The New Normal

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snoloco said:
I'm saying that no level of caution is ever enough for people like you. You'll still call me selfish no matter what so I just won't do anything. If I can ignore a mask requirement and get away with it, that's what I do.


My guess is there's a mandate in that area, so most people are only wearing masks so they don't get kicked out or fined. It's not lacking common decency to go unmasked when masks don't work, and the mandate in New York State has objectively failed.
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How can you be expected to be taken seriously when you constantly repeat the lie that masks do not work?
 
Let's all try to take it down a notch, maybe kill the moron stuff.

Re masks working: I think the definition of "work" is in play. The fact that there was almost zero flu last year indicates to me that masks and social distancing have some impact on the spread of a virus. Covid seems more contagious than flu, and how much masks work, who knows. Also I'm sure there is a big diff between a fully and properly masked n95 population and whatever we are actually doing.
 
I wasn't going to post here anymore but I spoke to an old friend who is a retired epidemiologist. This is some of what she told me.

1- Michael Osterholm (who is on often MSNBC and CNN) and Dr. Fauci are the to most credible public experts, She knows them both.
2- We're gonna live with COVID and annual vaccinations the rest of our lives. The virus mutates too fast for to be effective for longer than that.
3- She wears a mask only in large crowded indoor spaces, or if it's necessary to make others comfortable. We were all wearing masks yesterday at an indoor gathering of maybe 200 people. No one checked vaccination status, but my friends are mostly vaxxed.

In other news, we got a briefing from the local infectious disease doctors this morning. NYC infections are dramatically down, and are now the lowest in the state. Warren County (Gore) has one of the highest infection rates, but it's coming down now as well. It seems the Omicron wave is passing, It has caused way more infections than Delta but about the same amount of serious disease. That seems like good news to me.

My observation is that, except for NY, masking is mostly limited to employees on a corporate payroll. In the City, proof of vaccination is required for a lot of ordinary activities. Upstate is in between with a lot of masking but few vax requirements. I think that's because NYS rules are largely driven by the experience of the City two years ago. It's gonna take some time for NYC to get back to its normal, and it's gonna require some patience from everyone.
mm
 
Harvey said:
Re masks working: I think the definition of "work" is in play. The fact that there was almost zero flu last year indicates to me that masks and social distancing have some impact on the spread of a virus. Covid seems more contagious than flu, and how much masks work, who knows.
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Not going to look it up, but the comparisons for some state in the midwest comparing counties that had school mask mandates with those counties that didn't was pretty clear in 2020. Requiring students, staff, and teachers to mask reduced community spread. There was a similar pattern in terms of kids being detected with COVID-19 in 2021 in NC counties. In NC, every school district was making their own decision about masking and testing approaches for the 2021-22 school year.

That said, the situation has changed with Omicron and the fact that kids ages 5 and up can get vaccinated. Even though the numbers aren't that big, the increasing number of younger kids who are being hospitalized for COVID-19 symptoms is a concern. Although the stats are a bit confusing because detected cases in hospitals are now a mix of people admitted because of COVID-19 and those who tested positive who were in the hospital for a different reason.

Masks work. But the reality is that most community spread after mid-2021 was from social interactions. The number of families who would plan to mask up for a Thanksgiving gathering is probably pretty small, even in NY/NJ/New England.

Omicron changed the situation in November 2021. Just as Delta did in June 2021. The availability of vaccines and improved treatments if COVID-19 is detected early is very different in January 2022 than January 2021.
 
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Milo Maltbie said:
I wasn't going to post here anymore but I apoke to an old friend who is a retired epidemiolgist. This is some of what she told me.
1- Michael Osterholm (who is on often MSNBC and CNN) and Dr. Fauci are the to most credible public experts, She knows them both.
2- We're gonna live with COVID and annual vaccinations the rest of our lives. The virus mutates too fast for to be effective for longer than that.
3- She wears a mask only in large crowded indoor spaces, or if it's necessary to make others comfortable. We were all wearing masks yesterday at an indoor gathering of maybe 200 people. No one checked vaccination status, but my friends are mostly vaxxed.
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Thanks for posting. That all makes sense to me.

The key is that SARS-CoV-2 caused a pandemic on a scale that probably hasn't happened before in human history. That means as long as there are large populations who don't have vaccine-induced immunity or natural immunity from a relatively recent variant, the coronavirus will continue to have mutations that find new hosts.

Think global, act local.
 
Milo Maltbie said:
I wasn't going to post here anymore but I spoke to an old friend who is a retired epidemiologist. This is some of what she told me.

1- Michael Osterholm (who is on often MSNBC and CNN) and Dr. Fauci are the to most credible public experts, She knows them both.
2- We're gonna live with COVID and annual vaccinations the rest of our lives. The virus mutates too fast for to be effective for longer than that.
3- She wears a mask only in large crowded indoor spaces, or if it's necessary to make others comfortable. We were all wearing masks yesterday at an indoor gathering of maybe 200 people. No one checked vaccination status, but my friends are mostly vaxxed.

In other news, we got a briefing from the local infectious disease doctors this morning. NYC infections are dramatically down, and are now the lowest in the state. Warren County (Gore) has one of the highest infection rates, but it's coming down now as well. It seems the Omicron wave is passing, It has caused way more infections than Delta but about the same amount of serious disease. That seems like good news to me.

My observation is that, except for NY, masking is mostly limited to employees on a corporate payroll. In the City, proof of vaccination is required for a lot of ordinary activities. Upstate is in between with a lot of masking but few vax requirements. I think that's because NYS rules are largely driven by the experience of the City two years ago. It's gonna take some time for NYC to get back to its normal, and it's gonna require some patience from everyone.
mm
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Thanks for sharing this, MM
 
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