COVID topic vol 2

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7Wannabe5
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Viagra sales worldwide = $30 billion= 1Million UK life years.

nomadscientist
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by nomadscientist »

Seems reasonable. I think at least one million men in the UK would swap one year for the ability to get it up again.

ducknald_don
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by ducknald_don »

Ego wrote:
Sun Dec 27, 2020 5:53 pm
It is interesting how much this has come to resemble the abortion debate with the roles reversed.
I wonder what it would look like if a new variant emerged that killed young people.

7Wannabe5
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

If a variant that killed young children emerged people not wearing masks would be shot in the street.

If a couple of the big Antarctic ice basins collapse due to GCC, the economic losses would likely be more than a quadrillion dollars (1000 trillion.) So, if the blip of a global brownout second order effect of lock-downs contributes just 1/10,000 towards avoiding this event that represents over $100 billion saved.

nomadscientist
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by nomadscientist »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 11:57 am
If a variant that killed young children emerged people not wearing masks would be shot in the street.
Step back a moment.

If the disease killed young children people would not just blithely assume that masks stop 100% of all transmission, something for which there is no evidence and which is almost certainly false.

More likely, they'd completely isolate all the children. As a first step.

Mask signalling is a consequence of everyone having internalized that the disease doesn't really matter, but some people wanting to pretend it does and force others to give credit and status to that pretense.

A Life of FI
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by A Life of FI »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 4:37 am
I believe that “tinkering” isn’t the worst possible solution seeking method, and, in fact, it is often the best possible given a highly complex emerging situation. Do I believe that all players in the U.S. still have reasonable degree of freedom to “tinker” towards their own solutions for relieving their own suffering at their own level? More or less, but yes.
Many politicians say we do not have enough capacity and the elderly need to be protected.

The elderly are the ones at risk so that is logical, but hospitals are less clear as often they will claim a given place has overloaded hospitals but if you look up that area’s current hospital occupancy statistics and compare them to prior years, they are around the same or even less.

And in the places where they had no lockdowns at all, like Sweden, they never overloaded their hospitals and have no more deaths than they had in prior years – even though the same people who predict our hospitals will be overloaded predicted that it would be a complete disaster there and almost twice as many people would die there this year as die there normally. So the predictors predictions where wildly wrong there and might be wrong here too – No?

But in any case, the question is if these things are purported to be needed, why did they deconstruct the few temporary hospitals that were constructed in the Spring and why have they not constructed many more and recruited and trained medical staff over the last 9 months, and why have they not isolated the elderly.

Tinker - "attempt to repair or improve something in a casual or desultory way, often to no useful effect"

Tinkering is the problem here.

ducknald_don
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by ducknald_don »

nomadscientist wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 12:04 pm
If the disease killed young children people would not just blithely assume that masks stop 100% of all transmission, something for which there is no evidence and which is almost certainly false.
Masks don't need to stop 100% of all transmission to be effective.

7Wannabe5
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@nomadscientist: My current assumption is that one mask is maybe 70% effective and 2 masks (one on me and one on the other human 6 ft away from me) are maybe 90% effective, but I don’t push it. I try to keep any event where I choose to break total isolation down to 1/10,000 risk of death and limit those events to frequency of other “normal” risky behaviors such as climbing a ladder by myself to clean gutters. So, if 2.5 % of general population is likely infected, and 2 masks reduces transmission risk to 10%, and my personal Covid death risk is 1/20 due to weak lungs, then every novel encounter with masks is approximately 1/8000 death risk, whereas every novel encounter without masks represents 1/800 death risk = WAAAY too high! It’s not just signaling. I wouldn’t let the guy who came to repair the furnace into the apartment without a mask.

I would expose a young child in my care to even less risk, for the same reason I wouldn’t choose to take them up on a ladder with me to clean out the gutters.

Is it the case that we as a society do not take as much care to reduce risks for elderly people who can’t be completely isolated because they must be cared for like infants due to their infirmities? Yes, this is true.

I would also note that I wore a mask the entire time I was in hospital in known proximity to people who had Covid and I did not contract the disease.

A Life of FI
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by A Life of FI »

Ego wrote:
Sun Dec 27, 2020 5:53 pm
It is interesting how much this has come to resemble the abortion debate with the roles reversed.
And further interesting that one position relates to the first part of some kind of existence (a fetus) and the other position relates predominately to the last part of some kind of existence (a frail old person near death with many limitations and health problems - which many of them consider less that a full existence).

One could say the Repubs are Pro-Life at the beginning of life and Pro-Choice at the end of it and the Dems vise-versa.

And what is further strange is that the Repubs are old and they in theory are at the one’s at risk of dying from it and the Dems are young and the spirit of their messaging is that everyone is be given an equal chance - which would be more consistent that Pro-Life than Pro-Choice position in relation to abortion.

Though positions of political parties are not necessarily logically consistent with other their positions, I do think both parties would have been better off if the Repubs, like abortion, could have found some biblical citation supporting people staying a home during a plague and insisted that this was the correct answer, then the Dems would have taken the other side and each parties positions would be internally consistent.

7Wannabe5
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Suicide rate is also higher for Republican voters.

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Ego
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Ego »

Has anyone here purchased one of the more extreme filters like the Air Microclimate?

https://youtu.be/qghNAX2V2o4

For those at high risk, why not?

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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by jacob »

@Ego - See viewtopic.php?p=220307#p220307

Both DW and I use half-masks with P100 filtration when out and about. Add goggles insofar we have to spend time indoor with the same person for more than a few minutes. Otherwise, I consider the goggles overkill (infection through the eyes is very rare).

That hood is a full mask with N95 filtration and motor driven intake which makes breathing easier. However, I don't find P100 particle filters to be that much effort to breathe through. My solution is both cheaper and ~166x more effective but perhaps not as cool. Not sure where either rank on the fashion scale though.

Anyhoo, this puts us pretty much at zero risk or some 3000x less risk than not wearing a mask given the same exposure.

nomadscientist
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by nomadscientist »

ducknald_don wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 12:29 pm
Masks don't need to stop 100% of all transmission to be effective.
To have some level of effectiveness, that is true.

If the disease were massacring children, what would be required is a complete and rapid end to the disease, rather than just some level of effectiveness.

Above this post, jacob discusses the quality of masks in terms of their ability to filter our microparticles, the mindset of a man who actually believes masks work. Whereas the politician*, who wears a piece of cloth with a logo printed on it, does not really believe masks work or does not believe coronavirus is a serious problem, and nor do most people who advocate them.



*creditworthy exception: Angela Merkel wears an N95. And has a PhD in quantum chemistry.
Last edited by nomadscientist on Mon Dec 28, 2020 3:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

chenda
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by chenda »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 4:37 am
my best option given my extreme weak lung status at the moment is to continue to shelter with an increasingly rabid Republican (although very fastidious in regard to Covid)grouchy old man who is hoping I will agree to squish myself into a corset and hostess MMF threesomes.
Post vaccination I assume ? ;)

Although I expect STD rates have plummeted in 2020...

c4rat0n1a
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by c4rat0n1a »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Dec 27, 2020 6:46 am
3) The primary limiting factor in expansion is trained staff. Staff can't be trained quickly enough to provide resilience in face of epidemic.
Exactly. In the UK, once it became apparent during the first wave that even after cancelling all but the most critical medical treatment, hospitals were still going to be overflowing, the government quickly built 7 new "nightingale" hospitals - basically military style field hospitals.

Turns out though, that there weren't just a bunch of doctors and nurses sitting round with nothing to do. All the actual doctors and nurses in the country already had jobs in the hospitals that already existed. It seems that you can't just magic new doctors into existence in a few weeks or months, so these new hospitals aren't getting used due to lack of staff. Undergraduate medical students and trainee nurses have already been pressed into service. January is not going to be a good time to need medical help.

For the vaccination roll out, vets and dentists are being paid to do it, and some parts of the country are training volunteers to do the jabs. Treating seriously ill patients is a bit different though.

7Wannabe5
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Ego:

I have a small stash of N95 masks from when The Cowboy was in the Middle East. However, Catch 22 is that they are not easy to breath in when my asthma is not well controlled. I prefer to simply not go out.

When I was in the hospital, they gave me the usual disposable surgical type masks, and as I noted above, if my antibody test results are accurate*, I did not contract Covid while in the Covid ward.

@chenda:

I am not doing anything remotely like that in the time of Covid. After I get vaccinated, I am definitely going to go out and get me some regular old burger sex before I can be bothered with anything that “gourmet.”

*I do wonder about this because I still have a sort of unusual “like I breathed in fiberglass” feeling in my lungs although I am doing much better.

A Life of FI
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by A Life of FI »

jacob wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 3:00 pm
Are the nursing homes using these?

If they work as you say, which I do not doubt, we should be seeing few deaths in them.

If they are not using them, then why not?

Doesn't seem like they should be selling to lower risk people if they don't have enough for the high-risk ones.

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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by jacob »

Because the lack of exhalation filter in the unmodified consumer version(*) would require everybody in the nursing home to wear one whenever they find themselves in the same room as someone else. This would require people to demonstrate an unusual level of conscientiousness, awareness, and discipline far beyond what can be expected from everybody in a group of random people. They are also not easy to talk (be heard) through.

(*) This is also why those don't count as wearing a mask in some places. See other thread.

Whereas N95s, surgical and cloth masks filter in both directions and thus help reduce the level of exposure when some are less disciplined about usage. And you can hear what people are saying.

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Alphaville
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by Alphaville »

fyi i strapped surgical mask over the exhaust of my p100 respirator. it's just small hole vs the relatively large mask so it took some tying of knots to properly filter.

nomadscientist
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Re: COVID topic vol 2

Post by nomadscientist »

c4rat0n1a wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 4:09 pm
Exactly. In the UK, once it became apparent during the first wave that even after cancelling all but the most critical medical treatment, hospitals were still going to be overflowing, the government quickly built 7 new "nightingale" hospitals - basically military style field hospitals.

Turns out though, that there weren't just a bunch of doctors and nurses sitting round with nothing to do. All the actual doctors and nurses in the country already had jobs in the hospitals that already existed. It seems that you can't just magic new doctors into existence in a few weeks or months, so these new hospitals aren't getting used due to lack of staff.
They aren't getting used due to lack of patients.

Lack of hospital-quality staff was well expected - the purpose of those facilities was crowd control, not treatment. They would be used to warehouse the cases expected to survive with minimal interventions (most of cases), and as hospices for those considered unlikely to survive despite interventions so they do not die in hospital car parks in front of TV cameras.

Those who could benefit most from interventions would be treated in regular hospitals.

The general public (and even people who should know better) grossly overestimate the value added of intensive interventions though. The idea that these restrictions made sense to slowly feed people through ICUs was obviously crazy from the beginning which is why the pre-covid UK epidemic plan did not include that policy. It only ever made sense as measure to maximize the impact of vaccines, although it's unclear whether governments and officials realized that.

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