I call solid digestive waste from a male bovine.
Maybe, if you’re spraying water in a narrow stream, almost parallel to the fence, it’ll block almost as much as gets through.
This seems like the sort of thing that would be trivially easy to test, but it’s an analogy, anyway: water droplets are not viral particals, and static isn’t a thing with water.
I applaud critical thinking, but this seems to be a case where common sense is outweighing expert testimony, which is not always the best path to the truth.
In my experience, when “common sense” is in conflict with “expert knowledge”, common sense is wrong 99% of the time.
It is, indeed, just an analogy. Lots of people played with hoses near fences as kids. If you didn’t, then it won’t work for you.
Here’s a video of a guy actually testing commercially available masks on YouTube:
In a lot of his earlier videos he carefully explains his set up. But I’ll summarize and tell you that he’s testing what fraction of tiny particles of salt get through various masks as he wears them. Those salt particles are much smaller than the gaps between the fibers. In some of his videos he tests how much the effectiveness of a mask is degraded by various insults. For instance, water and salt water (like sweat) barely reduce their efficacy, but alcohol strips off the static charge and permanently degrades a mask.
My experiences over my sixty years of life have solidly taught me otherwise.
I have made these points elsewhere. Here’s another attempt.
At this point I equate chance of getting Covid or anything else to time spent in close proximity with anyone else. Meaning that I’m most likely to get it from my kids. Who attend school. They do not mask there. Covid is not particularly dangerous to them IMO and I don’t want to put them through years of mask wearing all day in school. I am divorced and the kids go between households which further makes me creating any sort of household bubble extremely difficult and not worth it.
My mother lives in a memory care facility where to provide relevant protection a 90 something woman would effectively need to be masked 24-7.
My third point about masks is that they are a halfway measure. Why not continue to put off, cancel, weddings, church services, etc. or do them remotely. No masking system is perfect and people will continue to be infected even when masked. So it seems like somewhat a matter of opinion that masking hits the “sweet spot” of reducing risk just enough to an acceptable level without eliminating it entirely. We’re supposed to be scared of long Covid, but not enough to go back to fully virtual, just enough to mask.
…except these aren’t “experts” with air-quotes. They are actual experts, with verifiable qualifications, that have been studying epidemiology and/or public health for decades, and have provided peer reviewed studies to support what they have said about masking.
Are you still talking about masking? Because our public health officials weren’t demanding absolute belief and obedience. Heck: for the first couple of years our mitigation efforts were so effective we didn’t even need to wear masks. But when the situation changed, so did the recommendations from our public health team.
FYI, I made a spin-off to discuss mask efficacy specifically.
~Max
You have to admit that there’s plenty of suggestion that’d it’d be an ideal situation. Why isn’t it just fact it’d be more effective if everyone did it? I don’t see this as a misconception that requires correction.
…I don’t think I have to admit anything here, to be honest.
Okay, fine, I’ll say it on my own behalf: I have no moral problem with a nationwide mask mandate, were it practical, and I don’t see why anyone should need to backpedal over it. So what if folks on this thread have implied or stated that they wanted to see such a thing? That’s not a big deal. Some might think it is, but they’re the reason why we’re in this mess to begin with.
So maybe nobody in this thread intended to say such a thing. In that case, I’ll say it: in an ideal world, everyone worldwide would and should have been wearing masks for at least some period of time. There we go. I don’t see it as some kind of horrible straw man; I think it’s a reasonable stance to take.
Then again, I’ve said multiple times on this board that I’ve flirted with the idea that not wearing a mask is potentially a prima facie sign of either intellectual or moral deficiency of some degree, so that may just be me.
Oh, and to answer the subject line directly: I’d stop when it stops being useful, and/or when it stops being a pandemic. How’s that?
I just wanted to go back to this, the first reply, as I think a very important point.
When I recently came down with a nasty cold, but still had to venture out (luckily I could work remotely, but I still needed to go outside for a couple important errands, as I live alone), I wore a mask.
While doing so, I noticed a lot of people coughing their guts out, unmasked.
We’ve learned nothing.
Anyway, in terms of the OP, yes I’ll continue masking while ill, and when there is a high chance of encountering vulnerable people (e.g. visiting a hospital).
What I wonder is not if I will ever stop masking, because I don’t really mind masking, and masking seems like a good value. What I wonder is if I will ever feel comfortable going to restaurants again. I used to really enjoy eating out. But I don’t feel safe doing it these days.
We’ve been going to restaurants throughout. We chose carefully, based on (1) ventillation and (2) places that were taking protocols seriously (you could tell at a glance whether staff were wearing masks properly or not). So far, we either haven’t had covid or had asymptomatic cases. We have also been bringing my nearly-80 immuno-compromised mother. (This makes it sound terrible, but what I mean is when she’s comfortable, and obviously if we’re seeing her frequently we have to behave as if we are regularly coming into contact with an immuno-compromised 80-year-old anyway, since we are.)
Sadly, this means a lot of smaller, more interesting, mom-n-pop places are right out, as are a lot of places downtown due to floorspace limitations,and we’re patronizing more corporate chains in the suburbs.
We decided that our balance was going to be mitigating risk rather than eliminating it. I don’t think eating out is any worse than going to work, which isn’t optional, but I’m still very much making pandemic-influenced choices. Reading up on ventilation, it seems to actually make more of a difference than masking (though science-y folks are welcome to correct me). Obviously, both is even better.
We did have one scare at a wedding: the bride had asked everyone to test the morning of, which we did, but someone STILL turned out to have covid, and sat at our table for a few hours. I don’t know whether it was ventillation or dumb luck that saved us there (and, again, it could be both).
Ah. I can mostly work from home, and i can wear a mask when i do need to go to the office. I obviously can’t wear a mask while enjoying a nice meal at a restaurant.
It also helped that here in British Columbia, for months and months you could not enter a restaurant unless you showed proof of vaccination, meaning that we knew there were no anti-vaxxers in the restaurant with us.
Not just masking. It depends on where you live, but here in California, the foul criminal that infests the position of Governor illegally ordered all sorts of radical, unjustifiable restrictions on us, under the fraudulent guise of “protecting” us from this overhyped cold/flu bug. Our Constitutional rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of religion were openly violated, as well as the ability of many of us merely to go about our day-to-day business, and to make an honest living. Much of commerce was forcibly shut down, and our economy trashed.
And he wanted to force all employers to require all workers to submit to being used as test subjects in a dangerous medical experiment, to be injected with dangerous experimental drugs, as a condition of keeping our jobs. That’s one of the crimes for which we put German and Japanese war criminals to death after World War II, the use of nonconsenting human test subjects in such experiments, and why the Nuremberg Code was specifically devised as a standard for the use of human test subjects, the first and most essential point being the need for informed consent on the part of any such subject.
Of course, no surprise, there were more than a few incidents in which this corrupt fragment of solid digestive waste was himself caught violating the very same restrictions that he wanted to impose on us “little people”.
Similar patterns were seen in other states across the country, as well as some efforts on the part of the Biden administration to impose such measures nationwide.
And for what? An outbreak that, if allowed to run its course, would have burned itself out after a few weeks, or months at most, as all such outbreaks normally do, has now been dragged out for three years, and will probably continue to be dragged out for as long as corrupt politicians are able to exploit it.
None of this was ever about protecting anyone from any disease. It was never about anything other than corrupt political criminals creating and exploiting a fake crisis to empower and enrich themselves, to the detriment of those of us whose interests they are supposed to be serving.
Shame on all of those among you who were (and still are) dumb enough to fall for any of it.
Moderating:
Wow, hard to know where to start.
You’ve been previously mod-noted in this thread for engaging in spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories. You’ve ignored that instruction.
Further, you’ve dragged politics into a thread and that’s not allowed in The Quarantine Zone.
Lastly, you’ve engaged in a rant and insulted others in the thread who disagree with you.
For all of the foregoing, I am issuing a formal warning to you. I’m taking up your continued permission to post in this thread in the mod loop, so further instructions may follow.
You say he ordered restrictions under a “fraudulent guise”. What do you think was the actual reason he ordered restrictions if it was not to protect people from Covid? Just shits and grins? Perhaps unbridled Democratic psychopathy?
What does a governor gain by
making people adhere to public heath procedures that he knows arent needed?
Please don’t respond to this poster. He’s been temporarily topic banned while his posting privileges on this topic are under review. Thanks.