Did you link the study? If so, which post (I missed it, but I tend to read quickly at times)?
But really, only those who have tested positive are worth a scientific study of long Covid vs a study of the mind. I have a neighbor who will insist she had Covid back in the fall of 2019… That’s not a Covid study no matter how much she insists it’s been around long before it was discovered.
D2’s fiance worries he may have long Covid because months later, he still has congestion. However, after speaking to him in more depth about it, I think he may actually just have gotten “addicted” to Afrin. When used over too long a period, people begin to experience rebound nasal swelling, which induces them to continue to use it to gain relief. I told him he needs to wean himself off of it.
I’m seeing him Sunday, so I will ask him how it’s going.
Given your refusal/inability to wear masks except when mandated, I am not sure that your personal experience tells us much about the effectiveness of kn95 masks. There is plenty of research indicating that they are effective. While they may not be as effective against omicron as against previous variants, they are loads more effective than no mask at all.
Likewise regarding your comments about one person wearing kn95 vs. two people wearing surgical masks. Two people properly wearing kn95 masks more effectively prevent spread than when only one of them is wearing a kn95 mask.
Likewise regarding your comments on masks only protecting against a small viral load, and your comparison of wearing a mask vs. staying six feet away. Protection against a small viral load can be a lifesaver (in either direction), and those two preventative measures are not necessarily an either/or proposition.
Regarding your claim about “the lack of a clear pattern,” and setting politics aside, if one focuses on the time period after vaccines became readily available, there is a strong correlation between lack of remedial covid measures and covid deaths and serious illnesses. There are studies upthread exploring this.
Likewise regarding those who try to diminish the proven effectiveness of a simple measure like correctly wearing mask, for the protection of oneself and those around.
The problem I see with mask mandate studies is that so many don’t mask even when it is mandated. Our school had a mask mandate, but the list of those exempt just in the high school was over 100 students long (around 1300 students). Teachers weren’t allowed to keep one group away from the other even in the classroom. Covid was certainly present in the school, but are we in the mandate group? If so, why? It only takes a few not doing it to negate the whole thing.
We had indoor mask mandates for a while outside of school and there were plenty of people ignoring them in grocery stores, post offices, and convenience stores. Restaurants were supposed to be closed for indoor dining and a fair number stayed open. Do our numbers get counted with PA as being a mandated state? Because locally, you couldn’t tell.
One needs very high compliance for mask mandates to be effective. I never saw it where I live. I have seen it elsewhere in our travels, and those places tend to have really good numbers TBH.
Hawaii is the only state that has retained an indoor mask mandate for adults ( other than public transportation facilities), I believe. Many large school districts have removed them, but some still remain.
You are conflating masks and what they do and vaccines and what they do. Did you think I was arguing that vaccines are not fantastic at reducing Covid mortality? You are incorrect. Vaccines are the number one, best (imo) weapon against hospitalization and death from Covid. Mask mandates do not produce differing covid waves between states. Vaccines produce wildly different outcomes. Two totally different things.
I think what @mtmind means is this as an example:
There was a link to a study upthread by Dr. Makary, which another poster referenced, saying natural immunity is superior to vaccination. This study is a junk study by someone with a known bias and therefore all his work should be viewed with skepticism. Kind of like if a tobacco company came out with a study saying tobacco doesn’t cause lung cancer. It’s one of the first things you are trained to do when you participate in journal clubs. Evaluate the data and look for bias.
I’m not “conflating” anything. Nor, IMO, am I “incorrect.” Please don’t twist my post into something it is not. Vaccines and boosters are effective. So are masks. The two aren’t mutually exclusive and there is no reason to treat them as such in this discussion, nor is their reason to contrast their relative levels of effectiveness.
It is safer for oneself and others to be vaccinated, boosted, and masked than it is to be vaccinated, boosted and unmasked. This is especially true in areas where many are not vaccinated or masked. And while it may not be true in your particular case, there is a correlation between unmasked and unvaccinated.
Hawaii is lifting its indoor mask mandate this month.
Despite its constant influx of visitors from around the US and World, Hawaii’s various measures have been relatively effective in controlling the negative impacts of Covid.
Another perspective on the movement away from masking.
Hawaii had a"constant influx of visitors"? The hospitality industry would disagree.
Dr. Marty Makary is a surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University. He writes for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and is the author of two New York Times bestselling books, Unaccountable and The Price We Pay. Dr. Makary served in leadership at the World Health Organization Patient Safety Program and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Clinically, Dr. Makary is the chief of Islet Transplant Surgery at Johns Hopkins. He is the recipient of the Nobility in Science Award from the National Pancreas Foundation and has been a visiting professor at over 25 medical schools. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed scientific articles and has served as on several editorial boards.
Dr. Makary is the recipient of the 2020 Business Book of the Year Award by the Association of Business Journalists for his most recent book, The Price We Pay. It has been described by Don Berwick as “a deep dive into the real issues driving up the price of health care” and by Steve Forbes as “A must-read for every American”.
Dr. Makary serves as a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a professor, by courtesy, at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. His current research focuses on the underlying causes of disease, public policy, health care costs, and relationship-based medicine.
That happened to my husband when he was in college. Thankfully it was not hard to get unaddicted.
Yep. Since vaccinations became readily available, domestic travel to Hawaii has returned to close to its pre-pandemic levels. International travel is still somewhat lower, but nonetheless there has been a constant influx of visitors to Hawaii.
As for Dr. Makary, he has repeatedly trafficked in false, misleading, and downright dangerous covid-misinformation. How many people have died or become seriously ill from Covid since last February, when he declared in the WSJ that “We’'ll have Herd Immunity by April”? We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April - WSJ
And…in his study, an example of how he twists data to serve his purpose and then let others, such as the poster on this thread, run with it as fact:
So his study states natural immunity lasts that long?
First, he used selection bias by finding participants from ads on Facebook and Twitter? Is he preferentially selecting his followers, i.e. people that think like him? Sure sounds like it, and when you look at the demographics of his participants, his own data support this. Second, people self reported data. Ok, how many people self report correctly? Well if you can hold your nose for those two, fine. But’s here’s the kicker. He followed people and found antibodies from natural immunity for up to 20 months after infection. But he could not and did not exclude that the people who had antibodies for that length of time did not have repeat infections. Maybe they had another infection 6 months after the first. That would have bumped the antibody levels up again, just like a booster would do. Perhaps they had another infection right before participating in the study. If you can’t exclude the possibility of repeat infection, then you can’t prove that antibodies last 20 months. So it’s a junk study. Yet he puts it out there and his followers state this as fact. From someone with a bias. And now people believe this as fact. His own data says people will have had a repeat infection and not even know it: 11% of the people in the study had covid and didn’t even know it. And - only 14% of people in the study routinely wore masks. This was during Delta. Everyone should have been routinely wearing masks at that time (again - selection bias at play). All of this supports repeat infections in people - they are putting themselves at risk of reinfection by lifestyle choices. One infection only in this crowd? Absolutely not!
And if anyone wants to disagree with anything above - be careful. It’s all from his study. And in his own words - taken directly from his study: “Study limitations include lack of direct neutralization assays, the fact that antibody levels alone do not directly equate to immunity,4,6 the cross-sectional study design, a convenience sample with an unknown degree of selection bias due to public recruitment, self-reported COVID-19 test results, the study population being largely White and healthy, and lack of information on breakthrough infections.”
So yes, this is an example of misleading people.
I would agree with this. We just got back (yesterday) from a month-long trip to Oahu followed Maui.
We stayed in Waikiki for 4 nights and aside from fewer international weddings, it was surprisingly active. Since we were escaping the cold of the Chicago area, we walked outside a lot. We saw fairly uniform mask compliance and surprisingly, quite a few pedestrians wore them outside on the sidewalks in the shopping areas on Kalakaua. The restaurants we ate at, expensive and casual, consistently checked vaccination cards and IDs. People wore masks to the table and then removed them to eat. It felt quite reassuring and I believe it contributed to a fun, relaxed atmosphere. The street performers were out doing their thing. There were a couple of weddings during our stay. And while we saw few masks at the outdoor reception…staff wore masks.
The biggest change at our hotel (we go every yr, except 2021) was that the brunch switched from an all-you-can-eat buffet to a set menu, delivered to your table.
The rest of the trip we were on Maui. We ate inside at a restaurant at only one place (Lahaina Grill) and they checked vaccine cards and IDs. There was more spacing and plexiglass up in certain locations that was new since our previous trip in Feb 2020. At all the outside locations, people wore masks to tables and the general atmosphere was relaxed. The non-confrontational compliance to the rules fostered a great atmosphere. In my opinion it’s the individuals who angrily try to defy the rules who spoil it for everyone else.
Last point I wanted to share about my trip to Hawaii concerning the return of tourists is that the locals and the hospitality workers I spoke with, were all in agreement that things are pretty much “back to normal”. The Hyatt Regency guy said they’ve been about 90-100% occupancy for a while now, including large convention groups. The Ritz-Carlton is also hosting large groups as evidenced by the large canopied spaces that are erected for their special events. I actually spoke and saw many of them on our flight back to Chicago. You couldn’t miss them with their large framed awards. Lol.
The article on the high risk Americans has not changed my perspective on their plight. I have talked once about one of my good friends who has taken 4 Covid shots as he is on immuno-suppressants and still recovers from 2 different cancers and chemotherapy. He talked often about expecting the world to go away from masks as soon as it was possible and we watched it happen in our area last spring while he continuing to live with N95 masks and the precautions that he lives with daily. I have watched him still volunteer at his church, go to Braves playoff games (over 90% of the attendees were unmasked during the World Series) and continue to live his life while taking many precautions since getting vaccinated. But I know others who would consider his lifestyle to be risky. For people in his situation, even the common cold/flu could morph into something dangerous, but we did not mask for those folks 5 years ago in public is the way he thinks about his own situation.
I also visited my grandfather who has my Mom as his caretaker at his home recently and I quarantined myself from the outside world for a week just to be safe before driving to my hometown to see him while being masked. I asked him about his own feelings and he said that “the world has to keep spinning, son” He is protected in his own world (his home), but he doesn’t expect the outside world to change what it is doing on account of his personal medical issues when there are no mask mandates for the public at large in his area.
copy and paste URL in to be able to read paywalled articles. I use it for NYT articles. JFYI.
I’m jealous, and glad to hear things are moving more toward normalcy. I was there during the pre-Delta lull when there were still a lot of restrictions in place, and know many people who had been there then and since. (Most I know chose Hawaii because of the restrictions, not despite them.) Rental cars were impossible to find, restaurants were limited capacity so reservations were tough to get, but other than that it was business as usual even then. Overall, though, it was comforting and relaxing to be somewhere that was doing its best to protect the locals and guests while still staying at least somewhat open for business.
And this is what my original comment was about. Despite the continuous influx of people from outside the state, Hawaii has managed to keep its cases and deaths way down compared to the rest of the country. The restrictions not only provided with a level of comfort and confidence for those visiting and working there, the restrictions also seem to have been relatively effective from a health and safety perspective.
This isn’t to say there has been no adverse economic impact, or a continuing decrease in the number of International visitors. There has been. It is a pandemic, for goodness sake. But Hawaii has navigated it more safely and effectively than most places.
[I was challenged in a private message for “cherrypicking” the domestic passenger count (even though the overwhelming number of visitors are domestic, and that many of the International restrictions are beyond Hawaii’s control.) So, for full disclosure, here is the chart of total incoming passengers.
!(upload://yp4ynttQAN85RF7TF88VAwmg2JC.png)
As you can see (and as I mentioned in my previous post) them total numbers aren’t yet quite up to normal due to the drop in international visitors, but since vaccinations became readily available there have been tens of thousands of visitors arriving in Hawaii daily, and close to normal numbers during peak seasons. Given my point was about health and safety, and not to fully assess the extent of economic impact of the pandemic, not sure what it adds, but nonetheless there it is. In either chart own can see that there has been a “constant influx” of visitors to Hawaii since vaccinations became readily available.
@ChangeTheGame, while I don’t totally agree, I understand your perspective. I wasn’t expecting the linked article to change many views, but nonetheless wanted to provide another point of view that isn’t always given voice in these discussions. To my mind it adds some perspective when considering the views of healthy, low risk individuals who are outraged and angry that they would be asked to do something as simple as wear a mask.
