Reusable respirators will work well against any fast-spreading pandemic (assuming no ridiculously-long, asymptomatic incubation periods).
Florin
There seems to have been plenty of papers on airborne aerosol transmission of the flu and experiments with human subjects strongly suggested that the common cold is transmitted via aerosols. So, this makes it even more surprising that the experts got transmission so wrong and took forever to correct their mistake.
Yes, but your post seemed to focus on the individual, and that’s why I didn’t mention future humanity.
For humanity, it did go from no doom to maybe doom which is worse. And perhaps it’s worse for the individual in the long run too, but that’s a lot more speculative.
In any case, there’s still some hope left that our luck will last long enough to avoid doom, even if it will be by the skin of our teeth.
Until very recently, it was doom for every individual. Maybe-doom is a vast improvement.
And whatever happens, we’ll have the privilege of knowing how human history will have turned out.
The virus most likely leaked from the gain-of-function experiments that they were doing under BSL-2 and not from the BSL-3 or BSL-4 labs.
Third scenario: bat-to-researcher transmission during field work at bat caves or from the bat repository/colony or unaltered bat viruses at the labs in Wuhan.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html
It’s a tricky situation. As soon as Hong Kong relaxed its pandemic strategy, excess deaths exploded. Since China followed a similar (and even stricter) pandemic strategy, it seemed inevitable that the same thing would happen (all things being equal) and millions would die with many more millions becoming hospitalized. But all things might not be equal; the circulating strains of covid in China might be less lethal than when Hong Kong relaxed its own pandemic strategy. So, it could go either way.
The real problem here is that China is playing Russian roulette; rather than using more effective vaccines and respirators, its using less effective vaccines and poorly-performing masks instead. The expert consensus seems to correctly identity the vaccine problem but still mostly ignores the mask/respirator issue, as they’ve done throughout the pandemic.
I was referring to how docs do brain surgery (e.g., infection prevention procedures, what instruments are used, where incisions are made, etcetera) rather than error rates or second opinions. I highly doubt that many non-experts (even a very motivated brain cancer patient) could successfully determine the appropriateness of specific surgical techniques for brain surgery. And since brain cancer is rare, it’s low stakes from a societal or even a personal survival point of view (although, it will become high stakes if you’ll live a lot longer than the current lifespan).
Nah, bridges (see other reply) and rockets aren’t high stakes enough to be worth worrying about.
What kind of demise are you referring to?
Bridge building is nowhere near as important as cryonics (or more appropriately, “brain preservation” technology which may not involved cryonics at all), because brain preservation tech has the potential to save hundreds of millions and possibly billions of people from certain death. Even if you disagree, it is still potentially important for personal survival way more than bridge building.
My general heuristic is that the higher the stakes (especially for personal and societal survival), the more you need to check the expert consensus (especially for softer sciences such as medicine, sociology, and economics). Examples where expert opinion should be checked (and is or was probably wrong or misguided): cryonics, certain pandemic mitigation strategies, aging research, geoengineering. Examples where expert opinion probably shouldn’t be checked very often by non-experts: brain surgery, bridge building, rocket engineering, archeological excavation.
In most situations (with some exceptions like going to the dentist) and for nearly everyone (with some exceptions like people living in a nursing home), the level of risk remaining after taking reasonable efforts to protect oneself seems miniscule.
I suspect we mostly agree about this, and the apparent disagreement was caused by a misunderstanding.
So, let me clarify: what I tried to say is that as long as individuals can protect themselves, there is no compelling reason for society to force others to protect individuals or for others to voluntarily protect individuals in those situations in which individuals can protect themselves (I probably should have been more explicit about this to avoid any confusion). For instance, if you need a root canal, you obviously can’t protect yourself by wearing a respirator (and assuming that vaccines weren’t effective), and dental staff should wear respirators and perhaps also increase ventilation. In the case of flying, individuals can protect themselves by using a respirator, and there would be no point in having anyone else mask up. Earlier in the pandemic, having everyone mask in most situations was a good policy at the societal and individual level, but now it’s not for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.
You seemed to be talking about mask mandates versus individual responsibility, and that’s what I replied about. If you think my reply didn’t address your comment, can you rephrase it or point out why you think my comment wasn’t responsive?
If there were no reasonable ways (e.g., lack of respirators and/or vaccines) for an individual to protect themselves against covid, society could force everyone to protect individuals. The only reason why mask mandates (and associated NPIs) were ever a thing was that there were no other reasonable ways of protecting against covid. Now, there are other reasonable ways of protecting against covid, and that’s why mask mandates aren’t a thing anymore.
The CDC also says:
Most of these products have an ear loop design. NIOSH-approved N95s typically have head bands. Furthermore, limited assessment of ear loop designs, indicate difficulty achieving a proper fit. While filter efficiency shows how well the filter media performs, users must ensure a proper fit is achieved.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/NonNIOSHresults.html
Anything that has earloops (this includes most of the KN95s that I’ve seen and all KF94s) can’t be a respirator, because it’s nearly impossible to form a seal between the filter material and the face with the low amount of tension that earloops provide. There will be massive air leakage and the filtration efficiency will be much less than 95% (the minimum standard for most respirators), regardless of the filtration efficiency of the filter material itself.
For kids, options exist that are likely to be lot better than anything with earloops. Some KN95s do have head straps like N95s (but I’ve heard that a good seal is not easy to get around the nose due to the lack of a piece of foam which N95s often have). Kid-sized elastomeric respirator-like facepieces (like the Flo Mask and Aria 19) exist and some have been “tested to” N95 or higher standards (but not officially approved by any standards body, AFAIK). A PAPR that can fit anyone can be DIYed. Although it isn’t officially approved by any standards body either AFAIK, the seals and filtering material can be verified by the person that’s DIYing it.
The masks in your photo don’t look like respirators.
Also, KN95s aren’t respirators.
If respirators are widely available (even in the absence of vaccines), the responsibility for protection (especially for voluntary activities) falls on the person that doesn’t want to get infected.
If someone wants to protect others, they should wear ventless (or vented-but-filtered) respirators. Non-respirator masks provide little to no protection.
Also, this is a good time to practice using respirators to mitigate against much worse future pandemics which may kill or disable the young at similar rates to the old.
You might want to consider adding additional protection measures (like a respirator), as the effectiveness of some vaccines can be moderate to non-existent. The effectiveness of the flu vaccine in years when its well-matched to the circulating strains is between 40% and 60%, and when the vaccine is not well-matched, it’s protection against illness plummets, although it may still offer some protection against complications such as pneumonia. Vaccines don’t exist for bad colds and the stomach flu.