If you believe anything that comes from China, well then it is clear there is no point in having a logical discussion with you.

Haha yes let's believe the garbage Infection numbers that some idiot intern in Beijing created in excel.

I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure you're mistaken about the governor's executive order. That being the case, I'm assuming you're okay with the masks now?

MassAggie97 said:

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Did you ever stop and think wearing a surgical mask while standing over a person cutting them open might be a good idea and is a high risk situation however walking by you at Home Depot Is not a remotely similar situation and may not require the same precautions.

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Nice re-direct, but you missed the point. The point is not that breathing into an open body during surgery is more/less dangerous than breathing on a complete stranger during a pandemic. The point was made to demonstrate that masks are an effective means of limiting vectors of contagion that are spread via water droplets that come out of your face. It was made to directly refute the implication, made by a previous poster, that masks are not effective against spread of COVID. And it sounds like you agree that's the case!

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It will take a while to find, but a surgeon on this site explained that it is BACTERIA they are mainly protecting from - not viruses. That's like comparing a bowling ball to a BB in the microbe world.

MassAggie97 said:

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And should be a choice...you know..freedom to choose...

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Should we allow people to "choose" their speed on the freeway? We allow TxDOT to choose speeds because they've done research on how to balance safety against expediency. There are plenty of issues where "choice" has been ceded to government agencies with expertise on the issue. This is really no different.

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They aren't on the freeway. There's no speed limit in someone's parking lot unless they put one there, Einstein.

MassAggie97 said:

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If walking by someone at the grocery store or HD without masks on results in the rampant spread of the disease then we've found our global killer that many have been predicting (except that for the vast majority this is a fairly mild disease).

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How do YOU think it spreads?

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If masks are so successful at stopping the spread then I cannot believe China would have had any issues at all with CV, they mask up at the drop of a hat.

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Compare China's case count and number dead to ours. You just proved my point. We're 4% of the world population, but 25% of cases and deaths. Why? We're the only country where a large number of people actually question whether barrier over the face can slow a disease that spreads by mucus and water droplets flying out of your face.

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LOL, China welded people in their apartments. Cuomo and other DemGovs made nursing homes take COVID-positive residents in.

We have more cases because of our freedoms and because we have tested 40MM people. I am sure you don't really trust China's numbers.

We have more deaths because Dems are stupid. Almost half our deaths are from Cuomo's decision alone.

China's case count...



Bwahahahahahahaha

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If you believe anything that comes from China, well then it is clear there is no point in having a logical discussion with you.

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No, but I also don't believe they fudged their numbers in such a way that they're anywhere close to ours. That would be damn near impossible in today's internet whistleblower culture.

MassAggie97 said:

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If you believe anything that comes from China, well then it is clear there is no point in having a logical discussion with you.

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No, but I also don't believe they fudged their numbers in such a way that they're anywhere close to ours. That would be damn near impossible in today's internet whistleblower culture.

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MassAggie97 said:

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I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure you're mistaken about the governor's executive order. That being the case, I'm assuming you're okay with the masks now?

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HEB wanted people to wear masks. My gym asks me to wear gloves. They are a private entity and I can chose to attend or not.

The EO that the governor signed is not limited to public land (where they do have authority), it is intended to force mask wearing in private companies open to the public. They can suck my left nut. They have no authority to mandate such a thing.

Lol...like I said...logical conversation with you would be a frivolous exercise.

Nitro Power said:

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Lol...like I said...logical conversation with you would be a frivolous exercise.

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They threw the doctors who tried to warn the world in jail. But I'm sure their case numbers are about right.

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Mom goes to store with mask on. Handles a product with virus on it. Touches her mask, virus now on mask. Leaves store, gets in car, tosses virus laden mask in passenger seat. Puts sanitizer on her hands. Goes to pick up daughter from daycare. Daughter gets in, handles mask, scratches her eye. Daughter now had covid. Days later, entire family has covid.

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In your hypothetical, the mask protected her at first contact. Your scenario, which relies on secondary contact, proves the point. No, masks will not protect people in every instance. However, you CHOSE to take the scenario in the direction of secondary contact. It's just as likely "mom" puts her mask in the door of the car like I do, and in the Texas heat once the car is turned off, the virus denatures very quickly.

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It will take a while to find, but a surgeon on this site explained that it is BACTERIA they are mainly protecting from - not viruses. That's like comparing a bowling ball to a BB in the microbe world.

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The vector for spread, for both the virus and the bacteria, is spit. That's the whole point. Throw away the size difference between a bacteria and a virus - either one would slip through any mask by itself. I think it would be a rare million-to-one shot for a single bacteria to fly out of somebody's face not housed in a river of spit.

MassAggie97 said:

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Mom goes to store with mask on. Handles a product with virus on it. Touches her mask, virus now on mask. Leaves store, gets in car, tosses virus laden mask in passenger seat. Puts sanitizer on her hands. Goes to pick up daughter from daycare. Daughter gets in, handles mask, scratches her eye. Daughter now had covid. Days later, entire family has covid.

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In your hypothetical, the mask protected her at first contact. Your scenario, which relies on secondary contact, proves the point. No, masks will not protect people in every instance. However, you CHOSE to take the scenario in the direction of secondary contact. It's just as likely "mom" puts her mask in the door of the car like I do, and in the Texas heat once the car is turned off, the virus denatures very quickly.

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It will take a while to find, but a surgeon on this site explained that it is BACTERIA they are mainly protecting from - not viruses. That's like comparing a bowling ball to a BB in the microbe world.

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The vector for spread, for both the virus and the bacteria, is spit. That's the whole point. Throw away the size difference between a bacteria and a virus - either one would slip through any mask by itself. I think it would be a rare million-to-one shot for a single bacteria to fly out of somebody's face not housed in a river of spit.

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The mask did not protect her, genius. You just make **** up, don't you?

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Lol...like I said...logical conversation with you would be a frivolous exercise.

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No problem I'm not really gaining anything from you either.

MassAggie97 said:

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Mom goes to store with mask on. Handles a product with virus on it. Touches her mask, virus now on mask. Leaves store, gets in car, tosses virus laden mask in passenger seat. Puts sanitizer on her hands. Goes to pick up daughter from daycare. Daughter gets in, handles mask, scratches her eye. Daughter now had covid. Days later, entire family has covid.

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In your hypothetical, the mask protected her at first contact. Your scenario, which relies on secondary contact, proves the point. No, masks will not protect people in every instance. However, you CHOSE to take the scenario in the direction of secondary contact. It's just as likely "mom" puts her mask in the door of the car like I do, and in the Texas heat once the car is turned off, the virus denatures very quickly.

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It will take a while to find, but a surgeon on this site explained that it is BACTERIA they are mainly protecting from - not viruses. That's like comparing a bowling ball to a BB in the microbe world.

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The vector for spread, for both the virus and the bacteria, is spit. That's the whole point. Throw away the size difference between a bacteria and a virus - either one would slip through any mask by itself. I think it would be a rare million-to-one shot for a single bacteria to fly out of somebody's face not housed in a river of spit.

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The CDC has studied it. It don't do sht to reduce the spread!

B-1 83 said:

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MassAggie97 said:

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If you believe anything that comes from China, well then it is clear there is no point in having a logical discussion with you.

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No, but I also don't believe they fudged their numbers in such a way that they're anywhere close to ours. That would be damn near impossible in today's internet whistleblower culture.

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Holy #$&@! I can't believe I just read that. There is ignorant, then there is MassAggie97 ignorant.....

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Dude is off the charts.

B-1 83 said:

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MassAggie97 said:

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If you believe anything that comes from China, well then it is clear there is no point in having a logical discussion with you.

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No, but I also don't believe they fudged their numbers in such a way that they're anywhere close to ours. That would be damn near impossible in today's internet whistleblower culture.

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Holy #$&@! I can't believe I just read that. There is ignorant, then there is MassAggie97 ignorant.....

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He's trying to surpass another poster by the initials of SP.

MassAggie97 doesn't understand the penalty in China for disobedience to the party.

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The mask did not protect her, genius. You just make **** up, don't you?

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Did you even read what I said? Did the mask protect her if you changed your hypothetical to "threw it in the door of the car" instead of "threw it wear her kid would be sitting later"? I can make up hypotheticals too. YOU made up the one where the woman touched her face but a mask was there instead of her face.

Gold Star ntxVol said:

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It's been 12 days, not quite 2 weeks yet but Houston's hospitals are nowhere near being overrun.

Why are we going backwards? We need to open everything up and let this thing run its course.

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After cancelling elective procedures and putting a mask mandate in place they have still seen a steady rise in the percentage of ICU patients that are COVID-19, from the teens to 44% as of yesterday.

They had to cancel elective procedures and shuffle beds to make room for the steady, still increasing, number of COVID-19 patients needing ICU.

Yes, capacity is being kept in check, but it is not back to normal at TMC. Hopefully they can continue to shuffle and keep capacity in check, unfortunately that's also at the expense of elective procedures.

"Everything is fine at TMC,return to normal" seems ignorant. The hospital themselves put out a statement saying please be cautious so we can keep things under control here.

The WHO has admitted that they found out about the Kung Flu from the Internet, not from the Chinese government.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/who-quietly-alters-coronavirus-timeline-to-indicate-it-first-learned-of-coronavirus-from-the-internet-not-the-chinese-government

you serious, Clark?

MassAggie97 said:

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The mask did not protect her, genius. You just make **** up, don't you?

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Did you even read what I said? Did the mask protect her if you changed your hypothetical to "threw it in the door of the car" instead of "threw it wear her kid would be sitting later"? I can make up hypotheticals too. YOU made up the one where the woman touched her face but a mask was there instead of her face.

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That hypothetical is real. Thats one of many reasons masks don't reduce spread. Dirty, Covid laced masks all over the damn place.

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That hypothetical is real.

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Awesome quote. I don't think "hypothetical" means what you think it means.

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Thats one of many reasons masks don't reduce spread. Dirty, Covid laced masks all over the damn place.

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Maybe you don't understand how these masks work. You're not supposed to share them with other people. I'm beginning to see the issue now.

ETFan said:

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Gold Star ntxVol said:

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It's been 12 days, not quite 2 weeks yet but Houston's hospitals are nowhere near being overrun.

Why are we going backwards? We need to open everything up and let this thing run its course.

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After cancelling elective procedures and putting a mask mandate in place they have still seen a steady rise in the percentage of ICU patients that are COVID-19, from the teens to 44% as of yesterday.

They had to cancel elective procedures and shuffle beds to make room for the steady, still increasing, number of COVID-19 patients needing ICU.

Yes, capacity is being kept in check, but it is not back to normal at TMC. Hopefully they can continue to shuffle and keep capacity in check, unfortunately that's also at the expense of elective procedures.

"Everything is fine at TMC,return to normal" seems ignorant. The hospital themselves put out a statement saying please be cautious so we can keep things under control here.

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The entire premise of this thread was that Houston's hospitals would exceed capacity in just 2 weeks. That's absolutely not happening. Yes, hospital administrators are having to manage elective surgeries because of the the additional load from the Chinese flu. THAT's THEIR JOB.

This thing isn't much different from a novel flu season. The CDC has a mountain of data for flu and pneumonia. The 2017-2018 flu season saw a novel flu pandemic and guess what, the numbers are comparable to what we are seeing now across the board. Hospitalization rate, mortality rate vs age, etc, etc. Mortality rate from that flu season will likely end up being higher than that from the Chinese flu.

The Chinese flu is big nothing burger, the medical community has this thing figured out, it's treatable. It's over, time to stop the madness, these disaster declarations are bull*****

MassAggie97 said:

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They've lost all credibility and this goes with the mask thing too. If someone is stupid enough to believe a lie after believing it the previous 9 times then they deserve what they get.

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I'm still waiting to hear an actual explanation of how a disease that is transmitted through water droplets flying out of your face when you cough or sneeze is NOT impacted by a barrier over your face when you are coughing and sneezing.

Speaking of stupid.....The whole surgical profession is built around masks being able to stop doctors and nurses from accidentally infecting surgery patients through their breathing, coughing, etc. It's been that way forever, yet now all of a sudden Texags forum 16 and the Trump party have decided that the doctors and nurses have just been wasting their time and money all these years. Think how "stupid" those medical professionals must feel.

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You might enjoy this review, then, as it may address your questions and concerns:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/

I've taken the liberty of cutting and pasting some of the most salient findings below.

Abstract:

The use of surgical facemasks is ubiquitous in surgical practice. Facemasks have long been thought to confer protection to the patient from wound infection and contamination from the operating surgeon and other members of the surgical staff. More recently, protection of the theatre staff from patient-derived blood/bodily fluid splashes has also been offered as a reason for their continued use. In light of current NHS budget constraints and cost-cutting strategies, we examined the evidence base behind the use of surgical facemasks.

Examination of the literature revealed much of the published work on the matter to be quite dated and often studies had poorly elucidated methodologies. As a result, we recommend caution in extrapolating their findings to contemporary surgical practice. However, overall there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination. More rigorous contemporary research is needed to make a definitive comment on the effectiveness of surgical facemasks.

Contemporary attitudes to the surgical mask

A contemporary questionnaire-based study, which attempted to assess the attitudes of surgeons, revealed that 96% of responders wore facemasks.1 About equal numbers did so with the primary aim of protecting the patients compared to protecting themselves. However, it was also found that 20% of responding surgeons wore the mask for the sole purpose of respecting tradition. Furthermore, 30% of responding surgeons felt that masks could make surgery more difficult by increasing breath condensation on spectacles, endoscopes and microscopes and thereby obscuring vision.

Protection of the patient

The facemask has been used in surgical settings for over a hundred years;2 first described in 1897, at its inception, it consisted merely of a single layer of gauze to cover the mouth,3 and its primary function was to protect the patient from contamination and surgical site infection. This practice was substantiated, at the time, by a recent discovery which demonstrated that bacteria could be disseminated from the nose and mouth during normal conversation as observed by bacterial colony growth on strategically placed agar plates in theatres. In the 1940s and 1950s, antibiotics and aseptic technique came to the forefront of infection control strategies within the surgical setting. Until recently, it has remained unclear as to whether bacterial colony growth on an agar plate was a direct correlate of surgical site infections and also whether the purpose of the surgical mask has been superseded by more modern strategies of infection control.

Intuition would suggest that facemasks offer a physical barrier preventing the emanation of droplets from the oral or nasal passages and therefore satisfy the efficacy requirement of the evidence ladder. However, there are a number of different hypotheses as to why this may not be the case. 'Venting' is a phenomenon whereby air leaks at the interface between mask and face which can act to disperse potential contaminants originating from the pharynx.5 The accumulation of moisture, during prolonged usage, may exacerbate this problem by increasing resistance to air flow through the filter itself. Moisture accumulation is also thought to facilitate the movement of contaminants through the material of the mask itself by capillary action. These bacteria can subsequently be dislodged by movement. Friction at the face/mask interface has also been demonstrated to disperse skin scales which can further contribute towards wound contamination

In the modern era, there has also been a scarcity of experimental evidence to support the effectiveness of facemasks in the prevention of surgical site infections. The earliest retrospective studies7 failed to demonstrate any statistically significant improvement in surgical site infection rates following the use of masks. Indeed, the latest National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on the matter do not require operating staff to wear a mask in theatre.[url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/#bibr8-0141076815583167][/url]

TLDR: There is very little evidence that facemasks protect the patient or surgeon, and what evidence does exist is very outdated. Surgeons who wear facemasks are 50/50 when it comes to the focus on whether they are protecting themselves or their patients; and, roughly 1/5th wear them out of respect for tradition. Societal expectations and erring on the side of caution, in light of poor data, are two big reasons for wearing facemasks during surgery. Studies on 4,000 patients with masked versus unmasked surgeons are included in Table 1, there was no statistically significant difference in outcomes between the two groups.

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Examination of the literature revealed much of the published work on the matter to be quite dated and often studies had poorly elucidated methodologies. As a result, we recommend caution in extrapolating their findings to contemporary surgical practice. However, overall there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination. More rigorous contemporary research is needed to make a definitive comment on the effectiveness of surgical facemasks.

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With regard to the first bolded sentence, "literature review" studies, or meta-analyses, are never a substitute for an actual controlled study. With regard to the 2nd bolded sentence, "lack of substantial evidence" from the literature is meaningless. There is probably "lack of substantial evidence" that spitting inside of a patient can spread disease, but that doesn't mean it is wise to spit into a patient. The fact that an overwhelming majority of surgeons choose to mask in the face of this study says it all.

Finally, there was a simple experiment done by a group on Facebook with masks and agar plates that was controlled, was pretty definitive, and took 1 day to carry out. You've probably seen it. Even better, it's been repeated several times now by different groups, using the same general experimental conditions, and getting the same result. That's experimental science.

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In the modern era, there has also been a scarcity of experimental evidence to support the effectiveness of facemasks in the prevention of surgical site infections.

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I would argue that this "finding" lacks merit, because as stated, a majority of surgeons wear masks. How are you going to test the null hypothesis of "no effect" if you can't find a control group of non-mask wearers? The examples in that paper are non controlled, and their sample sizes are too small to have any merit.

MassAggie97 said:

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Finally, there was a simple experiment done by a group on Facebook with masks and agar plates that was controlled, was pretty definitive, and took 1 day to carry out. You've probably seen it. Even better, it's been repeated several times now by different groups, using the same general experimental conditions, and getting the same result. That's experimental science.

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Funny, that's almost the same thing some Korean scientists did...except they specifically counted CV19 particles instead just showing off whatever random bacteria colonies popped up. They found that the viral loads expelled with/without masks were not significantly different.

But that paper was retracted...because the viral loads recorded were too low:

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We had not fully recognized the concept of limit of detection (LOD) of the in-house reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction used in the study (2.63 log copies/mL), and we regret our failure to express the values below LOD as "<LOD (value)." The LOD is a statistical measure of the lowest quantity of the analyte that can be distinguished from the absence of that analyte. Therefore, values below the LOD are unreliable and our findings are uninterpretable. Reader comments raised this issue after publication. We proposed correcting the reported data with new experimental data from additional patients, but the editors requested retraction.

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Toptierag2018 said:

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https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/proposed-early-warning-monitoring-and-mitigation-metrics/

What's the latest orders put in place in Harris County? I'm not up to date on them.

Houston is one of the biggest if not the biggest hub for medical care. This is scary.

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OMG, not sure how I missed this post, thank you OP. Is Houston now deciding who to save and who to kill based on limited ICU space?

I'm not sure I would quote a retracted article, especially one where the sample size is n=4 and the authors don't understand the mechanics of their own experiment. If you are running a quantitative PCR and don't know what a LOD score is, you have no business running a qPCR.

What difference does it make??? The oceans are rising!!! The OCEANS are RISING!!!