Violet Affleck and mask mandates

I think we can conclude that if you’re sick then avoid others - and if you can’t, then just wear a mask and stop being a dirty beggar

Better tell Cambridge University researchers that they’re practicing pretend science, and that you know better

www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/upgrading-ppe-for-staff-working-on-covid-19-wards-cut-hospital-acquired-infections-dramatically

Interestingly, doctors were very against hand washing when it was first suggested to stop spreading infections. They thought the idea was stupid and ridiculous. We now think it’s obviously good. I suspect air will go the same way, I’d just rather it happened sooner!

Personally I think we should stop washing our hands and drinking clean water. Infections are good for us; it’s important for our immune systems.

The argument doesn’t really hold up, does it? I agree that asking everyone to mask in public spaces is not viable (although masking when you’re unwell I think would be reasonable, but people are too unwilling).

Personally I think far UVc is the answer. It destroys pathogens in the air - it should at least be installed in hospital wards. I think the money would be made back by reduced hospital length of stays - the number of times granny gets admitted for a broken hip and leaves 4 weeks later having had two hospital acquired pneumonias is immense.

You are not only being unreasonable, you are also demonstrating a total lack of understanding and awareness. Did you listen to what she SAID?
Or are you just focusing on her wearing a mask?
She is a highly educated woman, working in a lab at Yale with experts in the field of long Covid.
Do you think, MAYBE, she knows more about this than you do?!
Try listening instead of judging.

Masking is very bad for the environment, so actually she is.

Utter claptrap based on pretend science 🙄

I think the problem is that people's context for this is the mission creep during the restrictions period. Rolling consent for lockdowns and things like school closures rather than explanations at the start that we were liable to be looking at longer periods. This has had an impact- I appreciate Violet is in the US, but most posters here talking about compulsory masks in healthcare are in the UK afaik.

Which yes, further reinforces the point that we'd be better approaching this by improving air quality. But of course in the UK it was always easier to shunt the downsides of dealing with the problem onto the public instead of making more efficient but expensive changes. See also, adequate sick pay. All the money we spunked on shit from 2020-22, but it was fine for some people to have to choose between isolation and keeping the roof over their heads whilst simultaneously risking criminalisation!

Hmm - who has asked for the public to mask all the time? This feels like an argument rehashed from 2021. Do you believe everyone who wants any masks at all secretly wants constant masking?

I don't buy "don't bother masking unless it's perfect and perfect is really too difficult for the plebs" as an argument, either. Sure, a non-fit-tested FFP mask might not filter out the full 97% of particles that it would if it was perfectly fitted - I wouldn't rely on it to protect me in a room with someone with active TB. But it filters out an awful lot and I'd rather have that protection than none in a busy hospital waiting room.

In fact "most people" I know who mask now use FFP2 or FFP3 masks, and I don't think we should be saying to those that don't: "don't try to wear a mask, it's too difficult for the likes of you". It would be better to say "great, but that fabric mask isn't doing as much as you perhaps think it is so why not try one of these instead". At least that's constructive.

Right from the start the government could have trusted people and been honest about real masks, and told people that they do protect wearers but we didn't have enough, that the fabric ones might help the tiniest bit but not much, and that (crucially) rather than accepting unlimited covid in order to give up masks we've always had another option: improve ventilation in order to make masks less necessary.

No one is saying that people who work in, say, a burn unit, or a serious infectious disease unit, shouldn't use appropriate measures to prevent infection.

Public mask mandates mean people making all the time, and there is no evidence that is effective, no matter what kind of method you mean.

You might as well talk about perfect use stats for contraception, totally useless for creating policies.

Proper masking is not easy or simple and not something people can fudge. It means a fitted mask, used for only a few hours, not touching it, not reusing it, not putting it in a pocket, not pulling it down even for a moment and then replacing it, not allowing it to touch a surface.

And what most people use, surgical or cloth masks, are just useless from the get go.

There are a lot more people being misled about how effective the mask use they are actually doing is than there are questioning proper use of masks in limited settings.

Do you think that countries or organisations that are addressing indoor air quality are terminally terrified or do you think there could be other reasons?

Which terminally terrified people did ‘they’ listen to for the best part of two years?

Which posts seem very extreme to you?

I don't know, I know I'll never convince the "its vascular!!!" crowd that COVID is a very minor illness in the grand scheme of things. The anxiety will be induced if people in power start listening to the terminally terrified, like they did for best part of two years. Luckily, even wets like Starmer think you're all silly.

It comes across as mocking a little, I’m not seeing the sympathy, but most of all it comes across as nasty and ignorant.

@everanewbieWho are you intending to mock on this thread? Who has overstepped in your mind?
Why are you drawn to covid threads when you find them so anxiety inducing?

@Everanewbie:

Compared to nearly 220,000 uninfected people, those infected with Covid-19 were more than twice as likely to have had a heart attack or stroke or died from any cause by October 2022. [2 years later]

For people who were hospitalised with Covid-19, the risk of these events was 4 times higher than for those who did not test positive for the virus.

In another study, almost 154,000 people in the United States who tested positive for Covid-19 between March 2020 and January 2021 were 72 per cent more likely to have heart failure a year after they were infected, compared to people who did not have the virus.

https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/coronavirus-and-your-health/what-does-coronavirus-do-to-your-body

It’s not obscure research, it’s pretty much settled science at this point and there are thousands and thousands of papers. And we’ve known this since 2020. Hence the microclotting issue we couldn’t solve with blood thinners and your risk of a heart attack doubling with an infection for all age groups.

My fingers just take over when I see a COVID thread. Its like an out of body experience. There are maybe 5-6 posters that present some obscure research that details the remote possibility of vascular complications as a reason to forever shield, mask and live the purgatory that we did from March 2020 to February 2022 indefinitely, and seemingly compare 'long COVID' to something like motoneuron disease. They deserve our sympathy. But when they set out to mislead and and influence, they deserve our mocking.

Violet Affleck is an intelligent young woman who knew full well she would be criticised for speaking at the UN.

She cares passionately about the health of young children who are being repeatedly infected by a virus that our media has encouraged us to ignore since "freedom day". Would it be too much to request people listen to what she actually said (based on huge amounts of evidence) before voting?

Covid was a small part of her speech , she spoke about air filters and air quality after the LA fires ,
fair enough, but going back to Covid , first
the data she quotes about Long Covid sufferers is quite misleading, reading further the vast majority are elders or people with compromised immunity , overweight. A very fragile percentage of the population really.
second what about the side effects of masks ? Breathing in all that micro plastics is probably more damaging than long covid. The mental and physiological impact lockdown had on children ,
I pray we never go back to that ever.

Great! 🙂

Thanks, I've just bought some 😷 It was quite hard to find any still in stock - they wouldn't have been my first choice, but it says they're fog free and are reduced to £10 for 20.

Nobody does moan at me for wearing a mask but, should anyone need to see my lips moving, they'll be able to! I think these duckbill-shaped ones look stupid, though ...

It might be better not to imply masks in general don't work, then, but to be specific that you're talking about "all the time public use" of masks. I don't think anyone at the UN was proposing that anyway. Some people who could wear a good mask to good effect for short periods in particularly risky situations might not do so, or might get pressure from other people not to bother, based on that sort of misinformation suggesting they just don't work.

The evidence for all the time public use even of those kinds of masks isn't really there either. Which is what we'd be talking about - the majority of the population using the right kind of mask, and following correct masking procedures, all the time in public.

It's not going to happen even if they do mandate it, so it would never work. Even many professionals find following masking protocols for long periods tiring, and that is just in limited work settings.

My 33 yr old son (very fit, rugby player, trains every day) has been very ill for weeks with covid. We should not be complacent.