InfiniteISO Loc: The Carolinas, USA

The important fact is that now, with current treatment protocols, the chance of someone dying from this disease if they catch it today, even if they are elderly and have comorbidities is less than 2%.

Most displayed statistics include the entirity of our covid history. The majority of logged deaths in the US were front-loaded into the pandemic statistics when we were still figuring out the best way to help someone who caught the illness.

The CDC is calculating Case Mortality Rates and Crude Mortality Rates based on the entire span of the pandemic. This keeps the rates artificially high even as the number of confirmed cases rises and the death rate slows. It's a case of skewing the analysis so that the results are the most alarming.

You can imagine this easily if you hypotheically exagerate the statistics. If this disease had killed 1/2 the US population in the first week and none of the subsequent confirmed cases for the remainder of the year died, the CDC would still be calculating you had a 50 percent chance of dying from the virus.

If you dig into the numbers and look at the last couple of months, the number of deaths per case reported GLOBALLY is about 1.5%. This includes areas where medicine is extremely crude. Of course most of these areas don't have the obesity issues that plague the US population.

If we look at a couple of areas in the US for the period from 8/1 to 10/1, the number of deaths per reported case in Florida is about 3.2 percent. In New York City, where Covid has almost run its course, the deaths per reported case are 1.4 percent. Frame these numbers with the consideration that the number of cases is low because very few people that don't get sick get tested. Also, remember that it has already been shown that Covid deaths are over reported.

Of course the virus is bad, but if you look at excess death curves, the virus appears to run through a population over a period of a couple of months with most of the deaths occurring in the elderly. Sheltering in place lengthens this time period but doesn't stop people that will contract the virus from contracting the virus. If you are at risk of dying you should stay in your foxhole until the vaccine comes along and we should avoid contact with you. In the meantime, the healthier among us should throw our masks away, go down to the local pub and have a beer and get on with our lives. The world is a SAFER place if we catch this.

https://data.cdc.gov/Case-Surveillance/United-States-COVID-19-Cases-and-Deaths-by-State-o/9mfq-cb36

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Can you smell someone's perfume through your mask when you are near them? Than you are inhaling their air.

mwalsh Loc: Houston

LoL


Do people exhale their perfume? Is that how smells work?

LoL


Stick to photography!

InfiniteISO Loc: The Carolinas, USA

I think the point here is that atomized virus droplets and atomized perfume are similar in size. Perfume wafts off of a person, breath is propelled by exhalation. If you're close enough to smell their perfume, you're sharing their air, even with a mask on.

An immunologist likened the size of virus particles and the grid of those blue and white face masks to a football going through the uprights of the goalposts. There's plenty of room. A mask protects the wearer from shooting out globs of snot and that's about it. There are plenty of people who wear masks and use sanitizer religiously getting covid.

mwalsh Loc: Houston

I am no expert on how smell works. But I don't think atomized perfume is needed to smell the perfume. Whatever the particles are that transmit smell, they are likely much tinier than an atomized droplet of anything. You can place a droplet of perfume on a counter top, nothing aerosolized, nothing atomized...yet someone down the hall can smell it.

Tex-s

I don't recall responding to you in the past, so if I offend, please know that is not the intention. You mentioned the efficacy of mask wearing is a long-debated topic, and I agree. However, there is new data from California showing that in 84% of their new-found Covid cases, those infected said they 'always' or 'almost always' wore masks in public. That is quite interesting because it poses a LOT more questions.

1) As a man who regularly downgrades his own alcohol consumption on medical questionnaires, I have to ask how accurate the self-reporting on masks is.

2) Presuming the mask wearing data to be even marginally reliable does the data show mask wearing is not effective?

3) Does it show that mask wearing is over-hyped, and that people are being infected while mask wearing because they are making other risky choices in distancing?

4) Does it suggest people wearing masks are neglecting other measures like hand washing?

5) Does it suggest those who are wearing masks less frequently are also less likely to seek medical attention when symptoms arise?

6) If number 5 is true, does it suggest non-mask infections are less severe?

7) If number 5 or 6 is true, does it suggest that long term mask wearing lowers the immune response and maximizes infection symptomology?

My best guess is that the mask-infection-severity data, ultimately, will show that masking was a mixed bag. My tendency is also to believe that mask vs no mask is absolutely NOT the only axis on which this data operates. I also believe that 'false security' may be just as deadly as 'no protection' as young people who feel their mask wearing makes them 100% safe actually infect the vulnerable at higher rates than those who know they are not 100% safe and avoid contact with the vulnerable.

And finally, I believe the failure of medical and media people to ask these questions is at least as dangerous as any world, national or state leader policy could be or has been.

InfiniteISO Loc: The Carolinas, USA

Smells are transferred by diffusion. I just looked up that aromatic perfume particles range from 30 to 100 microns. COVID is much smaller than this, but it normally travels on respiratory droplets, the smallest of which is about the same size as the perfume. The real point here is that your N95 mask should stop the perfume particles and it doesn't. A surgical mask certainly doesn't. On top of this, if your mask does stop the particles, they're now ON YOUR MASK. If you follow protocols you should take off your mask by the strings. If you remove it to eat, you throw it away and get a new one. You don't use it for several days and throw it on your seat or console while your driving, etc. A mask that is fine enough to be effective is a virus collection and incubation device.

Employees, where I work, are pushing back on mask use by following all protocols, going through 10 to 15 masks a shift.

DennyT Loc: Central Missouri woods

The argument make no sense unless the person was wearing a mask and only placed the perfume in the area under their mask and you smelled it through your mask.

Back to the issue the purpose of the mask is stop you from spreading NOT you from catching it .

InfiniteISO Loc: The Carolinas, USA

Your hypothetical is entirely possible.

InfiniteISO Loc: The Carolinas, USA

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342

In conclusion, both surgical and cotton masks seem to be ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS–CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment and external mask surface.

This article was published at Annals.org on 6 April 2020.

lenben Loc: Seattle

Masks do not protect you from the virus. Masks help keep someone infected from spreading the virus. Since many cases are asymptomatic, if we all wore effective masks, the case load would decrease. Note also that for those who somehow feel that enforced mask wearing is a violation of their constitutional rights, I have never seen anyone complain about the common sign: "No shoes, no shirt, no service" which has been present for years with no complaint about rights.

Rose42

The city or state doesn't dictate "no shoes, no shirt, no service". That's never been a good analogy.

As for masks, it doesn't matter if you wear one if you're not going to practice basic hygiene.

btbg

Notice that it doesn't say fewer mask wearers are getting infected. It just says that there aren't more getting infected. There should be less if the masks work. They don't. There have been exhaustive studies beginning in 2009 and continuing through 2017 that show that masks have no impact on the flue, including swine flu and some covid viruses. Obviously those studies did not look at covid-19, but they are clear that masks don't slow the spread of viruses that are airborne. If you think about it it's pretty obvious that they don't work since you can get the virus through rubbing your eyes. Masks don't protect your eyes, so at best they give very minor protection. Even the CDC's own doctors give mixed messages on the use of masks. First they say they protect the wearer and then they say they don't protect the wearier, but they protect others from the wearer. And their own paper supporting the use of masks says "they may provide some protection." Hardly a ringing endorsement.

btbg

The survival rate is much higher than 96 percent unless you are over 75 and have serious underlying conditions. Also, they count virtually all deaths with covid as covid deaths, and they have no idea how many people have had covid and not been counted since they believe that 40 percent of cases are asymptomatic. None of those people are being included in the percentages, which would go way down if they were counted.

Remember even the CDC's own website admits that a huge percentage died with covid, not necessarily from covid. If I recall correctly it is only six percent of the deaths that are covid only. That means that most of the remainder would have died within the year anyway. Not a nice thing to say, but statistically correct. For those of you that are slow, that means that actual covid deaths are probably much lower as most of the deaths would have died anyway.

btbg

Remember you are talking about percentage of deaths per reported cases, but according to the cdc 40 percent who get the virus are asymptomatic, so they are mostly not reported cases. Add that 40 percent in and the mortality rate goes way down. Current estimates are under .03 percent for those under 75.