You know that the US also doesn't recognise Taiwan? And in fact only a tiny handful of countries do?

There is ongoing debate about this because the evidence shows only a small positive effect for wearing them, and mask wearing can change behaviour.

There has been masks around for more than 100 years to protect from infectious diseases. Why is this still an ongoing debate?

The ongoing debate is whether getting the general public to wear masks is actually helpful or not.

See my other response for ways in which that differs from medical staff doing it. It's psychology and sociology as well as pure "can a mask stop the virus", which are important factors when looking at disease transmission in a population.

There is no debate. Healthcare workers are invariably wearing masks around all patients, regardless of known COVID19 status.

It is simply irresponsible to claim that wearing masks offers only marginal benefit. This is a respiratory virus, it is transmitted by droplets.

The downvoting of this plain truth ought to scare anyone who values science over politics.

Healthcare workers wear masks of a known quality, which they have fit tested, and they know how long to use them and when to dispose of them. They wear them as part of a full protective strategy along with other context-appropriate equipment and have training to know how to conduct themselves in the situation too.

You can't just claim the same benefits for an old piece of t-shirt stretched across your face. An old piece of t-shirt which may give you a false sense of security and lead you to take risks and get closer to other people, and which may make you touch your face more, and which you may not clean or replace etc etc...

> They said wearing masks does not help decrease infectious spread. They actually claimed that wearing masks can increase infectious spread because of improperly wearing it.

Can you please point to the studies claiming that masks significantly lower transmission rates? The only think I ever read was it lowers a bit the transmission FROM infected people by blocking some of the droplets sneezed/coughed, but just wearing them doesn't protect healthy people anyhow. Unless you have N95 + good glasses and perfect hygiene.

The behavior of 'I have a basic mask therefore I am protected' - I've seen it quite a few times personally. It really can lead to false feeling of security and lowering one's guard. I've seen folks wearing them incorrectly too, especially in the beginning - ie not over nose, huge gaps around it, putting it down in store for a call etc.

I think your statements are taken out of context of what was claimed. Not claiming WHO is perfect (far from it), but trump-ish bashing everybody and everything external instead of admitting one's utter failure and working on fixing things won't change much.

WHO said that masks are very helpful for Asia. Netherlands government also mention that the usefulness of masks is questionable at best. This despite that the masks obviously do help.

It seems that this was said because there's a huge shortage of masks. People starting hoarding them, plus stealing them from hospitals and so on.

So yeah, WHO did mention masks aren't super useful for the general public, but seems like the reason is mostly because to prevent people going crazy for masks.

The bit about people thinking their safe due to a bad mask is also mentioned by the Dutch government btw. And they decide for themselves, they do not just follow whatever WHO says.

If oil price goes down, demand for renewables goes down.

Lower demand for renewables means... Higher prices? Less output of actual renewable products like solar panels? Less demand for new wind turbines?

If the price of oil drops by 20% the demand for oil from marginal sources like tar sands could go down by 70%, since they were barely profitable when prices were 20% higher. On the other hand, oil (or natural gas) prices are only a fraction of the total cost of electricity or gas/diesel, so demand for renewables will probably not drop by too much. In fact, since a sudden shock in the price of oil could kill off a lot of marginal producers, the long term average price of oil could increase from previous expectations. This would make renewables even more attractive. Another factor to consider is that if marginal oil producers die out the price of labor will decrease in many places. This will also serve to make the price of solar lower, since labor costs are a decent fraction of total costs. There are a lot of cascading effects from a change in the price of a commodity as big and important as oil.

Another factor is that oil seems to be much more vulnerable to volatility than renewables. I haven't read anything about renewable sources needing continue production when it's unprofitable to do so because the cost of turning production on or off is so high.

All that is saying is that shutting borders is not by itself an effective method of limiting the virus. We also needed extensive testing/tracking, early aggressive self-isolation, adequate protective gear and other medical equipment, consistent messaging on how to limit exposure. Along with universal screening of returning travelers. All things that we failed at.

A high percentage of COVID-19 infected people are asymptomatic.

How would temperature and subjective screening prevent these asymptomatic patients from infecting many others?

In terms of screening people returning from abroad to the US, if we had immediately established a regime of either testing or mandatory self-quarantine, that would have greatly reduced the rate of transmission.

Doing widespread spot testing across the country would've identified the communities where the virus was extant. From there we would've known where to focus the brunt of universal testing, tracking and quarantining.

Just the fact that we are still fiddling with estimates of what percentage of CV infected people are asymptomatic is a travesty. We should have long ago conducted enough statistical sampling to have a very clear picture what was happening in our communities.

Except there are governments around the world that are handling this crisis well. Just because American government(s) are incapable doesn't mean all are.

It really works both ways, but most people only focus on one.

E.G. "Imagine being a peaceful farm owner family and a bunch of preppers with assault machine guns who spent lifetime secretly hoping for a zombie apocalypse come to steal your food." etc.

It doesn't really work both ways. Angry mobs looking for food don't need guns to cause problems for peaceful people. Peaceful people do need guns to protect themselves from angry mobs looking for food.

My limited but non-zero experience in real-world situations has shown that "Angry Mobs" are far more likely to be armed than "Peaceful people", across regimes, situations and armament laws, regardless of the initial starting point.

The thing to hope for in "If we run out of food" situation is that some people at least will co-operate. Once it gets to "Angry mobs", and most importantly "who does and doesn't have a gun" - peaceful people will lose, one way or another.

Again, it's a personal & subjective perspective (which is why I've vouched/upvoted your comments - we're all allowed a personal & subjective perspective and it tests our ideas:), but it also means it's less theoretical than for most folks - having been variously in a civil war, starving situation, and facing angry mobs, turns out, last thing I personally wanted to have is a gun - it's just another highly desirable item for an angry mob and paints me as a bigger target.

So I try to have a reserve of food and medicine and important things at all times - but a gun has never joined the list. I know vividly from experience that if it comes to defending my stash, I'll loose very soon - if not to the very first "wave of angry mobs", then very very shortly thereafter. Popular SciFi movies and series notwithstanding :-/

>My limited but non-zero experience in real-world situations has shown that "Angry Mobs" are far more likely to be armed than "Peaceful people"

And my point is that it doesn't really matter that much if the angry mob is armed or not, whereas you having one can have a huge impact on the outcome. There are a lot more of them than you. They can very easily kill you with a gun or without one. But you cannot possibly hope to dissuade any angry group of people from attacking you without at least a gun. Obviously it won't make you invincible, and gets less likely to help as the size of the mob increases (for that situation, you'd want to have a bunch of other armed people at your side), but that's not the point.

>which is why I've vouched/upvoted your comments - we're all allowed a personal & subjective perspective and it tests our ideas:

Downvoting to show disagreement is pretty sad behavior.

That won't work in India nor America. What everyone imagines is one or two people sneaking around trying to steal things and being thwarted by a big family. The reality is groups will quickly form. First 10 people then 20 and soon little militias of 100 people will be raiding. Do you really think several towers is going to make a difference to a small 100 person well armed militia?

This vague "America is special so can't be compared" line of argument often gets used to explain away things we compare badly on: residential internet, public education, health care, the coronavirus response... I'm sure I'll think of others, later. Point is, it's a rhetorical thing that distracts from the problems rather than explaining them.

There is nothing concrete in what he said. US cities don’t even make the list of top50 most dense cities. Chinese and Japanese cities where coronavirus was contained are on the list:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/07/11/the-50-...

Beyond that, US cities are usually not dense at all due to people living in single family homes rather than apartments.

Singapore is very much a global hub of business, and it's high population density makes outbreaks even harder to contain. And yet they're doing a much better job.

Not only that, but if you compare the public presentations on the COVID situation given by Trump to those given by Lee (Singapore PM), the difference is stunning. One is nearly incomprehensible and full of unrelated matter (name calling, politicizing, even campaigning), and the other is polite and clear and comprehensive.

t o r n a p a r t b y i d e n t i t y p o l i t i c s

I think "identity politics" are actually just an artefact of commercially driven manipulation of government and media.

If you were to really get to know most people, you will find they have (obviously) the same basic needs and desires. Amusingly, this is even illustrated by the large percentage of Trump supporters who are heavily dependent upon government services (i.e. handouts).

At the end of the day, we all want food, shelter, safety, and some amount of personal privacy and freedom. These things probably comprise at least 70% of our needs and desires. The remaining bits get divided up somewhat, and I daresay only the last 10-20% are "identity". Identity really just means what you and your peers/neighbors think.

Nobody wants to be sick, or hungry, or in pain, or unappreciated, or discarded. Much of the politics we see is thrust upon us by a narrow few (powerful) interests with their own agendas.

When you talk about government you seem to mean united states government, and the current one at that. There is such a thing as the rest of the world (shock!), and some places are doing a decent job.

Actually I'm pretty sure almost any previous US government, rep or dem, would have done a much better job than this one.

BTW if you want to 'save yourself', what are your personal plans for developing a vaccine?

I would refer you to New Zealand which has, last time I checked, had one infection and zero fatalities. Sure this is not "preventing any infections" but I would argue that the rounding error on this is sufficient to make the claim that some governments have reacted well and the United States government has not. Of course NZ has several advantages geographically, but they also have a competent government that was willing to take proactive action.

> incapable of saving everyone or preventing any infections

True in that no government can save everyone and prevent all infections. Therefore all government is shit, even thoughthey clearly all aren't.

How's your plans for creating your own vaccine coming along, have you started that virology and epidemiology course, and how's the new laboratory progressing? And that new supercomputer, and the chemicals (better not buy from anyone else, make your own!), and the various other kit that only a prepper can do properly. Fill us in, do.

Governments don’t create vaccines, they govern and approve them for usage, but private companies develop them.

How exactly do you expect to save yourself in a pandemic? Are you going to put yourself on a ventilator if you get really sick?

The more likely answer is that you would be one of the many people that gets to die alone in your home.

So is the sea level being measured or estimated?

Ventilators are incredibly simple and can suffer considerable constant abuse without a hiccup.

These are medical grade devices.

It's like artificially inflated GDP numbers from producing bad steel that nobody will buy. It does something, but in the end it's really nothing, and actually quite wasteful.

Physician practices get absorbed by large national corporations and patient care gets reduced to metrics that administrators can tweak to extract more revenue and profit. The benefits get paid to administrators as bonuses, while physicians see their salaries stagnate.

The corporitization of physician practices is destroying the profession.

The country also wants more supply of healthcare, at lower prices, while the supply of doctors remains constrained via the restriction on number of residency training spots each year. This is the root cause, insufficient supply in the face of demand, and it is manifesting itself in these various side effects.

This is incorrect. There is no supply/demand relationship for pricing services. Doubling the number of trained physicians will not decrease healthcare costs, it will simply drive down physician annual income.

The main driver of inflated healthcare costs is administrative waste: hospital management, insurance management, government management.

> patient care gets reduced to metrics that administrators can tweak

So they’re applying “agile project management” then?

The takeover of real jobs by bullshit jobs