I believe just a one-line statement of retraction from the editors.
It didn’t seem to be drawing any dodgy medical conclusions,
Well, it did suggest that the transmission could be twice as far as previously suspected. And there were questions as to why nobody closer, even those without masks, didn’t seem to get exposed. The fact that it seems plausible makes it even more dangerous as a potential circular reasoning trap.
Coronavirus isn’t the only US-incubated thing spreading across borders:
I’m in favor of cutting out the middle man, since we’ve seen plenty of stars with less polished viral videos. Still, PSAs with real people who have recovered might be useful. Also, less content about helping others and more emphasis on what it might cost should motivate the unmasked who put self-interest first:
Is he on drugs? I listened to a minute and a half (in which he said 'here’s the point" three times without actually making one. I mean he rambled run on sentences of wild accusations - mostly easily disproved by you know actually reading some shit. It wasn’t synthesised in a lab, it’s been in bats c. 80 years. China did not send out hundreds of thousands of people by plane. Wuhan was locked down. You couldn’t fly out of it. I know people there.
Fuck me that is some level of bad crazy. Wtf are people interviewing him for? Would you go interview a wino for his explanations of particle physics?
Edit @DukeTrout made the exact se points as me way up thread. I was just enraged listening to that fool.
im floored by the numbers. epecially because in the past, weekends have generally had lower numbers because - presumably - of reporting and staffing issues on weekends.
if these numbers are coming in on a holiday weekend of all things… i’m not looking forward to what’s next 
I’m sure that he can invent a medical expert to back him up.
hearing our incompetent president spout “the virus is from chy-na” over the weekend made me think how ridiculous this all is.
would it fing matter if the planes that came to bomb pearl harbour had come from china as opposed to japan? or, if hitler had been chinese? is china some get out jail free card? is saying it “chy-na” like he does some sort of excuse for his inability to respond?
oh, hell. china. why didn’t you say? no wonder the richest country in the world, with most of the top science and technology companies, with some of the best and brightest minds is completely unable to do anything about this damn virus.
china. we are so screwed. i mean we should have just given up from the beginning. we are so weak and incapable.
china. no wonder we’re doomed.
don’t give the man a mask to wear, give him a white flag to wave. we fascist liberals have found his kryptonite. it was china all along.
Sigh. It just keeps getting worse.
One of the takeaways I took from The Montreal Gazette post was that masks should still be worn… but, that accumulated moisture (from breathing into it) would eventually (after 20 minutes per the article) compromise the mask’s filtration capabilities. We always don masks while (for example) grocery shopping every couple of weeks or so, and have kept our visits there very short just based on not wanting to be around others even though they’re also masked. Pending better, proven advice, I figure the best we can do is limit person-to-person exposure, wear masks, maintain the 6’ minimum distance, use hand disinfectant as needed, and wash our hands. I find myself washing my hands five/six times a day even if I haven’t been outside. The ‘anal’ shall inherit the earth.
Two thoughts:
Fauci said basically this recently, when asked about masks. The general public should not be snatching up medical grade masks was the advice back in March, and still is. But cloth face coverings are advised.
Not coronavirus related but distressing local news for me nonetheless
I’m temped to frown at the people wearing N95 masks (with the breath-check value that would release the virus), but I don’t know what their story is. Besides, it’s possible that those are the KN95 knockoffs rejected for medical use.
And then, of course, there are asshole like this
Because having to wear a mask to protect others from a deadly disease is exactly like genocide. Fucking assholes.
But Hicks said in an email that political cartoons are “gross over-caricatures designed to provoke debate” and “fodder for the marketplace of ideas.”
When I hear “marketplace of ideas”, I always have to listen to this again:
The argument the FHI in Norway used (and I think still uses) is that people tend to substitute mask wearing for social distancing, where the latter is more important. However, it is also probably the case that in those places where the virus was effectively controlled without mask wearing (like Norway and NZ), people tend to be better at social distancing anyway.
I think New Zealand was lockdown followed by quarantines, testing and contact tracing.
“If people wear masks they won’t socially distance!” sounds an awful lot like, “If kids have access to condoms they’ll have sex!”
It was the same in Norway, but the question of whether or not to wear masks was a big topic of discussion, including at the beginning when Norway had one of the highest per-capita infection rates in the world. Likewise Finland.
(I should add that it was essentially impossible to find masks in Norway until quite recently; I was lucky to find some for my flights home.)
