This letter goes out to the people who choose not to wear masks.
I have never had the flu in my life, but I get the flu immunization every year. Why? Because I never want to be the A-Hole who brings it home to my kids. I don’t like wearing a mask but wear one every time I go out in public. Why? Because I don’t want to be the A-Hole who takes the virus home to my kids.
But wearing my mask will not be enough to get my students or my own children back in the classroom where they belong. You can deny science, but don’t deny that leaving your mask at home has wreaked havoc on your community. Gyms can’t reopen. Bars continue to keep their doors shuttered. Schools will not open in August. It pains me to no end knowing that so many people care so little about the greater good.
Virtual learning falls unbelievably short for the majority of our students, and teaching from home fails to fulfill my love for teaching. My children and students need direct instruction and all of the supports put in place for them at their school. All of our schools’ resources were made available for the last three months of the school year, but think of how many students were not equipped to access them. Communities at large have failed their most precious resource: its children.
Our schools will not reopen in August. Blaming Gov. Cooper, Dr. Fauci or anybody other than yourself is a cop-out. Please get it together in time to get the kids back to school by spring 2021. Teaching from home hurts me to the core, both personally and professionally. My pain is nothing compared to the pain of the families and children left suffering without their school community.
It shouldn’t take a local or state mandate to get some of you to make the right decision. Think less of your personal feelings about the science and so-called oppression of your right to not wear a freaking mask. I hope you start seeing the bigger picture in all of this and become a better member of your community and society. If for nothing else, do it for the kids.
— Jeff Bloomer
Mills River
“You can deny science, but don’t deny that leaving your mask at home has wreaked havoc on your community. ”
Your comment denies science. In Buncombe County, there have been 823 cases and 32 deaths. At one point (before they subtracted 10 deaths), nearly all of those deaths took place in long-term care facilities. In Henderson County 47 of the 49 deaths took place in long-term care facilities. There is no science to support that wearing a face covering in public is going to change those numbers.
The North Carolina Coronavirus Dashboard is showing 0-17 and 18-24 at 0% deaths.
https://www.buncombecounty.org/covid-19/coronavirus-cases-dashboard.aspx
“Blaming Gov. Cooper, Dr. Fauci or anybody other than yourself is a cop-out. ”
Blaming people without the virus is also a cop-out.
“Think less of your personal feelings…”
Sounds like good advice… for you to start following.
mcates—good effort to share facts. A tough sell with the regulars around here, ha, but appreciate your input.
Men it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
“They were nearly dead anyway” is quite the take. You should try that line at the next funeral you attend.
It is certainly true that WNC has a low absolute case count and death toll, reflecting the low population density and the shutdown of social gatherings. Absolute case numbers are rising in counties further west, perhaps because of closer proximity to TN/GA.
It’s hyperbole to say that not wearing a mask has ‘wreaked havoc’ in terms of cases in this particular region. Nor is “mask-shaming” a helpful approach here. But with pandemics, it’s also difficult to prove a negative: we know that there’s community spread, but what would it look like without the whole set of mitigation measures? Would even the current limited reopening be feasible? Exponential growth quickly turns small numbers into big ones.
The question is really about the coming months. The TDA is going to start marketing again to “responsible travelers” within a 6.5hr driving distance of Buncombe County, though they promise to avoid “hotspots.” (This is feasible with targeted online ads, less so with TV buys in wider media markets, and places become hotspots very quickly.) Inviting visitors back to the region comes with risks, so how are they to be managed?
It’s difficult to get timely testing, which in turn makes it difficult to do contact tracing and self-isolation. Reimposing stay-at-home orders is politically unpalatable. That places the onus on individual behavior. And yes, the research on masks is messy, because research in a pandemic is messy, but more recent papers are approaching a consensus that the precautionary principle ought to apply and something covering your mouth and nose (and something else covering your eyes) is better than nothing to reduce spread, e.g.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2020.0376
What’s apparent is that countries where mask-wearing has been prevalent for a while seem to have done better, and the US is doing terribly.
“They were nearly dead anyway” is quite the take. ”
Who are you quoting?
“What’s apparent is that countries where mask-wearing has been prevalent for a while seem to have done better, and the US is doing terribly.”
Singapore had one of the most extreme lock-downs and forced mask-wearing. They did horribly. If you haven’t studied them, you might find their experience enlightening. Obviously just guessing, but I think some of the Asian countries you are referencing primary benefited from immunity built up due to earlier coronavirus exposures.
“precautionary principle ought to apply”
When science is lacking, people always resort to this tactic. That’s not science driven, that’s driven by fear.
What precisely was your point in emphasizing that the majority of deaths were residents in long-term care facilities?
“Obviously just guessing”
Obviously. Apparently it’s okay to pass judgment on what counts as “science” while tossing out unsupported speculation.
You really want to talk about Singapore? Less than half the size of Buncombe County, a population of nearly six million people, and precisely 26 deaths. Taiwan did well. Japan fared much better than many expected without any significant shutdown. Hong Kong did well in spite of ongoing protests and state crackdowns on protest. In case you still think it’s an “Asian” thing, the cities in Germany that mandated mask use earliest reduced transmission fastest.
Once again, lumps of genetic material do not care about courage or fear. If courage made a difference, then a bunch of health workers would still be alive for continuing to work without adequate PPE. The opposite is true. The hero narrative is bunk.
The whole point of the precautionary principle is that in a crisis, it is better to recommend simple interventions based upon sound-but-partial understanding than to withhold that recommendation until later. As one paper notes, there are no randomized control trials on the effectiveness of parachutes:
https://www.bmj.com/content/333/7570/701?ijkey=420793691001ebf401e8a78012bc5741a2a32633&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
luther—
Every virus that is airborne follows the laws of physics. Why? Because they’re natural laws, that’s why. They’re not The 10 Suggestions any more than gravity is.
We knew in the middle of February this virus spread in scat. Why? Because in multiple incidents, including one in Hong Kong, people who did not know each other and lived ten floors apart in apartment buildings got the virus at the same time. It is implausible that such events could have occurred due to “respiratory droplet” spread; to do so they would have had to have been in the same place at the same time and had the potential to have said contact with one another in a reasonably close and continual basis for at least some material period of time. That didn’t happen so that means of spread is not possible.
So how did the transmission happen?
The building did not, as is common in that part of the world, have “P-Traps” on the sinks.
You don’t smell sewer gas in the US because it is code to have P-traps on the sinks and other fixtures connected to the sewer line (go ahead and ask Peter Robbins, he’ll confirm). The water trapped in the “P” (or “U”) keeps gas from coming back up into the building. But in many parts of the world there either are no traps as originally installed or people illegally modify the plumbing to add another fixture or other thing, and don’t put one in. There is no compliance monitoring and this happens all the time. In both these cases the people infected were on the same sewer line and there were no traps on the sinks.
We knew at that point that the only plausible explanation for how these people got the Wuhan Flu was that (1) it was in crap and (2) it was spreading via other than direct contact with same. It was that and Diamond Princess that convinced me that this was being spread via feces and the galley/food staff were the primary vector. This, by the way, is the same mechanism by which norovirus, which is common on cruise ships, spreads. We have since confirmed it is in feces and in fact MIT and others have proposed that we can detect outbreaks in a community before they hit the hospitals by sampling sewer lines.
We’ve deliberately ignored this evidence for the last five months.
Masks do exactly zero to inhibit fecal/oral transmission. In fact they are very likely to enhance it since you’re more-likely to touch your face with a mask on. What’s worse is that anything less than an N95 is absolutely worthless against aerosols, whether as source control or as PPE. This is well-understood in the scientific literature.
We knew at that point that the only plausible explanation for how these people got the bug was that (1) it was in crap and (2) it was spreading via other than direct contact with same. It was that and Diamond Princess that convinced me that this bug was being spread via feces and the galley/food staff were the primary vector. This, by the way, is the same mechanism by which norovirus, which is common on cruise ships, spreads. We have since confirmed it is in feces and in fact MIT and others have proposed that we can detect outbreaks in a community before they hit the hospitals by sampling sewer lines.
We’ve deliberately ignored this evidence for the last five months.
Masks do exactly zero to inhibit fecal/oral transmission. In fact they are very likely to enhance it since you’re more-likely to touch your face with a mask on. What’s worse is that anything less than an N95 is worthless against aerosols, whether as source control or as PPE. This is well-understood in the scientific literature.
MacIntyre CR, Seale H, Dung TC, et al A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers BMJ Open 2015;5:e006577. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-006577
Yeung W, et al “Assessment of Proficiency of N95 Mask Donning Among the General Public in Singapore” JAMA Netw Open 2020; DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.9670
MacIntyre et al. (2011) A cluster randomized clinical trial comparing fit‐tested and non‐fit‐tested N95 respirators to medical masks to prevent respiratory virus infection in health care workers. Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses DOI: 10.1111/j.1750‐2659.2010.00198.x
Michael Klompas, M.D., M.P.H., Charles A. Morris, M.D., M.P.H., Julia Sinclair, M.B.A., Madelyn Pearson, D.N.P., R.N., et al.
May 21, 2020
Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era
N Engl J Med 2020; 382:e63
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2006372
This isn’t an error — it’s intentional. You can’t possibly believe that the so-called “experts” did not know that which was in evidence the first few weeks of February and “accidentally” ignored it when said reports were in the public media.
Further, this completely explains the wild spread in nursing homes where some 40-odd percent of the residents are incontinent. How’s your laundry-handling procedure in said places to prevent cross-contamination to the poor bastard in the next room?
And it explains why as absolute humidity has risen the virus was not inhibited as everyone expected. Indeed, it was enhanced. Why? Does scat smell more or less in the summer heat? Is it more or less-likely to wind up on you? Does norovirus rip through cruise ships in the Caribbean in the summer months? Did polio do the same thing all summer long?
Well?
And by the way the “indoor out-your-mouth” explanation doesn’t wash. Flu and cold don’t spread like crazy even indoors in the summer for the same reason. A/C units remove a huge amount of the suspended water vapor; indeed, nearly all of the power they consume in fact goes to remove said water vapor, which incidentally contains the virus, and down the drain it goes harming nobody.
This also explains the wild spread once it gets into the hospital systems because exactly zero precautions have been taken against transmission from scat including rabid hand-washing with soap and water despite the fact that in SE Asia they figured this out in their hospitals almost immediately and when they did so both their infection and death rates went to nearly zero as did their rate of transmission to health-care workers in the hospitals themselves.
We’ve ignored aerosol and fecal-oral transmission, choosing instead to reactively and reflexively push universal masking mandates due to fear not based upon hard scientific data, but political agendas— and so the virus has ripped through our communities. The places where it has not haven’t had material penetration into those places. So long as that holds while an area may have a lot of “cases” they aren’t serious and don’t kill people.
Further, we know there’s a very high level of innate immunity and have since Diamond Princess. Despite being quarantined together in their cabins only some 17% of the people on board got sick. It’s impossible for two people to be quarantined together in a 10×10 cabin for two weeks with zero PPE where one gets it and the other does not unless the second person is inherently immune. Therefore we know there is material cross-immunity to this virus — we just don’t know what produces it.
We’ve known all of this since February, and have intentionally ignored it since that time.
Masks do nothing — in fact they’re likely worse than nothing for these very same reasons.
If you wish to wear a mask, have at it. If you believe they will improve your odds of not getting the virus then go ahead and wear one. My read of the evidence and science is that they do nothing at best either as source control or PPE and thus I decline because from my read of the evidence, which matches that of The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, they increase rather than decrease my personal risk of contracting the virus.
https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts
The name for masks and gloves is “PPE” — PERSONAL protective equipment. If your analysis comes to a different conclusion then you should wear whatever the hell you want and I have no desire to try to dictate to you what PPE you CHOOSE to wear or not wear! Just leave me the hell alone! Your body, your CHOICE! My body, my CHOICE!
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
(AAPS is a fringe organization that has been on the wrong side of every important public health issue for decades. It literally does not believe in public health or the common good. That’s why Rand Paul loves it. And engineers’ syndrome is real and infectious.)
The most recent preprint examining transmissibility through feces still stops at “possibility”, so if you want to go any further than that, you ought to submit a paper.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-0681_article
That’s to say, your Grand Unifying Poop Theory is based on a hunch. (Extrapolating from the 2003 Amoy Gardens SARS outbreak is… just an extrapolation. It also doesn’t account for church-attendee spread unless there was a whole lotta poopin’ going on.)
But if we grant it for sake of argument, then apply the same precautionary principle as the meta-analyses that recommend face coverings, what does that translate into? That sounds like it means shutting down in-person schooling, campus dorms, churches, daycare, sports and arts venues, etc. But you take it to mean “Masks don’t work so I won’t wear a mask.”
Perhaps have the courage of your convictions and spell out what you think the correct course of action should be going forward.
But then he/she’d have to put a name on it, so that’s a non-starter.
“courage” and “convictions” don’t apply to the anonymous.
Just like it’s wrong to yell fire in a crowded movie theater, I think it should be criminal to advocate against wearing masks in the middle of a pandemic. The science is clear that masks reduce the transmission of the virus. Even Trump is now wearing a mask.
With America being the world epicenter of infection and deaths, you should be ashamed to be spreading this nonsense.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness in your response. Dialogue instead of character assassination seems to be a lost art in today’s society. Please consider this though. The reason nursing homes have been hit so hard is due to the people bringing it in not following safety protocol while in public. Like nursing homes, classrooms are confined to very little ability to distance or interact. How can we protect our kids when we’re virtually in the same physical environment as the hardest hit population?
I assume you were replying to mcates and not me, so I’ll tell you not to bother trying to persuade someone who’s in the thrall of partisan trollmanship.
The only reason that some on the right are still refusing to do what A) has worked in other countries, B) all credible scientific experts recommend, and C) is desperately needed is because they care more about protecting the Narcissist in Chief than their own families and neighbors. If they admit that masks, social distancing and testing are necessary, then it will expose how criminally negligent their candidate is.
“With America being the world epicenter of infection and deaths, you should be ashamed to be spreading this nonsense.”
He’s gotta “strike a blow from the inside” against the “heart of enemy territory” somehow.
“With America being the world epicenter of infection and deaths, you should be ashamed to be spreading this nonsense”
You confused America with Democrat governors in the Northeast. You should be ashamed of yourself for misleading everyone about that fact. Just 3 Democrat dominated states have over 30% of all deaths. 8 Democrat controlled states have over 50% of all deaths.
Florida, Texas, and Arizona are having massive outbreaks and all of them have Republic governors. Even the Republic governor of Texas has admitted the state allowed bars to reopen too soon.
A major reason why northeastern states had such a big problem in the early days of of the pandemic was a higher population density, and the fact that the strain of the virus that hit them was a more deadly one from Europe, not the one from Asia. Those northeastern states now are having less of a time then southern and western states with Republic governors because they took the threat more seriously once it hit. The southern and western states with Republic governors could have taken a lead before it hit so badly, but doing so would have gone against Dear Leader who had been claiming it was all a hoax before saying it would all be over by April, before saying whatever he has changed his tune on so many times.
Like I’m going to take epidemiological advice from someone who doesn’t know his nouns from his adjectives? Unlike “Republican” which is both a noun and an adjective, “Democrat” is just a noun. If you wish to refer to a person who is a Democrat, you use the adjective form, which is “Democratic”.
But that doesn’t allow you to make childish rhymes in the schoolyard, so you’d rather sound like someone who doesn’t speak…. good.
Mr. Bloomer,
Straight from the CDC—Xiao, J., Shiu, E., Gao, H., Wong, J. Y., Fong, M. W., Ryu, S….Cowling, B. J. (2020). Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 26(5), 967-975. https://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid2605.190994
And here—https://7news.com.au/travel/coronavirus/coronavirus-is-airborne-say-239-scientists-in-a-letter-to-who-c-1145825?utm_campaign=share-icons&utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&tid=1593967694136
The scientific consensus is clear.
Masks are a pointless exercise in psychological posturing.
Hate the physics, don’t hate the scientist, Yo…
Maybe teach “the children” a little maths and physics so they won’t end up gullible, low information sheeple?
Here is a more recent view from the CDC on the matter, and one that specifically regards the coronavirus, rather than influenza:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html
In regards to the CDC article you cited:
A) The article talks about Influenza pandemics not COVID-19
and
B) The article was originally published Feb 06, 2020, which means all research was probably performed well before COVID-19 appeared.
Jeff Bloomer–quick question…Does underwear stop a fart? No? Then what in the **** you think a piece of crap paper mask gon do to stop a damn respiratory virus!?
Really MtnX? Is this the Onion or something now?
I dig the local news coverage, but the letters…they gotta be parodies of the wacky groupthink that outsiders assume all Ashevillians conform to.
There are still some non-ideologue, free thinkers in the area, maybe throw us a bone once in while MtnX.! Ha!
“Is this the Onion or something now? ”
Your post certainly begs that question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr61JCgCwgc
Right on, ShelbyGT (if that is your real name). The last time I was in the hospital a couple of years ago, I couldn’t get over those ding-a-ling “doctors” and “nurses” wearing those stupid crap paper masks. I said to one of them, “Yo, nursie! Does my underwear stop this fart?”
pause, two, three.
Guess what happened. She hit me! I win! I win! I win!
Golds Gym is OPEN!
Arnold Schwarzenegger has left his go-to workout spot Gold’s Gym because they don’t require face masks
https://www.insider.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-left-golds-gym-over-no-face-mask-policy-2020-6
Sure. Sweaty, hard-breathing people sharing eqipment in a confined space for a prolonged period… I’d recommend to everyone that they stay the f*** away from that superspreader.
Anyone who thinks a mask is ineffective should try this simple experiment: 1) get a piece of fabric of your choosing and a candle, 2) put cloth over over mouth and nose, 3) light candle. 4) try to blow out candle.
Or you could take a look at Swedens numbers, where per capita there are 40% more deaths than the US.
The other question to ask: why has the US messed this up so badly? Because it has.
Evil democrackkks will stop at nothing to bring down Amerikkka … they think they can win by keeping the
country shut down to their total peril. Democrackkks want total CONTROL of YOU and everything about YOU.
They are our most EVIL ENEMY, locally, state, and national.
Well, that response tells us one reason why the US has messed this up so badly.
Yeah, this is going great.
NCDHHS reports highest one-day increase of COVID-19 positive tests
https://mountainx.com/blogwire/ncdhhs-reports-highest-one-day-increase-of-covid-19-positive-tests-2/
“Record-high numbers like today are concerning,” said NCDHHS Secretary Mandy Cohen, M.D. “We all have a responsibility to one another to wear a face covering, avoid crowds and wash our hands often to get our trends going back in the right direction.”
Yeah, sorry “Doctor”. An anonymous troll and a guy on record as hating Asheville tell me I don’t have to wear a mask.
And today was a high for hospitalizations. The county dashboard tells its own story: there’s a long lag between getting a test and finding the result, and a lag between finding the result and the state or county knowing about it.
A friend just flew back to her family in Europe: she got a test at the airport, a result within 24 hours, and had to self-isolate in a roome away from her family until a follow-up test three days later. That allows a quick and targeted response. The US has proved itself incapable of doing that.
It’s probably time to roll back indoor dining and shut breweries.
I would amend:
“The US has proved itself incapable of doing that… at least, with a malevolent, incompetent narcissist in charge.”
You know, I think the US would still have handled this poorly if Hillary Clinton were president, or even if it were towards the end of a third Obama term if we’re extending the counterfactual. Not as poorly, for sure, and an executive branch that read and followed the plans drawn up for this scenario would have made the challenge more manageable, but the US was never likely to handle this as well as South Korea or Germany or even Canada.
We’d have seen Republicans at national, state and local level behave the way they did during the SARS and ebola scares, backed up by right-wing media. There’d have been resistance against acting strongly in the early weeks out of a misguided sense of exceptionalism: mcates has shown us how some conservatives enjoy thinking it’s a “Democrat problem.”
We’d still be dealing with a fractured and extortionate private health infrastructure, denuded public health departments, and inadequate support for those who lost jobs or saw their income cut back. We’d still have people whose gut-level opposition to government and skepticism towards the common good would lead them to push back at restrictions and prescriptions. We’d still have senior public health professionals (especially women) threatened and driven out of government by so-called “patriots.”
There have been many examples of good government across both major parties, but not enough and not broadly enough to handle a pandemic.