CDC Says Vaccinated Americans Don't Need a Mask Outdoors in Small Groups (cnet.com) 282
Americans who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can safely do many outdoor activities without wearing a mask, according to updated guidance Tuesday from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, health officials said vaccinated people should continue to wear a mask indoors and at crowded outdoor events, such as concerts, parades and sports events. From a report: "There are many situations where fully vaccinated people do not need to wear a mask, particularly if they are outdoors," said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky during a press briefing. "If you are fully vaccinated and want to attend a small outdoor gathering with people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated or dine at an outdoor restaurant with friends form multiple households, the science shows -- if you're vaccinated -- you can do so safely unmasked."
The CDC released a graphic to help people make decisions about when to wear a mask both outdoors and indoors. For fully vaccinated people, the CDC says these outdoor activities are safe without a mask: Walk, run or bike outdoors with members of your household. Attend a small, outdoor gathering with fully vaccinated family and friends. Attend a small, outdoor gathering with fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Dine at an outdoor restaurant with friends from multiple households.
The CDC released a graphic to help people make decisions about when to wear a mask both outdoors and indoors. For fully vaccinated people, the CDC says these outdoor activities are safe without a mask: Walk, run or bike outdoors with members of your household. Attend a small, outdoor gathering with fully vaccinated family and friends. Attend a small, outdoor gathering with fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Dine at an outdoor restaurant with friends from multiple households.
CDC for whatever reason (Score:3)
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This was "fact checked" 14 days ago: https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
The case rate is even lower since the "fact check".
LACK OF DATA (Score:2)
We can't check everything involved so there isn't clear data as to why.
Fauci was surrounded by fools at super spreader events and he never was infected because he is an expert and followed the recommendations; even went beyond them.
Fauci is careful about his highly educated guesses; it's crazy how people judge him with hindsight are also the ones lacking any common sense!
It should be clear population DENSITY is a huge factor. Plus, idiot governors make many people think for themselves and take precautions.
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What nonsense. Fauci is a paper pusher who never treated nor cured anyone of any disease. His stupid agenda ruined thousands of small and medium businesses for no reason at all in early pandemic as we see now that such businesses could have operated without issue. His ignorant guesses that have changed over time and have contradictions should not be basis for any policy.
Your hero is a piece of human shit who ruined many lives.
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Texas and Florida got rid of masks everywhere indoors and outdoors two months ago
Florida resident here. You are a liar or you don't know what you are talking about. South Florida (where I live), which is a) the pandemic epicenter in the state, and b) the largest metro area in FL, we still have mask mandates. You cannot do any business indoor or in crowded outdoor settings without a mask.
Yes, DeSantis declined to issue a mask mandate, but our local governments pretty much ignored him. Go to South Florida (be it Miami, Broward or WPB) and try to go inside a store without a mask. They'l
Did you read the article? (Score:3, Informative)
In the interview, Fauci said three weeks is too early to know the result of Abbott's executive order.
“Yeah, you know, it can be confusing. You may see a lag and a delay, because often, you have to wait a few weeks before you see the effect of what you’re doing right now," Fauci said. "We’ve been fooled before by situations where people begin to open back up, nothing happens, and all of a sudden, several weeks later, things (hospitalizations, case numbers) start exploding on you. So we
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much lower than states with mask mandates
Not according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ [worldometers.info]
US daily new cases peeked in Early January, fell steadily until early March, and then leveled off in almost every state in the union.
Just by glancing at the bar-graphs of daily new cases, you can see that Texas and Florida are not significant exceptions to the general trend.
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Even in Texas I heard the sister-fucking orgies have slowed greatly since 2020.
Given how many have moved to Texas from the bay area I am sure it has been replaced with "brother-fucking orgies"
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How existent were they before? None of those dumb fucks were wearing "muh face diaper tee hee". That's my point. Nothing changed except for the better (social distancing, even in cousin-kissing Texas), vaccines, and the people most likely to get it already having got it.
And while I don't think masking up is generally of any use outdoors, it has no cost so "completely fucking insane" is a bit of a stretch. And I actually agree that at this point some people are going way overboard considering we're well past
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Re:CDC for whatever reason (Score:5, Informative)
Total bullshit. Masks are virtually non-existent now in Texas and Florida.
I live in South Florida, and you are talking bullshit. My kids go to ballet with masks (city ordinance). We cannot go shopping or a gas station without a mask. My wife works in retail and is (by company orders and city law) required to wear a mask. When I go to my local gym, I must wear a mask (and have my temperature checked.)
Our gyms and restaurants are still operating at below capacity. Not a single Starbucks or Dunkin's will let you sit inside (by local policy.)
| Hell, you cannot go to Disney in Orlando or Legoland in Lakeland without a mask.
Yeah, sure you can take one of those dumb rural towns in the middle of Floriduh that chaff at mask ordinances. But I challenge you to go to any of the large cities (where most of the people live, where most of the cases have been and where most of economy happens) and see how far you can go without a mask.
Tampa, Orlando, Naples, the Miami/Broward/WPB metro area, the Keys. You name it.
You. Don't. Know. What. You. Are. Talking. About.
You. Are. Full. Of. Shit.
Sources: me living in South Florida.
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For now yes, far to many people have yet to be fully vaccinated. Had my first jab here in the UK last month, and will happily wear one for now.
Firstly other people don't know if you have had a jab so for now wear one. I have worn one all day when I needed to do some work in the data centre so meh. Plenty of people have to wear them all the time in their jobs pandemic or no pandemic.
Second while being vaccinated does reduce the spread it is not perfect because no vaccine is 100% perfect, nice study from Scot
Re:CDC for whatever reason (Score:5, Informative)
There was even a Standford study a few days ago that determined that masks are in fact worthless at preventing the spread.
You mean the fake study that had nothing to do with Stanford and provides no actual data [local12.com]?
This should be obvious by the fact that the states that were most hit with COVID were and remain all blue states. Red states have been far less affected by COVID.
Red states are rural. Rural areas are always affected more slowly by pandemics because people are in contact with fewer people on any given day. This is basic high-school-level statistics.
You get the point.
There keep on being studies proving that the mask mandates do nothing, and we keep on getting told to ignore them.
No, there have been precisely zero scientific studies proving that. There have, however, been multiple studies proving that masks are highly effective.
Maybe if you would actually spend the time learning enough about statistics, human physiology, and the scientific method to recognize the difference between an actual scientific study and an opinion with a bunch of science words thrown in, you'd understand that you've been lied to repeatedly.
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There keep on being studies proving that the mask mandates do nothing, and we keep on getting told to ignore them.
No, there have been precisely zero scientific studies proving that. There have, however, been multiple studies proving that masks are highly effective.
Well, in fairness there was the big study from Denmark that found that mask-wearing doesn't do much to protect the wearer of the mask. But they didn't design their study to attempt to find out whether mask wearing protects others, so it didn't do that. In fact they explicitly focused on mask-wearers in the vicinity of non mask-wearers.
So we have at least one fairly solid data point that says that wearing a mask doesn't protect you very much. But we all know that's not what surgical or cloth masks are for.
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Doesnt understand how vaccines work. The Israelis still do. Or maybe biology just works differently there?
There are two aspects to vaccination, personal protection and herd immunity.
Once you achieve herd immunity and have a low number of people in the population with the disease you can essentially go 'back to normal' since the disease will have a R 1 and you will be at low risk of exposure.
Before you achieve an R 1 and still have high numbers of people with the virus you are depending on the personal protection aspects of vaccines. In this case vaccines are like seatbelts - at low risk situations provide al
Masks outside? (Score:4, Insightful)
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But there's really no cost to wearing one so it's not really a big deal.
A lot of us, especially here on Slashdot, wear eyeglasses.
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Yeah, and? I wear glasses and so long as you have a decent fit, it's literally ZERO impact wearing a mask or not wearing a mask on my glasses. Wearing a shitty homemade mask, sure, that'll fog them up here or there. But a decent N-95 with the strips properly pressed to the nose? Doesn't make any difference at all unless it's SUPER cold and I have my hood pulled so tight some of the breath doesn't escape it.
Re:Masks outside? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is plenty of cost: human dignity. I know you guys don't value dignity, but the rest of us do. Take your "magical masks" and shove them.
Why do you consider a mask to be an affront to your dignity?
The only reason I can see is because some politicians decided to rally their base by turning mask wearing into a mark of political affiliation (meaning that wearing a mask sends a political signal you don't like).
It seems to me that accepting that narrative is a much bigger affront to your dignity than a mask.
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Oh, the science is simple. Masks capture a nonzero and at least moderate amount of the exhaled moisture that carries the virus, making significantly it less likely to spread to others. It also filters a nonzero but negligible amount of the moisture/droplets you inhale making it slightly less likely to catch it from others. This is epidemiologically significant in a pandemic, when even small reductions in transmission can have a huge downstream impact over time.
I mean, these are the most basic indisputable f
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We were supposed to wear them OUTSIDE this whole time until now?
In South Florida we were required even in the parking lot until recently. We still wear them if there's a chance to run into a large group of people. We have gone to some events outdoors (including a Miami City Ballet show performed outdoors), and we were required to use masks (some imbeciles were escorted out when they were complaining about the masks.)
It also depends on the city. Going west in Broward, people, the police and business owners will wear masks outdoors/in the parking lots and will give you
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Canada’s chief public health officer has issued safe sex guidelines for the coronavirus pandemic, including recommending you wear a face mask during sexual encounters with someone outside your quarantine group.
And we were told early on that you should keep your mask in place during meals unless you were actively eating.
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Which health officials say that? The CDC? (Score:2)
Just read the article: there is a graphic there explaining what you can do when you are fully vaccinated. It's all green. That means 'you can be careless now'.
I think there are some voices being overly cautious but i doubt if that is the official point of view.
It is not that vaccination makes everything entirely safe. It gives you herd immunity and it reduces the seriousness of the disease. It makes you far less contagious.
The aim should not be absolute safety. It shouldbe 'Safe enough'.
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Wtf No! Half of the green column is wearing a mask!
Alright that is just stupid.
Re:Which health officials say that? The CDC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wtf No! Half of the green column is wearing a mask! Alright that is just stupid.
It's not stupid. It may be excessively cautious -- but there's a possibility that it's not. Two points.
First, "safe" is not referring to the safety of the person making the decision about how to act, it's referring to the risk of spreading COVID from/to anyone in the area. Second, we don't yet have strong evidence that fully vaccinated people can't contract and spread the disease, which is what the mask is for. Fully vaccinated people may be carrying the disease, so when they're indoors they should wear a mask to prevent them from giving it to others.
Keep in mind that this is all a numbers game. An unvaccinated person in contact with a carrier will contract the disease with probabilty p1. An unvaccinated person who has immunity from having the disease who comes in contact with a carrier will contract the disease with probability p2. A fully vaccinated person in contact with a carrier will contract the disease with probability p3. p3 > p1 and p2 > p1. Put masks on any or all of the people in all of these scenarios and you multiply the probabilities in each case by some value < 1. When many people have immunity because of vaccination or illness (i.e. herd immnity), that lowers the probability that a person comes in contact with a carrier, that also multiplies the probabilities by some value < 1.
When you integrate all theses probabilities across the entire population, you get some level of viral replication. If it's higher than 1 new infection for every person infected, the disease spreads. If it's lower than 1, the disease retreats.
At the end of the day, the CDC's goal is to push that replication number well below 1 and keep it there. Until it's proven that the fully vaccinated have a vanishingly-low probability of passing the disease to others, they have to assume that unmasked vaccinated people indoors may be pushing the number up.
Thank you!!! (Score:2)
Mutters something about common sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
Over the pond, here in the place some people call "blighty", wearing masks outside has, as far as I'm aware, never been a "thing" unless you find yourself in a crowd.
It's hard to tell what the rules are. I've no idea whether that's the case in the USA, but here in Johnsonville, the land of the bold faced liar, the rules and messaging have changed so many times, it is impossible to keep up.
So, you know, most people have this habit of using common sense.
As the vast majority of our adult populace has at least the basics of education and common sense behind them, we tend to be able to work out when a mask would be useful to wear and when not.
Yes, absolutely, there are a good number of individuals who, for whatever genetic reasons, seem to be averse to common sense, but they are vastly outnumbered, except in the media, because, you know, it's great to get people stirred up.
And yup, we have those who seem unable to actually wear a mask properly - "erm, hi there, it doesn't work if it's hanging around one ear" - "excuse me, but it tends to work better if it covers your nose too, just saying!".
We also have those who believe the mask gives them superpower protection. "Yup, I'm right in your personal space here in the store, but it's ok, I'm wearing a mask."
But by and large, people have actually abided by COMMON SENSE during this pandemic and in many cases, have actually been ahead of government advise, especially in the early days of the pandemic.
Wear a mask outside?
Sure, if you are surrounded by people.
I mean, it would be kinda silly to be wearing one in the middle of a field with nobody else around...
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
For the 2000th time...is anyone forcing you *not* to wear a mask? No?
Well then...
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
I know several people who have been harassed for wearing masks; it seems to be a common occurrence for people who work in retail.
Tucker Carlson has stated that children wearing masks warrants reporting the parents to child protective services.
The rwnjs have absolutely politicized it.
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
The Tucker Carlson defense is now a thing. That's where the lawyer says that no reasonable person would have assumed those statements to be true.
In other news today: A private school in Miami with an anti-vax owner has stated that any teachers who get vaccinated will not be allowed to teach students in person because she's heard stories that you can be affected negatively by being near people who've had a covid vaccine. Even for Florida that's pretty damned stupid.
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It's been "a thing" for a very long time. That's been boilerplate in every defamation case against TV talking heads.
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> The Tucker Carlson defense is now a thing. That's where the lawyer says that no reasonable person would have assumed those statements to be true.
People say that every time the "rhetorical hyperbole" defense comes up. That applied to a few particular statements, namely the idea that calling someone a "fraud" or similar things isn't defamation in general without some specific explanation of exactly how they committed some specific crime. You know that Larry Flynt and several other news publications als
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In other news: public schools in Democratic states are still closed even though the CDC said they should open months ago. This adversely affects the lower/middle class and particularly PoC. But lets worry about some nutjob private school in Florida for some mod points.
Which schools and in which states. Prove it or GTFO.
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:3, Informative)
A neighbor of mine is a teacher.
He said that when schools first closed, some of his students' parents were so freaked out they wouldn't even let the kids out of their rooms in their own houses.
Giving your kid a mask isn't at that level of insanity, but scaring the shit out of your kids by locking them in their rooms for "safety" ought not be considered acceptable parenting practice.
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I absolutely have my toddler wear a mask. I have a 2yr old, and that kid wears a mask anytime he's indoors with other people not in our family or at a playground. I absolutely have him wear a mask; he doesn't mind it, because he sees his parents doing it, and knows its what you do in certain situations. So good for the Michigan governor. Maybe if more folks listened to her to begin with, less Michiganders would have died.
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:2)
My toddler doesn't.
Wearing mask is pointless for a kid that thinks blowing raspberries is the height of sophisticated humor.
In terms of overall risk, it's like installing an airbag on a motorcycle. Maybe not going to make things worse, but almost certainly won't make it better.
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in a very red town of a very red state. Not once have I ever had anyone mention anything to me about wearing a mask.
Don't get me wrong I've seen plenty of people on social media snickering about the people wearing them alone in their car (which is a bit juvenile - it's completely possible to just forget you're wearing it or not want to keep pulling it over and putting it back on for short trips - I don't snatch my socks off every time I hop in the car), but I've never seen it in person.
That said, I've been fully vaccinated for 3-4 weeks now. At this point I carry a mask in my pocket but I don't wear it unless the business has a sign requiring it - and within the next month or two I'll probably stop patronizing businesses that do. I behaved and stayed in for a year. If I needed to go out I masked up until we made it to the vaccine, but at this point we've put in our time and we have to accept that COVID exists and always will. Some people will die from it just like many other diseases but via reasonable precautions (ie, getting vaccinated, not wearing a mask for all eternity) we can minimize the impact.
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I'm also fully vaccinated and I have a mask in my car for whenever I go into a business. I don't complain because it's not a big deal and I respect other people.
There's a reasonable assumption that people going to bars/restaurants understand the risks of being around others who are mask-less. For businesses that I wouldn't consider optional (grocers for example), if you don't want to respect other people then pay
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, I've been fully vaccinated for 3-4 weeks now. At this point I carry a mask in my pocket but I don't wear it unless the business has a sign requiring it - and within the next month or two I'll probably stop patronizing businesses that do. I behaved and stayed in for a year. If I needed to go out I masked up until we made it to the vaccine, but at this point we've put in our time and we have to accept that COVID exists and always will. Some people will die from it just like many other diseases but via reasonable precautions (ie, getting vaccinated, not wearing a mask for all eternity) we can minimize the impact.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Sure you're vaccinated, but no one else knows that you're vaccinated and even with vaccinations available there's still a lot of people who have a legitimate reason to worry about contracting the disease.
There will be a time when the pandemic is a thing of the past, but until then wearing a mask indoors in public is the considerate thing to do.
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:5, Interesting)
No I said that some people will inevitably die from COVID. Some people will die driving to work tomorrow. Some people will die falling down stairs. It's all about taking a REASONABLE level of precaution.
Think of it this way: crime mostly happens at night. Be it murder, rape, etc, darkness limits visibility and as such makes crime much easier to carry out. With that in mind, I can GUARANTEE you that a strict sundown curfew for everyone except people who must absolutely be at work (mostly medical professionals and such working at hospitals, line workers fixing power outages, etc) would drastically cut down on crime and save lives. Are you for that? I mean if not and if it cuts down on the number of murders you obviously must care more about your recreation than the lives of the people would will die right?
I think we all can agree that though there is a cost involved, the societal cost of that is not worth it. The same must be weighed when it came to COVID. I was fine masking up to "flatten the curve" as it was pitched to us. I did it for a year until we got a vaccine available. But I absolutely will not do this forever. The last year of my life has basically been thrown away and I'm not going to continue this in perpetuity.
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Does everything now have to be political? Can't we just have one lousy pandemic where people actually care enough for their neighbors where they just follow the best guidance available at the time (eve
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:3)
In the winter it's not bad. Keeps the face warm. Might even keep doing it. But it fogs up my glasses...which is hazardous to me if I'm walking and to you if I'm driving.
In the summer it's stifling.
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I will wear my mask for a long time, if not out of concern for the 'rona, at least for personal hygiene. More so if *I* happen to have the flu or whatever (as a form of respect to others around me.)
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Kudos for you, but I will never understand people hesitance (or downright hostility) at wearing a mask.
This is rebellion / pushback against perceived illegitimate behavior.
Rather than simply asking people nicely and letting them make up their own mind it is being forced upon them. This predictably leads to entrenched grievance and with it a market to pursuit anti-mask consensus.
Having been in Tokyo where people wear them out politeness to others makes conclude we are a culture of unsanitary, unhinged boors.
This is rather childish.
I will wear my mask for a long time, if not out of concern for the 'rona, at least for personal hygiene. More so if *I* happen to have the flu or whatever (as a form of respect to others around me.)
Wearing a mask for no reason (e.g. virtue signaling) is unhealthy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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Wearing a mask for no reason (e.g. virtue signaling) is unhealthy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
I'm pretty sure that this study does not say what you're implying (or maybe even what you believe) it does.
Let's start by pointing out that the study was an observational study on health care workers and looked at their incidence of respiratory tract infections over a period of time. Safe to say that there were valid reasons to wear a mask within the study (being as they were working in a hospital full of sick people), and therefore it says next to nothing about "wearing a mask for no reason".
So, to the poi
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and within the next month or two I'll probably stop patronizing businesses that do.
A lot should depend on what is happening in your community with transmission. If there are still a lot of people getting new infections in your town, you should continue to wear a mask *to protect other people*. While the risk of severe disease to you as a vaccinated person is practically nil, there still is a significant chance you could infect people who haven't been vaccinated yet or who cannot be vaccinated. Thanks to your vaccine you might not even feel sick, but you can still pass the virus on to s
re: vaccinations (Score:2)
Well, I'm going to offer the counter-argument (however unpopular) that all of these vaccinations are mostly a gambit to knock the virus prevalence down ASAP to small enough numbers of infected people so everyone can "get back to normal life" and stop freaking out about it.
The whole thing about "not having to wear a mask anymore because I'm fully vaccinated" is really only accurate for a small window of time, since these vaccines don't provide immunity that lasts more than 3-6 months.
Will that (plus trying t
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The whole thing about "not having to wear a mask anymore because I'm fully vaccinated" is really only accurate for a small window of time, since these vaccines don't provide immunity that lasts more than 3-6 months.
This is total nonsense.
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+1 for giving up. Edward Jenner would no doubt be ashamed of you, assuming of course none of your ancestors had died from a vaccine-preventable disease.
The only diseases that vaccinations have ever managed to completely eliminate are things that are a "one and done" type disease (ie, you get either the disease or the vaccine once and then you have a negligible chance of ever being reinfected). COVID-19 isn't like that. You can catch it again. You will need periodic booster vaccinations much like the flu. It isn't going away.
All of the hulabaloo was about giving us enough time and buffer to develop a COVID vaccination, plus a little more time to distrib
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:4, Funny)
Flu shots aren't "booster vaccines". Unlike the flu shot, at least Covid-19 vaccinations seem to work.
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:4, Interesting)
My wife really hates wearing a mask. She says it feels like she can't breathe. There are places she won't go just because of that. Me, I sometimes forget I'm wearing a mask. It's no big deal to me. If I'm going to two different stores in one trip, I'll often leave the mask on between stores--it's just easier. I'm not scared or stupid or anything; I'm just lazy.
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:4, Interesting)
From the testing results, it's roughly on par with an N95 but (IMHO) easier to breathe through than a generic surgical mask. Certainly moreso than a fabric mask, which I'm surprised are still extremely common.
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The rwnjs have absolutely politicized it.
I mean... look who you're talking to.
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Meanwhile there is more and more cases in schools here. It's true that the kids generally don't get too sick though a 2 year old died here the other day and a 14 yr old not too far away. The 14 year old might have lived except her dad decided to nurse her himself due to worry about how the hospitals are filling up.
What the kids do do, is give it to their elders, including teachers, with some schools barely staying open due to staffing issues caused by the virus.
This is Canada, where the new variants of conc
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It never made sense to wear a mask outdoors if a person wasn't in close proximity to another.
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Sounds illegal (Score:3, Funny)
You're gonna have to pry my mask from my cold dead face.
Am pretty sure that the CDC has mandated you must wear a mask even in a casket. After all, the casket is technically indoors.
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This is combined with additional knowledge about how COVID spreads through surfaces.
I donâ(TM)t think they are saying not to wear a mask. The info graphic still says wear one inside as we all do. It is just that some of us wear masks in our cars and some donâ(TM)t.
It is important to separate the evolution of science and the politics. I was t
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Vaccines do NOT work that way (Score:3)
> Either vaccines work, or they do not.
How did you come to this absurd conclusion? Why do I keep hearing this all over the place? I have never seen even one scientific paper claiming that absurdity.
A vaccine causes the immune system to develop defenses against a pathogen. Now think about that, please, for a moment. What happens if you give a vaccine to someone who has little or no immune system left for whatever reason? It's not going to do jack for them, now, is it? Even if it works just fine on a
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I am not willing to hang up my mask to take on a 5% chance of getting covid, which will probably kill me
The vaccines have over 99.99% effectiveness at preventing hospitalizations and death (as we get more information, more nines will likely be added to that figure...) The likelihood of you dying from covid if you've been vaccinated whether you are wearing a mask or not is practically zero.
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The vaccines have over 99.99% effectiveness at preventing hospitalizations and death (as we get more information, more nines will likely be added to that figure...) The likelihood of you dying from covid if you've been vaccinated whether you are wearing a mask or not is practically zero.
Where did you get that BS number? Vaccines are nowhere near that effective in preventing either hospitalizations or death. At peak effectiveness (up to 2 months after a second dose of Pfizer) they are about 20x-30x effective in reducing hospitalizaitons and deaths. At 7 months post vaccination they are about 3x-7x effective.
Vaccination can be overwhelmed by a high dose exposure (ie up to 1500x increased exposure due to being around people singing or yelling indoors; or 50,000x- 100,000x exposure from a s
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I'm pretty sure that 99.99% is a real number, in that in some study, 99.99% of vaccinated people were not hospitalized and did not die.
But you are correct that the more useful number is the risk *relative to unvaccinated people*, which like you say, is about one order of magnitude lower. Last time I checked, the Pfizer vaccine seemed to prevent ~90% of infection, a higher percentage of serious infection, and ~90% of transmission. But it's been a while so I presume your statistics are a bit more up to date.
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Scarred lungs from COVID would mean hospitalization, and if you're afraid of getting a vaccine due to a blood clot then sweet Jesus don't ever get into a car or plane because the likelihood that you'll die travelling in one of those is significantly higher than developing a blood clot from a COVID vaccine. The risk there is so miniscule as to be not even worth worrying about.
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Actually, when you take a single flight, your risk of dying in a plane crash is one in 5.88 million, versus 7 in one million for women under 50 dying from a blood clot from the J&J vaccine. So the risk of that J&J vaccination is about 41 times as high as as the risk of taking an airline flight. Even the risk for people outside of that demographic is higher.
Car crashes are, of course, a much higher risk, but people grossly overestimate the risk of air travel. :-)
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:2)
No, just by coincidence the risk of a woman between 18 and 50 dying in a car crash in the two weeks after getting a j&j shot is roughly the same as the risk of getting a clot from that shot.
Math is your friend. Always.
Re:CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:5, Informative)
There is so little accurate in your statement I doubt you are sincere, but you are spreading quite a bit of FUD there.
CDC also implored Americans not to buy or wear masks during the rollout of the pandemic. Fauci said masks were useless to stop the spread of disease and that they only created a false sense of security
For a few weeks Fauci and the CDC said they didn't recommend people wear masks because they weren't sure if it would do more harm than good. They were concerned with people touching their masks constantly, among other things. They quickly found out the virus doesn't travel easily by touch and changed their recommendation. Your statements are taking a changed recommendation and trying to make something sinister out of them.
The vaccines are not 100% effective. Their manufacturers will tell you that. You still have a ~5% chance of getting covid after exposure.
No, you have a 95% reduced chance of getting Covid after exposure. You never had a 100% chance of contracting the virus, and I have never seen a firm estimate for what that chance is. It is so highly dependent on the details of your exposure who knows if we ever will be given an exact percentage chance of infection. But we can measure the reduction in infection by using a control group, which is where the 95% reduction comes from.
I am not willing to hang up my mask to take on a 5% chance of getting covid, which will probably kill me, because the US government wants me to get back to being a good little productive taxpayer.
Covid will not probably kill you. Right now estimates of mortality are at around 1%-2% in the US. If you are older the chance is much higher, but not higher than 10-20% for any high risk group I am aware of. And the chances are much lower if you're younger.
I am the member of my extended family who is most stringent with following CDC guidelines here, but it isn't out of a fear of dying from Covid. These guidelines are meant to slow spread of the disease. Very few individuals should be scared of getting Covid; you should only be scared of being responsible for the deaths of others.
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>Very few individuals should be scared of getting Covid
After reading the data coming in about long-haul symptoms, and after reading about the fraction of patients who wind up with autoantibodies at levels comparable to lupus patients, if I'm not going to be scared I'm sure going to do prudent avoidance.
And absolutely I don't want to be part of a chain of transmission that ends with someone vulnerable. Most of the people in my book group are 70-90 or more.
Re:CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing some more information:
He said don't go out and BUY N95 masks. Everyone at that time understood masks to mean "N95 particulate masks". As such, he said, "DONT GO GET MASKS." Because we didn't have a supply for healthcare workers or retail shoppers.
I agree with GP that he was never against "wearing masks". He was against people preventing healthcare workers from being able to get N95 masks.
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I've told my kids many times that their government will lie to them when it suits them, and that Fauci was lying. And then he proved my point.
Oh boy.
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I've told my kids many times that their government will lie to them when it suits them, and that Fauci was lying. And then he proved my point.
Oh boy.
You think your government never lies to you? Don't be naïve. You can be a patriot without the willful blindness.
I can think of a couple of lies right off the top of my head
"The air is safe at ground zero" (after 9/11). They knew it wasn't, but they needed the cleanup to proceed.
"The attack in Benghazi was caused by a YouTube video". They knew it was a lie, but the filmmaker went to prison anyway.
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Because in science you learn things that force you to change your mind. Backtracking is not somehow dishonest; it is in fact what honest people do when they learn new things.
At first scientists were reasoning by analogy to flu, where masks might theoretically be beneficial but in practice provide questionable protection to untrained people. What they discovered about COVID is that you can start shedding substantial amounts of virus before you develop symptoms. That's what changed the advice to the public:
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We need carrots to encourage vaccinations and this is a damn good carrot with relatively low risk:
We're nerds, lets do some Feynman estimation:
Nationwide we have a 7-day average of about 55k new cases per day. Assuming people are infectious for 10 days and we are tracking 1 in 6 cases, there's about 3 million infectious people in the country representing about 1% of the population.
We know vaccines are about 90% effective and only about 50% of the adult population has started the series so it's reasonable to
Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:5, Informative)
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You'll never convince a lot of slashdotters that. Ignorance is bliss, and they're very happy people. They do their own science based upon the half year of college science they took pass/fail back in 1977. Any science or health story they will instantly mock without bothering to read past the title of the paper. It is a good thing that most of them will never pass along their genes.
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I don't have any issues with this statement, but as long as you are outdoors with a good distance to others then a mask isn't really doing anything. And when driving alone in my car I can't use a mask because the glasses fogs up.
Mask is for when you are in areas where you can't help getting in close proximity to others - like shopping food and other necessities.
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Re: CDC is also fucking retarded (Score:3)
Being wrong by itself is one thing.
Being wrong by claiming the same rationale for totally opposite conclusions *and* cycling back between the two...that's a special kind of stupid that only a well-resourced state actor can pull off.
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If it's an N95 properly fitted to your face, it can actually work pretty well. But the cloth ones? ehhhh
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The purpose of masks is COVID theater to pretend you can do something about viruses.
No. You are just an unhygienic clod. Take a trip to Tokyo on a normal day and see people wearing masks out of respect to others.
We are just filthy and proud of it cuz freedumb.
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I was just telling a friend the other day that the older I get (I'm 53 now), the more I realize that scientists and doctors don't know jack shit. She chuckled, but she knows my history, I've worked in an academic institution/hospital for over 30 years. I know these people. Just like every other profession, there are geniuses among them, but most of them just fall on the mediocre scale.
And then I started to think "why" I had changed my opinion of the scientists and the doctors. Two things came to mind.
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You can't argue with a fool.
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Accurate name there.
So the whole problem is that the average mask is pretty crappy. They are generally not that useful for protecting the wearer. They are fairly effective though at protecting others from the wearer, if the wearer is contagious (whether symptomatic or not). Basically they tend to be permeable, but slow things down so they don't get as far.
Now if everyone was walking around with N95 or better properly worn, that's a fine stance, because those do protect the wearer. Surgical masks and typica
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At that point, the folks with immunity should be free to go about normal life and those that refuse, well, they are responsible for protecting themselves and they need to space, stay home and double mask, etc.
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Probably so, I'm guessing for the US that time will be mostly in June. Before that there will still be a lot of people who despite a sincere intent to get one, have not been able to get one.
Re: I recognize that the council has made a decisi (Score:4, Insightful)
Being skeptical of political takes on science and being anti-science are completely different things.
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Being skeptical of political takes on science and being anti-science are completely different things.
Nice quote ... for people who can't tell the difference between both stances.
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The science is that if you are vaccinated, then you are sufficiently low risk to not really need a mask in a lot of contexts.
Practically speaking, the honor system is not reliable. Hence why they specifically mention contexts where stranger to stranger contact is still masked, and small gatherings of people who would trust each other to be honest about their vaccination usage. The reason for the gatherings being specifically small and outdoors is not because the vaccine is less effective in larger groups an
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everyone should just wear a mask.
And yet, literally the CDC just said the opposite. This is why Slashdotters are anti-science.
They said at the time out of concern that the mask could become a fomite and because there was a shortage of masks for essential workers at the time. That recommendation changed eons ago. But here you are, polishing that turd of yours to prop a sinister narrative. You do you.
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Society only works on trust. If trust goes away, or is pissed away, society will function less well.
If I could build a giant monument, it would be located at the National Mall, and it would be a massive structure in the form of the words: "QUESTION AUTHORITY"
Re: CDC is full of itself (Score:2)
You're actually agreeing with me.
Authority that refuses to even acknowledge the question engenders much less trust than an authority that at least attempts to come up with a straight answer.
You don't question authority for the sake of rebellion for rebellion's sake. You do it to keep everyone honest.