Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[Trackhead]

The problem with airplanes as I understand it is that the air circulation is usually off when the plane is on the ground--boarding, unloading and generally sitting there doing nothing. Apparently they could run the ventilation system but it costs money. Experts care to comment?

As a former flight nurse during covid, yes, you are correct. During flight air exchanges per hour in most jets far exceeds CDC guidelines for hospitals. Outflow valves direct airflow, in theory. During flight air is brought in to maintain cabin altitude, goes through compressor, is clean……outflow valves should, in theory, direct airflow..but in our testing, airflow was not laminar and highly variable.

Government medevac for previous repatriation flights had patient aft, crew foreword….to keep crew out of contaminated air flow. Assuming aft positioned outflow valves. Lear 31/45 and Pilatus airflow is erratic, at best. That said, prior to vax, very very few nurses got sick while wearing N95 or PAPR.

At the beginning of all this, this was our setup. Overkill now, but before knowledge and vax, felt like the right thing to do. Negative pressure Isopod. Hard to work with when a patient is in their on a ventilator

[supermodel159]

At this point, 95% of Americans have either had covid, been vaccinated, or both. None prevent transmission, so living in high vax area means absolutely nothing.

Wise words.

[JaytaeMoney]

I have two kids maskless in school. Exposure is mostly out of my hands at this point and we're all vaxxed.

If it makes you feel better my kid's school had "universal masking" and every kid and teacher in the class still got Covid

[paulster2626]

Once you go to a restaurant for food and drinks, then a hockey game with 20,000 people, and then a packed bar afterwards for more drinks, then stay in a hotel, you don't GAF about a mask anymore. I got 'back to normal' pretty damn fast.

[SumJongGuy]

Once you go to a restaurant for food and drinks, then a hockey game with 20,000 people, and then a packed bar afterwards for more drinks, then stay in a hotel, you don't GAF about a mask anymore. I got 'back to normal' pretty damn fast.

I've been doing all of that for the past year. I'm still not ready to lose the mask when around strangers up close for more than 10+ minutes.. Dining spread out is OK. Sitting shoulder to shoulder at a bar not so much...

I still trust the CDC to make decisions more than how fucking tired I am of having to wear a mask around strangers.. so I'll still do that until A) the CDC says all clear and/or B) when most hospitals have more patients with flu complications than they do with COVID complications..

That's when it will be over from my perspective..

[bennymac]

Where I live 10% of the population has tested positive for covid. Call it twice that to capture those not tested. Shit why not triple it.

It’s nowhere close to 100%.

My point being that not everywhere is at 100% - yet all areas are subject to somewhat similar restrictions /loosenings as time passes.

I’m not saying that places that have 90-100% rates need to be locked down. I’m not even saying my area needs to be locked down.

[bodywhomper]

My area, 16% tested positive (unclear how many were reinfection or vaxed). 66% eligible are vaxed and 59% eligible have been boosted.

My understanding is that being vaxed or previously infected prevents infection/reinfection for some and it reduces (for some) the time of being infectious.

[Dantheman]

I 110% DGAF if someone is still choosing to wear a mask. However, why they are wearing anything other than a N95/KN95/etc. baffles me. I also sometimes still see people walking outside alone with a mask on which blows my mind.

[bodywhomper]

Most masks reduce transmission, no?

[muted reborn]

I have two kids maskless in school. Exposure is mostly out of my hands at this point and we're all vaxxed.

Me too! And they both tested positive in the last week thanks to an outbreak in one of my kids classes. Both my kids are vaxxed.

[Buzzworthy]

I 110% DGAF if someone is still choosing to wear a mask. However, why they are wearing anything other than a N95/KN95/etc. baffles me. I also sometimes still see people walking outside alone with a mask on which blows my mind.

My wife occasionally drives home in one. She doesn’t even know that she has it on from the hospital and being dead tired.

[J. Barron DeJong]

I 110% DGAF if someone is still choosing to wear a mask. However, why they are wearing anything other than a N95/KN95/etc. baffles me. I also sometimes still see people walking outside alone with a mask on which blows my mind.

This is pretty much where I am. Well fitting N95/KN95/etc. are so far superior to any other option that if you are truly concerned about masking, then you really have to be wearing one of those.

And they’re so effective that having people around you wear cloth or even surgical masks isn’t going to greatly reduce your chance of getting sick.

So unless you’re advocating for a mask mandate that requires everyone to wear an N95/KN95/etc., then why bother?

[teledad]

Most masks reduce transmission, no?

[skiskiskiskiski]

Once you go to a restaurant for food and drinks, then a hockey game with 20,000 people, and then a packed bar afterwards for more drinks, then stay in a hotel, you don't GAF about a mask anymore. I got 'back to normal' pretty damn fast.

I dont give a fuck what people do in places that nobody HAS to go like bars, restaurants, hockey games, vanilla ice concerts, etc.

I care about protecting the vulnerable people in our society in places they cannot reasonable avoid.

Grocery store, pharmacy, dmv, doctors offices, hospitals, public transit, etc should be mask required.

Its not often people have to be in those places long.

Suck it up and give a fuck about someone other than yourself for a few minutes.

I cannot even fathom being so selfish to be unwilling to wear a mask. I cant even comprehend it. It makes me so sad for all of us.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Most masks reduce transmission, no?

Technically yes, but actually no:



Cloth mask does basically nothing. And note the text at the bottom: two people wearing well fitting instead of unfitted N95’s increases the safe exposure time from 25 hours to 2500 hours. Wish it had exposure for fitted N95 vs. no mask, but it’s got to be a fairly high number.

Edit: I see teledad beat me to it.

[bodywhomper]

Made me laugh because I now remember sharing that graphic many months ago. Must be brain fog… or maybe recovery from bicycle day (I wish!)

[Trackhead]

If it makes you feel better my kid's school had "universal masking" and every kid and teacher in the class still got Covid

That’s because epi data has shown mask mandates do nothing on a population level.

[bodywhomper]

really?
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0252315
https://www.poverty-action.org/sites...211108.pdf.pdf
https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-...pdf?sc_lang=en
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35086185/

[Trackhead]

We can search pubmed and post confirmation bias all day long, or just agree to disagree. I’ll go with the latter for now.

[bodywhomper]

I didn’t scour pubmed. Apparently, google did it for me.

I’m curious to see the literature showing epi data that shows mask mandates do nothing on a population level.

Most analyses that I’ve read or heard couple mask mandates with horrible and confusing messaging from public health agencies.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Technically yes, but actually no:



Cloth mask does basically nothing. And note the text at the bottom: two people wearing well fitting instead of unfitted N95’s increases the safe exposure time from 25 hours to 2500 hours. Wish it had exposure for fitted N95 vs. no mask, but it’s got to be a fairly high number.

Edit: I see teledad beat me to it.

I puzzled out the pattern on this chart, and it looks like if two people wearing well fitted N95’s are good for 2500 hours, then a person wearing a well fitted N95 should be safe from an unmasked person for 25 hours.

So, if you’re shopping, at an airport, etc. you can be quite safe by wearing a good fitting N95, regardless of what others around you are doing.

If spending a significant amount of time with someone who is high risk, in a close space, then it may be a good idea for both to mask up.

IANAD

[jono]

I puzzled out the pattern on this chart, and it looks like if two people wearing well fitted N95’s are good for 2500 hours, then a person wearing a well fitted N95 should be safe from an unmasked person for 25 hours.

So, if you’re shopping, at an airport, etc. you can be quite safe by wearing a good fitting N95, regardless of what others around you are doing.

If spending a significant amount of time with someone who is high risk, in a close space, then it may be a good idea for both to mask up.

IANAD

You are an engineer, though, right? Are you familiar with how much more concentrated a stream of air stays when exiting from a high pressure source as compared to the massively more dispersed sourcing that happens when air is drawn toward a vacuum? (Aka, exhale vs. inhale.)

If you look around you'll notice that there are more versions of that chart. The earlier versions showed a difference between masks worn by an infected source and those worn by an uninfected person. That difference reflects the fact that it's easier to reduce transmission by blocking the source than filtering at the uninfected. This is why masks have generally been used medically to keep the wearer from infecting others.

There are a couple of other things that are obviously half-assed about that chart, too, like the implication that any N95 mask will be 100x more effective when well-fitted. That may be true of some N95's, but the standard only requires them to be 95% efficient even fitted, so at the least some of those masks are not going to step up that much. Others may, but those aren't going to be better than well-fitted cloth until they are fitted--i.e. the flow resistance is so high in that material that a slight gap renders them useless.

They're not citing a specific mask for that chart because they made that chart up without testing anything--note the perfect symmetry. It may be a useful analogy, but it doesn't work for proving a specific point.

FTR: I'm a big fan of N95's. They've kept my wife safe hovering in people's mouths (well, that and a face shield). We sat on 2 flights totalling 9 hours in them on Tuesday. (If we come down with something I'll update.) On both flights I noticed that pretty much everyone else that was wearing a mask was wearing a protective/sealing mask, too. So Brandolini's Law fans, gather your cherries while ye may, because the apparent effectiveness of masks is about to go way up now that they are only being worn by people who give a shit and keep them on (even while eating, in many cases).

[J. Barron DeJong]

If you look around you'll notice that there are more versions of that chart. The earlier versions showed a difference between masks worn by an infected source and those worn by an uninfected person. That difference reflects the fact that it's easier to reduce transmission by blocking the source than filtering at the uninfected. This is why masks have generally been used medically to keep the wearer from infecting others.

I did think it was odd that the effects were symmetrical, but trusted that there was something I wasn’t thinking of that would make it so. Haven’t come across the chart that shows the asymmetrical effects.

(And, yes I’m and engineer, but fluid dynamics was one of my worst grades…)

[jfost]

I did think it was odd that the effects were symmetrical, but trusted that there was something I wasn’t thinking of that would make it so. Haven’t come across the chart that shows the asymmetrical effects.

(And, yes I’m and engineer, but fluid dynamics was one of my worst grades…)

N95’s, fit-tested, ABSOLUTELY are effective because people who actively care for Covid+ patients wear them, and don’t generally get infected.

[jfost]

Also pretty dumb to say that cloth/surgical masks “do nothing”… if people bother to wear them, they double/quadruple the time to infectious exposure. That seems pretty fucking significant to me. But yeah, I guess if people don’t wear them they won’t work at all…