Coronavirus Outbreak

[Ken]

I have a hard time believing N95s are not effective, but there would be a number of questions with that…
1: is the study following Healthcare providers who are trained and fit tested? or just Joe your neighbor?
2: was this conducted while these masks were being reused?
3: what duration was the masking followed?
4: for healthcare workers, how would you determine community spread versus infection while wearing N95?
5: did the study follow only properly made N95s? Or did it include the improperly made ones?
Prior to covid, there were carefully controlled rooms along with proper masking regulations and it was understood what would cause infections. N95s are the correct tool for airborne disease in short term exposure. Longer term exposure needs better equipment due to mask fatigue. None of this is somehow unknown but for some reason all this factual science flew out the window.
Even right down to O2 CO2 exchange rate was scientifically tested and understood on an N95…

Unless I'm misreading the study, it sounds like they were talking about ordinary people using N95 masks in public (like wearing them all day) which is different from health care workers actually wearing them fitted properly, putting on fresh new ones for every patient, etc.

[Valerie]

I have a hard time believing N95s are not effective, but there would be a number of questions with that…
1: is the study following Healthcare providers who are trained and fit tested? or just Joe your neighbor?
2: was this conducted while these masks were being reused?
3: what duration was the masking followed?
4: for healthcare workers, how would you determine community spread versus infection while wearing N95?
5: did the study follow only properly made N95s? Or did it include the improperly made ones?
Prior to covid, there were carefully controlled rooms along with proper masking regulations and it was understood what would cause infections. N95s are the correct tool for airborne disease in short term exposure. Longer term exposure needs better equipment due to mask fatigue. None of this is somehow unknown but for some reason all this factual science flew out the window.
Even right down to O2 CO2 exchange rate was scientifically tested and understood on an N95…

Unless I'm misreading the study, it sounds like they were talking about ordinary people using N95 masks in public (like wearing them all day) which is different from health care workers actually wearing them fitted properly, putting on fresh new ones for every patient, etc.

Is it healthy for you to wear an N95 and breathe back in, what you breathe out? I tried wearing one all day at work when we were required. I felt my breathing was very labored and questioned if I was getting the proper amount of oxygen to my brain. Also I knew I was inhaling that which I had just breathed out which I don't think we're supposed to be doing that. Then I saw videos that showed how the covid molecules are so small that they go right through any mask if he could still breathe through a mask at all then you could still breathe in the molecules of covid and also exhale them through the mask. I think there's some benefit to catching say particles of a cough or a sneeze-

Recently there was a terrible train derailment in Ohio that had highly toxic smoke into the environment and even pets are dying and they recommended people evacuate the area. I thought it was interesting they said the masks would be ineffective because they can still breathe in the toxic air through them. Kinda said something regarding these masks

[Josh]

Honestly, what I find rather depressing about this whole COVID experience is how little systemic study actually occurred with respect to all of this stuff. The study that RZehr referenced above is a meta analysis of a variety of smaller scale studies. But there was no large-scale effort by the CDC to actually gather systemic data on all of these subjects back when they basically had a blank check and the attention of the whole country and a bazillion state and local health departments fully mobilized.

It was one thing when the pandemic started and the virus was new and basically all we had to go on was previous experience with other similar but not identical viruses when all the hand washing, hand sanitizing, masking, and social distancing made some logical sense. ESPECIALLY before vaccines became available.

But once we were well into the pandemic and could start taking stock there were still no large-scale government-lead studies on any of the following topics as far as I can tell:

masking
social distancing
distance learning vs hybrid schools vs regular schools
all the various proposed remedies like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin
various ventilation systems in public spaces like schools, stores, etc.
plexiglass screens
lock downs
everything else I'm forgetting

This was all a giant lost opportunity and next time we get some new pandemic like bird flue that starts killing hundreds of thousands we will be back to square one and making up everything as we go and dividing again into different camps based more on political ideology than actual science.

It all seems an enormous wasted opportunity given how many billions of dollars we actually spent on this pandemic.

Well, Ken, anyone who questioned anything in your list got denounced as not being in science, being a conspiracy theorist, or wanting to kill people. And got denied funding.

A lot of us such as myself were willing to take these precautions. What I wasn’t willing to do was keep doing them over months or years with no scientific evidence, which we now know there never was at all.

Blame the government that wasted billions of dollars and trashed the economy. We are much worse off now than if we’d just treated it as another cold or flu.

[Soloist]

Is it healthy for you to wear an N95 and breathe back in, what you breathe out? I tried wearing one all day at work when we were required. I felt my breathing was very labored and questioned if I was getting the proper amount of oxygen to my brain. Also I knew I was inhaling that which I had just breathed out which I don't think we're supposed to be doing that. Then I saw videos that showed how the covid molecules are so small that they go right through any mask if he could still breathe through a mask at all then you could still breathe in the molecules of covid and also exhale them through the mask. I think there's some benefit to catching say particles of a cough or a sneeze-

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7157953/
Note the date on this article when you read it

Recently there was a terrible train derailment in Ohio that had highly toxic smoke into the environment and even pets are dying and they recommended people evacuate the area. I thought it was interesting they said the masks would be ineffective because they can still breathe in the toxic air through them. Kinda said something regarding these masks

https://clark.wa.gov/sites/default/file ... tsheet.pdf

Will a face mask protect me from wildfire smoke?
Respirator masks worn correctly may provide some protection by filtering
out fine particles in the smoke. Masks do not help with hazardous gases
in the smoke.

https://www.draeger.com/en-us_us/Safety ... espirators
Please look at what firefighters use and compare it to what healthcare users are recommended for airborne diseases.

Now look at what is recommended and used in a Biosafety lvl 4. That is the gear used to study things like smallpox and other very dangerous diseases. Now in theory, an N95 would be adequate to stop smallpox or things like measles but in actuality, if you are going to be in close proximity to these diseases such as a lab setting, you need that Biosafety suit.
The issue is that you have to balance cost/benefit ratio and as you pointed out, the mask would stop most of a cough or sneeze which would help reduce the spread of disease but not stop it. If everyone was given a respirator and properly used it, the disease would stop in its tracks but that is not even close to practical or actually achievable. When this whole thing became political, suddenly established knowledge was thrown out the window and this stuff was well understood prior to covid.

[Robert]

Honestly, what I find rather depressing about this whole COVID experience is how little systemic study actually occurred with respect to all of this stuff.

There were many studies done before Covid and they were all ignored. Studies on masks, HCQ, distancing and several other of the issues you posted. I read them and was talking about them early in the Covid stage. I, like many others, were ignored or claimed to be distorting things or anti "science."

Go back and read the early posts in this thread. You will find me referencing them and posting links to them.

Big Pharma and the NIH wanted vaccines so anything that got in the way of that was ridiculed. If there were other options, emergency use of the new mRNA vaccines could not be given. They had to make it look like nothing else could work so they could justify the EUA. With the EUA they are not liable to law suits. The biggest thing that slows big pharma down is the fear of massive law suits. With the EUA, that was removed.

It was real plain to see all this early on. I wish someone would have been saying this. Oh wait! There was!! We were ridiculed and ignored. Fear was used and everyone fell in line. It works all the time.

‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ ~ Ben Franklin

[GaryK]

Some of the same people who were signees to the Great Barrington Declaration are now part of the Norfolk Group and are proposing a Covid-19 commission be set up to study and learn from the mistakes made during the pandemic. They ask some good questions.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In this document we list specific questions on specific topics related to COVID-19
pandemic responses in the United States. We believe these questions are vital for the
nation to ask the White House, the CDC, the FDA, and other government officials, as
well as state health departments, scientists, and the media. The public deserves
answers to these questions so we can learn from our mistakes. Key issues include:
1. What could have been done to better protect older high-risk Americans, so that
fewer of them died or were hospitalized due to COVID-19?
2. Why was there widespread questioning of infection-acquired immunity by
government officials and some prominent scientists? How did this hinder our fight
against the virus?
3. Why were schools and universities closed despite early evidence about the
enormous age-gradient in COVID-19 mortality, early data showing that schools
were not major sources of spread, and early evidence that school closures would
cause enormous collateral damage to the education and mental health of
children and young adults?
4. Why was there an almost exclusive focus on COVID-19 to the detriment of
recognizing and mitigating collateral damage on other aspects of public health,
including but not limited to, cancer screening and treatment, diabetes,
cardiovascular diseases, childhood vaccinations, and mental health?
5. Why did the CDC fail to collect timely data to properly monitor and understand
the pandemic? Why did we have to rely on studies from private initiatives and
from other countries to understand the behavior of the virus and the effects of
therapeutics, including vaccines?
6. Why was there so much emphasis and trust in complex epidemiological models,
which are by nature unreliable during the middle of an epidemic, with unknown
input parameters and questionable assumptions?
7. Could therapeutic trials have been run in a more timely manner? How was
information on drug effectiveness and safety disseminated to doctors and
clinicians? Were effective therapeutics easily accessible across the population?
How did certain drugs become heavily politicized?
8. Why did vaccine randomized trials not evaluate mortality, hospitalization, and
transmission as primary endpoints? Why were they terminated early? Why were
there so few studies from the highest-quality CDC and FDA vaccine safety
systems?
9. Why was the USA slow to approve and roll out critical COVID-19 testing
capacity? Why was there more emphasis on testing young asymptomatic
individuals than on testing to better protect older high-risk Americans? Why was
so much effort spent on contact-tracing efforts?
10.Why was there an emphasis on community masking and mask mandates, which
had weak or no data to support them, at the expense of efficient and critical
COVID-19 mitigation efforts? Why did the CDC or NIH not fund large randomized
trials to evaluate the efficacy and potential harms of mask wearing? Why didn’t
policy recommendations change after the publication of randomized trial data
from Denmark and Bangladesh which showed no or minimal efficacy of mask
wearing by the public?

https://www.norfolkgroup.org/

[GaryK]

Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds
The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-n ... -rcna71027

[Ken]

Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds
The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-n ... -rcna71027

That has always made sense to me. Have people argued the opposite?

Think about it. If you catch COVID your immune system is going to be hammered by exposure to the virus for 1-2 weeks. Which gives it a LOT Of time to get boosted up. Whereas if you get the vaccine you are just getting a one-time boost of virus-like material that your body thinks is the actual virus. It stands to reason that actually catching COVID will give you as good or better immunity.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't' survive that first infection of COVID which is the problem. IF COVID wasn't potentially deadly then no one would care about immunity in the first place.

[Soloist]

That has always made sense to me. Have people argued the opposite?

Think about it. If you catch COVID your immune system is going to be hammered by exposure to the virus for 1-2 weeks. Which gives it a LOT Of time to get boosted up. Whereas if you get the vaccine you are just getting a one-time boost of virus-like material that your body thinks is the actual virus. It stands to reason that actually catching COVID will give you as good or better immunity.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't' survive that first infection of COVID which is the problem. IF COVID wasn't potentially deadly then no one would care about immunity in the first place.

This logic was lacking on Menno and quite a few places until recently.

[GaryK]

Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds
The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-n ... -rcna71027

That has always made sense to me. Have people argued the opposite?

Think about it. If you catch COVID your immune system is going to be hammered by exposure to the virus for 1-2 weeks. Which gives it a LOT Of time to get boosted up. Whereas if you get the vaccine you are just getting a one-time boost of virus-like material that your body thinks is the actual virus. It stands to reason that actually catching COVID will give you as good or better immunity.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't' survive that first infection of COVID which is the problem. IF COVID wasn't potentially deadly then no one would care about immunity in the first place.

When the vaccines were being pushed so hard, a lot of people were asking if it was necessary to get the vaccine if a person had already had Covid. Oddly, none of the leading policy makers at the time seemed to have the answer to that question.