Thoughts on how Halloween parties gonna affect virus spread in US?

I got an idea...very badly.

Mask wearing behavior is complex and it would be implausible if science gave the nice clear answers that some demand of it. Plus simply looking at overall data hunting for a signal is a bit hopeful for relatively small factors implemented in a noisy fashion. This is all a very different question to the effectiveness of masks if used correctly in specific situations.

Education on using masks would have been very useful imo. A tough question for science to address.

Final thoughts on the 'expert' advice - that was heavily influenced by the initial concerns over supply for the professionals who needed them most.

chez,
The expert advice against masks continued well beyond when scarce PPE considerations were relevant.

For a scientific take of why masks don't work, here's the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota.

Comically, the start of the article consists of explaining the demands they get to take the article down - a great example of how the science is corrupted by religious-like beliefs ("masks work! you've causing harm by saying they don't!") to the point of trying to censor frank discussion and differing opinions. Same thing happens in other fields. It's part of the reason why experts aren't worth much.

The main takeaway is that masks in real world settings appear to not lower transmission rates by any meaningful amount. They're ineffective at filtering small particles both inbound and outbound. They appear to be only good for stopping large droplet transmission (sneezes and major coughing, mostly), which (and this is my addition) would be most prevalent during the peak of cold and flu season (February-April) with its frequent coughing and sneezing and ideal airborne transmission dynamics for large particles.

Those 'experts' do not adjust quickly but I agree it's not the only factor.

I dont have any issue with this. Their conclusion seems the same as mine
i.e dont interact with other people because you have a mask but if you have to then wear a mask.

It's not. Cmon chez, you're smarter than that. They just wrote that to assuage the vicious attacks they were getting from the mask religionists. The actual article is below that FAQ they put up after the howls and harassment from crazies demanding that they take the original down. Read between the lines:
I also believe that people should wear masks "when mandated", as to do otherwise would be breaking the law, and law is good in a civil society. This is their actual opinion:

That's their true opinion. They do not recommend the mandating - they think they are useless - but they recommend that people not break the law once they are mandated.

Their opinion - which I would have disagreed with strongly in March - appears to borne out by all the data since April. Mask mandates have been useless and pretty likely net harmful overall (vs if masks hadn't been invented) outside of flu season. The only question left is whether they work during flu season.

TS. They said

Can you see it's now pretty much exactly the same as my view?

i.e dont interact with other people because you have a mask but if you have to then wear a mask.

Again, making the mistake the WHO/CDC etc made at the start of this outbreak and using the wrong disease to base your hypothesis on.

You are making the classic mistake of fighting the last war and not this one.

Even then April is not height of flu season.

Your chart is not useful in that it shows cumulative totals.

April daily incidents of influenza are usually not significantly higher than in Sep/October and in April the decline in daily case numbers is obvious.

Sars 2 behaves differently to Influenza.

Firstly, it creates a much higher asymptomatic population carrier base than Influenza, many many more positive individuals will be walking around in the wild with no idea you have the disease, both through there being totally asymptomatic cases and there being a longer incubation time with C19.

This changes the intervention mechanics of masks fundamentally and inherently, and if you were not so desperate to win an argument I am sure you have the intelligence to realise something so obvious without it needing to be elucidated. I will anyway.

This means the properties a mask has to protect you (old war) become secondary or complimentary to the masks properties to stop you spreading Sars 2 (new war).

It was absolutely the understanding of this that lead to the change of position of WHO etc, because when a mask provides two benefits it means downsides are diminished in balance.

Also the extension of your argument makes no sense at all when exposed even slightly to reality.

The extension of your argument is that all the current explosion, across regions all over the world, in Europe and North America with North America having the administrative region with the highest growth (North Dakota) is happening without a major transmission vector of Sars 2.

Sars 2 is somehow exploding like wildfire everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, with this explosion clearly correlating with dramatic change in weather, without the ability to survive as droplets in air. You are seriously arguing this? Cmon.

Every virus has its own degree of survivability, using flu as a base line for Sars 2 survivability is obviously a a mistake.

This is evinced that Sar 2 was obviously able to make significant inroads in April a time when Influenza is usually burning out and losing all momentum, though some strains have occasionally held on a little bit harder in April, but again this just evinces different virus different survivability.

All this whilst ignoring that Sar 2 was able to inflict a steady DPM on USA all over Summer. Something that obviously differentiates it from your common flu strain.


You have argued yourself in a cul-de-sac of obviously false suppositions.

1: Masks work in March/April but are totally useless in late Sep/October.

2: Transmission ability of Sars2 in air in Mid Autumn is still basically the same as it was in August.

Even though the weather has changed dramatically, it is much colder, its much wetter, its darker etc etc and cases have exploded all across the Northern Hemisphere, the transmission profile of Sars 2 in air is the same as it was in Summer, because flu.

Absurd.

So really if you want to look at a policy failure.

Over summer adapt indoor spaces to be hot, dry and ventilated.

If indoor spaces achieve this then being indoors becomes much safer.

OAFK11,
You're making assumptions which aren't in evidence. Again, we have the data now: Mask wearing mandates show zero signal in preventing transmission in the weather since April.

Assumption 1: That mask advice was changed because asymptomatic spread was found to be a thing and unique to covid.

Reality: Apart from this not being true as the reason for mask advice changes, there's no good evidence difference between covid and flu/cold for asymptomatic spread. 20-50% of people (depending on study) are asymptomatic yet infectious carriers of the flu. This is yet another example in which the reasoning from health authorities was wrong. The current data showed them to be wrong and yet the cucks went ahead if there was no asymptomatic spread.

Further, asymptomatic carriers do not spread it by the large droplets that infectious people do and that masks somewhat stop. That's because they don't cough (they're asymptomatic!) They spread it by fine aerosols from which masks provide no protection (incoming or outgoing).

Assumption 2: March/April but has the same transmission characteristics as Sep/October.

Reality: Flu is at its highest in Marh/April in terms of infected people coughing and sneezing everywhere. In terms of weather, there is nothing comparable to March/April. Apart from being colder in March/April, with more heaters running and few windows open, humidity is way lower, and humidity is thought to be a large part of droplet and aerosol spread (higher is better). This is NY (lines) vs the US overall (areas)



Look at how humidity dives as winter progresses. So there could easily be a case for masks have a much greater positive effect in March/April than afterwards, enough to overcome their negatives during that time. If large droplet transmission contributes 1 to R in winter (flu everywhere, coughing and sneezing, very low humidity cool air so they travel and linger, doors and windows closed) vs 0.2 in summer (the opposite conditions), then masks could easily be hugely positive in March/April and net negative until about December. In fact, that's just what the data looks like. We know R goes up at 1 to 2 points starting around January from previous flu graphs and from winter vs summer spread of corona. That mechanism is extremely likely to be increased droplet transmission, which masks partially protect against.

Dry is the worst thing you can have in temperate climates. Humidity greatly reduces spread.

Reality is daily cases of Flu fall dramatically in April and tail off into insignificant in May.

You are arguing that people who are sneezing in January are still sneezing in April.

Facepalm.

Your last post does nothing but dig deeper and deeper into the obvious fallacy that somehow C19 is spreading exponentially across the Northern Hemisphere, in conjunction with an obvious and pronounced change in weather without airborne transmission, because flu.

Because flu is your whole argument now.

Still fighting the last war, charging Sars2's machine gun on your horse.

Just a point on that humidity graph—it's plotting relative humidity. For virus transmission, absolute humidity is the relevant metric. It doesn't change your argument too much, but it does a little bit: absolute humidity in NYC bottoms in January and then rises steadily until August.

Average humidity in the entire US? Seems like a dubious thing to even consider.

He went cumulative cases to give April the most info graphic punch whilst probably knowing full well how incorrect he was being.

From that link:

Over twice as many people died in USA in Summer (78K) (June1st to Aug 30th) from C19 than died from influenza full calendar year in 2018-2019.(34K)

"probably" = absolutely.

Tooth knows that most people do not dive into the data. Just post data to back up the most specious arguments and many will then give them credit.

No one is more dishonest with data than Tooth. Everything is reverse engineered to tell the story he wants to tell. So cumulative Flu cases being highest in April (d'uh the end of the season) means it is worst in April, if that is the case he needs to make. He just crosses his fingers no one looks deeper.

But he knows there are many dupes who will fall for it and all through this thread you see it. You see people dumb enough to argue 'but Tooth provides data...'.

FLOL, ...dupes.

quoted for posterity

Answering for Tooth:

'But...but... caveat ... caveat... my statement is accurate and right if you look at it cumulatively. It is not fair to consider the FACT that transmission rates are at the lowest part of the curve and most people who have it caught it prior. It is not fair to recognize that new transmission is plummeting to near zero by April. If you do not consider any of that and only look at it cumulatively April is the worst month.'


FLOL. His clown shoes and dishonest use and spamming of data just get bigger and bigger and more and more disingenuous.

Wow I leave for a day and you guys go full ******.



The last two years (2018 and 2019 - yellow and red) have both peaked in late March/early April. Transmissions have been at their highest then because it has the most active infections. A good percentage of the population is immune (to flu but not corona) by then which is why transmission starts dropping before weather matters (see: years which peaked much earlier (sometimes in January) and drop off before weather matters). 2020 was interrupted by distancing that began in March as some people shied away from corona, but it was a big flu year.

Absolutely a reasonable statement. Incredible that the dickhead Cuepee has nothing better to do than try and throw shade.

Especially since the whole point of the statement was that there was ample flu everywhere in March (coughing and sneezing - the peak of that) that could act as a vector to spread corona that masks very likely helped reduce - an effect they obviously don't have in the summer or even now with no flu around.

Looks like USA will break its all-time record today of most infections in a day.
7 day average will reach new record high mid next week.
DPM also moving up for USA now, not even sure now if EU will ever overtake USA again in terms of deaths per capita.
Herd immunity doing wonders.

Did you expect anything else?
LOL...stupid statement of the day. Maybe even the week. Check back here in 3 weeks.
Yes, partial herd immunity is doing wonderful things in the US. A very low R there compared to a quite high one in Europe.



Playing out exactly as predicted...the US is going along just fine as the weather cools thanks to its lower R. Their economy is able to stay open and their citizens able to live a fairly normal life. Meanwhile large parts of Europe are locking down/going into restrictions/seeing their economy screwed up and business confidence plummet. Winter going to be a disaster in Europe and merely suck in the USA.

US vs Europe is playing out exactly like the SAGE model from March:



Inflections and everything (and now Europe overtaking the UK) are pretty spot on. Europe will need to take radical, economy destroying action to avoid mass death, while the US can merely tweak responses to keep it under control.

To put north and south Dakota in perspective, there are less than a million people in each state. So 1339 cases per million is about 1100 cases total, lol

Goal Posts have been shifted.

Pivots have been Pivoted.

Cave...oh **** it you know the score.

IT IS TIME FOR DAILY TOOTHSAYER CURRENT POSITION UPDATE

So yea basically one time flu, or maybe a couple of times recently, yea, anyway, flu was bad in April and March, actually times made distinct by how bad it was in April and March, coz yea, its not normally that bad in April and March but these were stand out years in April and March so yea I chose those years obvs, anyways my argument is because of these couple of bad times, flu could oops I mean sars2-covid could never evaaar spread in October via droplets etc, coz of those times in April those couple of times flu (not sars2) was bad yea. I think that is my argument though I may be frantically backing away from the idea that droplets cant spread in the fall (official flu season)

I mean yea Sars2 still killed more people just in Summer than flu did during its whole season those bad years, but yea I mean no wayz Sars2 a completely different virus to flu could spread in October etc at a massively exponential rate via air no ways, coz of what happened in April those times with flu.

Only way to read Toothsayer posts.