Don’t count on masks to help. Here’s a peer-reviewed study from just last month:
" 2020 June - There is no good evidence that face masks protect the public against infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID‐19."
California’s mask mandate has been in effect for a month and both cases and deaths have exploded.
You forgot to include the next like:
However, absence of proof of an effect is not the same as proof of absence of an effect.
Let me guess, you didn’t actually read the article.
First they say:
A meta‐analysis of randomised controlled trials of pre‐COVID‐19 showed that surgical masks or N95 respirators reduced clinical respiratory illness in health‐care workers by 41% and influenza‐like illness by 66%
Then they go on later to say
Some health‐care and ancillary hospital staff have mooted wearing surgical facemasks all the time even when asymptomatic to protect themselves and patients. 4 However, given the current low and declining transmission within the Australian community, the risk of a health worker inadvertently catching or spreading the infection if not wearing a mask is very low.
Which is definitely not the case in most parts of the world at the moment, especially the US.
Basically, the whole article is saying that masks are pointless, in Australia, because your risk of contracting the disease is low there.
And to drive the point home, in early June Victoria [pop. 6.5 million] was doing <10 cases per day and 1, from maybe 8,000 tests. Masks were not recommended because social distancing was sufficient in a population where the infection was so sparse. Now due to a careless quarantine control, possibly a single slip, they’ve got 450 cases per day, and masks have become mandatory.
Yes - here in Victoria we are wearing masks now - and I am very glad that we are.
I want to congratulate Florida, Texas, and California for surpassing NY in total cases! Well done!
They still have fewer deaths, but that’s because we’ve learned tons about how to treat the disease, on the backs of dead New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. You’re welcome! Thanks for completely wasting our shut down. Can’t wait for tourists to come visit so we can completely shut down again, rather than just mostly shut down.
The average age of infection is roughly 15 years lower in those states, largely because so much of the early outbreak was in nursing homes. I haven’t seen any studies yet that evaluate improvement in outcomes after controlling for age.
I’m sure that’s part of it, but remsvirdir (or whatever) and that steroid have both been shown to be effective in treating it. That was something NY and NJ didn’t know about back in March and April. Plus, nursing homes have basically completely shut down to visitors, so that’s helping keep it out of the older population.
I think the anti-viral (rem…) can reduce the severity of the disease itself, and the steroid is good at stopping the body from killing itself with one of those cytokine storms.
I think we also know to obsessively monitor O2 levels. Early on, they were sending home people that seemed pretty healthy but died. 02 levels seem to be key.
I actually turned on and updated my old Samsung Galaxy S7, which has an O2 monitor built in. My daughter has had a cough for a couple of months now, so I wanted to make sure she was getting enough oxygen (we’re not relying on that, of course – she’s been tested, been to the doctor, and is on some new meds).
You can probably buy an easier to use and more accurate pulse oximeter at your drugstore. They aren’t very expensive.
I don’t know about the Samsung Galaxy S7, but my old Samsung Galaxy S8 gave the same results as an inexpensive pulse oximeter.
I thought for a while Newsom was doing a good job here in California. We were locked down fairly well with a pretty good phased reopening plan. Then he gave in to the anti-maskers here, opened everything up way too early, and now we are screwed.
I don’t blame the government as much as I blame the people here for this. I live in a more conservative area of the state in the Inland Empire and these people are everywhere. Hardly anyone around here wears masks anymore while Riverside county has one of the biggest infection rates…
I looked into this a few months ago, and here is what I found:
The verdict was:
The bottom line conclusion was: “It is not physically possible to measure SpO2 using current smartphone technology.”
The paper goes into the reasons why this is so. The short version is that a pulse oximeter compares the transmissivity of two different wavelengths of light through the finger (usually red and infrared). A cell phone attempts to measure the reflection instead, and only uses one wavelength of light.
You’re better off getting a $25 pulse oximeter that actually works, instead of trying to use a cell phone app. After some intermittent shortages, pulse oximeter are pretty much widely available again. I bought one for each of my extended family members over the last few months.
Slight quibble, it is possible to measure it, just not very accurately, and not in a clinically useful way. Looking through the paper makes it clear that of course my results had the Samsung phone and the cheap dedicated device consistently giving the same results. All measurements where on people with 95-100% SpO2, a range were the Samsung phones do give accurate results. The Samsung does have additional hardware to do the measurement, it isn’t just using the flash, like the app only method.
I’d only looked into buying a pulse oximeter a few months ago, when they were nowhere to be found, and felt bad about having sold my Samsung S8. Now there’s no need to worry, as they seem to be in stock locally, and are even on sale.
I seem to recall a few things that were known/expected in the very beginning… old people and others with underlying conditions would be hit hard. Same goes with people of color.
Seems like big state governors are getting a pass on both of those factors. Granted it would be hard to better protect people of color without being considered racist… but it could have been done.
I don’t think either of those were known “in the very beginning.” I remember articles pointing out that the age pattern of previous epidemics had often been very different; and I don’t think the pattern with people of color was picked up on for a couple of months.
– here’s a news story from early April talking about newly available data showing relatively high rates in black people in the USA; note that they’re talking about this as being new information, from data collected in March and released in early April:
A Washington Post analysis of early data from jurisdictions across the country found that the novel coronavirus appears to be affecting — and killing — black Americans at a disproportionately high rate compared to white Americans.
And here’s one from mid-March that not only doesn’t seem to be aware of a higher rate, but is trying to counter an impression that black people might be immune:
The news last week that NBA player Rudy Gobert, a Frenchman of Caribbean heritage, had tested positive for the coronavirus shattered a myth that some of the world’s more conspiracy-minded had circulated online through jokes, news stories and social media posts.
Black people are not, in fact, immune to the coronavirus.
Yeah, pretty sure the reports out of China, Iran and Italy weren’t very clear about whether American minorities would suffer disproportionately.
But there was a recognition early on in the West that co-morbidities such as obesity, high blood pressure, heart conditions and so on, which are probably more highly reflected in US minorities [they certainly are in our indigenous population], made you more vulnerable.
“Very beginning” was a poor choice of words on my part. However, on 4/20 Michigan’s Governor Whitmer established a task force on racial disparity wrt Covid. Didn’t shut down Detroit earlier, harder or longer… just a task force.