Game over

[stoner]

4 hours ago, JimTripper said:

I still like wearing my mask on public transit, it just feels healthier. Plus, I don't like people staring at me in crowds so it helps with that as well. Also, my cloth mask it's comfortable going in & out of heavily air conditioned buildings, I don't like the temperature change.

 

I don't talk to people much though, so having my mask on is not that big of a deal. I have a comfortable cotton mask though, not cheap, so maybe you just need a better mask.

 

Oh yes, I almost forgot, get a nice hat also. Protects from the sun which can cause skin cancer. Standing in the sun is also sweaty and uncomfortable.

 

so you mostly wear a mask now because of social awkwardness. 

[chiang mai]

3 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

April 2020 was not the "very beginning of the pandemic".  The outbreak began in December 2019. So tell me, John, do you think the SAGE scientists were investigating the evidence for mask to evaluate the spread of Covid by touch? Of course they had figured out that it was spread via particles in the air, hence, the evaluating of the mask in the first place.

 

What we have is the pre-eminent scientists saying the evidence for masks protecting you is very weak and refusing to mandate the wearing of masks in an urban or non-urban environment, except for very crowded places.

 

I can tell you from personal experience, I have not worn a mask, apart from when it was mandated in planes and other times, and I did not catch the virus. 

Technology is not to the stage where society can easily tell which people are susceptible to the virus and those that have strong immune systems, everyone is different. Clearly, if I had worn a mask during my weekend in Bangkok in June, I would not have caught covid and now be ill. You on the other hand may be of a disposition whereby your immune system can easily withstand a covid onslaught, minbe can't. As a blanket rule, wearing a mask is a good protection because it helps some of us, if it's overkill for others, should you really be complaining! If you think it is overkill, just ignore the rule quiently, comfortable in the knowledge that the rule is helping save some lives, even if it isn't impacting yours.

[Red Phoenix]

1 hour ago, chiang mai said:

Technology is not to the stage where society can easily tell which people are susceptible to the virus and those that have strong immune systems, everyone is different. Clearly, if I had worn a mask during my weekend in Bangkok in June, I would not have caught covid and now be ill. You on the other hand may be of a disposition whereby your immune system can easily withstand a covid onslaught, minbe can't. As a blanket rule, wearing a mask is a good protection because it helps some of us, if it's overkill for others, should you really be complaining! If you think it is overkill, just ignore the rule quiently, comfortable in the knowledge that the rule is helping save some lives, even if it isn't impacting yours.

Mandating everybody to wear a mask, just to provide some misplaced sense of safety to those that naively believe that "masks work" is akin to forcing everyone (including children) to take the jab to "protect" granny...

[Cameroni]

29 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

Technology is not to the stage where society can easily tell which people are susceptible to the virus and those that have strong immune systems, everyone is different. Clearly, if I had worn a mask during my weekend in Bangkok in June, I would not have caught covid and now be ill. You on the other hand may be of a disposition whereby your immune system can easily withstand a covid onslaught, minbe can't. As a blanket rule, wearing a mask is a good protection because it helps some of us, if it's overkill for others, should you really be complaining! If you think it is overkill, just ignore the rule quiently, comfortable in the knowledge that the rule is helping save some lives, even if it isn't impacting yours.

 

First of all, I am deeply sorry you were infected by this virus. I sincerely hope you make a full and good recovery. I support everyone's right to decide for themselves if they do or do not wear a mask, as much as I hate them myself. Whether you wearing a mask during a particular weekend would have prevented you from contracting Covid cannot be said with certainty. Even now, studies talk about 19 percent protection from mask for early strains, whereas later Covid variants could not be stopped by a mask. I do not know which strain caught you, obviously. 

 

The problem with mandatory mask wearing is that it causes an annoyance to those of us who do not want to wear masks. I had to go on a 12 hour flight wearing a mask. Now, I go on flights without masks, and still do not have Covid. So I hope you understand why I think masks are not wonder weapons, and they did impact my life, albeit in a limited way.

 

Nevertheless, if you wish to wear a mask of course that is your right. Above all I hope you regain full health, as you are a contributor I always read with great interest.

Edited yesterday at 08:55 AM by Cameroni

[johng]

26 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

if I had worn a mask during my weekend in Bangkok in June, I would not have caught covid and now be ill.

How could you possibly know that ?  do you have a time machine and have gone back  this time wearing a mask ?

[chiang mai]

22 minutes ago, johng said:

How could you possibly know that ?  do you have a time machine and have gone back  this time wearing a mask ?

Yes, I tested it, the mask worked!

[chiang mai]

41 minutes ago, Red Phoenix said:

Mandating everybody to wear a mask, just to provide some misplaced sense of safety to those that naively believe that "masks work" is akin to forcing everyone (including children) to take the jab to "protect" granny...

You wouldn't say that if you were Granny.

[Red Phoenix]

3 minutes ago, chiang mai said:

You wouldn't say that if you were Granny.

I am of Grampa age, but do not want anybody to wear a mask in my vicinity.  And I have never worn myself, with the exception of official services that required mask-wearing in order to provide you with a service. 

And needless to say I didn't got COVID (and if I did it must have been unnoticed).

Edited yesterday at 09:24 AM by Red Phoenix

[BangkokReady]

Quote

‘Game over’ for Covid despite next surge

 

Not in Thailand.  They love the fear way too much.

[chiang mai]

8 minutes ago, Red Phoenix said:

I am of Grampa age, but do not want anybody to wear a mask in my vicinity.  And I have never worn myself, with the exception of official services that required mask-wearing in order to provide you with a service. 

And needless to say I didn't got COVID (and if I did it must have been unnoticed).

Anecdotal evidence, nothing more.

 

And I doubt you are of Grandma's age, not if you can't spell it!

[hotandsticky]

5 hours ago, johng said:

 

Yes it was but don't worry too much  WWIII will make everyone forget about it ! 😋

Best time ever in my 18 years in Thailand.

 

 

From a selfish perspective I look forward to the next pandemic.

[johng]

1 hour ago, chiang mai said:

Yes, I tested it, the mask worked!

If your time machine worked then why don't you go back and stop the whole debacle from happening ? 😋

[chiang mai]

1 minute ago, johng said:

If your time machine worked then why don't you go back and stop the whole debacle from happening ? 😋

Look, I can't keep going backwards and forwards in time like this, the wife gets too annoyed plus time machines are not cheap to run you know! Anyway, case proved beyond doubt, next case please ballif.

[stats]

An off-topic trolling post and ensuing reply have been removed.

 

[MicroB]

On 9/18/2024 at 12:52 AM, Cameroni said:

Praise the <deleted> Lord.

 

So all the hysterics when the pandemic broke out, all the mask fanatics...they were all wrong.

 

Those of us who said it is another respiratory disease, we were all right.

 

And the governments that locked down, all wrong.

 

 

Thing is it was originaly thought to be a respiratory disease, but it was actually a vascular disease. The cells infected were not confined to the respiratory tracts. Sars-Cov-2 had/has the potential to infect any cell bearing ACE2 Receptors, which, it turns out, are pretty much ubiquitous. The Angiotensin system, it turns out, was not that well understood, in its function beyond blood pressure control. The etiology is still emerging; the AHA for instance has concluded that COVID-19 is a vascular and neurologic infection. I said to taskforce colleagues back in February 2020 that this is a disease which will take a generation to understand, which is pretty par for the course for any emerging infectious disease agent. The difference is, previous EIDs took repeated infection events to really understood, whereas COVID-19 has amassed a literal unprecedented amount of data, which will take a generation to understand. You only havr to take a look at something such as Pubmed to understand the attention Sars-Cov-2 drew in just 2-3 years, compared to 80 years of influenza and 40 years of HIV. But even comparing Influenza to HIV tells you a lot. The flu was first recognised ~2000 years ago, I think in Greece.  The causative virus wasn't discovered until 1933. Fears of another Spanish Flu (considered even then one of the side effects of the end of WW1) spurred Australian researchers to get a functioning vaccine ready by 1945. Strain identification was possible by 1957, allowing strain-specific vaccine production, but always too late to anticipate the coming season. By the 80s, multi-target effective vaccines were available. Literally just before COVID-19, there was success in developing tests to identify risk biomarkers in individuals that put them at risk of the flu virus killing them. For most people, a proper dose of the flu (which most of us rarely experience), is a fairly debilitating illness, but recoverable. For some, its a killer. Its not simply if you are old, fat, a smoker, a drinker that puts you at high risk. Its all those factors and more, and many of those factors are resulting from expression of some biomarkers that put some of us, more at risk from illness than others, leading to a changing risk profile as you age. Eg, someone could smoke 40 a day until a 100, and get by with a slice of orange in the beer  for the vitamins. Many others can't.

 

One of the early victims to COVID-19 I recall was a 95 year old gent who was recovering from lung cancer, down to one lung. He spent 2 days in hospital, an outlier.

 

80+ years of intense flu research has lead to vaccines that mostly work, and has lead to personalised medicine that can prevent death.

 

40 years of HIV research has changed a terminal disease into a chronic disease.

 

4 years of COVID-19 research has uncovered profound levels of knowledge about a virus type. There has been 100+ research to cure the common cold, caused by other coronavirus variants, without a shred of advancement. The scientific endeavour that has lead to ignoramuses pronounce COVID-19 nothing to worry about, was simply amazing. I was part of that, and? proud of my colleagues, despite the stick we took.

 

Sars-Cov-2 might recede into the background, but we are going to know a damn lot more about infection, about strokes, about vascular disease, about dementia etc as a result.

 

The Polio pandemics of the 1920s resulted in a whole new area of medicine. You probably didn't know Intensive Care Medicine only occurred because of Polio. Bfore that, you had dying rooms. Now you can go to hospital with a sudden impactful illness, and people are going to help make you survive. The Danes came up with the concept. This intense desire to save mostly middle class older children lead to the iron lung. Can you actually imagine that? Kids in their early teens, being suddenly struck down by an infection that caused them to choke to death. Can you imagine the sheer genius of the doctor who explained to the engineer how lungs work, and the lateral thinking, at pace, to develop a machine to keep children alive.

 

This brought time, this allowed ventilators to be designed, and ventilators to be engineered. Ventilators have served us well, saving millions of people.

 

Roll on to 2020, when people thought COVID-19 was a respiratory disease, a disease causing Acute Respiratory Disease Syndrome, or ARDS. People with ARDS are put on ventilators. ARDS leads to loss of elasticity of the lungs; your lungs can no longer expand, you can't breath. Lung scarification  results. You die. Ventilators can help. Ventilators can also cause scarring, so they  can just extend your life, because eventually you might need a lung transplant.

 

COVID-19 was different. The lungs remained elastic, but the lungs were filled with cell debris. This was the unusual "shards of ice" features seen on lung CTs. This lead to a medical technological bit of genius, like the iron lung, which I think saved millions. A CPAP is a breathing device, often used by people with sleep apnea. It allows oxygen to be delivered to the lungs, unlike a ventilator with really is about a machine helping your lungs work better.

 

But you can't use a CPAP on a COVID-19 patient, because they are going to exhale virus laden breath. University College literally dragged up an old CPAP device from the basement; it was no longer in production. They went to F1 Mercedes over at Brackley. F1 engineers are superb; they are very used to diagnosing engineering problems very quickly, and coming up with high quality solutions very quickly (Mclaren also got involved elsewhere during COVID-19). UCL wanted Mercedes to basiically reverse engineer this old Philips device, and make it suitable for a patient infected with a fairly poorly characterised biological threat agent. At speed, Mercedes, working with the doctors, came up with something that was mass produced cheaply. Ironically, the UK government, like many others, thought it was the military who could sort this out. The UK ventilator challenge was managed by Babcock, who are behind many MOD challenges, loads of companies engaged, genius designs came out, but they did not talk to the doctors. The military spec ventilators that were offered, none of the doctors wanted them, because no doctor had been involved in the design, and how the hell do they know they were safe. What they wanted was lots more of what they were already using, not some novelty that Dyson or whoever scribbled on a bit of paper (Ford came closest, applying mass production principles to some Philips devices).

 

 

So the Pandemic changed how intensive care is delivered, its improved the outcomes of intensive care. If you go into intensive care now, your chances of coming out have improved.

 

[MicroB]

14 hours ago, Cameroni said:

 

First of all, I am deeply sorry you were infected by this virus. I sincerely hope you make a full and good recovery. I support everyone's right to decide for themselves if they do or do not wear a mask, as much as I hate them myself. Whether you wearing a mask during a particular weekend would have prevented you from contracting Covid cannot be said with certainty. Even now, studies talk about 19 percent protection from mask for early strains, whereas later Covid variants could not be stopped by a mask. I do not know which strain caught you, obviously. 

 

The problem with mandatory mask wearing is that it causes an annoyance to those of us who do not want to wear masks. I had to go on a 12 hour flight wearing a mask. Now, I go on flights without masks, and still do not have Covid. So I hope you understand why I think masks are not wonder weapons, and they did impact my life, albeit in a limited way.

 

Nevertheless, if you wish to wear a mask of course that is your right. Above all I hope you regain full health, as you are a contributor I always read with great interest.

 

Ok, "I've never had COVID", is a bit like an untested HIV+ saying they never had AIDS.

 

COVID, like AIDS, is the disease. A lot of people infected never developed recognised symptoms (recognised being the operative word). 33% of positive COVID cases will test negative by PCR.

 

People misunderstand how masks work. They do not work like the colander you wash your vegetables in, ie pore size. They work exploiting Brownian motion and Van Der Waals forces. Viruses and other very small particles move by Brownian motion, which is easily overcome by other forces. Your tap/faucet stream of water isn't, otherwise the colander fills up.

 

Van der Waals is, in simple terms, static charge. At a neutral pH, viruses have a negative charge, and they are attracted even by a weak positive charge. Hence its really hard to be infected by the Sars Virus by being near a surface, unless you apply forces to overcome that Van der Waals force, like heat (eg rubbing). Cotton  has a charge, so a single layer can capture some viruses, but the weave is too regular. A double layer mask, where the weaves are at 45 degrees to each other, is a bit more effective. The question is how much knock down is there of the ID50. The single use blue masks use spun propylene; its no longer a regular cross hatch weave, but a random mass of fibers. The poor size is still the same (you can breath through just as well), but the effectiveness goes way up, to 95% of virus sized and above particles. A cloth mask is probably 25%(it will vary a bit). 2 people, X has a cloth mask, Y doesn't X receives 75% of whatever Y is coughing up. But if Y is also wearing a mask, then X is exposed to 56% of whatever Y is coughing up. Gaps at the side don't make that much difference, because, guess what, the force of the cough is overcoming Brownian motion, Those virus particles don't suddenly change direction.

 

 

 

 

[Cameroni]

4 hours ago, MicroB said:

Thing is it was originaly thought to be a respiratory disease, but it was actually a vascular disease.

 

Covid-19 is not a vascular disease.

 

You have sent us an article published in the media that talks about a study from San Diego University which supposedly affirms that “covid-19 is not a respiratory but a vascular disease”. This is FALSE. As the World Health Organisation has explained, most of the infections affect the respiratory system, although they can also have implications in other organs. The study cited by the article does not deny such a thing, but rather deepens into how SARS-CoV2 affects the circulatory system.

 

Covid-19 is is an infectious respiratory disease that can manifest itself in multiple ways, but in most people it causes mild to moderate respiratory symptoms, according to organisations such as the Spanish Ministry of Health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition to affecting the respiratory system, the coronavirus has implications for other systems, including the cardiovascular one. This has been detected before. What the paper in question provides are details of how it reaches the blood vessels.

 

In other words, this is "additional, concomitant, non-exclusive data", that is, it is not intended to convey the idea that covid-19 is a vascular disease, but rather to emphasise "the very systemic and multi-organ involvement that covid-19 produces", he concludes. 

 

"In the paper they highlight how the vessels are disrupted, endothelial dysfunction is documented, but this does not give it an aetiological exclusivity (this is not solely the cause of the disease) nor is it the only mechanism responsible for many of the covid symptoms," says Cequier, who believes that saying that the conclusion is that it is a vascular disease is "a bit of a superficial interpretation". 

 

Why is it not exclusively vascular?

 

Vascular diseases are those in which the arteries or veins are affected and, in most cases, also the blood flows, either by blockage or weakening of the vessels or by damage to the valves in the veins. Although covid-19 sometimes affects the heart and circulatory system with thrombi, it is not a vascular disease. If it were, says Cequier, "it would cause acute myocardial infarctions, or many arterial embolism, both of which are rare in covid," he argues. 

What is more common is that through the whole inflammatory cascade that takes place after an infection and is a consequence of the immune system, "very diffuse" damage is produced and ends up affecting the heart, which can lead to "an alteration of the coagulation system" and, therefore, to "an increased risk of thrombi formation, which is associated in turn with thromboembolism", concludes the cardiologist.

 

https://www.verificat.cat/en/covid-19-is-not-a-vascular-disease/

 

 

[Cameroni]

4 hours ago, MicroB said:

 

Ok, "I've never had COVID", is a bit like an untested HIV+ saying they never had AIDS.

 

COVID, like AIDS, is the disease. A lot of people infected never developed recognised symptoms (recognised being the operative word). 33% of positive COVID cases will test negative by PCR.

 

People misunderstand how masks work. They do not work like the colander you wash your vegetables in, ie pore size. They work exploiting Brownian motion and Van Der Waals forces. Viruses and other very small particles move by Brownian motion, which is easily overcome by other forces. Your tap/faucet stream of water isn't, otherwise the colander fills up.

 

Van der Waals is, in simple terms, static charge. At a neutral pH, viruses have a negative charge, and they are attracted even by a weak positive charge. Hence its really hard to be infected by the Sars Virus by being near a surface, unless you apply forces to overcome that Van der Waals force, like heat (eg rubbing). Cotton  has a charge, so a single layer can capture some viruses, but the weave is too regular. A double layer mask, where the weaves are at 45 degrees to each other, is a bit more effective. The question is how much knock down is there of the ID50. The single use blue masks use spun propylene; its no longer a regular cross hatch weave, but a random mass of fibers. The poor size is still the same (you can breath through just as well), but the effectiveness goes way up, to 95% of virus sized and above particles. A cloth mask is probably 25%(it will vary a bit). 2 people, X has a cloth mask, Y doesn't X receives 75% of whatever Y is coughing up. But if Y is also wearing a mask, then X is exposed to 56% of whatever Y is coughing up. Gaps at the side don't make that much difference, because, guess what, the force of the cough is overcoming Brownian motion, Those virus particles don't suddenly change direction.

 

 

 

 

 

I was tested twice. Both times the test said I do not have Covid. I tend to go on what the evidence says.

 

The effectiveness of masks in preventing infection with Covid in healthy adults is significantly below 95 of 75 percent. This is self evident since masks mere mandated but did not stop the spread of Covid. Even studies that conclude that masks have a small effect are nowhere near these levels of effectiveness for preventing infection.

Edited 10 hours ago by Cameroni

[Patong2021]

Covid is an inflammatory disease. It's impact on anyone is determined in large part by their genetic structure and pre-existing health conditions. The evidence is showing that many patients  had long term damage to their critical organs. 

Covid has not been with us  for enough time to see its long term impact on  the body.

Like radiation, impact may take years to determine the outcome.