Slight derail here but as China has pretty much effectively dealt with their crisis, why aren't we importing loads of Chinese public health experts and getting them to help us implement the measures they used. Maybe they could bring some masks with them.
Do you need to prepare the ground by importing loads of teachers in Confucian thought and practice? How many years may they require before obstreperous* Europeans are willing and able to receive with discipline?
* "stubbornly resistant to control : UNRULY"
according to Merriam Webster definition 2
Slight derail here but as China has pretty much effectively dealt with their crisis, why aren't we importing loads of Chinese public health experts and getting them to help us implement the measures they used. Maybe they could bring some masks with them.
Do you need to prepare the ground by importing loads of teachers in Confucian thought and practice? How many years may they require before obstreperous* Europeans are willing and able to receive with discipline?
* "stubbornly resistant to control : UNRULY"
according to Merriam Webster definition 2
3000 deaths in 1.3 billion people and we are already at 3 times that mortality. Obviously they did something right that we are not doing.
Slight derail here but as China has pretty much effectively dealt with their crisis, why aren't we importing loads of Chinese public health experts and getting them to help us implement the measures they used. Maybe they could bring some masks with them.
Do you need to prepare the ground by importing loads of teachers in Confucian thought and practice? How many years may they require before obstreperous* Europeans are willing and able to receive with discipline?
* "stubbornly resistant to control : UNRULY"
according to Merriam Webster definition 2
3000 reported deaths in 1.3 billion people and we are already at 3 times that mortality. Obviously they did something right that we are not doing.
FIFY
Re: Effective re-usable face-masks
Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2020 12:25 am
by Bird on a Fire
I don't think there's any argument that the Chinese response, in terms of lockdown, testing and isolation, were more restrictive and more severely enforced than any of those in the West. Whether anybody would want, even temporarily, to submit to that kind of government control is another matter. And it's not like governments generally do give the citizenry their civil liberties back after an acute crisis.
Hiding the outbreak and arresting whistleblowers isn't a good look, though. And nor is using the crisis to cause trouble in a childish spat with the people of Taiwan.
Slight derail here but as China has pretty much effectively dealt with their crisis, why aren't we importing loads of Chinese public health experts and getting them to help us implement the measures they used. Maybe they could bring some masks with them.
Because the most important part of the Chinese solution is ideas. If we are willing to learn, we can do so remotely: if not, importing experts makes little difference.
Re: Effective re-usable face-masks
Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2020 7:47 am
by EACLucifer
Worth pointing out the South Korea has managed a pretty good job of containing it without welding people into the flats and totally shutting cities down. They got it before us, have had a fraction of the mortality, and haven't had to use as restrictive measures as we have.
And their figures are a lot more likely to be accurate than the Chinese fascists that caused this in the first place and sabotaged initial containment.
I posted an article talking largely about cloth masks, actually.
"We estimate that the benefits of each additional cloth maskworn by the public are conservatively in the $3,000-$6,000 range due to their impact in slowing the spread of the virus"
Meanwhile, using the same model for weighing up the value of different interventions, they were reckoning the value of an N95 on a frontline healthcare worker as in the region of a million dollars.
The study they cited for the effectiveness of cloth masks had surgical masks three times as effective as home made ones, but home made ones were still effective. It is worth remembering that masks aren't being recommended as an alternative to other measures, but an addition to them. Annoyingly, I lost the tab I had open comparing handwashing to masks during the original SARS outbreak, but masks were probably a fraction better, but both was rather better than either intervention alone.
Gah! That's what I get for reading the links one day and replying here the next without rechecking. My apologies.
I'll continue to worry about people's mask technique and mostly just stay out of everyone's way. :/
Worth pointing out the South Korea has managed a pretty good job of containing it without welding people into the flats and totally shutting cities down. They got it before us, have had a fraction of the mortality, and haven't had to use as restrictive measures as we have.
And their figures are a lot more likely to be accurate than the Chinese fascists that caused this in the first place and sabotaged initial containment.
As has Australia, which, with a very similar government to the UK and USA, is currently on a very different trajectory to either. The number of deaths in the UK overtook the total number of cases in Australia a few days ago and is accelerating away. Australia's doubling time is currently 15 days, down from 3 days in early March.
Australia didn't move especially quickly and I was very worried for the first half of March. Nobody has been locked in their home, though the treatment of returning travelers from overseas hasn't been exactly great. Nobody has gone to jail for disputing the official narrative. And almost nobody is wearing masks. Australia has done a lot in the area of financial support so that most people can afford to stay at home without starving, which probably helps, as does the sprawling nature of our cities.
Also, our positive test rates are around 3% and the new case rates have been stable for a while so we're probably not missing large pockets of disease in the community.
The other thing that China, South Korea, and Taiwan share is experience with SARS. That gives their community a headstart in taking the risk seriously. But, again, Australia (and New Zealand) demonstrates that you don't need that history to stomp on this disease effectively, at least in the short term.
Worth pointing out the South Korea has managed a pretty good job of containing it without welding people into the flats and totally shutting cities down. They got it before us, have had a fraction of the mortality, and haven't had to use as restrictive measures as we have.
And their figures are a lot more likely to be accurate than the Chinese fascists that caused this in the first place and sabotaged initial containment.
Also, South Korea, and Taiwan are democracies, so far better models for what can be achieved with a free country - as opposed to China, where there are multiple issues, both with the accuracy (especially in the beginning) and the potential for misusing the response. For example, this is quite convenient for them as far as Hong Kong is concerned.
I don't think there's any argument that the Chinese response, in terms of lockdown, testing and isolation, were more restrictive and more severely enforced than any of those in the West. Whether anybody would want, even temporarily, to submit to that kind of government control is another matter. And it's not like governments generally do give the citizenry their civil liberties back after an acute crisis.
Hiding the outbreak and arresting whistleblowers isn't a good look, though. And nor is using the crisis to cause trouble in a childish spat with the people of Taiwan.
They made some mistakes initially but they have still fared much better than we have.
Back to masks, are there any medically certified re-usable masks?
Re: Effective re-usable face-masks
Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2020 7:12 pm
by EACLucifer
AFAICT Whistleblowers are still disappearing in China, or at least I've heard of a few in the last few weeks. China didn't make mistakes initially, they engaged in a reckless and evil campaign to suppress information.
AFAICT Whistleblowers are still disappearing in China, or at least I've heard of a few in the last few weeks. China didn't make mistakes initially, they engaged in a reckless and evil campaign to suppress information.
Fewer dead Chinese than dead Brits (from corona virus).
What about medically certified re-usable masks? Are there any?
That is what we will need to turn this pandemic around.
We simply haven't the faintest idea what Chinese deaths were, but estimates based on workload of crematoria suggest radically higher than their fascist regime admits.
And then consider; if they had behaved remotely responsibly, not sending police thugs round to rough up whistleblowers, or better yet, not running the dangerous, known to be a massive disease risk wildlife markets to cater to ignorant superstition, then there would be far fewer deaths worldwide, potentially. In a way, all deaths are on China. While this does not in any way absolve other leaders for failing to prepare, don't f.cking praise the country that started this, especially when there are far better role models out there - South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, and so on.
*racist statement*
Yeah, okay, but what about the masks?
Like f.ck is it racist to criticse a totalitarian regime.
It was a Chinese doctor they roughed up for warning people, a Chinese city that was first hit even when their instinct was to lie to the world and try to hush it up.
Perhaps if you are so concerned about racism as to imagine it in the defence of a fascist regime, you could look at the current treatment of non-ethnically Chinese people in China right now, a direct consequence of the Chinese fascist government's propaganda's ludicrous claims that they had it under control but the rest of the world let them down.
Re: Effective re-usable face-masks
Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2020 9:49 pm
by Gfamily
Socially acceptable? If people object it's their problem
Spoiler:
Screenshot_20200410-224038.jpg (222.25 KiB) Viewed 4325 times
I've linked to the World Service item, rather than the Radio 4 programme, as the World Service programmes tend to be a single item (in this case, only 9 minutes long). As far as I know, no transcript is available.
Re: Effective re-usable face-masks
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2020 11:43 am
by bmforre
Thank you PS!
PS: I see that your avatar still is facing the world with no face mask. Is this safe these days? I guess he depends on you bringing home necessities.
PS: I see that your avatar still is facing the world with no face mask. Is this safe these days? I guess he depends on you bringing home necessities.
Just for you...
Re: Effective re-usable face-masks
Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:05 pm
by Woodchopper
Respiratory virus shedding in exhaled breath and efficacy of face masks
We identified seasonal human coronaviruses, influenza viruses and rhinoviruses in exhaled breath and coughs of children and adults with acute respiratory illness. Surgical face masks significantly reduced detection of influenza virus RNA in respiratory droplets and coronavirus RNA in aerosols, with a trend toward reduced detection of coronavirus RNA in respiratory droplets. Our results indicate that surgical face masks could prevent transmission of human coronaviruses and influenza viruses from symptomatic individuals.
"Who are we?" "Italians!"
"What do we want?" "Masks!"
"Here they are!" "..."
Re: Effective re-usable face-masks
Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 3:40 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Is that "liberally based on a true story" at the bottom there?
Re: Effective re-usable face-masks
Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 3:43 pm
by shpalman
Yes.
Re: Effective re-usable face-masks
Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 3:54 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Thanks.
I can't quite read Italian - I don't know the pronouns, auxiliary verbs or idiomatic word order, which seem to be the things that vary most between romance languages. But it seems a lot of the vocabulary comes free with Spanish and Portuguese, which is nice.
I'm pretty jealous of languages that have mutual intelligibility. I was in Frisland a couple of years ago, and Frisian (English's closest relative) is just about similar enough to trick me into thinking I understand it, but not similar enough to make actual sense. Reading in a Dutch accent and imagining it's Chaucer helps a little, though.
