The basic lie:
Every mask used by a “civilian” to protect his family and children, his office mates, the grocery clerk, … from himself, because he doesn’t know (can not know because not tested) if he as the Corona Virus, is not available for the Doctors and Nurses and endangers them! And naturally Trumpists can not do, what Governor Newsom from California just did: order 1 Billion masks, from “Build Your Dream” (BYD), which happened to be builder of about half of all electric locomotives world wide. A multi-billion$ company, who can build whatever they set out to build.
That is the Trump Admin fairy tale, covering the neglect in pandemic preparations, even reversal, of Obama Administration preparations.
- If the HHS Staff would be in the military they should be court marshaled for dereliction of duty for not having masks available for every body, like in South Korea and Taiwan, for example.
- The whole Government should be court marshaled for not having enough mask production capability for 3 masks per person per week. As in South Korea or Taiwan.
- Since the Government, having been drowned in a bath tub by the Tea Party adherents, has let you down, you are on your own!
- And like the people in West Virginia, left bereft of shopping opportunities by the Local and State Government: Amazon to the rescue.
- If you order surgical masks on Amazon.com (or, as I did for my French sister-in-law in Germany, on Amazon.de) you find these masks are shipped directly to you from a Chinese Postal address. For a very reasonable price.
You do not compete with health care professional, who should be able to rely on their employer, who should be able to rely on the Administration, except, see above, the Administration is run by people who loudly declared they wanted to shrink the Government until you could drown it in a bath tub. Do you remember that? If not, do a little Google Work. Before you vote ever again for a Republican except for the Mormon Mitt Romney. Remember the last honest majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid? He was a Mormon, as well!
Infection Growth 101:
Computer savvy Americans should have a natural understanding of explosive growth: the Kilobyte. One Kilobyte is 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2, but written differently as a sum sequence: 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 ….
That means with a doubling time of infections of 3 days, which generally seems (even in the US now for not understood reasons), 125 “cases” will be 500 “cases” after 4 days, and 125,000 after 20 days. This does not go on fore ever, it eventually flattens out because of double infections, where a person is being infected from 2 different people. Also finally more people develop an immunity, or die, so you run out of targets. Like in the marriage market, there is a limited number of “partners”. Its a numbers game, as gambler Mr. Trump should know, if he knows anything.
As the infections with the novel corona virus resulting in COVID-19 disease outside of China has sky-rocketed, global public demand for face masks has soared, with especially bad shortages in the all-knowing Trump-USA. We have produced fewer masks per capita than any other industrialized country. But since the corona virus was “hoax”, the Trump sycophants did not dare to up the production, lest they be punished by the Master.
The most commonly worn masks are surgical masks, loose-fitting pieces of non-woven cloth (you can buy in bulk at Amazon) that cover the nose and mouth. Often they are washable, but there are also one-way masks. As Thailand has shown the world, you also can mass produce it by the population, as in better than nothing, i.e., bandannas. The “America-First” US they will not be able catch up with the 120Million masks produced daily by China.
But the per capita leaders in mask production is South Korea and Taiwan. They have the most impressive flattening of the infection progression, with out draconian Chinese measures. So the key is physical separation, with physical distance, with masks, with glass shields in supermarkets.
In summary: The masks are frequently worn by doctors and dentists, and are designed and highly effective to help protect other people and the surroundings from the mask-wearer by trapping respiratory droplets emitted from the mouth or nose.
But they also protect the wearer himself from infection by others. This effect has (as usual) been criminally belittled by US HHS (Health and Human Services). Even if only 80-90% effective, it would reduce 100,000 deaths to 20,000-10,000.
But coupled with a mask on the other side, the effective “Herd” protection is between (1-0.8)x(1-0.8) and (1-0.9)x(1-0.9), that is between 4% and 1%, so the 100,000 death are reduced to 1,000 to 4,000. This is known from, for example, the measles, where a small 5% percentage of children do not become immune (despite the “shots”). They are protected by all the other children becoming immune.
Always keep in mind because of the 14 day incubation period, and the observation that an infected person starts shedding virus’ very soon, you may encounter and interact with dozens of potential “shedders”, who do not know they are infecting others. Because we don’t test like Korea or Germany.
I did read that few people understand exponential (or non-linear, or geometric) growth, and that even scientist seem to try instinctively to linearize it. So stare at the KiloBytes until you understand it!
Using my back ground in chain reaction analysis from Nuclear Reactor Studies (thank you Walter Humbach), and looking at Singapore data, it became quickly clear to me, from data published, (see here: [ https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/ ] ) and ignoring the self-serving cover-my-ass statement of HHS, that the use of surgical masks, in addition to strict social isolation, indeed played an important role as interrupter in China.
But there are also South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore who “bend the curve”, without the strict physical (wrongly called social) separation, but they are all-surgical mask carrying nations, as any photograph of their subway system shows.
What would Frederick the Great have done I think? The most capable Administrator who ever ran a modern state, Jonathan Steinberg writes, Frederick would have worn a surgical mask at Press Conferences. Little grew in the Swamp and Sand of Brandenburg. So the Prussian King introduced the Potato. And Potato Pancakes were served at Royal Dinners, to get the farmers to plant and use them. You have seen Mr. Trump donning a mask?
To use even the word “social” separation is irresponsible I believe, as the example of 2 people close together of opposite sides of a plexiglass protection shows. It is physical separation which matters, which can be achieved with surgical masks on both sides. Strengthened by a plexiglass shield in grocery stores. Randomly both sides are always needed because we nearly never know who is shedding virus’.
I can not produce enough venom for the HHS and CDC recommendation that these masks only be used by people who are already infected with Covid-19, so as "to prevent contamination of the surrounding area when a person coughs or sneezes," according to the agency's website. As if we would have any idea on who is infected since we do not test. We criminally have not planned for enough testing, and with criminal neglect Mr. Trump for many months has down played the danger, and has intimidated Government scientists from speaking up.
Masks also protects the innocent by-stander, as for example the grocery clerk who is showered with the virus-laden droplets from a sneezing customer without a mask himself. Or the next shopper, since the food and the cashiers area being rained on. As I have observed several times in a few weeks.
Worse, since the incompetently led US HHS (Health and Human Services), unlike such departments in other rich countries, neglected to both stockpile masks and expand production of them, blithely issued contradictory recommendations:
- 1. Don’t use them, if you are not infected, they we not really helping anybody.
- 2. Don’t use them, they are urgently needed for health care professionals.
So which one is it?
Cities should have ordinances so that both clerks and grocery shoppers must wear masks, which I think is one of the biggest holes in the “cordon sanitaire” established. Masks were mandatory in Wuhan outside of living quarters.
Again: The HHS proclamations are both arrogant and criminally negligent because we do not know who is infected, mostly because the Trump Administration has refused to use either, or both, of the WHO Test, or a German Open Source development, which are both fast and cheap. But they do not allow huge profits for the US Pharmaceutical Industry, which in the “American Profits First” Trump-World is a reason of not using them.
It really is “America First”. No wonder China now exercises a “Non-America First” policy, or “America Last” as in giving a Million mask and 20,000 ventilators to Slovakia. And then Peter Navarro, one of the worst offender in besmirching China in the past, complains that China has claimed first dibs on masks produced in China by US companies. Hello, wake up. What goes around, comes around.
What’s crucial here is that the “America First” mindset comes from the top, proudly even written on the baseball cap, and reflect an actual mind-set that has had terrible real-world consequences — and continues to do so. Trump has gambled away the goodwill President Obama created all over the world.
Trump’s consistent downplaying of corona virus’ danger and his relentless deceptions about his own administration’s catastrophic performance are a massive obstacle to mitigating the virus’ deadly danger. Trump’s ongoing efforts to minimize both the crisis and his own responsibility for it constitute an active and continuing danger to the country. Trump is still angering governors — and even passing the buck to the states — amid his ongoing refusal to admit the need for a more robust federal coordination effort.
What comes around goes around. But to change an attitude probably a few 10,000 Americans have to die in the Trump-loving rust belt. Just like 50,000 Opioid deaths made them appreciate Obama Care.
The results in Germany are very clear: the death “rate” is about a tenth of the US death rate. https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/
A 2019 study of health-care workers exposed to the flu suggested that surgical masks provide the wearer with protection from respiratory illness not only by reducing the number of droplets reaching the wearer, but also by reducing the number of times a person touches their face.
As the gambler said: it is a numbers game. Think about the next election.