I may have discovered something.
Nov. 27th, 2020 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdI may have discovered something about anti-maskers.
We all know they think masks don't do anything. We also know they think the virus just goes through it.
What I didn't know is that at least some of them think "airborne" means LITERALLY EVERYWHERE IN THE AIR ALL THE TIME FOREVER. Except maybe magically at home, because magic. But otherwise? Step out of your house, it's there, or probably there. So how could masks help?
Below I'm pasting in a reply I made elsewhere to one of them. In it, I make a comparison that would work particularly well with older people, who knew Peanuts and Pig-Pen very well. It's not entirely inaccurate - and hopefully, it'll resonate.
They haven't responded yet. They may not. I'll post an update, if they do.
You might give it a shot, see whether it works.
Karl?
I don't know you, but you sound like a nut. That doesn't mean you _are_ a nut; just that you sound like one. But you're apparently a friend of Randy's? So I'm going to try to talk you through this.
Please don't make me regret that decision.
> So your saying that you can only contract
> the virus through saliva
That's not what he said. He said _aerosolised droplets_, which was, of course, correct. That can be in the form of any fluid in droplets in the air small enough to remain in that air for more than a short time, as opposed to larger droplets which fall out of the air quickly - like, say, phlegm.
These droplets are made of fluid, mostly but not entirely water, and are _many, many times larger_ than the coronavirus's protein shell. They _are_ large enough to get caught in masks _most or all of the time_, depending upon the individual droplet's size.
Coronavirus's protein shell doesn't survive very well outside of a fluid envelope. It breaks down. Once it's broken down, the virus is even more fragile and breaks down rapidly. Not instantly! But fairly quickly.
Hence, masks work by capturing most of the relatively large droplets containing it.
(And no, all masks are not equal. This is why thickness and layers matter, because if one section of mask doesn't catch it, the next one it has to pass through probably will. Just like how in general thicker air filters are more effective than thinner ones. But even thin masks help _some_.)
> Haven't you heard that the [COVID-19] virus
Coronavirus is global, and the term you use is race baiting. I have accordingly edited it, and will continue to do so in this response.
> can simply pass through the very large holes
> in most masks
Except it doesn't, because the droplets containing the virus are much _larger_.
If the virus itself were all that was being expelled, your commentary would be relevant. But it's not, so it's irrelevant. It's literally not what happens in real life.
In a different world, where coronavirus didn't need to be encapsulated in water droplets to survive outside the body for very long, it would be different.
But that's not _our_ world, where we live. That's not how this virus works.
> If Masks were effective, then why has there
> never been a push for mask wearing during
> traditional Flu seasons?
During particularly widespread outbreaks, these pushes are a matter of historical fact, even in the United States and Canada.
(See your historical antecedents, the Anti-Mask League of 1919, for an example of previous pushback against attempts to control outbreaks of disease.)
However, even in a bad flu year, the spread of the flu virus is very different. Most notably, the window of contagiousness without symptoms with typical flu is _much shorter_. The person with the flu generally knows they have the flu, and they stay home. Even if they don't, other people can tell, and take precautions.
With coronavirus, the period of time when a person is contagious without knowing they are infected is _very long_ - many days or even weeks. During all this time, they are spreading the virus _without knowing they are ill_.
Flu isn't like that.
And _that_ also said, I've lived places where mask wearing when you think you might be ill is a social norm, for exactly these reasons. I think it is a good custom and adopted it.
> I read the [COVID-19] Virus was "AIR BOURNE"
> which makes masks irrelevant doesn't it?
If it were a free-floating virus by itself in air - akin to, say, measles - this would be a cogent point. But it is not - it is spread in tiny droplets of fluid - so this is _not_ relevant and is, again, why masks work.
> the survival rate of the [COVID-19] Virus is 99.95%
> for those under the age of 70
This is just wrong. Survival rates are improving as medical professionals learn how to treat it, but this is still flat out wrong.
Leaving aside the fact that it is just wrong, death is not the only negative outcome.
2% or so of cases turn into Long COVID, where it basically guts you and - so far - people just don't recover properly. How long Long COVID lasts is still an open question, but we know it is _at least_ many months.
This is probably related to the next fact:
_All_ ages groups see high _long-term_ organ damage rates. We don't know how long-term yet. This has been observed even in _asymptomatic_ cases - the lightest possible case. The lowest estimates I've seen from actual data collection have been in the 20% range. For identified cases, 70% - SEVENTY PERCENT - show continued lung damage literally months later.
What does damage does is make you highly vulnerable to whatever comes next. These cases aren't considered COVID deaths, so don't show up in the COVID-19 death rate.
But they _are_ showing up in "excess deaths" numbers.
Finally, a recent large-scale study reported that 20% see long-term _neurological_ impacts. These aren't the same group as the other organ damage cases, which are typically lungs, heart, kidney, and liver. These are separate.
20%.
I know someone personally who is no longer in graduate school and may never be able to go back. He lost the ability to type for a while. He couldn't even play videogames for six months because his ability to process quick movements was gone. And, like I said - he may never be mentally capable of the focus required for his studies again.
He is not, needless to say, over 70. He's less than half that age. He's probably never getting that degree.
I also know - not well, friends of friends - two people who have died. Neither were over 40. That's not data, it's anecdote. But the odds against it with a "99.95% survival rate" are fairly long.
> Herd immunity would not be out of the question
Herd immunity functionally doesn't happen without vaccines. Shall I rattle off a list of common killers and maimers where humanity didn't manage "herd immunity" without vaccines or can I just drop in "measles" and "polio" and move on?
> but it is also irrelevant because the virus
> is AIR BORNE meaning if you go outside or
> do not live in a biodome then the chances
> of you coming in contact with the virus is
> pretty high.
That's not what airborne means.
Airborne does not mean omnipresent, it means carried in the air. This does not imply either "forever" or "everywhere." Coronavirus has a lifespan. Generally, that lifespan is short, particularly outside the body. It's shorter in summer, partly because of higher temperatures and more sunlight, which cause those droplets to evaporate more quickly when people are outside.
Also, we know that it takes a fairly substantial amount of contact to make it past basic bodily defences, even amongst those who have no previous exposure.
When someone describes a virus as airbourne, think of it as... the little omnipresent bundle of dirt and dust around Pig-Pen, from Peanuts, but bigger.
I'll attach a picture. Note how the cloud of dirt reaches Charlie Brown, but if Charlie Brown was further away, he wouldn't be in it.
_That's_ airborne. Not "forever" and not "everywhere." But if you put Pig-Pen in room with a lot of other people, everybody's going to end up dirty.
If you cover Pig-Pen in a filter bag, a lot fewer people end up dirty.
Does that make sense?
> And why are there no cases of the FLU this year?
Because masks also work against spreading the flu. And enough people are following this basic disease containment protocol - masks - that it's doing _exactly what you'd expect_ - reducing spread of the flu virus, a virus which is less contagious than the COVID-19 virus. If flu cases _weren't_ down, that _would_ be strange.
But they are. Exactly as one would predict.
> Why are all deaths this year directly
> associated with the [COVID-19] VIRUS no
> matter the cause of the DEATH
This is conspiracy theory nonsense - completely untrue - and I will not entertain it.
> Anthrax it requires 16 vaccinations
> How in the HELL is that better!
Because anthrax vaccinations don't kill people and respiratory anthrax kills over half the people who get it, even now, with treatment.
And weaponised anthrax is respiratory anthrax.
And you were deployed to a theatre where we know people have tried to develop weaponised anthrax.
(By the way, anthrax isn't a virus. It's a bacterium.)
Smallpox, by the way, has also been a weaponisation target. That's why you get the shot.
The rest is conspiracy theory nonsense, which - as before - I will simply will not entertain.
But if you can think of airborne coronavirus as the dirt always hanging around Pig-Pen, that might make... everything... make more sense to you, _without_ requiring an impossibly complex global conspiracy to make it happen.
We all know they think masks don't do anything. We also know they think the virus just goes through it.
What I didn't know is that at least some of them think "airborne" means LITERALLY EVERYWHERE IN THE AIR ALL THE TIME FOREVER. Except maybe magically at home, because magic. But otherwise? Step out of your house, it's there, or probably there. So how could masks help?
Below I'm pasting in a reply I made elsewhere to one of them. In it, I make a comparison that would work particularly well with older people, who knew Peanuts and Pig-Pen very well. It's not entirely inaccurate - and hopefully, it'll resonate.
They haven't responded yet. They may not. I'll post an update, if they do.
You might give it a shot, see whether it works.
Karl?
I don't know you, but you sound like a nut. That doesn't mean you _are_ a nut; just that you sound like one. But you're apparently a friend of Randy's? So I'm going to try to talk you through this.
Please don't make me regret that decision.
> So your saying that you can only contract
> the virus through saliva
That's not what he said. He said _aerosolised droplets_, which was, of course, correct. That can be in the form of any fluid in droplets in the air small enough to remain in that air for more than a short time, as opposed to larger droplets which fall out of the air quickly - like, say, phlegm.
These droplets are made of fluid, mostly but not entirely water, and are _many, many times larger_ than the coronavirus's protein shell. They _are_ large enough to get caught in masks _most or all of the time_, depending upon the individual droplet's size.
Coronavirus's protein shell doesn't survive very well outside of a fluid envelope. It breaks down. Once it's broken down, the virus is even more fragile and breaks down rapidly. Not instantly! But fairly quickly.
Hence, masks work by capturing most of the relatively large droplets containing it.
(And no, all masks are not equal. This is why thickness and layers matter, because if one section of mask doesn't catch it, the next one it has to pass through probably will. Just like how in general thicker air filters are more effective than thinner ones. But even thin masks help _some_.)
> Haven't you heard that the [COVID-19] virus
Coronavirus is global, and the term you use is race baiting. I have accordingly edited it, and will continue to do so in this response.
> can simply pass through the very large holes
> in most masks
Except it doesn't, because the droplets containing the virus are much _larger_.
If the virus itself were all that was being expelled, your commentary would be relevant. But it's not, so it's irrelevant. It's literally not what happens in real life.
In a different world, where coronavirus didn't need to be encapsulated in water droplets to survive outside the body for very long, it would be different.
But that's not _our_ world, where we live. That's not how this virus works.
> If Masks were effective, then why has there
> never been a push for mask wearing during
> traditional Flu seasons?
During particularly widespread outbreaks, these pushes are a matter of historical fact, even in the United States and Canada.
(See your historical antecedents, the Anti-Mask League of 1919, for an example of previous pushback against attempts to control outbreaks of disease.)
However, even in a bad flu year, the spread of the flu virus is very different. Most notably, the window of contagiousness without symptoms with typical flu is _much shorter_. The person with the flu generally knows they have the flu, and they stay home. Even if they don't, other people can tell, and take precautions.
With coronavirus, the period of time when a person is contagious without knowing they are infected is _very long_ - many days or even weeks. During all this time, they are spreading the virus _without knowing they are ill_.
Flu isn't like that.
And _that_ also said, I've lived places where mask wearing when you think you might be ill is a social norm, for exactly these reasons. I think it is a good custom and adopted it.
> I read the [COVID-19] Virus was "AIR BOURNE"
> which makes masks irrelevant doesn't it?
If it were a free-floating virus by itself in air - akin to, say, measles - this would be a cogent point. But it is not - it is spread in tiny droplets of fluid - so this is _not_ relevant and is, again, why masks work.
> the survival rate of the [COVID-19] Virus is 99.95%
> for those under the age of 70
This is just wrong. Survival rates are improving as medical professionals learn how to treat it, but this is still flat out wrong.
Leaving aside the fact that it is just wrong, death is not the only negative outcome.
2% or so of cases turn into Long COVID, where it basically guts you and - so far - people just don't recover properly. How long Long COVID lasts is still an open question, but we know it is _at least_ many months.
This is probably related to the next fact:
_All_ ages groups see high _long-term_ organ damage rates. We don't know how long-term yet. This has been observed even in _asymptomatic_ cases - the lightest possible case. The lowest estimates I've seen from actual data collection have been in the 20% range. For identified cases, 70% - SEVENTY PERCENT - show continued lung damage literally months later.
What does damage does is make you highly vulnerable to whatever comes next. These cases aren't considered COVID deaths, so don't show up in the COVID-19 death rate.
But they _are_ showing up in "excess deaths" numbers.
Finally, a recent large-scale study reported that 20% see long-term _neurological_ impacts. These aren't the same group as the other organ damage cases, which are typically lungs, heart, kidney, and liver. These are separate.
20%.
I know someone personally who is no longer in graduate school and may never be able to go back. He lost the ability to type for a while. He couldn't even play videogames for six months because his ability to process quick movements was gone. And, like I said - he may never be mentally capable of the focus required for his studies again.
He is not, needless to say, over 70. He's less than half that age. He's probably never getting that degree.
I also know - not well, friends of friends - two people who have died. Neither were over 40. That's not data, it's anecdote. But the odds against it with a "99.95% survival rate" are fairly long.
> Herd immunity would not be out of the question
Herd immunity functionally doesn't happen without vaccines. Shall I rattle off a list of common killers and maimers where humanity didn't manage "herd immunity" without vaccines or can I just drop in "measles" and "polio" and move on?
> but it is also irrelevant because the virus
> is AIR BORNE meaning if you go outside or
> do not live in a biodome then the chances
> of you coming in contact with the virus is
> pretty high.
That's not what airborne means.
Airborne does not mean omnipresent, it means carried in the air. This does not imply either "forever" or "everywhere." Coronavirus has a lifespan. Generally, that lifespan is short, particularly outside the body. It's shorter in summer, partly because of higher temperatures and more sunlight, which cause those droplets to evaporate more quickly when people are outside.
Also, we know that it takes a fairly substantial amount of contact to make it past basic bodily defences, even amongst those who have no previous exposure.
When someone describes a virus as airbourne, think of it as... the little omnipresent bundle of dirt and dust around Pig-Pen, from Peanuts, but bigger.
I'll attach a picture. Note how the cloud of dirt reaches Charlie Brown, but if Charlie Brown was further away, he wouldn't be in it.
_That's_ airborne. Not "forever" and not "everywhere." But if you put Pig-Pen in room with a lot of other people, everybody's going to end up dirty.
If you cover Pig-Pen in a filter bag, a lot fewer people end up dirty.
Does that make sense?
> And why are there no cases of the FLU this year?
Because masks also work against spreading the flu. And enough people are following this basic disease containment protocol - masks - that it's doing _exactly what you'd expect_ - reducing spread of the flu virus, a virus which is less contagious than the COVID-19 virus. If flu cases _weren't_ down, that _would_ be strange.
But they are. Exactly as one would predict.
> Why are all deaths this year directly
> associated with the [COVID-19] VIRUS no
> matter the cause of the DEATH
This is conspiracy theory nonsense - completely untrue - and I will not entertain it.
> Anthrax it requires 16 vaccinations
> How in the HELL is that better!
Because anthrax vaccinations don't kill people and respiratory anthrax kills over half the people who get it, even now, with treatment.
And weaponised anthrax is respiratory anthrax.
And you were deployed to a theatre where we know people have tried to develop weaponised anthrax.
(By the way, anthrax isn't a virus. It's a bacterium.)
Smallpox, by the way, has also been a weaponisation target. That's why you get the shot.
The rest is conspiracy theory nonsense, which - as before - I will simply will not entertain.
But if you can think of airborne coronavirus as the dirt always hanging around Pig-Pen, that might make... everything... make more sense to you, _without_ requiring an impossibly complex global conspiracy to make it happen.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 06:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 05:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-29 08:45 am (UTC)So I said "Whelp, you went straight to making me regret this, so I'm out. But as I leave, consider reading up on the Dunning-Kruger effect, because understanding it will really help you" and noped the fuck out.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-29 04:31 pm (UTC)The "libertarian" who I was arguing with chastised me because I'm relatively well off and work from home and am in no danger of becoming homeless. I wish I'd thought of telling him -- I've muted him now because it's too much effort for no return -- to say, "But I thought that you libertarians were all about 'I got mine, to heck with everyone else'? Shouldn't I be a Hero to you?"
no subject
Date: 2020-11-29 07:52 pm (UTC)The context didn't help.