In the early begiining I downplayed COVID-19....BUT

Also, I think EVERYONE could benefit from deleting their Facebook and Twitter accounts, or at least making a conscious decision to stop using a curated news feed from one of these platforms, or any platform, for that matter, as their primary source of news.

That also doesn't mean that someone should quit Facebook to just turn around and go to some other platform like Parlor to get an even greater degree of confirmation bias and the daily dopamine hit that comes with it.

The division we are going through right now does NOT lead to a good place. Remember when people used to do this thing called "going outside"?

I don't have Facebook or Twitter either, and I'm a Gen-Xer or Millennial, depending on where you define the boundary between those two generations. I did have FB for a few years (now deleted), just to do things like signing up for contests and things like that that required you to have a FB account, but I never did anything else with it. No friends. No posts. No pics. No nada.

Ever since the inception of social media years ago, I've always thought that it was a bad idea, even when my friends would ask me why not. I've finally managed to get a few of them to change their minds.

I haven't read the whole paper yet, but I did see this in there:

"Here, we report a randomized controlled trial (20) that assessed whether a recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others reduced wearers' risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection in a setting where public health measures were in effect but community mask wearing was uncommon and not recommended."

My understanding of masks, at least as has been recommended here in the US, is that they are not so much to protect the wearer but to protect other people around the wearer. In other words, the intent of the masks is to prevent the wearer from spreading droplets as far as they might without a mask, thus helping to reduce the likelihood of transmission from the wearer to someone else nearby, not the other way around.

This is the exact same reason surgeons wear surgical masks. It's not to protect the surgeon from the patient but to protect the patient from the surgeon.

As that study says,"community mask wearing was uncommon". So, if in fact masks are intended to work in the manner I described above, I wouldn't necessarily expect this study to be very conclusive.

I suppose I might be more interested in a study that compares a study group in two different scenarios, one where study group A is among a larger population of mask wearers and one where study group B is among a larger population of non-mask wearers. Granted, I realize it's hard to have any sort of control over whether or not members of the general public, who are non-participants in the study, wear masks around the study participants. There are also lots of other potential variables, such as if masks are worn correctly, etc.

I think the only way to properly study the effects of mask usage in a more conclusive manner is to do so in a laboratory environment where things like air flow, dispersion, and particle size are measured. To the extent that those sort of studies have been conducted, I have seen some that conclude that mask usage is beneficial in preventing the transmission of airborne disease. The CDC also still officially recommends it as well. So there's that.

Edit: By the way, I just saw that the NY Times reported on this Danish Study. So the media IS reporting on it. It just looks like they are similarly skeptical of it's conclusions for the same reasons I described above.

www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/health/coronavirus-masks-denmark.html

If you read the whole thing, their only solid conclusion is that the results were, in fact, inconclusive. There's so much wiggle room and waffling in their conclusions that the study is pretty useless.

Trying to wrap my head around this.  CNBC says that a few trump rallies pre election led to over 30,000 Covid cases.  While hundreds of thousands of protestors at BLM rallies have not sparked any substantial cases?  Talk about numbers not adding up....   

re: the trump rally in my town - a good percentage of the people were in fact wearing masks. It was also outside.

re: BLM protests - a lot of people were not wearing masks on the protests I saw. Also, the numbers were HUGE compared to trump rally numbers.



All that said, BLM protests are mainstream media approved and not deemed "super spreaders", while a trump rose garden (presumably outside) gathering with hundreds at most is deemed a "super spreader" event. The bias of the media makes me want to barf. I agree with you that both sides are politicized, but I am just about 100% in toxic media overload at this point... I essentially don't believe anything out of a politicians or reporters mouth. Self serving ********.


Just sayin'.......

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You mean places like Portland? St. Louis? NYC? DC? Chicago? Democrat cities where they are being looted and burned down by 'protestors'?

It's almost as if they think protesting is the cure for COVID19. But I might be mistaken in my observations . . . and perhaps all those cities aren't protesting after all. It always amazes me how dangerous a church service is compared to 50,000 people shoulder to shoulder, peacefully celebrating the overthrow of a president. But I digress . . .


www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html
www.newsbreak.com/news/2061916952025/nolte-blm-riots-are-officially-the-most-costly-manmade-damage-to-american-property-in-history
[/quote]The "protesters" causing all the trouble in those areas are out of state right-wing militia members and the like being bussed in to cause trouble.[/div][div.
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Tell that to the right wing Trump supporter that was stalked and killed by Antifa (whom you conspicuously didn’t mention) here in Portland. And while I can confirm that BOTH right wing AND left wing radicals are getting bussed into this city, it’s Antifa and the radical left that get a pass by the city, media, mayor etc all while spewing the most vile, racist, hateful speech against police officers of color, setting fires, smashing windows, terrorizing residents and small Business owners downtown, threatening journalists and anyone taking pictures and stifling free speech. All in the name of fighting fascism. But for some reason Marxists are not considered a threat and aren’t taking any blame for spreading Covid. These things are being done by people that adhere to an ideology that is responsible for the murder of 100 Million people last century. The damage is real, the danger is real, the threat to democracy is real and it’s certainly not propaganda