Re: Masks (Page 3/6)
sourmash MAR 26, 05:02 PM
No, not destroyed, just 30 trillion under water and going deeper fast. And with only 2 ways out, war or theft.

[This message has been edited by sourmash (edited 03-26-2021).]

Hudini MAR 26, 05:30 PM

quote
Originally posted by TheDigitalAlchemist:

<snip>
The government should have sent out a box of masks to every person’s home.

They “spent”(pocketed) at least a billion dollars for “training” and even less traceable “supplies”

<snip>



Not trying to nitpick you. Just remember back when this started there was no national supply of masks to ship anywhere. The Surgeon General was telling everyone they don't need a mask and to not go out and buy them all up because healthcare workers needed them. My daughter, a nurse, never ran out at her hospital but was worried there wasn't going to be enough.

When companies like 3M tried to ramp up their Chinese plants and to ship that product to the US the shipments were blocked from leaving China. This one move by China should have been a wake up call to politicians.
TheDigitalAlchemist MAR 26, 05:32 PM
Why force small time shops to close but allow big box places to stay open? Local pharmacy can’t stay open, but the CVS gets a pass?

They should have allowed restaurants to stay open if they wanted and if you wanted to go in there, have at it.

I just don’t want to get this friggin’ thing and pass it to my kid or my mother-in-law because some dummy on the train didn’t wear a mask.
82-T/A [At Work] MAR 26, 05:58 PM

quote
Originally posted by maryjane:

The country is not destroyed. Not even close, but I know someone that thinks in a similar vein, that people that don't want to get tboned by a drunk drivers should just stay home and off the roads.

Another guy that had similar thoughts is mostly staying home nowadays, instead of traveling around the world on Air Force 1.





Sorry, your arguments are basically retarded. I know you live out in the sticks... but here in San Antonio, nearly every small restaurant and store went out of business. Most of them have been replaced by other businesses... but it had to do with people like you trying to determining who's important and who's not... when really, it was none of your business to even be making such assumptions.

We never should have locked down. I apologize for your lack of intelligence if you are unable to grasp this simple concept. If it helps you to go on talking about Q-Anon and looking at shirtless men, then by all means... do what makes you feel safe.
rinselberg MAR 26, 06:28 PM
Some news is still being published about San Antonio. There's even a section about Food & Drink:
https://www.sacurrent.com/s.../Section?oid=2240580

If you think a lot of small restaurants and other businesses went down because of the Covid lockdowns and restrictions, I shudder to imagine how many restaurants and businesses, small or large, would be vacant storefronts and real estate if there hadn't been any kind of lockdowns and restrictions. Remember going to a restaurant or other retail establishment before Covid? How many of the managers and staff were people in their 20s and 30s and looking in very good health--even so, still appreciably at risk from Covid--and how many were older?

I think it's especially wrong to be weighing in against the face mask mandates (or expectations) and other Covid restrictions affecting public spaces at this time, when the vaccination campaign is going well (for the most part) and we are likely only a few months away from the 75 percent level of vaccine immunity that would provide real confidence about "herd immunity." Dr Vin Gupta singled out July 4 as a milestone on the return to normalcy based on his expectations, but his expectations were based on continuing widespread adherence by the public to the most basic of the anti-Covid behaviors that many of us are accustomed to, including the continued wearing of face masks.

That's the reason that the Democrats in Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue or "Covid relief" Act.

Look to that--and not to the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers and anti-science cultists (etc.)
sourmash MAR 26, 06:42 PM

quote
Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]:
Sorry, your arguments are basically retarded. I know you live out in the sticks... but here in San Antonio, nearly every small restaurant and store went out of business. Most of them have been replaced by other businesses... but it had to do with people like you trying to determining who's important and who's not... when really, it was none of your business to even be making such assumptions.

We never should have locked down. I apologize for your lack of intelligence if you are unable to grasp this simple concept. If it helps you to go on talking about Q-Anon and looking at shirtless men, then by all means... do what makes you feel safe.



I get the impression he is Black or partially, which would explain the belief about people harming him if we don't wear masks. Just a hunch.
rinselberg MAR 26, 06:46 PM
"U.S. COVID response could have avoided hundreds of thousands of deaths: research"
Howard Schneider for Reuters; March 25, 2021.
https://www.reuters.com/art...conomy-idUSKBN2BH1DK


quote
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States squandered both money and lives in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and it could have avoided nearly 400,000 deaths with a more effective health strategy and trimmed federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars while still supporting those who needed it.

That is the conclusion of a group of research papers released at a Brookings Institution conference this week, offering an early and broad start to what will likely be an intense effort in coming years to assess the response to the worst pandemic in a century.

U.S. COVID-19 fatalities could have stayed under 300,000, versus a death toll of 540,000 and rising, if by last May the country had adopted widespread mask, social distancing, and testing protocols while awaiting a vaccine, estimated Andrew Atkeson, economics professor at University of California, Los Angeles.

He likened the state-by-state, patchwork response to a car’s cruise control. As the virus worsened people hunkered down, but when the situation improved restrictions were dropped and people were less careful, with the result that “the equilibrium level of daily deaths ... remains in a relatively narrow band” until the vaccine arrived.

Atkeson projected a final fatality level of around 670,000 as vaccines spread and the crisis subsides. The outcome, had no vaccine been developed, would have been a far-worse 1.27 million, Atkeson estimated.

The economic response, while mammoth, also could have been better tailored, argued University of California, Berkeley economics professor Christine Romer. She joins former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and several others from the last two Democratic administrations in criticizing the spending authorized since last spring, including the Biden team’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

While she said the federal government’s more than $5 trillion in pandemic-related spending won’t likely trigger a fiscal crisis, she worries that higher-priority investments will be deferred because of allocations to initiatives like the Paycheck Protection Program.

Those forgivable small business loans were “an interesting and noble experiment,” but were also “problematic on many levels,” including an apparent cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars for each job saved, she said.

“Spending on programs such as unemployment compensation and public heath was exactly what was called for,” she wrote, but other aspects, particularly the generous one-time payments to families, were “largely ineffective and wasteful.”


That's about half the text. The remainder is ON LINE at reuters(.com).

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 03-26-2021).]

rinselberg MAR 26, 07:08 PM
People who say "We never should have had any lockdowns or Covid restrictions" are (IMO) overlooking something kind of big.

A Covid patient's prognosis is better now than it was earlier on in the pandemic.

Earlier on in the pandemic they hadn't figured out that patients who were having difficulty breathing would benefit from being turned over to lie on their abdomens instead of on their backs. If memory serves me, it was a few months into the pandemic before they figured that out. So to say that there never should have been any lockdowns or Covid-restrictions . . . that thought should complete itself.

The monoclonal antibodies that are being used now were not available. They hadn't even been developed. They're still being underutilized.

Generally, the care and remedies available to Covid patients have improved, but only gradually during the course of the pandemic. It wasn't all there at the very beginning of the pandemic. Former President Trump himself might not be alive today, had he contracted Covid earlier on in the pandemic. (NYT, I think, has reported that his condition was even more serious than was ever officially communicated to the public.)

And part of the improving survival rate is because people can be moved to hospitals and treated in hospital and ICU facilities. The hospital beds and ICU facilities are not used up with Covid patients that are already there. Without the lockdowns and other Covid-restrictions . . . how would that aspect of it be looking, today?

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 03-26-2021).]

theBDub MAR 26, 07:44 PM

quote
Originally posted by sourmash:


I get the impression he is Black or partially, which would explain the belief about people harming him if we don't wear masks. Just a hunch.



Lmao!

Don is White, my man.

And masks work. Anyone can look up the research, or stay ignorant. Their choice.

It shouldn’t have ever been required, and businesses should have never been forced to shut down. But if we had semi-competent leadership at the time that could have put out consistent messaging, we wouldn’t have had so many deaths. Shame.
sourmash MAR 26, 08:20 PM
It also occurred to me that thebdubs and maryjane could be the same person.

How would I know what either looks like since until recently the place I post is in actual Fiero related forums.