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Covid 19 virus
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nctnico:

--- Quote from: Stray Electron on March 25, 2020, 02:39:47 pm ---   A personal note, when the last polio epidemic went around in about 1960, my mother was was of the few trained nurses in our area and I well remember her going around to houses that had been quarantined to check on the people and to take them food and medicine and she always wore a mask.  No one debated the effectiveness of the masks,  you just wore one, no questions asked.

--- End quote ---
You are stepping over a very important detail here. Your mother likely put a new mask on before entering each home and took it off after leaving the home and disposed the mask properly. It would surprise me if she was wearing the same mask the whole day long!

BTW the WHO is recomending to wear a face mask while in the vincinity of an infected person.
not1xor1:

--- Quote from: drussell on March 25, 2020, 02:37:57 pm ---
--- Quote from: not1xor1 on March 25, 2020, 09:16:11 am ---SK South Korea death vs amount of cases is increasing and currently 1.379% (126/9137*100)
--- End quote ---

Of course that number is going up.  You're conveniently just totally ignoring the 5281 cases that don't have a known outcome yet.  (Well, you're not ignoring them, per se, you're actually just lumping them all in with the known recovered to calculate a meaningless percentage.)

Of the first 3856 cases in South Korea where there is an outcome, 126/3856 = 3.27%

You cannot just assume that the other active 5281 cases all miraculously recover with no more deaths.  While an epidemic is ongoing, calculating a crude CFR that way is disingenuous at best, dangerous at worst if it makes people complacent.  There is a multi-week delay between the detection of most cases and an outcome.  During exponential growth in spread it takes time for the outcome numbers to track the new cases.  You must look at the trends for forecasting, not the absolute numbers, and when calculating numbers you need to look at what set of patients actually represents your known outcomes.

If you look at the US' number right now and calculate a crude CFR, it would be 802/55243 = 1.45%
Some media has been continuing to report this kind of number, saying things like look, it's only 10x worse than the flu....  But it appears to actually be potentially closer to another order of magnitude higher.

It is still far too early in the US' outbreak to make any conclusions as to what the actual CFR there will be in any particular region.  With only 354 declared "recovered" so far nationwide, the naive calculation based on actual outcomes is currently just as meaningless, (other than to watch trends, of course.)  We know it will not end up being the current 69.4% once more cases have known outcomes.

--- End quote ---

I agree with you, but please notice that your remarks do not disprove what I never intend to prove or mean  :)
Please read more carefully my message in the context of the message I was replying to
SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: thinkfat on March 25, 2020, 03:05:18 pm ---As far as expert opinions go:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30134-X/fulltext

--- Quote ---It is time for governments and public health agencies to make rational recommendations on appropriate face mask use to complement their recommendations on other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene. WHO currently recommends that people should wear face masks if they have respiratory symptoms or if they are caring for somebody with symptoms. Perhaps it would also be rational to recommend that people in quarantine wear face masks if they need to leave home for any reason, to prevent potential asymptomatic or presymptomatic transmission. In addition, vulnerable populations, such as older adults and those with underlying medical conditions, should wear face masks if available. Universal use of face masks could be considered if supplies permit. In parallel, urgent research on the duration of protection of face masks, the measures to prolong life of disposable masks, and the invention on reusable masks should be encouraged. Taiwan had the foresight to create a large stockpile of face masks; other countries or regions might now consider this as part of future pandemic plans.
--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---

Which is almost exactly what I said earlier. And as I'll repeat (from my previous post), I completely understand the resource management issue, so I understand why the WHO statements would be what they are, and why they are much more political (not in a bad sense) than that of medical doctors.
PlainName:

--- Quote ---An infected person tugging at a virus soaked mask sounds like a great idea.
--- End quote ---

Just a thought - if the mask is virus-soaked then aren't those virii not in the person? Without the mask, they would have been breathed in, wouldn't they?
Mr. Scram:

--- Quote from: thinkfat on March 25, 2020, 03:05:18 pm ---I've looked into the two links you posted earlier in the thread. One is a study about food workers likelihood to performing proper hand hygiene in activities with and without gloves. The other ones is an expert opinion on the mertis of using gloves and face masks in a pandemic situation.

From the study:

--- Quote ---These results suggest that workers who wear gloves do not remove them and wash their hands as they should. Although some researchers and practitioners have contended that glove use can promote poor hand washing practices [...],little data exists on this issue. More research is needed to understand the relationship between glove use and handwashing.
--- End quote ---
And:

--- Quote ---Appropriate hand washing and glove use were also related to worker busyness — these hand hygiene behaviors were less likely to occur when workers were busy (i.e., engaged in relatively larger numbers of activities needing handwashing)
--- End quote ---

The study does _not_ show conclusively a dependency between hand hygiene and glove use. Just as likely, time pressure may be the driver here, as removing the gloves before washing and putting them on again afterwards are time consuming activities. The generalization from here to "protective gear promotes careless behavior" is not obvious to me.

As far as expert opinions go:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30134-X/fulltext

--- Quote ---It is time for governments and public health agencies to make rational recommendations on appropriate face mask use to complement their recommendations on other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene. WHO currently recommends that people should wear face masks if they have respiratory symptoms or if they are caring for somebody with symptoms. Perhaps it would also be rational to recommend that people in quarantine wear face masks if they need to leave home for any reason, to prevent potential asymptomatic or presymptomatic transmission. In addition, vulnerable populations, such as older adults and those with underlying medical conditions, should wear face masks if available. Universal use of face masks could be considered if supplies permit. In parallel, urgent research on the duration of protection of face masks, the measures to prolong life of disposable masks, and the invention on reusable masks should be encouraged. Taiwan had the foresight to create a large stockpile of face masks; other countries or regions might now consider this as part of future pandemic plans.
--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---
It's important to understand it's not a black and white matter. Discussions on the internet tend to end up heavily polarized but that's not how real life works. This means that the advice given can change as the situation develops and new information become available. This also means that most measures do some harm and some good and the trick is to pick the ones which do least harm and most good.

In regards to the conclusiveness of the links provided I'd invite you to look into the matter yourself. If possible, talk to surgeons or other staff working in areas where a lack of hygiene flat out kills people. PPE use and the negative impact it has on behaviour is a recognized issue in the medical world. A lot of attention is paid to when there is a positive or negative net gain and this is what the WHO does too. There are very likely some gains to be had, but there are various interactions which mean the result is far from what seems intuitive to many people in this thread. The WHO isn't just glossing over all the arguments made here. Most trained medics will be well aware of them and it's a matter of carefully weighing all the available information and converting that very nuanced position into a clear and simple to understand message. Judging by the assumptions and confusion we see in this comparatively well educated thread that may very well be the right approach.
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