Covid-19 miscellany

[TSwizzle]

That you don't want to play your part in protecting the vulnerable or in allowing a return to economic normal argues ignorance or really callous selfishness.

Two and half years in and you still have zero evidence that masks are effective in stopping/slowing the spread. Absent of evidence you go with the name calling and shaming. Water off a ducks back.

Two weeks to flatten the curve, I did my part. You stay home, wear your mask, don’t wear your mask, I don’t mind.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Didn’t Brandon say he would “end covid” as part of his campaign? And didn’t Brandon claim that once you were vaccinated you wouldn’t get covid?

Covid-Wuhan is extinct. He did end it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That you don't want to play your part in protecting the vulnerable or in allowing a return to economic normal argues ignorance or really callous selfishness.

Two and half years in and you still have zero evidence that masks are effective in stopping/slowing the spread. Absent of evidence you go with the name calling and shaming. Water off a ducks back.

Two weeks to flatten the curve, I did my part. You stay home, wear your mask, don’t wear your mask, I don’t mind.

The distribution of who gets infected is non-random. That shows behavior matters.

 

[Rhea]

Two and half years in and you still have zero evidence that masks are effective in stopping/slowing the spread.

This is spectacluarly untrue.

Evidence has been presented again and again and again.
TSwizzle then repeats his claim and pretends that no evidence was presented, when it was.

This does not make his claim true. His claim is false. It has always been false. It has been false since Doctors started wearing masks. The evidence is strong, repeated, durable and compelling.

However, any person can pretend that it doesn’t exist. Pretending is free. Which is what we see here.
No amount of evidence will stop this person from repeating the untrue claim.

It is untrue that there is no evidence.
It is untrue that masks provide no protection against the spread of disease.
It is untrue that the evidence has not been provided to TSwizzle, repeatedly.

It is a common tactic of antisocial people to make it painfully Sisyphean to try to give truth a seat at the table. They shout louder with untruths and use might to overcome facts.

But reality remains - there is evidence, it has been shown to you. And you will continue to shout these mutliple untruths because that is your game.


Luckily, those reading have been able to get lots of information that has been posted for you. You don’t use it, but they do.

 

[Toni]

Joe Biden has Covid. He's fully vaxed and boosted, showing mild symptoms. Being treated with Paxlovid.

I understand but I'd prefer performance of duties over theatrical performance. Biden wasn't my top or in my top 3 but so far, he's done well under some difficult circumstances.

 

[TSwizzle]

Two and half years in and you still have zero evidence that masks are effective in stopping/slowing the spread.

This is spectacluarly untrue.

No it is not. I’ve shown numerous times that mask do next to nothing to slow/stop the spread.

Evidence has been presented again and again and again.

Nope
Nope
Nope

TSwizzle then repeats his claim and pretendsith untruths and use might to overcome facts.

But reality remains - there is evidence, it has been shown to you.

No it hasn’t. Show me.

 

[repoman]

This woman definitely needs a 4th shot

 

[TSwizzle]

Happy Mondays bassist Paul Ryder dies suddenly;

Shaun Ryder has spoken out about the moment his mother found her son - his brother Paul Ryder - dead last week. Paul was found dead at the age of 58 in bed by his mother Linda last week having died unexpectedly, with Shaun saying his brother complained of a headache before his death after arriving back in the UK from Los Angeles, where he lived. He said, according to The Sun: 'When the ambulance came they said it looked like it had been a blood clot or a brain tumour, but it’s just weird that he’d had that Covid booster the day before.

Daily Mail

I am increasingly skeptical of these "vaccines" and boosters;

 

[bilby]

Happy Mondays bassist Paul Ryder dies suddenly;

Shaun Ryder has spoken out about the moment his mother found her son - his brother Paul Ryder - dead last week. Paul was found dead at the age of 58 in bed by his mother Linda last week having died unexpectedly, with Shaun saying his brother complained of a headache before his death after arriving back in the UK from Los Angeles, where he lived. He said, according to The Sun: 'When the ambulance came they said it looked like it had been a blood clot or a brain tumour, but it’s just weird that he’d had that Covid booster the day before.

Daily Mail

I am increasingly skeptical of these "vaccines" and boosters;

Fuck me, now you are using the Daily Mail's reportage on what was printed in The Sun as evidence that correlation implies causation.

About the only possible less reliable evidence than this would be "I just have this feeling".

Seriously, you are becoming a sad parody of yourself. It's in equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Happy Mondays bassist Paul Ryder dies suddenly;

Shaun Ryder has spoken out about the moment his mother found her son - his brother Paul Ryder - dead last week. Paul was found dead at the age of 58 in bed by his mother Linda last week having died unexpectedly, with Shaun saying his brother complained of a headache before his death after arriving back in the UK from Los Angeles, where he lived. He said, according to The Sun: 'When the ambulance came they said it looked like it had been a blood clot or a brain tumour, but it’s just weird that he’d had that Covid booster the day before.

Daily Mail

I am increasingly skeptical of these "vaccines" and boosters;

Look enough and you're pretty sure to find such an event. People have strokes every day. Somebody's going to have one after getting a vaccination.

 

[bilby]

Happy Mondays bassist Paul Ryder dies suddenly;

Shaun Ryder has spoken out about the moment his mother found her son - his brother Paul Ryder - dead last week. Paul was found dead at the age of 58 in bed by his mother Linda last week having died unexpectedly, with Shaun saying his brother complained of a headache before his death after arriving back in the UK from Los Angeles, where he lived. He said, according to The Sun: 'When the ambulance came they said it looked like it had been a blood clot or a brain tumour, but it’s just weird that he’d had that Covid booster the day before.

Daily Mail

I am increasingly skeptical of these "vaccines" and boosters;

Look enough and you're pretty sure to find such an event. People have strokes every day. Somebody's going to have one after getting a vaccination.

Yeah, but the Daily Mail reckons that the report they read in The Sun is significant and newsworthy.

I refuse to have any interaction with The Sun as a matter of principle, and for that matter, I won't click a link to the Daily Mail; But it wouldn't shock me if they got their report from reading the National Enquirer, or perhaps the editor's tea leaves; Or just invented it from whole cloth.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Happy Mondays bassist Paul Ryder dies suddenly;

Shaun Ryder has spoken out about the moment his mother found her son - his brother Paul Ryder - dead last week. Paul was found dead at the age of 58 in bed by his mother Linda last week having died unexpectedly, with Shaun saying his brother complained of a headache before his death after arriving back in the UK from Los Angeles, where he lived. He said, according to The Sun: 'When the ambulance came they said it looked like it had been a blood clot or a brain tumour, but it’s just weird that he’d had that Covid booster the day before.

Daily Mail

I am increasingly skeptical of these "vaccines" and boosters;

If the vaccine was responsible and it were dangerous, there would be a fuck ton (SI Unit) more Covid Vaccine related health problems.

 

[Elixir]

I refuse to have any interaction with The Sun as a matter of principle, and for that matter, I won't click a link to the Daily Mail; But it wouldn't shock me if they got their report from reading the National Enquirer, or perhaps the editor's tea leaves; Or just invented it from whole cloth.

It is astonishingly easy to send right wingers into fits of terror. Their innumeracy is but one contributor; most of it comes from pre-conditioning provided by RW media.

 

[Rhea]

If the vaccine was responsible and it were dangerous, there would be a fuck ton (SI Unit) more Covid Vaccine related health problems.

This is exactly right - and it’s how we’d look for these things. “If vaccine problems were true, what would it look like? Let’s look for that.” And we look and we don’t find it. “What else could it look like?“ and we don’t find that. “What else?” We don’t find that.

 

[Rhea]

For readers who were perhaps not here the last time TSwizzle was shown data, or the time before that, or the tme before that… here are several links tto reputable sources.

There are two learnings from this exchange.
1. The information is easy to find in reputable sources
2. No matter how many times TSwizzle is shown actual research, he would prefer to get his information from tabloids.

Luckily, readers can see for themselves that his assertions are based on emotions perhaps like fear or defiance and the outright rejection of new information rather than medical science.

At any rate. Here are some sources, again.
Mask wearing very definitely has a useful effect on significantly diminishing the spread of disease.
Readers can bookmark this post so that they can remind TSwizzle of all the data an research that has, indeed,, been shown to him.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118

we recommend increasing focus on a previously overlooked aspect of mask usage: mask wearing by infectious people (“source control”) with benefits at the population level, rather than only mask wearing by susceptible people, such as health care workers, with focus on individual outcomes. We recommend that public officials and governments strongly encourage the use of widespread face masks in public, including the use of appropriate regulation.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

CDC provides credible COVID-19 health information to the U.S.

www.cdc.gov

• A large, well-designed cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh in late 2020 found that surgical or cloth mask distribution, role-modeling, and active mask promotion tripled mask use to 42.3% in intervention villages compared to 13.3% in comparison villages. In villages receiving mask interventions, symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was reduced by approximately 9% relative to comparison villages. In villages randomized to receive surgical masks, symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was significantly lower (relative reduction 11.1% overall). The results of this study show that even modest increases in community use of masks can effectively reduce symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections (COVID-19).37
• A study of an outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an environment notable for congregate living quarters and close working environments, found that use of face coverings on-board was associated with a 70% reduced risk of infection.38
• In a study of 124 Beijing households with > 1 laboratory-confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 infection, mask use by the index patient and family contacts before the index patient developed symptoms reduced secondary transmission within the households by 79%.39
• A study examining SARS-CoV-2 secondary attack rates among eight public K-12 school districts in Massachusetts (70 schools with >33,000 enrolled students) during the 2020–21 school year found an unadjusted secondary attack rate of 11.7% for unmasked versus 1.7% for masked interactions.40

Still Confused About Masks? Here’s the Science Behind How Face Masks Prevent Coronavirus

We talked to UCSF epidemiologist George Rutherford, MD, and infectious disease specialist Peter Chin-Hong, MD, about the CDC’s reversal on mask-wearing, the current science on how masks work, and what to consider when choosing a mask.

www.ucsf.edu

The original CDC guidance partly was based on what was thought to be low disease prevalence earlier in the pandemic, said Chin-Hong.

“So, of course, you’re preaching that the juice isn’t really worth the squeeze to have the whole population wear masks in the beginning – but that was really a reflection of not having enough testing, anyway,” he said. “We were getting a false sense of security.”

Rutherford was more blunt. The legitimate concern that the limited supply of surgical masks and N95 respirators should be saved for health care workers should not have prevented more nuanced messaging about the benefits of masking. “We should have told people to wear cloth masks right off the bat,” he said.

Surgical masks reduce COVID-19 spread, large-scale study shows

Researchers found that surgical masks impede the spread of COVID-19 and that just a few, low-cost interventions increase mask-wearing compliance.

med.stanford.edu

“We now have evidence from a randomized, controlled trial that mask promotion increases the use of face coverings and prevents the spread of COVID-19,” said Stephen Luby, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford. “This is the gold standard for evaluating public health interventions. Importantly, this approach was designed be scalable in lower- and middle-income countries struggling to get or distribute vaccines against the virus.”

How effective is a mask in preventing COVID‐19 infection?

The main clinical characteristics of COVID‐19 are respiratory symptoms that can lead to serious cardiovascular damages and severe worsening of other medical conditions. One of the major strategies in preparedness and response to COVID 19 is effective ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

4.3. Cases studies on protection effective of masks​

Mask effectiveness has been demonstrated in prevention of influenza and some other infectious diseases. Van der Sande et al. (2008) showed that the use of any type of ordinary mask may reduce the risk of exposure to viruses and infections. Some observational results confirmed that frequently using masks in a community can prevent spread of infection from sick and infectious people (Jensen et al., 2005; Rockwood & O’Donoghue, 1960; Srinivasan et al., 2004; Weaver, 1919). As a non‐pharmaceutical intervention to control virus transmission during the influenza pandemic, persistent use of masks significantly reduced the risk of influenza‐like‐illness‐associated infection (Cowling et al., 2008; Maclntyre et al., 2009). Masks were shown to have protective efficacies in excess of 80% against clinical influenza‐like‐illness (Macintyre et al., 2008). Sung et al. found that requiring people who have direct contact with patients to wear surgical masks can considerably reduce respiratory virus infection (Sung et al., 2018). A face‐to‐face interview suggested greater protective effect of medical masks than the cotton masks (Yang et al., 2011). Masks and hand hygiene may reduce respiratory diseases in shared living environments and mitigate the impact of pandemic influenza A (H1N1) (Aiello et al., 2010; Jefferson et al., 2008). Wearing masks can also reduce the risk of avian influenza infection (Wiwanitkit, 2006). Some studies explored the impact of mask use during influenza by establishing a population transmission model from an epidemiological perspective. The results showed possibility of delaying the pandemic by wearing masks nationwide (Brienen et al., 2010; Chan & Yuen, 2020).

 

[TSwizzle]

For readers who were perhaps not here the last time TSwizzle was shown data, or the time before that, or the tme before that… here are several links tto reputable sources.

Erm no. And your lengthy reply contains no data although to be fair, I only read three of the dopey articles/opinion pieces because they don't provide any actual evidence. There is a suggestion masks may work but that is not evidence that masks actually work.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118

This is a bias "study" with zero evidence. It can be dismissed out of hand after reading a few paragraphs. It skims through other poor quality studies. Most of these were presented a long time ago and I addressed them at the time.

e.g. A Cochrane review (15) on physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses included 67 RCTs and observational studies. It found that “overall masks were the best performing intervention across populations, settings and threats.” There is a similar preprint review by the same lead author (16), in which only studies where mask wearing was tested as a stand-alone intervention were included, without combining it with hand hygiene and physical distancing, and excluding observational studies. That review concluded that “there was insufficient evidence to provide a recommendation on the use of facial barriers without other measures.”

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

CDC provides credible COVID-19 health information to the U.S.

www.cdc.gov

Bangladesh?!! You're having a laugh.

One of these studies even said that cloth masks are effective. That was disproved long ago.

Absolutely no point reading the rest. I ask for evidence and you provide nothing of the sort.

You'd think someone who bangs on about how effective masks are would have the evidence at their fingertips. But since there is no evidence that actually prove masks work in stopping/slowing the spread and you provide worthless studies that "suggest" masks may be effective. These are pretty old studies too.

So in future, if you are going to assert that masks work, present evidence that they do. The evidence will have to be more recent that the articles you present here because they did not prove your case the first time they were presented and they still don't.

Miraculously, the infection rate in LA County has slowed down and the mask mandate may be postponed. Fancy that, infections slowed down WITHOUT a mask mandate. "Dr" Barbara Ferrer (not even a medical doctor) is being ridiculed for even suggesting another mask mandate and seems to be backtracking on the idea, proving yet again masks are not about health.

 

[Toni]

For readers who were perhaps not here the last time TSwizzle was shown data, or the time before that, or the tme before that… here are several links tto reputable sources.

Erm no. And your lengthy reply contains no data although to be fair, I only read three of the dopey articles/opinion pieces because they don't provide any actual evidence. There is a suggestion masks may work but that is not evidence that masks actually work.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118

This is a bias "study" with zero evidence. It can be dismissed out of hand after reading a few paragraphs. It skims through other poor quality studies. Most of these were presented a long time ago and I addressed them at the time.

e.g. A Cochrane review (15) on physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses included 67 RCTs and observational studies. It found that “overall masks were the best performing intervention across populations, settings and threats.” There is a similar preprint review by the same lead author (16), in which only studies where mask wearing was tested as a stand-alone intervention were included, without combining it with hand hygiene and physical distancing, and excluding observational studies. That review concluded that “there was insufficient evidence to provide a recommendation on the use of facial barriers without other measures.”

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

CDC provides credible COVID-19 health information to the U.S.

www.cdc.gov

Bangladesh?!! You're having a laugh.

One of these studies even said that cloth masks are effective. That was disproved long ago.

Absolutely no point reading the rest. I ask for evidence and you provide nothing of the sort.

You'd think someone who bangs on about how effective masks are would have the evidence at their fingertips. But since there is no evidence that actually prove masks work in stopping/slowing the spread and you provide worthless studies that "suggest" masks may be effective. These are pretty old studies too.

So in future, if you are going to assert that masks work, present evidence that they do. The evidence will have to be more recent that the articles you present here because they did not prove your case the first time they were presented and they still don't.

Miraculously, the infection rate in LA County has slowed down and the mask mandate may be postponed. Fancy that, infections slowed down WITHOUT a mask mandate. "Dr" Barbara Ferrer (not even a medical doctor) is being ridiculed for even suggesting another mask mandate and seems to be backtracking on the idea, proving yet again masks are not about health.

There is plenty of evidence in the article linked. You simply refuse to believe the evidence, such as the efficacy of mask use aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt or the hair salon in Springfield MO. You scoff at studies performed in Bangladesh or China.

...still a man will hear what he wants to hear and disregard the rest or something like that..

 

[TSwizzle]

There is plenty of evidence in the article linked. You simply refuse to believe the evidence, such as the efficacy of mask use aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt or the hair salon in Springfield MO. You scoff at studies performed in Bangladesh or China.

Yeah, that was lol ridiculous. As was Bangladesh.

...still a man will hear what he wants to hear and disregard the rest or something like that..

I'd listen to evidence but you guys never produce any. Stop presenting lame studies that suggest.

Bring evidence or pipe down.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Well, he's been towing the anti-mask line for quite a while, no need to change tact. He was trotting out the Trump bullshit about the flu killing so many blah blah blah. Since exposing his wisdom then, roughly 1 million Americans have died. And still we hear the bullshit denialism.

 

[Toni]

There is plenty of evidence in the article linked. You simply refuse to believe the evidence, such as the efficacy of mask use aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt or the hair salon in Springfield MO. You scoff at studies performed in Bangladesh or China.

Yeah, that was lol ridiculous. As was Bangladesh.

...still a man will hear what he wants to hear and disregard the rest or something like that..

I'd listen to evidence but you guys never produce any. Stop presenting lame studies that suggest.

Bring evidence or pipe down.

Evidence suggests that you do not know what evidence is.
Evidence suggests that you stop reading whenever a study associates brown people with data or evidence.
Evidence suggests you feel comfortable telling women to shut up if you don't like what they have to say.