I stopped shopping at Home Depot years ago due to Ken Langone. This does nothing to counteract my stance on that choice, but I’ve also heard it from other companies. “Creat[ing] an atmosphere of fear?” How many of your customers are wearing masks right now?
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Is anybody surprised at this? This is the idiot who was too cool to wear eye protection when looking at a solar eclipse, where the negative consequences are much more acute.
Yeah, because of course the most effective way to combat a virus is prayer, but a close second is definitely showing the microscopic organism you aren’t afraid of it. They really respect that.
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Yeah, but we’ve known that people can carry SARS-CoV-2 for some time before developing symptoms since nearly the beginning of the US outbreak, and I am pretty sure we’ve known that some people don’t even notice their symptoms when their infection peaks (I think I recently read on NPR or NYT it may be as high as 40%), so I don’t understand why wearing a mask wasn’t recommended by the CDC from the start, other then they couldn’t conceive of people making their own ; p
I’ve been in isolation for a while now so the only vector for exponential growth would be me getting infected at the store and later infecting others at the store who aren’t able to isolate and / or actually interact with people at high risk. In which case I should have been wearing a mask from the start. It’s just dumb when “common sense” turns out to be correct but somehow the experts don’t use it. (Generally I am annoyed by people who think “common sense” is a meaningful term and engage in doubting the formally trained) But in this particular case it’s starting to seem like they messed up.
Edit: and no, I am not saying we should all become epistemic nihilists and embrace Alex Jones style conspiracy theories, or disregard all advice… I’m sure someone will read it that way.
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I guess that, as “sick people” can be asymptomatic and yet still contagious; treating everyone like a “sick person” is the safest stance to assume.
True, but this is not new information, though.
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I thought so, but some people seem surprised, who shouldn’t.
Treat everyone as sick, including yourself.
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Hopefully his tests, if he actually took them, were wrong and he succumbs being that he’s elderly and unhealthy.
Name of my new punk band.
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This is pretty much the talk i had with my staff 2 weeks ago. We know how to do this, we got pretty damn good at it with HIV. Treat everyone as if they are contagious. No exceptions. We do this now for blood and body fluids. We just have to consider respiratory droplets as body fluids (which they are.)
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So, TL;DR, we’re all to wear masks outdoors now, without exception?
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Yeah, we should. It is pointed out in the article, and the major argument against wearing one, that the value to the wearer is likely small, wearing a mask decreases risk to others. That is sufficient reason. It is important to wear a mask properly and handle it safely, and that we not think it is a substitute for all the other mitigation strategies. But it helps to decrease risk of spread, so yes.
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Thank you.
I just wanted that in the clear after 90 comments of dicking about and mixed messages.
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Outside, the droplets will disperse and evaporate quickly, which should kill the virus. I don’t wear one when I’m out for a walk, but that’s in a suburban environment with few people. In an urban area, where there’s a lot of people even if they’re spaced out, dunno.
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Yeah I have an N95 mask from when we had a lot of smoke over the city in January, and I will wear it at the shops from now on. But I see so few people on my walks (none, most of the time), and I never get close to the people I might see, that its really not justified.
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Plus, you’ll want to save that mask for when you need it, because replacing it will be difficult.
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To be fair, I don’t wear one to work in the garden or mow the yard. But going shopping, or anywhere with groups or crowds, absolutely.
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Sez you: Perhaps the crowd that takes over after he kills everyone in the room will be more decent.
They’d almost have to be.
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This is exactly what I was doing for the last two hours. It did help me feel better. I’m not planning on making many- enough for my immediate family and 2 for an older coworker.
This is the pattern I’ve been using. https://www.instructables.com/id/AB-Mask-for-a-Nurse-by-a-Nurse/
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Bigger mask- so it covers from just before your ears all the way down to your neck. If you or someone you know sews, you could try scaling this one up- or just try it. Mine aren’t done, but as a mask meant to cover N95s and be useful alone, the coverage is pretty good.
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Ugh, don’t ruin ball gags for me!
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