The argument is always spacing, but I think people who expect you to “just maintain six feet of distance” either have never been outside or simply don’t think about what they normally do on the course of a day.
When the pandemic first started my wife was hiking with my son, carrying but not wearing masks, when they came across a woman with three little kids who had badly cut her right hand and wasn’t able to bandage it with her left. Whatever her position in masks, obviously she wouldn’t have planned on needing a stranger to provide her with first aid when she left the house that morning.
It’s not just Germany. The AstraZeneca is the one that most people will be getting everywhere. Here the medical profession are complaining that it’s the one most of them are getting and they don’t like it.
The fuckery Oxford have been up to with their research protocols and how every cock up seems to make the vaccine more effective really has not bred a great deal of trust for them.
Don’t they have to redo their homework from scratch for the FDA? It’s a real pity they haven’t always been transparent as we are relying on it.
Medically, it’s probably not a big deal. The 21 vs 28 day thing is just because that’s how the studies were done. Whether someone will raise a stink down the road, probably. We have kids who have to repeat their MMR because it was given the day before their 5th birthday. No science, just “that’s how it’s written.” Considering we will most likely all have to get boosters with some regularity as variants appear, I would get the shot and figure the rest out later.
My kids are going back into school. A few weeks ago I got them kid-sized KF94 masks, to be safer than the cloth ones.
The problem is that they didn’t fit great (kids are 5 and 7) and also get damp from their breath super-quickly in the icy cold.
So I opened up the wallet again and got them some better-quality cloth ones than the ones they already had, and these new ones also come with a filter pocket.
Question: Can I just cut the KF94s to fit the filter pocket? Or is there some reason I need to use a specially-made filter insert?
Cutting up the KF94s is a great way to repurpose them.
You can also cut up a coffee filter to use if you have nothing else. The most important point is to have multiple layers of different types of materials so that they catch the molecules.
You can buy about 5 bucks worth of box coffee filters. You can actually use all four sides of the box and the bottom.
Definitely cheaper and easier and more efficient than cutting up furnace filter. Not so sure about the efficacy, though (it’s definitely harder to breathe through a Honeywell filter, but it’s really expensive).
I understand the anger and the uncertainties caused by a lack of information. From what I gathered, the transparency isn’t an issue, and “redoing their homework” isn’t necessary. The AstraZeneca vector vaccine is a success story on the medical side, and has the data to prove it. And the FDA (and other bodies, i.e. in other countries) do have all the necessary data confirming the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.
What causes the communication problem is, apparently, that this is a scientific project rather than a centralised commercial development by one company. That means that several research groups participate, and every single scientist has a high incentive to publish their part of the research. This, in turn, means that parts of the general research are published out of the larger context, apart from other data which is published elsewhere, or even still unpublished. That other dsta was perhaps recorded under a differently detailed question and with perhaps a different secondary aim.
I’m trying my best to find a metaphor which might work (but I’m not sure it does, so please be gentle with me ):
The above leads, in effect, to a fragmented landscape of information. While the FDA (etc.) will look at the larger landscape and the landscape context, a reader who looks at one garden bet will have another impression, and even those who look on a garden might miss the haha which connects the garden to the landscape. Now imagine you do not see the landscape at all yourself, but you just read media reports based on travel guides, some of which are based on gardening books themselves. And some of the people writing the books have own interests, because they need to promote their specific flower beds (or be out of funding for the whole garden in the future
The bottom line is: the AZ vaccine is safe, effective, may have even have advantages above other vaccines which are not yet clearly visible for us (as potential recipients). One of those might, e.g., be a very good and broad T-cell response after some time.
I thought the FDA had insisted they redo their paperwork and AZ had decided to run another trial instead which is why it isn’t approved in the US (yet). And while I trust it and will take it, if the EMA says it’s good enough, it is, I can understand how others are less enthused. Like many in the medical profession here. It was initially said to be fifty some percent effective, but look we made a mistake here and giving less makes it 90some percent effective but look it’s even better than the initial results if you delay it or don’t give the second…
Nobody else has been fucking around and changing their minds let alone setting off the alarm bells in the FDA…
After almost a year of riding the highs and lows of this pandemic, I wanted to check in with my peers to see where they were at in their personal and professional lives. Currently, job opportunities are few and far between, some job industries (like live entertainment) no longer exist at the moment, and so young people have had to pivot. All of my peers’ lives have completely changed direction in ways they never expected.
However, across the board, every single person revealed that they’ve gained a new perspective on the world and have reassessed their priorities. What’s important to them now wasn’t necessarily even on their radar a year ago. This type of self-reflection is so rare early on in life. Normally it feels like we’re pushing forward non-stop. But the class of 2020, and really all current 20 somethings, have had a unique opportunity to not only find a new life path but to also find out a lot about ourselves, the world, and what we can and can’t live without. We’ve lost so much but have also found/gained more than we even realize – mainly, gratitude.
Exactly what @anon67050589 said. The biggest thing is to include a layer of nonwoven material in the mask structure so that you can take advantage of the electrostatic forces and random arrangement of fibers. This is important in protecting yourself. Any 2 or 3 layer fabric mask will be effective in protecting others.
I am still trying to get my head around the thinking that teachers are the only ones at risk. It’s as though these people think kids can’t catch anything or transmit diseases to their families:
I haven’t read up on it much, so bear with me. But from what you describe, they didn’t hit the endpoints of their prospective study. Other regulatory bodies are ok with a revised analysis and alternative endpoints, but FDA is a real stickler about that and usually won’t accept that kind of re-analysis. So AZ needs to develop a new protocol and endpoints to match up with the vaccine’s real-world performance and start a new prospective clinical trial.
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