@suzianne saidI don't have to read common sense. Have you ever blown out candles on a birthday cake? You didn't have to read anything to instinctively know that restricting the flow of air out of your mouth would make the air blow faster and farther, did you?
The right is really really bad at analogies.
You read and believe every whack-a-doodle thing you read.
You're a science denier masquerading as a scientist.
Masks leak. Anybody can prove it by literally blowing smoke.
@wajoma saidThe irony is that I used common sense to prove shav's so called common sense wrong. Who hasn't put their thumb over the end of a hose to make the water spray farther?
It never occured to me but the thumb over the hose is an excellent analogy. We occasionally had to work on ships as they were sailing and while in a ballast tank welding I became seasick, everyone was sea sick the ship wasn't carrying any ballast we were in the tanks and the thing was bobbing and rocking around.
Anyway, I realised what was coming but by the time to stop we ...[text shortened]... ask going in every direction and some meters distance compared to a nice neat puddle in front of me.
@metal-brain saidIsolating only the effects of masks is "unscientific", which is what the OP did.
So you point out several different restrictions and give all the credit to masks? That is unscientific.
I obviously didn't "give all credit" to masks, since by your own admission, I mentioned other factors.
@sh76 saidWhy wouldn't you attribute the one year when flu cases were unusually low to widespread mandates that include masks and social distancing?
Right (along with other measures).
Which is why you can't assume that any one input drive the output. There are too many confounding variables.
That the flu skipped the 2020-21 winter season could have been driven by any or a combination of half a dozen factors. There is no reason to believe that mask mandates were the primary driver.
@vivify saidLocking people in homes works, destroying lives, businesses, productive effort, families, mental health works.
Isolating only the effects of masks is "unscientific", which is what the OP did.
I obviously didn't "give all credit" to masks, since by your own admission, I mentioned other factors.
A lot of masks don't filter enough to keep droplets from getting through. This alone makes most masks useless. A lot of masks don't hug the face enough to keep leaks to a minimum. If you think about it, the masks that filter the best must also hug your face best. The better they filter, the more the pressure inside of your mask. The more the pressure, the more they leak.
I would like to do the blowing smoke experiment with a N95 mask and have someone film it with my cell phone. My guess is a good sneeze would force a leak where the mask hugs the face and eject smoke in multiple directions, but that is just a guess. Maybe they don't filter as much as I think. That is why I would want it filmed from the side as well. The mask I got from the hospital had such little filtering ability I could probably blow out a birthday candle out with it on and still put saliva droplets on the cake.
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@sh76 saidLeonhardt has been a COVID minimizer and critic of any measures besides vaccinations for a while. Moreover, his quoted sources hardly support his claims - his cites this study from Hong Kong (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8061183/[WORD TOO LONG] to claim that mask mandates does virtually nothing to stop spread but the study concludes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/briefing/masks-mandates-us-covid.htmlThe idea that masks work better than mask mandates seems to defy logic. It inverts a notion connected to Aristotle’s writings: that the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts, not less.
The main explanation seems to be that the exceptions often end up mattering more than the rule. Th ...[text shortened]... t people can reasonably make different choices.[/b]
Who knew the NY Times was so radical?
"we conclude that universal mask-wearing can reduce transmission, but transmission can continue to occur in settings where face masks are not usually worn."
OOPS!
In general, mask mandates were put in place only where there had already been severe outbreaks of COVID, so I'm not sure how valid it is to compare rates of the disease in those areas compared to other areas. A crude analogy would be you might find that people wearing body armor in the Ukraine have a higher rate of being shot and injured then those wearing body armor in Sioux Falls but that would hardly lead you to conclude that body armor is ineffective against being injured.
@vivify saidYou did give credit to masks even though it is very well possible it was due to one or more other factors. Theoretically, it could have been from more frequent hand washing alone. Not that there is any proof any of those factors helped.
Isolating only the effects of masks is "unscientific", which is what the OP did.
I obviously didn't "give all credit" to masks, since by your own admission, I mentioned other factors.
You cannot prove any of the factors helped at all, let alone that one helped. Heck, it could have been because people picked their noses less. It is simply impossible to prove until you isolate the many different factors, known and unknown.
@metal-brain saidI gave credit to "both masks and mandates". See my first post in this thread.
You did give credit to masks even though it is very well possible it was due to one or more other factors. Theoretically, it could have been from more frequent hand washing alone. Not that there is any proof any of those factors helped.
You cannot prove any of the factors helped at all, let alone that one helped. Heck, it could have been because people picked their no ...[text shortened]... s. It is simply impossible to prove until you isolate the many different factors, known and unknown.
There is no better explanation for the unusually low instance of the flu other than mask mandates that included social distancing and lockdowns.
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@vivify saidI told you. PCR tests were counting flu and cold cases as covid, thereby inflating the covid case numbers artificially. That is why the CDC replaced the PCR test at the end of last year. If I am wrong you could easily prove it though. If tested cold and flu cases did not make a remarkable comeback since the new year I would have to be wrong.
Why wouldn't you attribute the one year when flu cases were unusually low to widespread mandates that include masks and social distancing?
There are other possibilities though. Even if I am wrong about the PCR tests that would not prove masks helped. Here is an excerpt from the link below:
Another possible explanation: The coronavirus has essentially muscled aside flu and other bugs that are more common in the fall and winter. Scientists don’t fully understand the mechanism behind that, but it would be consistent with patterns seen when certain flu strains predominate over others, said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert at the University of Michigan."
https://apnews.com/article/flu-has-disappeared-us-pandemic-2145d999319b53d8a32a829a324f398d
You are ignoring other possibilities to reach your preferred conclusion. You have no proof.
@metal-brain saidhttps://khn.org/news/article/fact-check-cdc-pcr-covid-test-distinguishes-from-flu-eua-request-withdrawal/
I told you. PCR tests were counting flu and cold cases as covid
Claims That CDC’s PCR Test Can’t Tell Covid From Flu Are Wrong