What do you mean by "don't help much"?
The plain English meaning of that phrase is completely at odds with "and should be mandatory".
Bad News Thread
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The plain English meaning of that phrase is completely at odds with "and should be mandatory".
The key is understanding that "effective" is not boolean, or even uniform.
Masks seem to reduce your ability to receive covid by about 10%. They also reduce your ability to send covid by 50 to 70%.
So, should I go indoors because my mask protects me? No. 90% of the risk to me is still there.
Should I go indoors because I know others wear masks? Not really. 30 to 50% of the risk is still there.
If I am stuck being indoors, should I wear a mask? Yes, because the mask eliminates more than half of the risk from me to other people. (Even though the risk to me is still quite high.)
I know you are all into math but didn't think you completely ignored your English classes. The opposite of much is a little...not none. From a cost benefit analysis....if the little help > very small cost (particularly if you exclude the very young and severely handicapped so you don't get the screaming children incidents on planes) o.k. go for it.
Big pharma was one of the few institutions in this crisis which didn't fail miserably. It doesn't seem particularly wise to back stab them, largely under pressure from the PRC because their vaccine doesn't work, if we want them to step up to the plate the next time there's a crisis.
That has to be the weakest policy endorsement I have ever heard.
Do you support any covid containment measure you actually believe to be effective?
Bruddah IZ
DA
Well, how about this.
The Atlantic, which hasn't exactly been on our side through all this, just published an article by Emma Green called "The Liberals Who Can't Quit Lockdown."
Subtitle: "Progressive communities have been home to some of the fiercest battles over COVID-19 policies, and some liberal policy makers have left scientific evidence behind."
Some excerpts:
The spring of 2021 is different from the spring of 2020, though. Scientists know a lot more about how COVID-19 spreads—and how it doesn’t. Public-health advice is shifting. But some progressives have not updated their behavior based on the new information.... Some progressives have continued to embrace policies and behaviors that aren’t supported by evidence, such as banning access to playgrounds, closing beaches, and refusing to reopen schools for in-person learning....
Scientists, academics, and writers who have argued that some very low-risk activities are worth doing as vaccination rates rise—even if the risk of exposure is not zero—have faced intense backlash. After Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, argued in The Atlantic in March that families should plan to take their kids on trips and see friends and relatives this summer, a reader sent an email to her supervisors at the university suggesting that Oster be promoted to a leadership role in the field of “genocide encouragement.”
Green spends some time discussing left-liberal Somerville, Massachusetts:
In Somerville, a local leader appeared to describe parents who wanted a faster return to in-person instruction as “f***ing white parents” in a virtual public meeting; a community member accused the group of mothers advocating for schools to reopen of being motivated by white supremacy. “I spent four years fighting Trump because he was so anti-science,” Daniele Lantagne, a Somerville mom and engineering professor who works to promote equitable access to clean water and sanitation during disease outbreaks, told me. “I spent the last year fighting people who I normally would agree with … desperately trying to inject science into school reopening, and completely failed.”
As most Americans prepare to go back to normal, Green says in her conclusion, lockdown-addicted progressives "are left, Cassandra-like, to preach their peers’ folly."
Nice to see progressives finally portrayed, accurately, as stubbornly refusing to listen to science, and addicted to restrictions as evidence of their good citizenship.
But also nice to see a mainstream publication say: everyone else is going back to normal.
Tom Woods
The Atlantic, which hasn't exactly been on our side through all this, just published an article by Emma Green called "The Liberals Who Can't Quit Lockdown."
Subtitle: "Progressive communities have been home to some of the fiercest battles over COVID-19 policies, and some liberal policy makers have left scientific evidence behind."
Some excerpts:
The spring of 2021 is different from the spring of 2020, though. Scientists know a lot more about how COVID-19 spreads—and how it doesn’t. Public-health advice is shifting. But some progressives have not updated their behavior based on the new information.... Some progressives have continued to embrace policies and behaviors that aren’t supported by evidence, such as banning access to playgrounds, closing beaches, and refusing to reopen schools for in-person learning....
Scientists, academics, and writers who have argued that some very low-risk activities are worth doing as vaccination rates rise—even if the risk of exposure is not zero—have faced intense backlash. After Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, argued in The Atlantic in March that families should plan to take their kids on trips and see friends and relatives this summer, a reader sent an email to her supervisors at the university suggesting that Oster be promoted to a leadership role in the field of “genocide encouragement.”
Green spends some time discussing left-liberal Somerville, Massachusetts:
In Somerville, a local leader appeared to describe parents who wanted a faster return to in-person instruction as “f***ing white parents” in a virtual public meeting; a community member accused the group of mothers advocating for schools to reopen of being motivated by white supremacy. “I spent four years fighting Trump because he was so anti-science,” Daniele Lantagne, a Somerville mom and engineering professor who works to promote equitable access to clean water and sanitation during disease outbreaks, told me. “I spent the last year fighting people who I normally would agree with … desperately trying to inject science into school reopening, and completely failed.”
As most Americans prepare to go back to normal, Green says in her conclusion, lockdown-addicted progressives "are left, Cassandra-like, to preach their peers’ folly."
Nice to see progressives finally portrayed, accurately, as stubbornly refusing to listen to science, and addicted to restrictions as evidence of their good citizenship.
But also nice to see a mainstream publication say: everyone else is going back to normal.
Tom Woods
I already laid out my plan for you. Care to (finally) lay out yours?
It seems you don't know how to do a cost/benefit analysis which is why you don't proffer one for your recommends even though you profess to be open to one. It's probably because we've established your econ background is fairly weak (incidentally I think everyone should be required to take econ in high school....it would put an end to stupid propositions like rent control). With masks the calculation is pretty simple. I think they provide substantially less benefit (even to others in non-residence situations) than you outline because: a) the externality of people being more casual in their distancing, b) that people can't wear them right, c) that they degrade with time or washing, d) cloth masks/bandanas/gaiters aren't even very effective and could be counterproductive in some instances, and e) the length of time spent indoors. But I do agree they offer some protection to both the wearer and others, particularly in short term situations indoors. Therefore there is a small benefit (particularly if it's coupled with the advice to keep indoor interactions short such as no airplanes). That small benefit exceeds the cost (social harm, pollution, cost of the mask, possible externalities like infections) if limited to indoors and you exclude the screaming babies and autistic.
Again, I'm not advocating for any policy here. I'd be o.k. with the one I outline above. That's not my objective...my objective is to drill down on truth, scientific or otherwise, even if we don't like the answer.
That's an awful lot of words for someone who didn't answer the question.
Which policy proposals do you support that would actually "help much"?
I don’t think any policy proposals would help much. Short of Australia (which is unconstitutional here at the minimum because of violent suppression of protests plus we can’t bomb Mexico into the oceans), virus is going to virus. Best we could have done was Germany and that’s a stretch given Americans aren’t Germans.
What you repeatedly fail to understand is that those percentages assume you are in the presence of someone with actively contagious Covid. The odds of you being in extended contact with anyone with Covid are slim. If you figure in the span of over a year that less than 10% of the population has contracted Covid and the fact that those with Covid tend to stay home, the odds of being in proximity of someone with Covid at any point in time (likely an asymptomatic, which aren't reliable spreaders) are just miniscule. On a daily basis there is very, very small percentage of the population that have Covid.
Based on SD numbers on average during the pandemic there was (assuming a 10 day contagious period) only 0.19% (1 in 523) of the population that had Covid on a daily basis. At the peak you had a 1.02% (1 in 98) of the population and currently only .005% (1 and 2000). The odds are never that high that you would come in contact with someone with Covid. I understand that those odds are still likely too high for you.
Restaurants, bars and indoor spaces don't cause the virus to spread, only people with Covid do.
What about those with no symptoms and thus no reason to be tested?
If you actually want to run the numbers on probability of running into a covid contagious in person, Georgia Tech did the work on that for you.
COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool
covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu
The probability of meeting one contagious person at a 25 person soccer game or team dinner in LA is about 4%.
The indoor team dinner is, of course, considerably higher risk. Same probability that someone has it, but a much greater probability that you inhale enough to catch it.
Desert Hound
DA
You know you lost the war.If you actually want to run the numbers on probability of running into a covid contagious in person, Georgia Tech did the work on that for you.
COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool
covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu
The probability of meeting one contagious person at a 25 person soccer game or team dinner in LA is about 4%.
The indoor team dinner is, of course, considerably higher risk. Same probability that someone has it, but a much greater probability that you inhale enough to catch it.
You are like Hitler in the bunker ordering non existent armies here and there to stop the Soviets from the East and the Brits and Americans from the West.
At some point wake up and realize the real world from the start of this has acted in very different ways vs your projections/preferred solutions.
Of course you set it for the higher ascertaiment biasIf you actually want to run the numbers on probability of running into a covid contagious in person, Georgia Tech did the work on that for you.
COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool
covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu
The probability of meeting one contagious person at a 25 person soccer game or team dinner in LA is about 4%.
The indoor team dinner is, of course, considerably higher risk. Same probability that someone has it, but a much greater probability that you inhale enough to catch it.
If you are fully vaccinated I’d go ahead and have that team dinner.
My kid is not 16 yet. Old enough to transmit, but too young to vaccinate. Open air for us.
I've been using 5 for a while. It used to be the low setting.
Looking now, a bias of 3 makes more sense for LA.
The most recent I have for LA is 4: 45% prevalence / 11% confirmed at time of study. But that's a long term average. Current would be lower.
So, set it for 3. But raise the person count to 50 to include the neighboring tables at your restaurant. But keep it at 25 if you're doing a picnic.
Didn’t they just approve 12-16 year olds for Pfizer?
Not quite yet. Waiting...
Actually, most of the world put in far more effort than you did.
You've been very consistent. Your risk evaluation has always been about the risk to the person choosing an action. Never once did you ask about the probability that one person's choice would cause another person to be harmed.
That's where it gets messy. You said you wanted to go there. The person being harmed most likely has fewer years of life remaining. Meanwhile, the children were asked to sacrifice the most for them, despite being the least at risk, putting the old motto "women and children first" completely on its head.
Probably routine vaccine breakthrough which does happen in rare cases (the individual in question was very old with multiple conditions) but roh roh. It makes sense, though, as every indication from India is that their version is much more contagious than the first, is reinfecting individuals who had mild or asymptomatic cases first go around, broke through previous regional resistance to the coronavirus (perhaps from prior coronavirus infections), and has been hitting younger people more seriously. Frankly surprised Biden/Fauci didn't put a travel ban in earlier and that the travel ban isn't more robust.
