking, every one of them. And from our youngest grandchild, aged 2, to our oldest friends in their 80s, no big deal. With or without Paxlovid.
You can’t fix stupid. Especially when the fetish serves the priesthood by visibly singling out the contumacious for extra attention.
In fact AFAIK the literature on masking —such as it is— suggests they do little or nothing to prevent spread, certainly outside of well-fitted masks in surgical suites during limited periods. Wearing your face rag to go bar-hopping isn’t doing anything but signal your claim to virtue (or hypochondria).
"certainly from covid"
Umm, no.
"health experts"
This means more than one "expert", probably two.
And "expert" means the thoroughly untrustworthy WaPo wants you to jettison your accumulated wisdom and be willingly deceived.
Masks on buses never stopped on LA.
Ease off there, Readering. Aren't Californians contemptible enough as it is?
As long as there are control possibilities, they will be applied. And what's the saying, "everything that's not illegal will be mandatory?" We are approaching that point.
"Many similar comments"
"We put the lotion on our skin, if we don't you'll get the hose again!"
Curious how we are defining down masking. What was once a special tactic to use against a new and poorly understood but rapidly spreading virus is becoming part of the standard toolkit for flu season. And the ratchet cranks another notch.
I feel about masks the way Quint felt about life jackets.
RSV is bad every year. Anyone who has had a child in winter in the past fifteen or twenty years probably wasn't allowed visitors under the age of ten at the hospital.
This was to prevent the spread of RSV in babies. Seems a lot more precise. Back then, you kept babies from RSV for the season, but expected that the next year when they were older they'd get RSV and be fine. Transmission happens, just try to control the timing. Novel.
In Ontario (and probably all of Canada outside Alberta), masking is being used as a crutch to avoid dealing with problems in the health system.
Emergency rooms are over-crowded, mostly due to children with the flu and RSV who would normally be kept home, but the supply chain problems caused by government health policies means there is a shortage of over-the-counter medicine. The government’s response? Masking.
Canadians being Canadians, many insist it’s our civic duty to mask up and not question this chain of events.
Schools will close again. Reasons.
“ I have no idea why masking is a big deal to some people.”
Two movies on one screen. I have no idea why we had masks in the first place.
Around here (suburban Richmond Va), only Black people wear the face rags. What's up with tha?
That the CDC hasn't been downsized to about 1/3 of its budget, and that Rochelle Walensky is still in charge of anything, is possibly more discouraging to me about the future of our republic than the fact that John Fetterman, Masie Hirono, Patty Murray and Ed Markey are US Senators.
Is there any penalty for rank incompetance in the operation of government?
My doctor friends say the hospitals are getting quite busy with this trifecta. Although the ER doc was complaining that half the folks were bringing in kids that just needed rest, Tylenol and chicken soup. There's still too many people begging for antibiotics as well.
But what ever you do, don't wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces. Because it's political virtue signaling and you don't want folks on your side to think that you're the enemy.
while the CDC’s mask guidance is “largely based” on the coronavirus, and not flu and RSV, “it is the case that the mask works against those as well.”....
"As well" can have one of two meanings here - "also" (masks "also" work for flu and RSV) or "as good as" (masks prevent flu and RSV as good as they prevent Covid - i.e., they are effectively useless).
Not that Covid-19 wasn't real. But the politicians and the health experts have lost all credibility. A virus that can kill you if you go to a funeral, or keep your business open, or send your kid to school, but will become dormant if you go downtown to protest social injustice and scream. Don't let the virus interfere with your arson and vandalism.
This. I was astonished to learn that so-called "scientists" actually had the gall to suggest that it was OK to not wear masks at protests (indeed, to attend protests in the first place) cuz racism is bad and stuff. How the hell did these people get medical degrees and become "experts" at all? Was it just a case of a handful of lefties saying this nonsense, and all the other scientists falling in line because they wanted to keep their jobs?
Is there any penalty for rank incompetance in the operation of government?
Promotion.
Is there any penalty for rank incompetance in the operation of government?
Promotion.
Is there any penalty for rank incompetance in the operation of government?
Promotion.
My niece’s kids are all sick- again. I’m wondering about if it’s their old house that’s making them sick so often. I’ve heard the hospital is full of kids and babies w/RSV. One of my kids had that when little. Kids get sick and I think Howard’s comment bears noticing: kids just need rest, Tylenol and chicken soup.
And more playing outside.
As for masks? I comply if it’s required.
They lost me at "experts". Public health officials have shown themselves to be many things, but their "expertise" has been found wanting.
I am glad that Howard is masked up. It makes him harder to understand.
Almost all the videos I see of criminal gangs robbing businesses of all kinds show that the thieves are wearing masks. Masks should be banned to help reduce theft. If someone claims they need to wear a mask that can be fine as long as they show ID and smile for the camera first.
Dave B says...
I have no idea why we had masks in the first place.
it's Really Quite Simple. A head covering shows your submission, to the will of your god.
The Only people, that Ever had ANY problem with these coverings were infidels that Refused to Submit
Fortunately, most of these infidels have been removed from our armed forces. Our remaining marines are folk like Howard.. Pasty Faced, effeminate cowards.. But Pasty Faced cowards that submit
We are going to pretend that the isolation of covid played hell with developing natural immunity to infections?
There are lots of things out there that don't have a PR dept like covid.get
I'm just one guy, and anecdote does not equal science, but I am a full slob as compared to those that buy hand sanitizer by the gallon, and where a mask alone in their car.
I get 2, maybe a third cold per year. Haven't had the flu in 60 years. But I'm out and about and don't change my habits. I did get covid, but in my mid 60's and over weight, My symptoms were almost non-existant. I attribute that to allowing my body to encounter and deal with everyday viruses.
Isolating the masses has created this years triple threat. We still don't have a morbidity score. Assigning values to each condition that puts you at unacceptable levels of risk. Why?
Why does the govt insist on controlling the masses, instead of protecting the vulnerable?
The govt still coming out with warnings and recommendations and NEVER admitting they were just making stuff up over the last 3 years, has earned them nothing but scorn, and serious doubt about what their motives are now.
Well...for what its worth...
I traveled for years for a living. And it was known that I would, quite often, get home and develop a chest or head cold, or some sort of sinus infection. I've never liked wearing masks, but my wife suggested I try it. This was before covid. I tried it once. I did not get sick. And so I continued to do it for a bit and I did not get sick.
Move ahead a few years and now it's covid time and no one is traveling anyway. But when we started up again we all had to wear masks. And I did not get sick. Great. Move forward again and at this point, I'm so over covid and masks that on my next flight- a short domestic one- I did not wear a mask. And...I got really sick. Picked up some sort of rotten thing. Maybe RSV, but not sure. What I do know is that there was a guy directly across the aisle from me hacking and coughing up phlegmy coughs the entire flight. (wearing a Delta sweater, by the way). I suspect he passed out his illness to a bunch of us.
So I vowed to wear a mask going forward on planes. You just don't know how many people coughing, sneezing, or just carrying a virus or something are there hanging out with you. This week my mask wearing wife flew home from Boston after visiting the kids. They all had RSV previously, but now were just trading around a bad cold and shared it with her. So she flew home when it started to hit her. And it turned into a bad infection. And...she had been on the plane. Masked, but carrying whatever it was.
It's not a political statement to stay healthy. I'm wearing a mask on planes going forward. I don't do it in the terminals, which I probably should. But for now, just the planes. (PS- I don't wear a mask anywhere else).
Readering said...
Masks on buses never stopped on LA.
People in LA are stupid then.
"Howard said...
My doctor friends say the hospitals are getting quite busy with this trifecta. Although the ER doc was complaining that half the folks were bringing in kids that just needed rest, Tylenol and chicken soup. There's still too many people begging for antibiotics as well.
But what ever you do, don't wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces. Because it's political virtue signaling and you don't want folks on your side to think that you're the enemy."
Howard, like all lefties, fail to realize that they created this monster. The same fear that drives people unnecessarily to the hospital also keeps people wearing masks. And taking dangerous gene altering madicines.
As we get more data showing they don't work, double down!
Here in far-northern California (Siskiyou County) where I live, seeing someone wearing a mask is like watching a meteor go by.
'Experts.'
How has that worked out?
I heard the NPR interview of Walensky yesterday. Despite the unsubtle urging of the interviewer, she absolutely avoided committing to any direct recommendation to wear a mask, except maybe in crowded indoor situations. She even resorted to suggesting opening a window to improved circulation during holiday gatherings. Even when she was talking specifically about her own family's plans.
The only things she urged were 1) get the bivalent vax and flu vax, and 2) stay home if you have symptoms and get medical advice sooner rather than later.
Lastly her recommendation to get early medical advice was based specifically on her statement that "we have some good antivirals that help if used early" which was news to me. They were not named.
What I forgot to add is that the WaPo avoids quoting Walensky, in favor of their own experts, for the obvious reason.
What? No boosters in this story?
WaPo is not boosting boosters?
When a YouTuber with a higher subscription rate mentions, recommends her followers to watch a new YouTube channel (usually with less subscribers) that YouTuber is said to be giving the less subscribed YouTuber a boost.
Influencer Wapo writing about the masks channel and not mentioning boosters channel sounds like a major dis.
What did the booster channel do to get ghosted? Masks and boosters are always boosted together. Every influencer knows that.
I don’t want to sound conspiratorial, God forbid, but if the rest of this Wapo story doesn’t boost the boosters channel, I believe we have a major rift behind the scenes. And Wapo, who went along with other influencers to keep us in the dark about the Hunter Laptop channel, is doing it again.
Be it resolved: You can’t trust the mainstream channels. Wapo is one of the biggest mainstream channels. #UnsaidThings
My kids picked up viruses a number of times when they were in pre-K daycare two decades ago. They were rarely sick during their K-12 years. Coincidence? I am not a doctor but I don’t think so. Pre-K daycare was like a vaccination clinic for them. I think the the Covid era kept the kids in isolation or partial isolation to where these viruses “lay in wait” and now we have a perfect storm. If we keep isolating, keep the kids out of school, I am guessing that we will see this triple threat type outbreaks constantly reoccurring.
Garlic necklaces and shrunken heads for everyone!
It's nice to look around and see supposedly smart people accelerating the slide into superstition and magical thinking. Fills me with hope and faith and in the future!
Temujin: do what you want but airplane air is ruthlessly filtered and cleaned. Look it up. Your results are likely coincidental.
Rochelle Walensky has no credibility. Masks don't work to protect against viruses. She, Birx and Fraudicy lied to us through out the pandemic. I wouldn't believe them if they told me tomorrow's weather forecast.
What I forgot to add is that the WaPo avoids quoting Walensky, in favor of their own experts, for the obvious reason.
The WaPo is a hotbed of White Supremacy.
Around here (suburban Richmond Va), only Black people wear the face rags. What's up with tha?
Helps avoid identification via the surveillance video.
Wearing a mask in a confined space is prudent. But so is knowing how well your own body works in response to pathogens. If I am flying home, I dispense with masks. So what if I'm sick at home? But if I'm flying somewhere for work and I have to be healthy when I get there, I'm more likely to wear a mask.
"[Walensky] also voiced concerns about the bill’s requirement for Senate confirmation of future CDC directors, pointing to the delay in getting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf confirmed.
"'One could imagine, especially with the politicization of CDC at the time, that that could have taken a really long time,' she said.
"'Tough shit,' Burr said. 'We desperately need to reform CDC,' he added. 'This is minor compared to what we should do.'”
LOL @ Rochelle, Rochelle.
Should I be impressed that Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, still thinks that anyone gives a shit what she says?
In normal America, it seems like about 5% of people wear masks, and nobody cares. WaPo commenters are welcome to wear masks if their medical deficiencies require it, but that's got nothing to do with the rest of us.
Hating on LA / California is so lame. There are LOTS of us here who are conservative. Plus most people living in "LA" i.e. LA county, do not live in LA city. Quit lumping us all together.
Tripledemic is a terrible word.
Why not tridemic? It just trips off the tongue.
Even better "fake bullshit"
Not that people are not getting sick. They are. I just got over something that screwed up my sinuses for 3 weeks.
The fake bullshit is the govt reaction. Same as the fake bullshit with kung flu.
John Henry
Obviously, California didn’t make much of an effort to improve the ability of our emergency services to handle the annual winter increase in need or the emergence of new pandemics. It’s only been two and a half years. This isn’t new. California emergency rooms have exceeded winter capacity for decades.
I don’t want to hear a single California complain because they keep voting for the idiots. I’m not going to mask unless it’s mandatory but I don’t care if others do.
Ryan, I’m sorry but I’m lumping too. Voting conservative in California is as effective as spitting into the wind.
Temujin: sick dude should have worn a mask!
Or, stayed home. So sorry you were sick.
Nothing surprises me any longer. I fully expect mandatory masking to return to cities nationwide, on airlines by federal mandate, and for the schools to shut down again starting in January. We have simply become too stupid to survive reality.
Can't always tell Coronavirus from Controlavirus.
Randomizer said...
WaPo commenters are welcome to wear masks if their medical deficiencies require it, but that's got nothing to do with the rest of us.
At first I read that as 'mental deficiencies', and then realized it works either way.
With Birx admitting in her book that the goal of the masking and the Draconian lockdowns was to get rid of Donald Trump, Walensky should just STFU and curl up in her office so she can go on pretending to be a scientist and pretending to be looking out for the health and safety of the American people.
She may technically be a scientist, but she is first and foremost a petty bureaucrat and — quite clearly! — a tinpot dictator who gets her kicks out of yanking around ordinary people.
This advice is working against my original plan, hatched in early 2020, to wear a mask in public in the middle of 2025 or so (after all this was over) to see if it could shock people. I may have to extend this minor, joking long con out to the end of the decade.
I ride public transpo in SF four out of five workdays a week. Riders on buses/streetcars here are about 50/50 masking. It's depressing to see 20-somethings masking, though. They should be the ones with a 'bleep you' attitude about this whole thing. I guess they've been fully inculcated to obey an authority figure no matter what.
Sadly, people here will fall for this and freak out again. We'll see what the morons in City Hall do over the next month or so.
Masks on buses?
Must have been something Big Dramamine ordered.
Well the results are in and Sweden had it right. Covid and extra deaths are lower there than fascist lockdown countries. The cdc is corrupt and not to be trusted. Not no but hell no.
I thought wearing a mask if one was sick (or even suspected) is common in many Asian countries? Anyone who has lived in that area have any input? Seems like common sense when stuck in crowded public places. Further, I wore a mask a few times this summer due to wildfire smoke. Masks will be more common due to air pollution.
My partner loves to scour the internet for scientific stuff. Just last night he was telling me about a study that explains why we get more colds in the winter/chilly-cold weather. Can't recall the biological mechanics - in a nutshell when our nose gets cold it inhibits aspects of our immune system defense that reside in that part of our body. As he's explaining this, I immediately think "hmmm a mask does keep my nose much warmer." Warming your nose via mask could be key to keeping colds at bay.
Howard -
I work as a surgeon in pediatrics. EVERY year the pediatric wards are filled with kids with RSV. Every year. Is this year a little more full? Could be. The wards are always full every year though so it's difficult to say if it's a little worse or not.
And a general comment about masking - from my training to currently, no one ever thought surgical masks prevent virus transmission. Masks in surgery are because there is an open incision at risk for bacterial infection from spit and the water from people's breaths that might contaminate the incision. I'm not aware of any suggestion from training to currently that people wear masks in surgery to minimize viral transmission.
Prior to Covid there were many papers written that masking seems not to have any effect on viral pandemics (though admittedly not rigorous studies). And the studies out now, for people who know how to read medical literature, show no significant benefit to masking. In statistics we talk about the 95% Confidence interval. For any paper to be taken seriously it needs to include this which means "this is the number we got, but the real number COULD be between X and Y." Relative risk speaks for itself. RR of 1.0 means the intervention and the control group are the same - there is no increased or decreased risk of the outcome based on the intervention. RR 2.0 means the intervention group is twice as likely and RR 0.5 means half as likely to see the measured out come. The BEST studies (randomized control trials) show no benefit to masking (no difference between masked and unmasked groups). For the studies that do show benefit, the 95% CI always either crosses 1.0 (no benefit) or comes very close (no meaningful benefit). So the correct interpretation of the positive studies, the studies that show benefit is "we think masking might be beneficial, but our data show that we can be confident that the reality is that masking provides somewhere between no benefit and a lot of benefit." And the best studies show no benefit.
For a scientist not to acknowledge this I think is shameful and that person should not be called a scientist, should not be allowed to claim he is following science, and should not be considered a serious person.
Yeah, the masks won't work any better against the influenza and RSV viruses than they do for the C19 virus. Sick people need to wear masks to contain their sputum, keeping it off of other people and surfaces.
Keith, that was a very well written comment on masking. I would only add that Howard is NOT considered a serious person. He is a troll who thinks himself very clever. He contributes nothing but bile.
ALP -
There is a big problem in the medical literature about the lack of reproducibility. Meaning - someone writes a paper, everyone lauds it, people base future research from it ... and years later someone tries to reproduce it and finds he cannot. It might not be that the research was faked. It could have been massaged. Or it could be that the outcome just happened to be incorrect. And that is for the "harder" medical fields. For softer fields - psychology specifically - the reproducibility is nearly nonexistent. Meaning when people read a scientific article and don't understand statistics well, and TBH even if they do, they often come to a conclusion that is simply not true.
When I was in medical school we started training in reading medical journals. The professor said that mass media medical writers are know-nothings and are certain to fail to understand anything they write about. We were assigned to review a paper and for kicks to review what the newspapers were writing about it. True to form the conclusions published in the newspapers were actually the opposite of what the data showed.
Yeah.....I was in the Safeway, and the in-store advertising recommended an RSV flu shot.
What is RSV?? I guess I didn't get the memo. They didn't mention a vaccine for FUD.
KellyM @11:52:
I'm right next to Chinatown. I'd say 95% of my neighbors wore masks before, during, after and now. It's kind of amazing.
Howard, as usual: But what ever you do, don't wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces. Because it's political virtue signaling and you don't want folks on your side to think that you're the enemy.
Howard, when I see someone wearing a mask, I assume that is a Democrat. Lots of them in Whole Foods, although I only go in there for sushi. As usual, you get your arguments mixed up, like Inga does all the time.
The RSV epidemic may be because kids have been isolated for so long. Nobody remembers chickenpox parties for kids.
Keith, there are no scientists involved in what is going on with Covid. Scott Atlas tried to bring medical articles to the White House Covid meetings. Nobody read them. The "Great Barrington Declaration" was dismissed as "fringe misinformation." Like you, I wore masks in surgery, in my case for 50 years. Nobody thought they affected viruses.
Howard is not to be taken seriously.
Scotty @ 8.56
^^^ Two years of masking and isolation gets you a virgin field epidemic. I'd have thought it would take longer.
Michael K - agreed. The reality is that historically few people know how to read medical literature. Which is fine. I don't know anything about car mechanics and lots of other things. The problem is there are credentialed people - people who received a degree from a university - who believe that makes them educated. They are credentialed not educated but bec of the degree they think they know things and they think they know how to think. Which is I think the source of the "We believe in Science in this house" signs. They are uneducated but have money and think that having money (or being left wing) means they are smarter than other people. Parts of my own family fall into this category.
Regarding global warming, obviously it is not science. Science is study of anything using the scientific method - observation>hypothesis>test>re-evaluate and adjust hypothesis to findings. Global warming science is not science because 1) it is not falsifiable - there is no set of findings that supporters would say proves it is false, and 2) when data show the hypothesis to be incorrect it is the data, not the hypothesis they adjust. I was speaking with family members whose education is liberal arts, not science. One repeatedly asked "do you know about the troposphere? Do you know about the troposphere? I said that's immaterial. The problem is much deeper than any "finding" they find. It is that they don't follow the rules of science. It is religion. "How can you talk about it if you don't know about the troposphere?" People really don't understand science. They don't know what it is. Which is fine. But they think they know what science is. And it seems the more ignorant they are, the more certain they are that they know more than people who actually know science.
This study finding came out in 2019 and they are just now able to use them
School sessions are correlated with seasonal outbreaks of medically attended respiratory infections: electronic health record time series analysis, Wisconsin 2004-2011
Abstract
Increased social contact within school settings is thought to be an important factor in seasonal outbreaks of acute respiratory infection (ARI). To better understand the degree of impact, we analysed electronic health records and compared risks of respiratory infections within communities while schools were in session and out-of-session. A time series analysis of weekly respiratory infection diagnoses from 28 family medicine clinics in Wisconsin showed that people under the age of 65 experienced an increased risk of ARI when schools were in session. For children aged 5-17 years, the risk ratio for the first week of a school session was 1.12 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.93-1.34), the second week of a session was 1.39 (95% CI 1.15-1.68) and more than 2 weeks into a session was 1.43 (95% CI 1.20-1.71). Less significant increased risk ratios were also observed in young children (0-4 years) and adults (18-64 years). These results were obtained after modelling for baseline seasonal variations in disease prevalence and controlling for short-term changes in ambient temperature and relative humidity. Understanding the mechanisms of seasonality make it easier to predict outbreaks and launch timely public health interventions.
Keywords: Influenza; respiratory infections; transmission.
"The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tested positive again for Covid-19.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky had mild symptoms Sunday and is isolating at her home in Massachusetts, the CDC said Monday.
Walensky, 53, first tested positive on Oct. 21. She took a course of the antiviral pill Paxlovid, and later tested negative. But the symptoms returned and Walensky is again in isolation, working and holding virtual meetings, the CDC said.
CDC officials said Walensky is up to date on her vaccines"
Presumably she also wears the "high quality masks" that she advises everyone else to wear.
It's like she denies her own experience.
Michael K said...
"Howard is not to be taken seriously."
Nope. Not gonna go there.
Blogger PM said...
KellyM @11:52:
I'm right next to Chinatown. I'd say 95% of my neighbors wore masks before, during, after and now. It's kind of amazing.
There seems to be a tradition of wearing masks in China. That was true long before the Covid outbreak. There has been a tradition in China of spitting and hawking phlegm that goes back centuries. Perhaps that is related.
I expect Inga or Howard will need a link to show it is not racist.
The first thing you will notice after arriving in China is that the locals spit in public places. Spitting in public might seem rude and offensive in western countries, but it’s ordinary in China. Indeed, in China, it is related to Traditional Chinese Medicine. According to TCM, phlegm is a toxin that needs to be removed from the body. So, spitting the phlegm out is a healthy thing to do, and people there view spitting as a cleansing action similar to sweating.
Though China is trying to curb this disgusting habit, spitting seems to be etched its way into the Chinese culture for the long haul.
@Althouse, if you had infant grandchildren you wouldn't think RSV was quite so funny. Just sayin'
Only bank robbers, Tonto and the Lone Ranger wear masks!
[cargo] cult science
Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study
Your experience will not vary.
Fuck off with that shit. Relieved to see our host feels the same. Wait until you hear how your new word is pronounced, and mispronounced.
We still have a standard of evidence based medical practice. The FDA won’t let you take a drug without proper studies and approval. There are no such studies for significant reduction of viral infection due to mask wearing. I can’t get antibiotics for a cold, evidence based practice. But I could be required to wear a mask, no evidence of effect. That is the hypocracy of government.
Hell, a recent study said that cloth surgical masks were not less effective than n95. How does that work? N 95 is 3 micron rated
and should be better, viruses are 0.5 micron. If masks were a new treatment and current studies were submitted to the FDA they would not approve you wearing a mask for virus reduction.
If you were in a lab and had a virus chamber, and you let an employee enter with an n95 mask you would be arrested for exposing a person to a hazard with inadequate Personal protective equipment.
If a person next to you is snotting all over you you may get snott all over your hands and clothes and all over your mask, then I can argue that the snot will dry out and you will suck in viruses thru the mask from a fixed close proximity source to your nose.
Wear what you will, let me do the same, the truth as I see it is that masks were required because there was nothing else the politicians knew to tell you to do.
The RSV epidemic may be because kids have been isolated for so long. Nobody remembers chickenpox parties for kids.
You should have seen and read the horrified responses I got whenever I suggested this during the pandemic. It was clear that most children were handling the illness easily and I suggested having COVID parties for kids so they could get the virus and develop immune defenses against it.
I was being called a monster.
ALP,
"I thought wearing a mask if one was sick (or even suspected) is common in many Asian countries?"
You think correctly. What's not common, however, is statistical evidence of lower incidence of respiratory infections there vs places where no on wears masks in public.
Keith,
Thanks for bringing up the Replication Crisis. Lots of stuff we supposedly "know" rests on a very weak foundation.
Regarding masks in surgery, I found a very interesting aside in The Checklist Manifesto (link via Althouse portal!)
The author, a US surgeon, helped put together a multi-national study on the effectiveness of checklists in reducing surgical errors; he expressed great surprise when visiting the UK study site to see that several of the personnel in the operating theatre did not wear masks! (Only the surgeon and one or two others, I forget who exactly.)
JK Brown said...
This study finding came out in 2019 and they are just now able to use them
School sessions are correlated with seasonal outbreaks of medically attended respiratory infections: electronic health record time series analysis, Wisconsin 2004-2011
...
Incredible! Someone published what every single mother already knows ... when school is in session their kids are more prone to passing around a virus. It's incredible to me that something like this was ever published. When they were looking at questions to study someone actually thought "are kids more likely to pass viruses around when they are together in school all day or when they are not all crammed in classrooms together?" And someone spent personal time going through data. Good use of time.
n.n said...
[cargo] cult science
Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study
Your experience will not vary.
12/8/22, 7:01 PM
...
I read that study a long time ago. With that said ... I'd still wear a mask even without scientific backup bec if I cough into an incision and the patient became infected I'd be very upset. I don't know enough of the details of that study but I'd be curious if the cases were inherently low risk (eg all soft tissue procedures like ganglion removal or carpal tunnel or similar) or high risk (eg implants). I am skeptical that surgeons using implants where the result of infection is catastrophic would be willing to take part.
In this situation I'd say the downside of mask wearing for an hour or two or three is minimal compared to the risk of surgical site infection which is a big magnitude problem. In contrast to Covid where wearing a mask for 12 hours a day is a real burden (I can't breathe well with them on) and it's not clear they are effective at all for virus transmission, AND the magnitude of how bad Covid is, is not so bad if you are not in the high risk categories.
n.n said...
[cargo] cult science
Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study
Your experience will not vary.
12/8/22, 7:01 PM
...
I read that study a long time ago. With that said ... I'd still wear a mask even without scientific backup bec if I cough into an incision and the patient became infected I'd be very upset. I don't know enough of the details of that study but I'd be curious if the cases were inherently low risk (eg all soft tissue procedures like ganglion removal or carpal tunnel or similar) or high risk (eg implants). I am skeptical that surgeons using implants where the result of infection is catastrophic would be willing to take part.
In this situation I'd say the downside of mask wearing for an hour or two or three is minimal compared to the risk of surgical site infection which is a big magnitude problem. In contrast to Covid where wearing a mask for 12 hours a day is a real burden (I can't breathe well with them on) and it's not clear they are effective at all for virus transmission, AND the magnitude of how bad Covid is, is not so bad if you are not in the high risk categories.
"I'm OK with people wearing masks voluntarily. It makes it easier to pick the idiots out in a crowd."
Yep. One can easily spot the mouth-breathers when they don't have masks hiding their faces.
To each their own. Out of politeness I wear a mask in the oncology office. Lots of very sick people there. You never know another person's travails. But grocery stores are actually big places of viral transmission and little research is done on this. The narrative is all about cultural power and political clout. Unions. Teachers.
I firmly believe in using old-fashioned heating of the head and throat to help knock out viruses, colds, and infections. It works for me: put on several hats and blankets, wrap a heating pad around your throat, keep your nose and sinuses overheated. Sweat it out for a day. And no exposure leaves you vulnerable too. So maybe masking keeps your sinuses a bit warmer and more protected. But every few years you're going to catch something.
Our emergency rooms should not be filled with people who belong at a free (for them) local public health clinic. But they just really don't give a shit. And idiots like Howard probably think such clinics don't exist everywhere. I've never met a liberal who knew where they are and how ubiquitous they are.
"grocery stores are actually big places of viral transmission and little research is done on this."
Have you seen data to support this?
In the heat of Covid, I made it a habit to ask store workers if they had siognificantly more staff getting sick. Answer was no. I signed up for a supermarket industry trade mag and didn't seem to bring up big sick outs.
Homes and small offices where people spend more time around each other, yes.
A good selection of nose warmers:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=clown+nose&ref=nb_sb_noss
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