No.
We know that surgical masks aren't sufficient against Omicron; maybe 50% effective in practice. Do not burn credibility on stuff that isn't effective, because pretending something is effective when it isn't burns credibility fast and there's already a deficit. (Yes mask wearing has a statistical effect even with inadequate masks. Not likely enough, and not likely emotionally for individuals.)
There's three things that should be done:
- pass a law requiring airborne precautions or better in all interior spaces, with an enforcement arm at least the same kind of enforcement power the fire marshall or the folks who inspect restaurant kitchens have. If the inspection doesn't pass, the building isn't open. Do this on the tightest materially possibly timeline, no exceptions.
- pass a law requiring elastomeric respirators with P100 filters for all indoor gathers at any time a designated airborne pathogen is known to be circulating. Same law provides the things, and filters, and so on. (Works better than masks; costs less than masks. Existing industrial capacity. Many options. Put anti-price-gouging provisions in the law. Consider direct production.)
- pass a law requiring daily public communication of Rt, down to the health authority if you can but certainly regionally as well as provincially. The target is an Rt less than 0.5; if it goes over 0.5, all non-essential businesses are closed. If it goes over 0.8, those close for in-person anything, schools close, and so on. Do the communication about exponentials. Point out this is the spreadingest disease in human history, lasting immunity isn't currently possible, and the damage is cumulative. (and nigh-certainly permanent.) Rt is a real measurable thing and the lower we can keep it the faster the disease goes away. Communicate that, and keep communicating that.
This will require spending public money to get that information about the current actual Rt, but that's an appropriate use in the first place.
The Feds need to pass a law that explicitly says "public health is a matter of national defense; just as you do not get a religious exemption from a blackout, you do not get a religious exemption from public health measures" and ideally start prosecuting the organized anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers as bioterrorists. (Y'all do recognize that the money and push behind faith-based exceptions to the law are dominionists? They want the civil law not to apply to them because they believe, and they're very focused on it.)
Some border control is absolutely required. A great deal of funding for the health care system is required, long term; we need to produce more nurses, more doctors, and more everything. That's going to take a long time and it's a larger number than it would have been with better pandemic management.
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"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow"
--T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
Having those policies in place would require the people in charge to actually give a shit about the people they are supposed to be leading. I don't see much evidence of that, sadly.
The final lines of that poem?
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
2022-11-12
+JReynolds
Oh, I have no expectation that's going to happen with this government.
On the other hand, there's a truism that you don't get a revolution until the actual bourgeois -- middle-aged, affluent, and supposedly secure -- are angry. If the perceived inevitability of pediatric disease and deaths ever cracks, things get interesting.
Why not mandate N95 masks? They are comfortable, effective, and easily available. Add a vaccination mandate, and covid would probably come under control.
Addressing IAQ is worthwhile, but those standards have yet to be written.
https://www.ashrae.org/about/news/2022/ashrae-commits-to-developing-an-iaq-pathogen-mitigation-standard
+randolph
Three reasons:
- poor price/performance due to being disposable
- lack of a gasket
- filtration is at the bottom edge of sufficiency
Omicron is the spreadingest disease in human history and it continues to get better at it. We're trying to live through a selection event.
For a year's worth of N95s -- you need at least a year's worth -- you can get more than one elastomeric respirator with P100 cartridges to last that whole year. It will fit better, work MUCH better, and is more comfortable to wear. (Respirators are designed to be worn for long continuous periods and the industrial designers have had multiple iterations to make them work.)
I'd consider a P100 elastomeric respirator the absolute floor against Omicron; you need eye protection and it's not obvious that the cheap powered wearable HEPA approach isn't superior to passive P100. (At least if you live somewhere the battery won't freeze when you go outside.)
N95 is better than nothing and if the choice is that or nothing, wear them. But it's not the choice of prudence.
Having worn both N95 and P100 respirators, I disagree; the P100 respirators are more intrusive and less comfortable. As someone who is retired and can afford to isolate, N95s have proven more than adequate. N95s can fit well (unless you have a beard) and, if most people wear them and vaccinate, N95s will do the job - the miasma (it seems miasmas exist after all) of indoor airborne covid that builds up when many people in a space are infected and do not mask would be drastically reduced.
The major risk, I think, comes from the general difficulty maintaining mask discipline. People don't know how to fit masks, don't want to shave their beards. Also, humans instinctively socialize over food; eating indoors at a restaurant is a high-risk situation. Another risk area is restrooms - fecal aerosol transmission is a major problem, and that's one area where we could write an IAQ standard right now. (In China, plumbing traps are not a routine part of building, which makes for a horrific problem.)
Exceptions: medical personnel in situations where patients cannot be screened, immune-compromised individuals, and so on. Some people simply cannot mask, and people around them must be extra-careful.
+Randolph
Have you had COVID? You're immune-compromised. ("immune dysregulation" seems to be the key phrase.) How much? still being investigated.
Also, nothing without a gasket performs all that well against omicron. Seems to be about 90% at best in practice. That's probably not good enough because the effort has to be sustained long enough to get Rt to zero.
You're right about not shaving, no knowing how to fit, and not being willing to give up social food.
(I think you could find a P100 that fit you better.)
No, I haven't had covid. We don't yet know if immune compromise is a certain outcome of covid. On the other hand, the odds of some long-term consequences of infection are perhaps 1 in 5, so it doesn't do to be careless.
N95 masks seal around the nose and mouth; it isn't quite an elastomeric seal, but it's close. Combine that with careful avoidance of exposure, and they do well. If two people wearing well-fitted N95s spend time indoors together, and one is infected, it takes about 25 hours to transmit the infection. (I forget what distance that study used.)
It seems to me that just educating the public on how to wear a mask and explaining that N95s are the best easily available and comfortable masks would improve matters a great deal. Mostly I see cloth and surgical masks; for some reason even medical personnel wear them instead of N95s or P100s. Cloth and surgical do reduce transmission, but they are not adequate protection against infection, and almost no-one seems to understand that. Likewise, educating the public on the implications of airborne transmission would help. Again, it's surprising how many medical personnel don't understand and some of the worst offenders are doctors.
Medical personnel who cannot avoid exposure to infected patients should indeed be wearing P100 masks and face shields; there is always the possibility that a patient will cough in their face. But for the majority of us, careful wearing of N95 masks, better ventilation (hopefully the ASHRAE work will produce some useful results in the next six months), and avoiding high-risk situations would make a huge difference. Oh, and mandating sick leave. We know simple, easy things that would improve matters a great deal, and we do not do them.
Hey Graydon. Hope you're doing OK.
Had to chuckle at today's article in the Globe and Mail. It's by Eric Reguly & describes the mess that Lebanon is in. It concludes:
"In Lebanon, the poor are poorer and the middle class is being wiped out. The rich are still rich, and many of them have left the country. There are a million lessons here, but a biggie is this: Do not let the political and business oligarchy run the show and shift the burden of their corruption and inaction onto everyone else."
Motes and beams, I guess.
2023-01-27
+JReynolds Not too badly.
Motes and beams, but maybe one of the few places to say it that will get past editorial.
(That is what being rich is about; transferring risk to other people. Lifespan vampires, instead of blood.)
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