Remember that time the President of the US warned us about the huge surge of cases in NZ and lamented that we don’t want that problem in the US?
“You’ve seen what’s going on in New Zealand?” Trump said of the island nation, which went months without any new covid-19 cases. “Big surge in New Zealand. It’s terrible. We don’t want that.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/18/trump-new-zealand-ardern-coronavirus/
It’s all about the rate of change, not the total numbers.
NZ - 13 new cases/5 million = 2.6/million
US - 50000 new cases/320 million = 156/million
Is that what are you talking about? Or is it that it went from 0/million and jumped to 2.6/million and that is what Trump is warning us about? And if we are not careful, we might get down to that same low number? Could you imagine the horror of having less than 1000 new cases each day in the US?
That’s an increase of infinity percent! We sure don’t want that here!
Yes we do! Infinity percent is the BEST percent! Nobody can beat us!
I think the issue is - people still primarily consider a mask to be a means of protecting oneself, not others. So when they are around strangers, they’ll wear a mask - those strangers have germs! - but when around close family, friends - it’s OK, family and friends won’t infect me, so goes the logic.
Excellent point. That explains it.
Agree 100% with your point. But masks are a way to protect oneself. Both directly by filtering what e.g. I breathe in, and indirectly by reducing community spread which over the longer term means fewer infected people sharing the store with me.
And the better mask I have (fishnet stocking = protest statement, T-shirt = risible, paper surgical = OK, N95 = better yet, full bore gas mask = best) the more the balance of benefit tilts towards me not them.
This is the truly faulty thinking. That somehow family is clean and strangers are dirty.
The real oddity to me is this is true even among the folks who fully understand and accept most of the benefit to them is via the indirect path; i.e. the folks who get that e.g. I’m mostly protecting others not myself. These people are still more willing to wear a mask at the store to protect strangers than they are to wear a mask in the car to protect their own sister.
Lotsa emotional “thinking” interfering with the logic and science and statistics. Even among the so-called “good guys” in this fight.
Yesterday I visited a street utility construction site in an inner-city residential neighborhood (as part of my job). The only people I saw wearing a mask (other then myself) were a single resident out for a walk and the mail carrier (who incidentally looked like he was 16 years old).
The construction crew who are all working outside are supposed to wear masks if they are working within 6 feet of another worker. Despite this, they all stopped wearing masks weeks or months ago.
Then there was the resident who came out to watch the construction. No mask and no social distancing (with me anyway). I immediately moved away and happened to make eye contact with him. He proceeded to point at his face (and his lack of a mask), and to then wag his finger and shake his head at me disapprovingly. 
I left the area.
On the other hand, the traffic on city streets is probably a third of what it normally is (pre-Covid) so a lot of people are still staying home here in Connecticut.
Last night, at dialysis, where everyone, patients and staff included, is required to wear a mask, I noticed one tech walking around with his mask below his nose. Whether it kept slipping down without his noticing it, I don’t know. I didn’t confront him about it directly, but I notified the nurse in charge of the shift, who said he’d speak with him.
I do see a correlation between mask just below nose, and having a particularly wide/flat nose.
Sure there’s plenty of deliberate scofflaws doing it, but there’s apparently a legit issue with masks staying up for some people. It’d get annoying to be pushing that thing back up every minute or two. They’d probably have the same challenge with eyeglasses.
This. I was at a doc’s office the other day and the receptionist’s mask was below her nose. Not being shy, I spoke up, and she was immediately shocked and apologetic and said she hadn’t noticed. I think the elastic over the ears can get stretched when people wear them for many hours and the masks really do slip down. Especially if the masks don’t have those little metal parts that you can squeeze to fit your nose.
But unless you’re at the gun counter at Wal-Mart, I say speak up, or tap your nose or something. If someone is making the effort to wear a mask at all, chances are they want to do it correctly.
I took my Saturday doughnut walk this morning.
The people working the shop are good about mask, as are the customers normally (although I’m usually there so early few other people are in there).
This morning though, Mr Dad was there with his two quite adorable little girls. Mask not over the nose, and the girls of course were wearing theirs like daddy was.
We needed to do title transfer paperwork. Signed all the documents electronically, but had a couple of signatures that had to be witnessed and notarized by the title company. They assure us that they’re using a whole separate floor and super-cleaned office for this. Signs all over the building and elevator about masks and distance. Office door propped so you don’t need to touch it, hand sanitizer on the counter. Took us to a conference room with a big plastic guard across the table. Offered us sealed, new pens. More sanitizer and wipes on the table. As we stand up from signing, we see another employee, perhaps a courier, in the main office, talking with another employee while his mask dangles from his ear. Shame that one schmuck can undo all that effort and expense.
I have observed people with all nose types with the mask below the nose or so far down that I could see into their nostrils.
This is the kind of stuff that scares the pee out of me. I read the following in the comments section of the Washington Post this morning in an article about covidiot behavior. This isn’t the first time I’ve read a “I did everything I was supposed to do, but somehow I got exposed” story. Remember early on the bus driver who got sneezed on by the passenger, and he eventually died of COVID? This is where I have a hard time with “odds.” Yeah, the “odds” are that I won’t get exposed if I wear my mask, distance, blahblahblah, but odds only predict group events, not individual events. Here’s the comment (edited some for clarity):
[My brother had] retired from a 40-year career as a petroleum engineer. He had only left the house four times in 5+ months - he’d been in very strict SQ with his family - but he was blindsided by some maskless, random woman at a gas station at 3AM in the middle of nowhere who both touched him and coughed on him.
He went home but didn’t go in the house, literally slept in the [brand-new] barn until his symptoms showed up, and hasn’t seen his family since. He had been in the ICU for nearly 6 weeks fighting for his life. We’re taking it day by day, and even though I can’t see him I read to him every morning over the phone or Skype, and we’re truly blessed that our sister, who works in the hospital, has been taking care of him. He’s been improving over the last week or so, as he can now talk a bit and sit up for 10 or 20 minutes at a time, but it may be months until we can bring him home, and there are already signs of permanent, irreversible damage.
This is not a common story, but it’s not completely unheard-of either. And the trouble is, the consequences of a miscalculation can be deadly or life-altering. Maybe for you COVID will just be like the common cold, or maybe it will wreck your health for months or forever. Or maybe it will kill you or someone in your family. I’m doing my best to keep my chances of getting it as close to zero as possible. It’s getting very old, but I don’t see another option.
Administrations and some teachers are back in my district. We have maybe 50 people in my building? One of our principals is walking around without a mask. He’s generally a macho dick, so it’s in character, but still infuriating.
That’s why I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I thought it might have slipped down without his noticing because he did pull it back up.
When a mask repeatedly slips below the nose, it’s because of an ill-fitting mask, not a particular size/shape of nose. No mask should rely on a prominent nose to hold it up. If a mask conforms to the face and the ear loops aren’t too large or stretched-out, it won’t fall down.
A friend of mine sent me two homemade masks that were shaped to conform to the face. Each mask has two adjustable bands that go around the back of my head. I no longer have issues with my mask slipping or my sunglasses fogging.
Today at the store I saw a woman in a face shield for the first time. The shield, at the lower end, was adjusted to about 5 inches off from her face. In other words it was useless. They are already pretty useless as anything other than eye protection when worn correctly, but this was a whole other level of useless.
“They are already pretty useless as anything other than eye protection when worn correctly, but this was a whole other level of useless.”
I wear a face shield with a mask. I used to layer my cloth masks so much that I felt like I couldn’t breath. A good shield (I don’t know WTF kind of shield she was wearing) blocks a great deal of large droplets and recently-spewed aerosols (they’re not the best if you hang around in poor ventilation for a long time). So now I only one cloth mask with 2-3 layers with the shield. I really like it.
There’s a great case study out of India that suggests that face shield are quite effective. Several social workers wearing only surgical masks and other PPE practices (sans face shields) caught COVID-19 from quarantined families they visited. When they donned face shields, no more caught it after seeing over a thousand people who tested positive not long after their visits.
Here’s several simulator studies.