5 ms·

I'm always amused at the lengths we, as a western society, must now go to because everyone refuses to wear a mask. A lot of the problems described in this artic

• ddrt 7y ago
  Just because you don’t have symptoms doesn’t mean you can’t spread it. What you outlined, wear a mask and carry on, that’s exactly the mentality that IS spreading it right now.
  • pentae 7y ago
    That'd be a great point if it wasn't for the fact that all the asian countries enforcing mask use are actually flattening the curve.
    • dabraham1248 7y ago
      There is no place on earth that has said "Not symptomatic? Wear a mask and carry on." and seen the curve flatten. As you say, a lot of asian countries _are_ enforcing mask usage. But none of them are just "carrying on". IIRC China is enforcing a "1 person per household is allowed outside once every three days for supplies" policy in the most affected areas, has built multiple new hospitals, has implemented multiple cordon sanitaires, locked down millions, has _free_ testing, and is enforcing that testing. South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan were among the first to ban flights from China (and given where they are that's MUCH bigger than the US doing so, both politically, and in percentage of flights). They are testing people constantly before they're allowed out of or in to places. They are _enforcing_ quarantines of people with fevers, they are interrogating people that might have been exposed to the disease, and are quarantining based on that, even without symptoms. They have a _lot_ more people staying home than usual. They are accessing people's financial data in real time without warrants. No one's saying masks make things worse. Given how many masks we have, there's an open question as to whether we should reserve them for medical care providers or not. What people are saying is that masks are not enough. And they're right.
• mft_ 7y ago
  Nah. Two points: 1. What this situation has already shown —on so many levels— is that we humans as a large group can’t be trusted to behave appropriately. Lots of people do follow the rules... but enough don’t, that it means the rules have to be stricter for everybody, so that the troublesome few don’t cause too much of a problem for the whole. 2. Your infection control proposal doesn’t stand up to the real world. Yes, if you could guarantee excellent N95 mask usage, and guarantee excellent hand washing (and other infection control measures - surfaces-hands-face) in everyone not locked down, and guarantee that no vulnerable people had to come to work or were exposed to people that had, and guarantee that people out in the world maintained strict social distancing... then maybe your proposal could work. But per #1 it’s super unlikely that this would be executed anywhere close to 100%... and failures would lead to more people getting sick... and then more people dying.
• altacc 7y ago
  You only need a few people not to follow the protocols and the result is disproportionately large spread. One problem with masks, apart from there not being enough of them in the world right now, is that some people think they're some kind of force-field that makes them totally immune and so they take less precautions. Really they're just an extra modifier to the risk, as shown by the number of medical staff getting ill despite all their protocols. Also the minute one of your key staff come under a high risk category, gets sick, is isolated, etc... then you need to involve remote work anyway.