Covid 19 thread

[XXXIVwin]

You said you have seen millions of people not wearing masks.
then you referenced a ridiculous “poll” of 592 people.
what’s ridiculous is when people just throw out false narrative and when called out, can’t just admit the mistake.
so open your own eyes and judge what you see.

Yeah, I honestly didn’t think you were focused on that word “see”.

Have I literally seen millions of people —with my own eyes— not wearing masks? No. Of course not.

Do I trust in the science of statistics behind GOOD polls with RIGOROUS standards of representative sampling? Yes, I do.

Polls are also thought to be more reliable when there are many of them that come to the same conclusion. There are dozens of polls out there—some of higher quality than others— but they all come to the same conclusion, that millions of Americans are still not wearing masks.


And no, there’s no point in me taking the time to search the internet and post all of these polls. Because if you don’t trust in the science behind polling, we really don’t have anything to debate about, we can just agree to disagree.

 

[Mojo Ram]

Since there are around 330 million folks in the USA, it seems to me to be an indisputable fact that millions of Americans are not wearing masks. Even in the hypothetical "most ardent mask supporter scenario" of 98% universal mask wearing, that would still leave 2% who were not, which would constitute several million folks.

Ahhhh but how many of those 2% are driving in their cars, or
sitting or sleeping in their own homes with zero need to be masked up?

 

[SWAdude]

Yeah, I honestly didn’t think you were focused on that word “see”.

But you honestly said that. You see millions of Americans.......

Like you saw pictures of passengers and Flight Attendants without their masks on and spun that into a systemic problem that was not true in the least.

One must be careful with their words.

 

[XXXIVwin]

But you honestly said that. You see millions of Americans.......

Like you saw pictures of passengers and Flight Attendants without their masks on and spun that into a systemic problem that was not true in the least.

One must be careful with their words.

Yeah, I wish I had used a word other than "see". I acknowledge my choice of the word "see" was a bit sloppy. But on the other hand, I find it surprising that some people took those words literally when it seems obvious that I was speaking figuratively.

Rather than saying, “I see millions of Americans...” it would have been better to say, “Basic math shows us that millions of Americans...”

(AHA! I see what you're doing there! )

If I had said, "I see over 7 billion people on this planet going about their daily lives," would people have taken me to task for using the word "see"? Would people think that I literally "see" over 7 billion folks? Or is it more reasonable to think I was making a rough estimate of the earth's population based on math, science, common sense, and basic shared assumptions?

It is an incontrovertible reality that well over one million Americans are not wearing masks in public. People can disagree with that sentence, but it's objectively true.

Let me put it another way. There are about 330 M people in the USA. If there were less than a million people who did not wear masks, that would mean the USA would have a mask compliance rate of 99.7%.

[Disclaimer to show the arithmetic: 330 million times 0.997 equals 329.01 million. So, at 99.7% compliance rate, that would mean 329.01 million people are wearing masks, and the remaining 990,000 are not.]

So yeah, if people want to believe that this country has achieved a 99.7% mask-compliance rate, and there are fewer than 1 million people who refuse to wear masks in the USA, then by all means go right ahead. But all the polls, common sense, and arithmetic say otherwise.

Lots of topics on this thread have been fascinating, frustrating, enlightening. But this particular "debate"-- are there more or less than a million Americans who won't wear a mask?-- just doesn't feel like it is worth the time for any of us. IMHO. So to anyone who says, "let's move on to another subject," I'd say, "You look like a million bucks."
(And the point of me saying that would be “thank goodness you’re willing to change the subject”, and NOT “you bear a physical resemblance to a stack of one million dollar bills”!)
---

Speaking of changing the subject....
As to you SWA, I find it really unfortunate that we had a breakdown in civility during our exchange. At some point I would be interested in exchanging some PM's in an attempt to bury the hatchet. Cheers.

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

One concern with CoVid that is largely ignored by the general public is the delayed side effects. Many patients, even with mild original symptoms are having fatigue, neurological problems, specific organ problems, pain etc,...showing up 3 months later. The affects vary with each person. It's interesting how little attention this gets, considering some of these cases can be life changing.



My wife has friends that took a group vacation to North Carolina. Both parents returned home feeling I'll and tested positive. They seemed to be doing well initially but on the 8th day both of them began having serious difficulty breathing. Last we heard they were both heading to the hospital. They have 12 kids. The trip to the beach was an unnecessary risk imo.




This is one example of the school opening scenario:

Our school is planning three options. One is to enroll in charter school for the entire year. Two is to return to school, and possibly do a two week rotation of one day on and one day off, to relieve congestion in hallways. Three is to stay at home and use Google Classroom and other on line assignments provided by local teachers, with the option of returning to school in the near future.

We are going with option three. Our school board claims to be in communications with Virologists and infectious disease control Doctors at the local Medical Center which is nationally renowned. But, my wife is a Registered Nurse Educator and recently met with the lead Virologist and that Doctor is livid that the school board is claiming that her department endorses the plan, because other than an initial suggestion list their has been no dialogue between them. We have no faith in our school board to come up with a viable plan. The only Doctor, a dermatologist, on the board quit because none of his input was taken seriously. It's mostly made up of parents with kids in sports. My son has had some hints of autoimmune troubles (minor arthritis) so we aren't putting him in poorly ventilated classrooms filled with micro particles floating around, especially since the board said the kids won't be required to wear a mask once seated. They also admitted that they cannot afford to upgrade their air handling system to what they were told would be adequate.

How many schools across the country will be in similar situations?

 

[-X-]

Thanks much for posting those clarifications.

Yeah, sorry for the confusion. I can see why you might have taken that personally. At any rate, I promised I was gonna post my entire thought process behind this pandemic, but it's impossible to do so without breaking the rules I, myself, put in place. So I won't be doing that. It's also very, very long, and that causes most people to just glaze over after a few minutes. Let's just say that, yes; we do fundamentally disagree on some things, but the one thing we can agree on is this. Nobody is out here wanting people to die. At least not the people who matter (the fine folk in this thread).

 

[dieterbrock]

Yeah, I honestly didn’t think you were focused on that word “see”.

Have I literally seen millions of people —with my own eyes— not wearing masks? No. Of course not.

Do I trust in the science of statistics behind GOOD polls with RIGOROUS standards of representative sampling? Yes, I do.

Polls are also thought to be more reliable when there are many of them that come to the same conclusion. There are dozens of polls out there—some of higher quality than others— but they all come to the same conclusion, that millions of Americans are still not wearing masks.


And no, there’s no point in me taking the time to search the internet and post all of these polls. Because if you don’t trust in the science behind polling, we really don’t have anything to debate about, we can just agree to disagree.

What you are doing is a form of trolling. You threw out a comment with no basis. " Yeah, and I *cringe* when I see millions of Americans refusing to do a simple act that can probably reduce the spread. "
That's what you said. And nothing of what you've posted supports that.
I get it, when one is getting their information from the media/social media and regurgitates the narrative being pushed, I can see why one would be stuck in the morass.
I am suggesting that you make your own opinion, from your own eyes. There are several folks in this thread (myself included) who due to work responsibilities are out amongst the masses each day. And there is a common opinion amongst which opposes what you "claim". So consider their POV over media. Lastly, if one is going to use a poll to support their POV, and dont know what questions were asked in performing the poll or the size of the sample, they are choosing to embrace ignorance

 

[dieterbrock]

Ahhhh but how many of those 2% are driving in their cars, or
sitting or sleeping in their own homes with zero need to be masked up?

Its been awhile since I was in school, but a 98% on a test was pretty good right? I think the term was excellent?

 

[dieterbrock]

It is an incontrovertible reality that well over one million Americans are not wearing masks in public. People can disagree with that sentence, but it's objectively true.

Like @Mojo Ram said, you are alone in your car driving, you are out in public. Are YOU wearing a mask? You are outdoors where social distancing of well over 6 feet is easily accomplished, are YOU wearing a mask?

 

[OldSchool]

It’s from the Gallup poll I linked in my post. It states that 14% of Americans say they “never” wear masks in public. 330 million people in USA, 14% of that is 46.2 million people.

So yeah, the Gallup poll implies that 46 million Americans never wear masks in public. (Not to mention the 11% who said “sometimes” and 4% who said “rarely”... those 15% combined in the “sometimes or rarely” category would mean an additional 49.5 M folks, over and above the 46 M “never” folks.)

Granted, that 46 M “never wear masks in public” number is only a “ballpark guesstimate”, and it could be inflated for all sorts of reasons. Lots of babies and young kids, for example. Lots of older folks who are on self-quarantine and never go out in public. Lots of folks in remote areas where masks probably aren’t necessary.

But yes, IMHO those Gallup poll numbers still imply that many millions of Americans still aren’t wearing masks even in “significant risk” public places.

IMHO there is a HUGE variation based on demographics. I live in San Luis Obispo, CA. In public stores, I’d say mask use is at 99.9% Teenagers and folks under 25, though, getting together in small gatherings? I’d guess mask use is probably at 5 percent, tops. (And yeah, I can totally understand why, since I agree that their risk to themselves is infinitesimal. It’s just a bummer that young folks can spread it to other more vulnerable folks).

Are those 14% of Americans in states/counties/cities that mandate wearing masks? I mean it's a great number to stand on a soap box and scream to the rafters but context is everything.

 

[OldSchool]

Like @Mojo Ram said, you are alone in your car driving, you are out in public. Are YOU wearing a mask? You are outdoors where social distancing of well over 6 feet is easily accomplished, are YOU wearing a mask?

So lets say the state of Montana doesn't have a mask wearing order. They have a population of over a million. Lazy stats just proved him correct but there's no context to the number.

 

[dieterbrock]

So lets say the state of Montana doesn't have a mask wearing order. They have a population of over a million. Lazy stats just proved him correct but there's no context to the number.

The WHO emphatically advises to not wear masks while exercising, but to adhere to social distancing. So how many people are following what they say, but are in effect not wearing masks? Funny how these statistics vary from real life

 

[OldSchool]

Now this is a lady that takes her masks very serious.

 

[OldSchool]

 

[bluecoconuts]

I’m pretty sure when talking about mask usage there is a “hidden” disclaimer that they’re not talking about the dude sitting at home basking in the glow of pornhub at 3AM, or the jogger running a mountain trail by herself.

Them talking about the people who are going into more crowded public areas and helping the infection spread, makes more sense doesn’t it? Are we to pretend like we don’t have common sense to try and score some nonexistent points?

The issue isn’t the dude in the car by himself, or the person at home alone. If you’re doing the right thing you’re doing the right thing.

Plenty of people are. Plenty of people are not, which is why we’re still dealing with this at the level that we are. Pretty simple logic chain to follow if you ask me. Are we still seeing massive numbers daily? Yes? Then we’re still in this.

This country is filled with armchair whatever’s, armchair QBs who don’t understand the fundamentals of football, armchair generals who don’t understand the first thing about soldiering, combat, tactics, etc, armchair scientists who don’t know a damn thing about science.

A high school class, a couple of war books, or a copy of Madden doesn’t suddenly make someone an expert, but holy hell if you wanna point that out to people.

Getting a deep enough understanding to be able to understand some of the root concepts is not easy. The result is wild misinformation and misunderstanding of things. Of course a public who doesn’t understand the scientific process is going to balk at watching it real time, because all they know is the sexy science. Yeah, let’s see that computerized artist’s interpretation of this planet really far away! That’s sexy! Let’s not talk about the wall of numbers and data that the poor bastard was looking at to figure out what the planet was made of that is actually how it happened.

Real science isn’t sexy, it’s work, it’s research, it’s challenging, it forces you to think outside the box. The public doesn’t have the stomach for it, and that’s just a fact. If it wasn't then we wouldn’t have so many people questioning it at every turn.

We’re struggling with this because as a country we’re arguing over if the cat the scientist pointed out to us is really a house cat and therefore the term cat doesn’t really work because it’s too broad, blah blah. Who cares? That’s just looking at the wrong thing, it’s not a solution, it’s not even an attempt at a solution, I don’t even see how it’s constructive.

 

[SWAdude]

Speaking of changing the subject....
As to you SWA, I find it really unfortunate that we had a breakdown in civility during our exchange. At some point I would be interested in exchanging some PM's in an attempt to bury the hatchet. Cheers.

Its all good brother. Just admit I was right and you were wrong.

Just kidding of course. Takes two to Tango.

Not too many on the anonymous boards have their profession not anonymous. Once in a while it takes a hit. My moniker came from a company specific anonymous forum that most of us adopted something of the sort. It was my first forum I belonged to over 20 years ago. Because I lack creativity I have just used this one ever since. I have found it not to be the smartest of moves because it can get targeted. In some of the most curious of ways.

It is seriously all good. After all, we are RAMILY.

GO RAMS!!!

 

[OldSchool]

My new hero

 

[Loyal]

Yeah, sorry for the confusion. I can see why you might have taken that personally. At any rate, I promised I was gonna post my entire thought process behind this pandemic, but it's impossible to do so without breaking the rules I, myself, put in place. So I won't be doing that. It's also very, very long, and that causes most people to just glaze over after a few minutes. Let's just say that, yes; we do fundamentally disagree on some things, but the one thing we can agree on is this. Nobody is out here wanting people to die. At least not the people who matter (the fine folk in this thread).

rules homer