Knowledge????

On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 7:03:16 PM UTC-5, Hank Nixon wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 5:32:11 PM UTC-5, John Sinclair wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 2:16:10 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 7:30:07 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 1:19:31 AM UTC-6, 2G wrote:
On Monday, December 28, 2020 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, Bob Leve wrote:
I'm amazed at the number of seeming experts who are littering this site with passionately uninformed opinions yet don't seem to have the credentials or expertise of an infectious disease MD or actual governmental experience.
Lets get back to what this site is about: Sharing information about the wonderful sport of soaring!
You're right (that they are not MDs). However, we have leaders who also aren't MDs but believe and act like they are. So, let's hear from some real experts:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0
This study ranks the effectiveness of virtually all COVID interventions by various governments. It is shocking that certain popular measures (closing restaurants and crisis management plans) might actually be doing more harm than good. And the wearing of masks is fundamentally ineffective as determined by 3 of 4 analysis methods. And our national expert, Tony Fauci, admits that he is "nudging" his herd immunity level based on public polls! Sorry, but this is a *******ization of science. And he is far from being the only one.

Tom
As I read it, that is NOT what that article says. Some extracts:

"The most effective NPIs include curfews, lockdowns and closing and restricting places where people gather in smaller or large numbers for an extended period of time. This includes small gathering cancellations (closures of shops, restaurants, gatherings of 50 persons or fewer, mandatory home working and so on) and closure of educational institutions. "

In other words, closing restaurants ("restricting places where people gather in smaller or large numbers") is among the more effective measures to take, NOT "fundamentally ineffective" as you state.

"Taken together, the social distancing and movement-restriction measures discussed above can therefore be seen as the ‘nuclear option’ of NPIs: highly effective but causing substantial collateral damages to society, the economy, trade and human rights4,39."

"We also find a number of highly effective NPIs that can be considered less costly. For instance, we find that risk-communication strategies feature prominently amongst consensus NPIs. This includes government actions intended to educate and actively communicate with the public. The effective messages include encouraging people to stay at home, promoting social distancing and workplace safety measures, encouraging the self-initiated isolation of people with symptoms, travel warnings and information campaigns (mostly via social media)."

There are also conclusions on ineffective measures:
"Some measures are ineffective in (almost) all methods and datasets—for example, environmental measures to disinfect and clean surfaces and objects in public and semi-public places. This finding is at odds with current recommendations of the WHO (World Health Organization) for environmental cleaning in non-healthcare settings46, and calls for a closer examination of the effectiveness of such measures."

"We also find no evidence for the effectiveness of social distancing measures in regard to public transport. While infections on buses and trains have been reported47, our results may suggest a limited contribution of such cases to the overall virus spread, as previously reported48. A heightened public risk awareness associated with commuting (for example, people being more likely to wear face masks) might contribute to this finding49."

They also found that timing was important. The earlier NPI measures were implemented the more impact on the virus:

"The effectiveness of individual NPIs is heavily influenced by governance (Supplementary Information) and local context, as evidenced by the results of the entropic approach. This local context includes the stage of the epidemic, socio-economic, cultural and political characteristics and other NPIs previously implemented. The fact that gross domestic product is overall positively correlated with NPI effectiveness whereas the governance indicator ‘voice and accountability’ is negatively correlated might be related to the successful mitigation of the initial phase of the epidemic of certain south-east Asian and Middle East countries showing authoritarian tendencies."

In otherwords, the administrations denial and delay in implementing effective measures has made the impact worse for the US.

And rather than focusing on a single measure, the authors conclude that a more comprehensive response is what is really effective:

"The emerging picture reveals that no one-size-fits-all solution exists, and no single NPI can decrease Rt below one. Instead, in the absence of a vaccine or efficient antiviral medication, a resurgence of COVID-19 cases can be stopped only by a suitable combination of NPIs, each tailored to the specific country and its epidemic age. These measures must be enacted in the optimal combination and sequence to be maximally effective against the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and thereby enable more rapid reopening."

You really ought to read and understand the article before citing it.

Rich L.
You looked in the wrong place - it is "Special measures for certain establishments," not "small gathering cancellations" which includes ALL small groups, not just restaurants. Contact tracing found that restaurants accounted for 1.4% of infections vs 70% in the home.

This study is important because it quantifies how effective the measures are that uninformed government bureaucrats and elected officials are cramming down our throats without representation. That said, it is likely that people will reach different conclusions and you are welcome to state yours minus the invectives.

Tom
When I was a kid (80 years ago) the county health department would quarantine your house if somebody in there got the measles............yellow notice on the door and nobody went in or out!
Now days you can’t get half the nation to even put on a mask! Come on people, get with the program and help put this virus behind us!
JJ
+1
UH

The politics of Covid is astounding.

For those of you who question the effectiveness of masks...oh my

I am a dentist. We have been wearing masks 100% of the time in our offices from the beginning.
We require all patients/delivery persons/anyone who enters our office to be wearing a mask that covers BOTH their mouth and nose.
No...we do not allow mouth shields or face shields in place of a mask. They are not the same thing at all.

From January 2020 through September 2020, less than 1% of all people who work in a dental office have tested positive for Covid.
A dental office is probably the most dangerous place you could be with regards to an airborne infectious particle.
Our handpieces blow air in the mouth which ejects the oral contents into the surrounding air in a mist.
Our instuments to clean teeth (ultrasonic scalers) create the finest of mists.
Yet, less than 1% have tested positive. Remember, all these people spend most of their time outside of the dental office so it speaks well of their behaviour outside of the office also.

I took a walk today in my town's park. Here in California we are having the most significant of all Covid surges. My local hospitals have ICUs that are 100+% full.
The dog park had more people than I have seen in many months. AND...there were less masks inside that dog park than inside my car.

That is why we are having this problem.

Now, let us talk about soaring.

Guy Acheson wrote on 12/29/2020 6:30 PM:
The politics of Covid is astounding.

For those of you who question the effectiveness of masks...oh my

I am a dentist. We have been wearing masks 100% of the time in our offices from the beginning.
We require all patients/delivery persons/anyone who enters our office to be wearing a mask that covers BOTH their mouth and nose.
No...we do not allow mouth shields or face shields in place of a mask. They are not the same thing at all.

From January 2020 through September 2020, less than 1% of all people who work in a dental office have tested positive for Covid.
A dental office is probably the most dangerous place you could be with regards to an airborne infectious particle.
Our handpieces blow air in the mouth which ejects the oral contents into the surrounding air in a mist.
Our instuments to clean teeth (ultrasonic scalers) create the finest of mists.
Yet, less than 1% have tested positive. Remember, all these people spend most of their time outside of the dental office so it speaks well of their behaviour outside of the office also.

I took a walk today in my town's park. Here in California we are having the most significant of all Covid surges. My local hospitals have ICUs that are 100+% full.
The dog park had more people than I have seen in many months. AND...there were less masks inside that dog park than inside my car.

That is why we are having this problem.

Now, let us talk about soaring.

Thank you, Guy.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 6:30:38 PM UTC-8, Guy Acheson wrote:
The politics of Covid is astounding.

For those of you who question the effectiveness of masks...oh my

I am a dentist. We have been wearing masks 100% of the time in our offices from the beginning.
We require all patients/delivery persons/anyone who enters our office to be wearing a mask that covers BOTH their mouth and nose.
No...we do not allow mouth shields or face shields in place of a mask. They are not the same thing at all.

From January 2020 through September 2020, less than 1% of all people who work in a dental office have tested positive for Covid.
A dental office is probably the most dangerous place you could be with regards to an airborne infectious particle.
Our handpieces blow air in the mouth which ejects the oral contents into the surrounding air in a mist.
Our instuments to clean teeth (ultrasonic scalers) create the finest of mists.
Yet, less than 1% have tested positive. Remember, all these people spend most of their time outside of the dental office so it speaks well of their behaviour outside of the office also.

I took a walk today in my town's park. Here in California we are having the most significant of all Covid surges. My local hospitals have ICUs that are 100+% full.
The dog park had more people than I have seen in many months. AND...there were less masks inside that dog park than inside my car.

That is why we are having this problem.

Now, let us talk about soaring.

The gold-standard mask, the N-95 (which you can't get), properly worn and fitted, filters particles down to 135 nm; coronavirus particles are 70-90 nm.. Let's go more extreme, the Stryker Flyte Helmet (https://www.stryker.com/us/en/orthop...on-system.html) used in high-risk areas for its filtered air supply; this helmet IS INEFFECTIVE in protecting wearers from COVID (https://link.springer.com/article/10...-020-04796-3):

"Sterile surgical helmet systems (SSHS) do not protect against aerosol particulate and therefore are not efficacious in protection against COVID-19. The fan system employed may even increase risk to the surgeon by drawing in particulates as well as delay recognition of intraoperative cues, such as exhaust from diathermy, that point to respirator mask leak."

Now, tell me again how effective those cheap, throw-away masks are.

Tom

On Wednesday, 30 December 2020 at 8:32:11 am UTC+10, John Sinclair wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 2:16:10 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 7:30:07 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 1:19:31 AM UTC-6, 2G wrote:
On Monday, December 28, 2020 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, Bob Leve wrote:
I'm amazed at the number of seeming experts who are littering this site with passionately uninformed opinions yet don't seem to have the credentials or expertise of an infectious disease MD or actual governmental experience.
Lets get back to what this site is about: Sharing information about the wonderful sport of soaring!
You're right (that they are not MDs). However, we have leaders who also aren't MDs but believe and act like they are. So, let's hear from some real experts:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0
This study ranks the effectiveness of virtually all COVID interventions by various governments. It is shocking that certain popular measures (closing restaurants and crisis management plans) might actually be doing more harm than good. And the wearing of masks is fundamentally ineffective as determined by 3 of 4 analysis methods. And our national expert, Tony Fauci, admits that he is "nudging" his herd immunity level based on public polls! Sorry, but this is a *******ization of science. And he is far from being the only one.

Tom
As I read it, that is NOT what that article says. Some extracts:

"The most effective NPIs include curfews, lockdowns and closing and restricting places where people gather in smaller or large numbers for an extended period of time. This includes small gathering cancellations (closures of shops, restaurants, gatherings of 50 persons or fewer, mandatory home working and so on) and closure of educational institutions. "

In other words, closing restaurants ("restricting places where people gather in smaller or large numbers") is among the more effective measures to take, NOT "fundamentally ineffective" as you state.

"Taken together, the social distancing and movement-restriction measures discussed above can therefore be seen as the ‘nuclear option’ of NPIs: highly effective but causing substantial collateral damages to society, the economy, trade and human rights4,39."

"We also find a number of highly effective NPIs that can be considered less costly. For instance, we find that risk-communication strategies feature prominently amongst consensus NPIs. This includes government actions intended to educate and actively communicate with the public. The effective messages include encouraging people to stay at home, promoting social distancing and workplace safety measures, encouraging the self-initiated isolation of people with symptoms, travel warnings and information campaigns (mostly via social media)."

There are also conclusions on ineffective measures:
"Some measures are ineffective in (almost) all methods and datasets—for example, environmental measures to disinfect and clean surfaces and objects in public and semi-public places. This finding is at odds with current recommendations of the WHO (World Health Organization) for environmental cleaning in non-healthcare settings46, and calls for a closer examination of the effectiveness of such measures."

"We also find no evidence for the effectiveness of social distancing measures in regard to public transport. While infections on buses and trains have been reported47, our results may suggest a limited contribution of such cases to the overall virus spread, as previously reported48. A heightened public risk awareness associated with commuting (for example, people being more likely to wear face masks) might contribute to this finding49."

They also found that timing was important. The earlier NPI measures were implemented the more impact on the virus:

"The effectiveness of individual NPIs is heavily influenced by governance (Supplementary Information) and local context, as evidenced by the results of the entropic approach. This local context includes the stage of the epidemic, socio-economic, cultural and political characteristics and other NPIs previously implemented. The fact that gross domestic product is overall positively correlated with NPI effectiveness whereas the governance indicator ‘voice and accountability’ is negatively correlated might be related to the successful mitigation of the initial phase of the epidemic of certain south-east Asian and Middle East countries showing authoritarian tendencies."

In otherwords, the administrations denial and delay in implementing effective measures has made the impact worse for the US.

And rather than focusing on a single measure, the authors conclude that a more comprehensive response is what is really effective:

"The emerging picture reveals that no one-size-fits-all solution exists, and no single NPI can decrease Rt below one. Instead, in the absence of a vaccine or efficient antiviral medication, a resurgence of COVID-19 cases can be stopped only by a suitable combination of NPIs, each tailored to the specific country and its epidemic age. These measures must be enacted in the optimal combination and sequence to be maximally effective against the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and thereby enable more rapid reopening."

You really ought to read and understand the article before citing it.

Rich L.
You looked in the wrong place - it is "Special measures for certain establishments," not "small gathering cancellations" which includes ALL small groups, not just restaurants. Contact tracing found that restaurants accounted for 1.4% of infections vs 70% in the home.

This study is important because it quantifies how effective the measures are that uninformed government bureaucrats and elected officials are cramming down our throats without representation. That said, it is likely that people will reach different conclusions and you are welcome to state yours minus the invectives.

Tom
When I was a kid (80 years ago) the county health department would quarantine your house if somebody in there got the measles............yellow notice on the door and nobody went in or out!
Now days you can’t get half the nation to even put on a mask! Come on people, get with the program and help put this virus behind us!
JJ
Yes John, those were the days, they quarantined the sick.

On Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:03:08 -0800, Paul B wrote:

On Wednesday, 30 December 2020 at 8:32:11 am UTC+10, John Sinclair
wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 2:16:10 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 7:30:07 AM UTC-8,
wrote:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 1:19:31 AM UTC-6, 2G wrote:
On Monday, December 28, 2020 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, Bob Leve wrote:
I'm amazed at the number of seeming experts who are littering
this site with passionately uninformed opinions yet don't seem
to have the credentials or expertise of an infectious disease
MD or actual governmental experience.
Lets get back to what this site is about: Sharing information
about the wonderful sport of soaring!
You're right (that they are not MDs). However, we have leaders
who also aren't MDs but believe and act like they are. So, let's
hear from some real experts:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0 This study
ranks the effectiveness of virtually all COVID interventions by
various governments. It is shocking that certain popular measures
(closing restaurants and crisis management plans) might actually
be doing more harm than good. And the wearing of masks is
fundamentally ineffective as determined by 3 of 4 analysis
methods. And our national expert, Tony Fauci, admits that he is
"nudging" his herd immunity level based on public polls! Sorry,
but this is a *******ization of science. And he is far from being
the only one.

Tom
As I read it, that is NOT what that article says. Some extracts:

"The most effective NPIs include curfews, lockdowns and closing and
restricting places where people gather in smaller or large numbers
for an extended period of time. This includes small gathering
cancellations (closures of shops, restaurants, gatherings of 50
persons or fewer, mandatory home working and so on) and closure of
educational institutions. "

In other words, closing restaurants ("restricting places where
people gather in smaller or large numbers") is among the more
effective measures to take, NOT "fundamentally ineffective" as you
state.

"Taken together, the social distancing and movement-restriction
measures discussed above can therefore be seen as the ‘nuclear
option’ of NPIs: highly effective but causing substantial
collateral damages to society, the economy, trade and human
rights4,39."

"We also find a number of highly effective NPIs that can be
considered less costly. For instance, we find that
risk-communication strategies feature prominently amongst consensus
NPIs. This includes government actions intended to educate and
actively communicate with the public. The effective messages
include encouraging people to stay at home, promoting social
distancing and workplace safety measures, encouraging the
self-initiated isolation of people with symptoms, travel warnings
and information campaigns (mostly via social media)."

There are also conclusions on ineffective measures:
"Some measures are ineffective in (almost) all methods and
datasets—for example, environmental measures to disinfect and clean
surfaces and objects in public and semi-public places. This finding
is at odds with current recommendations of the WHO (World Health
Organization) for environmental cleaning in non-healthcare
settings46, and calls for a closer examination of the effectiveness
of such measures."

"We also find no evidence for the effectiveness of social
distancing measures in regard to public transport. While infections
on buses and trains have been reported47, our results may suggest a
limited contribution of such cases to the overall virus spread, as
previously reported48. A heightened public risk awareness
associated with commuting (for example, people being more likely to
wear face masks) might contribute to this finding49."

They also found that timing was important. The earlier NPI measures
were implemented the more impact on the virus:

"The effectiveness of individual NPIs is heavily influenced by
governance (Supplementary Information) and local context, as
evidenced by the results of the entropic approach. This local
context includes the stage of the epidemic, socio-economic,
cultural and political characteristics and other NPIs previously
implemented. The fact that gross domestic product is overall
positively correlated with NPI effectiveness whereas the governance
indicator ‘voice and accountability’ is negatively correlated might
be related to the successful mitigation of the initial phase of the
epidemic of certain south-east Asian and Middle East countries
showing authoritarian tendencies."

In otherwords, the administrations denial and delay in implementing
effective measures has made the impact worse for the US.

And rather than focusing on a single measure, the authors conclude
that a more comprehensive response is what is really effective:

"The emerging picture reveals that no one-size-fits-all solution
exists, and no single NPI can decrease Rt below one. Instead, in
the absence of a vaccine or efficient antiviral medication, a
resurgence of COVID-19 cases can be stopped only by a suitable
combination of NPIs, each tailored to the specific country and its
epidemic age. These measures must be enacted in the optimal
combination and sequence to be maximally effective against the
spread of SARS-CoV-2 and thereby enable more rapid reopening."

You really ought to read and understand the article before citing
it.

Rich L.
You looked in the wrong place - it is "Special measures for certain
establishments," not "small gathering cancellations" which includes
ALL small groups, not just restaurants. Contact tracing found that
restaurants accounted for 1.4% of infections vs 70% in the home.

This study is important because it quantifies how effective the
measures are that uninformed government bureaucrats and elected
officials are cramming down our throats without representation. That
said, it is likely that people will reach different conclusions and
you are welcome to state yours minus the invectives.

Tom
When I was a kid (80 years ago) the county health department would
quarantine your house if somebody in there got the
measles............yellow notice on the door and nobody went in or out!
Now days you can’t get half the nation to even put on a mask! Come on
people, get with the program and help put this virus behind us!
JJ
Yes John, those were the days, they quarantined the sick.

70 or more years ago *almost everybody* got mumps, measles and (often)
scarlet fever. Obviously, since there were no vaccines. If you were male,
you wanted to get mumps before puberty because getting it later was very
nasty and could make you sterile - anmd its not good for women either.

Now we have vaccines against all of these and the MMR shot deals with the
first two (both varieties of measles), so people are forgetting how nasty
these were. Given that mumps can have such bad after effects, and measles
isn't pleasant either, it makes you wonder whether antivaxers have any
idea of the risks they're exposing their kids to.

Disclaimer: I have no medical training, but was a kid when measles, mumps
and scarlet fever were common, so of course everybody knew about them,
their symptoms and after-effects.


--
--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

If there were only a place more suited to this discussion....

Oh, wait. https://boards.straightdope.com/c/th...antine-zone/29

Paul B wrote on 12/30/2020 12:03 AM:
On Wednesday, 30 December 2020 at 8:32:11 am UTC+10, John Sinclair wrote:
When I was a kid (80 years ago) the county health department would quarantine your house if somebody in there got the measles............yellow notice on the door and nobody went in or out!
Now days you can’t get half the nation to even put on a mask! Come on people, get with the program and help put this virus behind us!
JJ
Yes John, those were the days, they quarantined the sick.

Please allow me to be pedantic: even back then, the sick were isolated, and the exposed people
that had no symptoms were quarantined, just as they are today.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

2G wrote on 12/29/2020 11:34 PM:
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 6:30:38 PM UTC-8, Guy Acheson wrote:
The politics of Covid is astounding.

For those of you who question the effectiveness of masks...oh my

I am a dentist. We have been wearing masks 100% of the time in our offices from the beginning.
We require all patients/delivery persons/anyone who enters our office to be wearing a mask that covers BOTH their mouth and nose.
No...we do not allow mouth shields or face shields in place of a mask. They are not the same thing at all.

From January 2020 through September 2020, less than 1% of all people who work in a dental office have tested positive for Covid.
A dental office is probably the most dangerous place you could be with regards to an airborne infectious particle.
Our handpieces blow air in the mouth which ejects the oral contents into the surrounding air in a mist.
Our instuments to clean teeth (ultrasonic scalers) create the finest of mists.
Yet, less than 1% have tested positive. Remember, all these people spend most of their time outside of the dental office so it speaks well of their behaviour outside of the office also.

I took a walk today in my town's park. Here in California we are having the most significant of all Covid surges. My local hospitals have ICUs that are 100+% full.
The dog park had more people than I have seen in many months. AND...there were less masks inside that dog park than inside my car.

That is why we are having this problem.

Now, let us talk about soaring.

The gold-standard mask, the N-95 (which you can't get), properly worn and fitted, filters particles down to 135 nm; coronavirus particles are 70-90 nm.. Let's go more extreme, the Stryker Flyte Helmet (https://www.stryker.com/us/en/orthop...on-system.html) used in high-risk areas for its filtered air supply; this helmet IS INEFFECTIVE in protecting wearers from COVID (https://link.springer.com/article/10...-020-04796-3):

"Sterile surgical helmet systems (SSHS) do not protect against aerosol particulate and therefore are not efficacious in protection against COVID-19. The fan system employed may even increase risk to the surgeon by drawing in particulates as well as delay recognition of intraoperative cues, such as exhaust from diathermy, that point to respirator mask leak."

Now, tell me again how effective those cheap, throw-away masks are.

Tom

Wearing effective masks, like N-95, might allow instruction to begin sooner than later, if both
instructor and student wore them. N-95 masks are generally still in short supply, but that may
change in the next few months, about the time our (northern hemisphere) flying season begins.
Some KN-95 masks, which are readily available now, might also be suitable, but the suitability
specific KN-95 masks is harder to determine; hopefully, that will change.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 9:30:07 AM UTC-6, wrote:
As I read it, that is NOT what that article says. Some extracts:
And rather than focusing on a single measure, the authors conclude that a more comprehensive response is what is really effective:

"The emerging picture reveals that no one-size-fits-all solution exists, and no single NPI can decrease Rt below one. Instead, in the absence of a vaccine or efficient antiviral medication, a resurgence of COVID-19 cases can be stopped only by a suitable combination of NPIs, each tailored to the specific country and its epidemic age. These measures must be enacted in the optimal combination and sequence to be maximally effective against the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and thereby enable more rapid reopening."

You really ought to read and understand the article before citing it.

Rich L.

Thank you, Rich, for posting this extract.
The virus knows no politics. Everyone, including scientists, were ignorant of its biology, best anti-infective measures, and best treatment a year ago.. Facts, through research, have been steadily accumulating. Sadly, opinions are often strongly held, even by "authorities", that are dissonant with fact. The discipline of practicing clinical medicine is that one quickly learns that using opinion instead of fact to treat patients is a disaster for the patient, which makes us cautious. Most people are not faced continually with this potentially catastrophic error-checking by nature, so opinions float free.
DrDan Johnson