How a Covid-19 Outbreak Spared Masked Starbucks Employees (marketwatch.com) 120
gollum123 shared this article from MarketWatch:
Do masks really work? Ask the dozens of Starbucks customers who tested positive for COVID-19 in Seoul this month after a woman with coronavirus sat under one of the cafe's air-conditioners. According to a local news report, at least 56 coronavirus cases have been linked to that one customer. The kicker: The four masked workers avoided infection...
"This speaks volumes about the role masks can play," Ma Sang Hyuk, a pediatric infectious diseases physician in South Korea, explained to Bloomberg News. "Masks may not provide 100% protection, but there's nothing out there that's as effective."
Local authorities made it mandatory this week for everybody to wear masks both indoors and outdoors, as the greater Seoul area has seen a surge in coronavirus cases.
"This speaks volumes about the role masks can play," Ma Sang Hyuk, a pediatric infectious diseases physician in South Korea, explained to Bloomberg News. "Masks may not provide 100% protection, but there's nothing out there that's as effective."
Local authorities made it mandatory this week for everybody to wear masks both indoors and outdoors, as the greater Seoul area has seen a surge in coronavirus cases.
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I could have sworn for months the experts were saying that masks aren't used to protect the wearer they protect everyone from the wearer. Also, I wonder how much of this particular outbreak has to do with everyone ingesting liquids that might have been contaminated by airborne particles as much as not having masks on.
Those "experts" were wrong. This is a new disease, that's possible, and happens on a smaller scale quite often. However, the question you need to be asking is why were the American and UK government "experts" so badly wrong when the Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese experts had already clearly decided masks were a good idea from the beginning?
In fact, I think one of the things to really ask is why have there been so many of our general "right wing" / "libertarian" nutters telling us all that China was wrong
Masks Work (Score:4, Insightful)
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Masks aren't perfect (Score:1, Offtopic)
But it's all a moot point. As I've said before neither me or my dollars are going back to normal until the virus is under control. And that means the economy isn't going back to normal.
Hawaii had a 98% drop in tourists. Yeah, you could lift the quarantine and get that back up... a bit. When the bodies start hitting the ground that won
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Masks work when people wear them. In food/drink establishments, it's not possible to wear a mask, and then there are all the people that refuse to wear them for whatever other reasons.
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How about the reality. Those workers work in a location where plenty of people pass through, the likelihood that they had all been infected and suffered minors symptoms would be pretty high. All this rubbish is just dragging the infection period out and allowing much greater opportunity for more mutations to occur, it is really a bad idea.
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All this rubbish is just dragging the infection period out and allowing much greater opportunity for more mutations to occur, it is really a bad idea.
Math doesn't work like that.
It's only the total number of infections that matter. We can assume each infection is for the same time to simplify a bit.1000 people infected in parallel at the same time will have the same number of mutations as 1000 people infected serially.
So it's best to slow it down as much as possible so a cure is found before you get to the end of the queue. Less exposed people less mutations.
Those workers work in a location where plenty of people pass through, the likelihood that they had all been infected and suffered minors symptoms would be pretty high.
This is Korea. They do adequate testing. They don't have anywhere near the number of infected
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They also work when people don't play fast and loose with what "mask" is worn. I went into Target this weekend and a guy was shopping there in a plastic Halloween mask (Guy Fawkes). This provides no protection and he was spewing his droplets everywhere. Unfortunately, the Target employees just let him shop and check out instead of demanding that he put on a proper mask. (It was clear that he didn't have another mask under that one.)
It also doesn't help when people pull their masks down to talk. I was also i
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Keep coming up with excuses [cleveland.com] for why masks don't work.
Is this person [9cache.com] one of your relatives?
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In Germany and France, clusters have been found in slaughterhouses, get infected there. Employees were wearing masks, so does it mean masks are useless?
What is the relative rate of infection of the masked and non-masked people present in these events? If they were all masked, it doesn't really tell you much, other than the viral loads present were high enough that people got infected even though masked.
Correlation is not causation (Score:2)
It wasn't the masks (Score:2, Insightful)
There is some limited efficacy of wearing a mask, but by and large you are at the mercy of distance and duration from someone spreading the virus.
You cannot tell me that NONE of the 50+ infected, in an asian country, were not wearing masks. That is simply not possible.
The reason the workers stayed safe was maybe marginally the masks, but far more because (A) they were fairly separate from the customer areas, and (B) workers wash hands VERY OFTEN. It's that simple, and coming to the conclusion the masks al
Re:It wasn't the masks (Score:5, Insightful)
Given they were customers in a coffee shop and it's hard to drink coffee while wearing a mask, I think it's quite plausible that none of the infected were wearing a mask
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Given they were customers in a coffee shop and it's hard to drink coffee while wearing a mask
That's bullshit, and here's the proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Hahahaha.
You had me so good with that post.
Mod up please (Score:2)
Mod up please
People eating / drinking don't wear face masks shouldn't have to be explain to anyone.
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Please. I have been in Starbucks. Every single customer gets within 1 ft of the cashier and the guy giving you your coffee, and they do not wash their hands more than a couple of times a day.
The customers were there for far shorter times then the workers
You are clearly someone that is outright IGNORING facts and making up inane arguments about how you are right.
The nonsensical comment about 50+ asians is simply proof you were never taught to think. No one said masks are perfect, any more than a bullet p
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What a horrible troll you are. Obviously those eating or consuming beverages don't wear a mask.
Please go on to till me how vaccines don't work or how 9-11 was an inside job. You're bullshit and all you're doing is making the current problem worse for everyone.
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Public sector workers might also have immunity, if they were infected before and were not flagged as infected due mild symptoms.
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You cannot tell me that NONE of the 50+ infected, in an asian country, were not wearing masks.
What the fuck does that mean?
Of all the right-wing dumbasses on /., SubKendall
is clearly the dumassedness king.
The guests are sitting down (Score:3)
If we assume that infection depends strongly on the amount of virus inhaled and that the air conditioning creates hotspots with high concentraiton of virus then it could be that people sitting in 'hotspots' would get infected and people who keep moving about are not infected because they receive the average dosage. It depends on what reasonable differences in concentrations are.
Another , opposite argument.
If masks mostly retain large droplets then because most of the virus in a volume of air is in the larger droplets (what is the actual distribution?) then simple masks could really stop a lot of the virus.
If a droplet is 10 times the size of another droplet then it can capture 1000 times the amount of liquid, hence picking off the large droplets could be effective if the distribution is in the right 'class'.
Speaks volumes about the airconditioner (Score:1)
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that people get the cold with air conditioning.
And it's at least plausible that COVID-19 spreads in ways similar to the common cold.
Maybe we should *finally* start investigating how air conditioning spreads respiratory viruses?
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Liberal conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)
All you Trumpers, please keep ignoring the mask thing. And if you do manage to get COVID, be sure to take your Trump-endorsed dose of inhaled Lysol/Chloroquine. The only proven cure! No wait.... the whole thing is fake news.... no wait, it's a liberal hoax... no wait.... it was spread by China..... meh whatever (insert whatever Tump tweeted yesterday)
Let's see how quick this gets modded down
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And unlike a lot of liberals, I'm perfectly fine with people not wearing masks. You're basically volunteering to be a test subject. The doctors can experiment on YOU, and use the knowledge they gain to improve the survival chances of ME and MY FAMILY MEMBERS.
Idiocy has evolutionary consequences.
Re:Liberal conspiracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Deranged man screams on tech news site about Trump. Trump nowhere in the article.
That's right, folks: The truly deranged people aren't the ones who politicized mask-wearing and delayed the reopening of the country by getting a large number of people killed, it's the people critical of them!
I'm starting to think the realize you lot communicate primarily in meme-form because your 'shoot-the-messenger' mentality means nobody wants to talk to you directly.
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Fake news! Liberal conspiracy! Chinese plot! (insert something about Qanon)
All you Trumpers, please keep ignoring the mask thing. And if you do manage to get COVID, be sure to take your Trump-endorsed dose of inhaled Lysol/Chloroquine. The only proven cure! No wait.... the whole thing is fake news.... no wait, it's a liberal hoax... no wait.... it was spread by China..... meh whatever (insert whatever Tump tweeted yesterday)
Let's see how quick this gets modded down :)
I was wearing a mask way back when the CDC was saying not to. But I can still see how politicized and irrational much of the response is.
For one thing, it was spread by China, who did shut down local flights while permitting international ones. And the Left is exploiting and politicizing it, quite obviously. (They had nothing else - the economy was doing well, and even their sham impeachment was going nowhere, though it kept them busy while they told everyone to ignore COVID-19 and go enjoy Chinese New Ye
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It's politicized because masks have caused many unintended consequences, especially from the "law and order" parties who realize their vast facial recognition surveillance systems are being rendered useless.
That's why a lot of them are politicians of the "law and order" party - if the public starts masking widely, these surveillance systems obtained at large cost to taxpayers are rendered useless.
China tried to work around it, but t
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And the Left is exploiting and politicizing it, quite obviously.
You expect them to not exploit the undeniable evidence that Trump is a liar, conman and fool?
It's not a perfect shield (Score:2)
I think the best way is to think on it like a bullet proof vest, where it will keep you alive if you get shot once or twice, but you can't dance in the middle of a firefight with it.
Anecdotal evidence is easily manipulated (Score:1)
This is not science, it is anecdotal (not to mention very hard to verify). Interesting, but not in any way convincing.
Please provide peer-reviewed *scientific* references for the effectiveness of mask wearing, if you can find them.
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If you didn't have your Trumper head up your ass,
you could have found this in 5 seconds:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext#%20 [thelancet.com]
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I'm aware of this paper, but it's very hard to tease apart masking from physical distancing, especially in a meta-analysis (see, for example, https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/arti... [cdc.gov]).
Your crude language doesn't make you sound any smarter.
Trump CDC: Reduce testing so Trump looks good! (Score:1)
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Trump CDC Announcement to stop testing asymptomatic peeps baffles M.D.s. They must be politically astute enough to realize Trump wants the infection numbers falling as the election nears? Or, are they being coy? *ponders*
Reports keep coming out how people tested positive and weren't. It's also a fact that over 99.99% of the people that get sars-cov-2 live. So not even as bad as the Swine flu of 2009 and certainly not as bad as the Chinese flu of 1995-1997. That was much worse. So what are we really doing other than allowing ourselves to be controlled by a bunch of leftists?
Not hard to figure out. Riot, do those things and it's ok to not have a mask. Go to church, etc and it'll be the end of mankind.
Employes used KF94 (=N95) masks? (Score:1)
I'm losing the moderation I did here, but according to the google translation of [1] it seems the employees were wearing KF94 masks (similar to N95 [2]).
So the masks weren't your regular surgical masks. Although we don't know if the masks were properly fitted or not.
Does anyone read korean and could confirm this? And perhaps say something about the reliability of the source.
Google translation of parts from [1]
Starbucks distributes KF94 masks and sanitary gloves to store workers every day, and makes them wear them throughout the working hours.
[1] https://m.chosun.com/svc/artic... [chosun.com]
[2] KF94 vs N95 masks: https://smartairfilters.com/en... [smartairfilters.com]
Masks are the shallow end of the pool.. (Score:1)
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Re:Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:4, Informative)
"This. I really don't see how any restaurants can operate safely if customers wear masks away from their table but can't (obviously) wear one when eating. Doesn't matter who brought the virus in."
They obviously can't operate safely. That's why I'm not going.
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Open air and semi-open air restaurants and places with plenty of outside air should be reasonably safe. Places with recirculating mini-split systems, demonstrably not safe.
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Just think how many lives would have been saved if Fauci and company had advised that everyone wear masks from the start instead of waiting.
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Re: Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:2)
And the substitute for an expert that has given bad advice is ... No expert?
Expert got it wrong so we should just go with our gut from now on. Can't find a new expert or let the old expert change their position under new data, nope nope.
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Expert didn't change his mind based on new data unless you consider increased production of masks, "new data".
He lied. He admitted it to congress
How many people could have been saved if he hadn't lied?
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Feel free to provide a citation. Otherwise, we'll know YOU'RE lying.
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Wrong.
Now Fauci ad the CDC say that cloth masks are effective.
At least you are admitting he lied now. Tell me, Should Trump have overridden hi and told Americans to wear masks then?
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About the same, because he probably would have been fired early on. By executive order, if necessary. You can tell he's kind of walking a fine line when he's on camera.
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At the beginning of the pandemic there was a PPE shortage, with front line medical staff unable to obtain sufficient PPE including masks. Under these circumstances what masks were available needed to go to the people dealing with actual cases of covid19 day to day rather than the general public who were mostly not coming into contact with Covid 19.
So yes the guidance was we don't need masks and it would have been a waste of limited resources. The main strategy was washing hands and social distancing. Most
Re:Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:5, Insightful)
This. I really don't see how any restaurants can operate safely if customers wear masks away from their table but can't (obviously) wear one when eating. Doesn't matter who brought the virus in.
They can have tables outside in the garden or they can have a dedicated (at least) HEPA filtering ventilation system which removes air directly from the tables and puts back air at ground level. Just like masks don't need to be perfect to make a big difference, the filters probably don't need to be perfect to help lots.
What this means though, is that offices are probably a much worse problem than anyone thinks.
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I wondered how the AC would add to the spread and didn't find a good explanation. It moves the air so it has more reach, that is for sure. But do you have a link on how the humidity reduction affects it ?
The argument you are giving is that drier air concentrates the virus and keeps it afloat for longer and high humidity does the opposite.
But I'd like some confirmation. Who knows, maybe the virus half life is much shorter if it dries out.
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Thanks I think I'll brood on this a bit . The smaller a droplet is the faster it can evaporate so humidity should have a large impact on how long droplets stay in the air. But it is also assumed that once a droplet really dries out the halflife of the virus also decreases drastically, and droplets dry out much faster when floating then when stuck on a surface.
It is remarkable that this article assigns a good initial size for droplets to maximize success and that masks would work well to capture this size: h [scitation.org]
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It is a different effect. I read something about it when articles appeared on halflife of the virus on different surfaces. I also recall that nebulizers caused serious spread of SARS 1 in 2003 in hospital settings.
The idea is that if the virus particle dries out it becomes noninfectious. So if a large droplet dries out enough to remain airborne it has more chances to cause infection. If a small droplet dries out - and in dry air this happens very fast, then the virus becomes noninfectious and doesn't work a
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Air conditioning spreads this virus.
You'd still agree that filtered air conditioning / a ventilation system which integrates both filtration and air conditioning, if correctly maintained (and that's a definite worry), would be an improvement even over plain ventilation without air conditioning wouldn't you? Or are you suggesting that the particles would pass through the filters? I don't think that's very likely given what I've seen about tests on filters. I think the air conditioning which is most worrying is unfiltered or just has a sponge
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Offices and schools. Making kids go back to school is insanity at the highest levels.
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Offices and schools. Making kids go back to school is insanity at the highest levels.
Over 1,000 students at Alabama have tested positive [cnn.com] since school reopened.
The high school where the girl posted a picture of effectively no one wearing a mask in the hallways had nine cases between students and staff [usatoday.com] a few days later and shut down.
Cherokee County School District in Georgia shut down three schools [nbcnews.com] when students and staff tested positive.
Back in May, South Korea reopened schools after the country did a fantastic job of mitigating the spread of covid-19 and deaths, only to close them a few day [cnn.com]
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The dogma from the medical establishment is that masks prevent you from spreading the disease but don't keep you from catching it. So this incident is evidence that they are wrong.
Re:Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry, I had to.
Re: Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:2)
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Re:Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:5, Informative)
That has never been what the medical establish has said. They have said it does more to prevent you from spreading the virus than catching the virus. It works both ways but does more to stop you spreading it since it stops your breath from going as far.
Re:Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:5, Informative)
It takes 2-14 days to develop symptoms. But South Korea actually has an effective testing and contact tracing system set up; when the one woman under the AC unit tests positive, they immediately start finding and testing other people who were exposed to her. And even if you're not showing symptoms yet, the virus is replicating inside you, and testing can find it before symptoms appear (the viral load typically increases for a while before the immune system fights back in earnest, and you're asymptomatic until then).
As for masks "slowing it down", that's not exactly how it works. It reduces the exposure; sometimes this means you don't catch it, and when you do, it means a higher rate of mild or asymptomatic cases [springer.com] (presumably because the virus takes more time to replicate to dangerous levels, which is more time in which your immune system can notice and start reacting to stop it before it becomes a problem).
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Effective contact tracing, sure. South Korea's fabled mass testing, however, has been testing something like a tenth or a twentieth as many people relative to the size of the population as the supposedly tiny, failing US and UK testing programs - it's just the press in both countries has been doing its level best to obfuscate that fact. (Last I heard, they weren't exactly encouraging people with potential symptoms to get tested in most cases either - testing was technically available to everyone if they pai
Re: Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:2)
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I think the reason professional medicos were somewhat cautious in their advice was that while there was fairly clear evidence that *any* mask, even cloth masks, were fairly effective at blocking the spread of the virus at its source, there wasn't nearly as much evidence that it would prevent infection. But with more data and more anecdotes, we're slowly piling on evidence that masks may help in blocking infection as well.
By the end of this pandemic, we'll have a LOT of raw data to sift through, so I'd imag
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True, those two organizations' early advice was rather disastrous, but they've reversed those positions months ago. I was thinking of the professional advice we've been hearing since masks have been nearly universally recommended. For instance:
https://masks4all.co/ [masks4all.co]
This site primarily talks about the use of masks as a way to contain the virus among those who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. As far as I can tell, they don't make any claims that it will prevent you from getting infected.
You're right abo
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Yeah the medical community all own stock in paper mask factories...
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I don't think you understood what they said very well. I know of no one who has said the mask has 0% protection to yourself and 100% protection to others.
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May also depend on how the Starbucks employees use the masks. They may well have been carefully taught the proper way to use masks precisely because they are in a working environment where there are a lot of possibly infected people taking off their masks when they are drinking and eating. For clumsy slobs like me, I'm just trying to minimize exposure...
I still think they should have a simple exposure-counter app rather than the cumbersome and intrusive contact-tracing app. Cut the details and just give me
Re: Hurr Durr its da masks (Score:2)
This actually is important to know - did the customers not wear any masks? Given mask culture in Korea, I feel this is unlikely, which means distance played a significant factor as well.
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They were in a coffee shop... eating snacks and drinking coffee. Sort of hard to do that through a mask.
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So will Starbucks follow other companies then in becoming a take-away only place? Sounds like that’s the only option, since they can’t control their customers and resulting viral spread.
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Honestly, some part of me thinks they should, but restaurants and bars are opening regardless. People are going to them, regardless of the risk. It's admittedly a fairly small risk for most people, but unfortunately, that's what keeps this virus humming along as it has. It's also a very hard case to make that we should permanently close restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and other public places.
For people like me, who have conditions that put us slightly more at risk, I'll just be avoiding restaurants or o
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The other option is outside seating, which they're doing around here. Of course with winter coming, that may become untenable.
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We have a door with a big hole in it . So you can keep the door closed and still let the cat through. All you need is a mask with a big hole in it so you wear your mask and you still can eat. Duh!
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You mean like this [youtube.com]? :-D
But seriously, what we need is masks with a spring-loaded straw port. Eating through a mask is infeasible, but drinking really doesn't have to be. :-)
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That woman is smart!
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"did the customers not wear any masks?"
They were customers at a coffee shop. Even if they had been wearing masks, they would've taken them off to drink their coffee.
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how does one drink coffee while wearing a mask dip fucktin tard num shit nuts?