Step on Mars but not on snek.
So they just deny space exploration. Easy.
Fossils, also fake
Flat earthers and moon landing deniers have entered the chat…
While using a smartphone with nano chips and GPS, based on satellites and Einstein’s General Relativity.
I recently had some guy rattle off 10 stupid reasons why we never landed on the moon in a row. I have never heard a more clear example of the fallacy of verbosity. One of them was "We didn’t have automatic windshield wipers for cars in the 60’s so there is no way we had the technology to go to the moon. "
I swear to god his reasons were that stupid and he had a ton of them.
The Saturn V moon rocket first flew in 1967, first carried a crew in 1968 and flew the first moon landing in 1969.
Bernard Sadow patented the first suitcase with wheels in 1972.
That sounds like some pure uncut Dunning-Kruger there!
white hoods covering the whole head are ruined too
Ship no go. Can you make it go?
Best interaction with an antimasker:
Them: masks don’t work
Me: We’ll I’m going to wear one anyway
Them: Well then you’re just traping the germs against your face
Me: so you’re saying they block germs?
They even stated the correct reason to wear a mask: to trap the germs against my face, so others don’t get infected
It’s like they don’t compute the idea behind it, it stops at me me me
My favorite reply to them is that it’s America and I can do whatever I want, I’ll call them snowflakes too whenever appropriate. They get pissed when you insinuate they’re anti American lul.
Well, it’s only fair, seeing as they ARE anti-American.
John Stewart’s latest show did a great job pointing this out. “Pro-constitution” redco- hats supporting a dictatorship and ignoring the fundamentals of the constitution.
i’ve just recently seen the same with pro 2a people. It was on a video about inclusive gun safety training, because the 2a is quite literally, for everyone. SO many people in the comments were saying something along the lines of “well if we trained them, then they might kill us”
Yeah no shit. What do you think they thought of you prior to this moment huh? Just utter fucking ignorance for anything more than a mere shred of intellectual thought being put into whatever they say. Not to mention that this is borderline authoritarian policy by nature but that’s the other funny part.
Didn’t gun control ramp up when the Black Panthers started exercising their rights to bear arms? Funny thing is the Panthers seem much more like a “well-regulated militia” than this Wild West, permitless carry, anything goes BS.
exactly. gun control only started when minorities started exercising their right to bear arms. The right don’t want gun control laws until the groups they are trying to oppress start exercising their second amendment rights.
i mean, that’s also perfectly legal under 2A, 90% of the time gun control is related to regulation in regards to owning, rather than the ability to the own it period. Which is another argument all together tbh.
I wouldnt know much about the specifics of that group though, only that it has to do with civil rights from memory lol.
I think they actually do understand but don’t have enough empathy with other people to see it as their responsibility to protect other people from their viruses.
Not that someone as perfect as them would ever sick enough to potentially infect others…
This. So much of this. I can’t even convince family members to not go and socialize with dozens of others while they are sick! Five years ago, I would have bet my life’s savings and every appendage I have that I would get the correct answer if I asked someone whether illnesses spread through contact with or being near a sick person.
Claims are not evaluated, in the loyalist worldview. They’re not arguments. They’re slogans. You shuffle your cards and say whatever might justify the ingroup being fundamentally superior to the outgroup. Because of course, it is impossible for someone to simply be wrong. That would require evaluating claims. No: truth is dictated by people above you. They must be right and smart and handsome, or they wouldn’t be above you. Any challenge, any criticism, any disagreement, is a personal attack. You are calling someone lesser.
And I say “you” because these people think this is all we’re doing. They think that’s all there is. It’s reality as a team sport.
Removed by mod
Or, more likely, they’re selfish jerks who don’t care about anyone else. “The greater good? What’s that?”
Someone once told me that the box in which masks came in says “doesn’t protect from viruses”, as if it was hidden-in-plain-sight proof that masks don’t work.
Yeah, they don’t protect the user from viruses, they protect other people. The box is technically correct, Patricia, there is no conspiracy here.
It is humorous that these people think that they have some secret knowledge that only they know and they feel so much power because of it. Except that the information they know is incorrect and they just end up looking like an idiot.
Not in their own minds, and that is all that matters. Also not to their church members, sadly:-(.
Perception is reality and they cannot perceive a reality in which they aren’t always correct.
I mean, I would not say that it is reality, just that they act like it is - except even that much is not true, b/c when they get REALLY sick, they finally show up at a hospital begging to be saved. So even they know, deep down, where the medicine is at. Cognitive dissonance is a horrific, terrible thing:-(.
… Which masks? N95 will totally filter viruses, no?
They will, but you have to follow some protocols, like not having beard where the masks is supposed to seal around your face, not using it more than ~3 times (iirc), not trying to clean it (just let it rest for some days on a clean surface) and etc.
Basically always seal testing.
Also, iirc the N stands for not oil resistant, so any oil staining ruins it. I’d guess that includes sneezing on it.
Not to mention skin is chock full of oils
Please stop you’re going to break them! 😂
While it is fun to tweak their titties with this, it will make zero difference on their position because their position wasn’t arrived at by rational thought.
Their actual position is that they don’t give a fuck about anyone other than themself. Everything they claim to believe is just a rationalization they think will sound good to someone else. All they care about is what they can convince others.
While there is some nuance between people, you pretty spot on.
Weaponized magical thinking.
My favorite interactions was going into Walmart.
It was mid/early spring, right as things were starting to lockdown. I wasn’t wearing a jacket cuz it was glorious out.
Some old boomer lady started harassing me over not wearing a jacket and blah blah blah.
She wouldn’t shut up, and was blocking me from walking in, so I faked a sneeze. The look of horror on her face as she fled.
(And I’m pretty sure that was also the fastest time in and out of a Walmart…)
Why did she have a problem with you not wearing a jacket? What am I missing here?
it was in the 40’s f (4-10 c) and it was still winter. Spring in MN, that’s T-shirt weather. but boomer’s just can’t not treat middle-aged men like children.
You are truly evil… and this story was glorious, thanks for sharing it!:-P
The reality is that you can easily get infected through a mask, but the viral load is much lower
Also if all the people around you are wearing masks in addition to yourself, then it’s way way lower
as the meme states actually, the point of masks isn’t really to protect yourself, that’s a marginal side benefit, the point is to protect everyone else from your pestilence ridden breath of death.
watching videos that show how particulate from your breath spreads with and without just literally anything in front of your mouth is disgusting, unblocked your breath carries spittle several METERS in front of you, like the world’s most disgusting sprinkler put sideways.
For some reason anti-maskers think that getting shot once and getting shot 276,000,000 times are equally bad
Aha, but if every bullet is a killer bullet then it is exactly the same.
Checkmate atheists.
I tried explaining this to a friend who was convinced masks do nothing. He would say stuff like “if it can still get through then what’s the point”. He claimed only people at risk should wear them.
if you can still die while wearing a seatbelt what’s the point
you should make him eat poop
since he consumes a non-zero amount of fecal bacteria just like everyone else
not eating poop does nothing
You’re assuming these people believe we even send things to space. I had a serious ass conversation recently with my father’s roommate. Typical conspiracy theorist ding dong. Full on flat earther and everything. I asked him how he thinks GPS works if the earth was flat. He admitted he didn’t know but then when I started to explain how it works by pinging satellites we put up in space he cut me off and said space isn’t real. Like legitimately thinks space isn’t real. He on a separate occasion also complained that we didn’t need to wear masks during covid because we apparently make our own viruses in our bodies and viruses don’t spread between people.
These people don’t even understand how logic works. Let alone that people could be smarter than they are.
We should just start jettisoning these people into space
There’s always been crazy and stupid people. And then we gave them the internet to connect and to have a voice. Now they feed of each other’s crazynies and believe they run the world.
Only way to fight this is education. Give people the ability to see through crazy. You’re not born with common sense. It’s taught and learned.
Not a solution but it is fun to put a flat-earther with a hollow-earther and say Earth is a ball. Then you grab some popcorn.
Well, if you reject all knowledge you cannot obtain through direct observation, you can kinda start to understand how they ended up where they are.
They’re intimidated by the scientific method.
Many of them are religious and believe plenty of things they didn’t directly observe. It’s more that they have been trained through religious thinking that if someone confidently claims something it must be more true than someone who honestly admits that “it is the best we can know right now and we will update our understanding as we obtain more evidence.” These people need the answer now and that answer can’t change because changing your opinion based on new evidence is seen as weakness and opinions should be handed down from on high and never change.
Tbh, it’s really your fault for choosing to interact with this person more than once.
yeah, god forbid you try to break down the echo chamber existing between parties for the benefit of public good.
Fuck you, be a good robot for the party and STICK ONLY WITH THE PEOPLE I DEMAND YOU TO STAY WITH.
I am reasonably sure that a fair many conservatives feel that they are entitled to their biases and fallacies and the world must bend to these biases.
It’s deeper than that, they literally believe they can change objective reality by believing hard enough.
That’s why they excuse all of their bad acts, if they ignore it, it doesn’t exist to them.
Negative object permanence.
Too bad they can’t make tulpas with that power
You can, and they’re useful, and tulpa is a stupid fucking name. There I said it.
The only thing about them is that they are really only useful for organizing parts of yourself that you are not consciously aware of. You can’t manifest a slenderman IRL but you can make a mind palace and vastly improve your memory, or go on spirit journeys and learn how to forgive.
It’s all in your head but that doesn’t make it any less real.
Currency and democracy are ideas made manifest, and all they are is shared ideas in our heads.
What’s the point of using my mind to create something internal? It would be better if I could just twist reality with a thought. Smh.
It’s complicated and if I fully explain it to you, it won’t work as well for you.
Google ‘mind palace’ and start playing with the practice. It’s really just a fun imagination game that can actually improve your memory drastically.
I’ll just look for a chaos magic grimoire at this point
I think you are right. I believe it is somehow related their obsessive belief in their religion.
I am not saying that all religious people are bad. But, somehow, these people excuse their bad behaviour by quoting scriptures. There has to a correlation too.
No, their religion is a paper thin pretext. They don’t actually do anything the Bible says to do, and they do a FUCKTONNE of what the Bible explicitly prohibits.
And I’m so tired as a progressive Christian of these cuntservative evangelicals convincing all of the internet that any theist is a mouth foaming bigot.
Behold: what religion does to a person’s mind.
Fauci is to blame. The path of evil is paved in good intention.
The fucker told everyone that they didn’t need masks.
What he was intending to do was make sure doctors and emergency personnel had masks. instead, it became an inflection point or publicly dividing the nation.
Well, then there was the intent to let it run its course, as it was only hitting blue states at that time… it was a bit of a cluster…
Do you recall the people hoarding and trying to profit off of toilet paper, alcohol sanitizer, Clorox wipes? 
Reluctance against masks was not unique to the USA
Exactly. The surgeon general tweeted out, “STOP WEARING MASKS” and CNN was publishing articles with all the anti-masker claims, including that they don’t work and could increase your risk of getting it instead, and people just pretend like it never happened and the anti-maskers came out of thin air.
It wasn’t just an idiotic ploy to deliberately spread misinfo to trick people into leaving masks for doctors, it was also about the government trying to cover their own ass for having sold off their emergency stockpiles for fast cash.
This is also misinformation. Fauci, et al, were going based on the current NIH guidance at the time, taken from the original SARS virus, which was that improper mask use was potentially more dangerous due to the risk of cross contamination. In this case there was actually strong evidence that a significant number of cases in healthcare settings were coming from contaminated PPE.
At the time, it was thought that it was primarily surface contact which spread the virus, or at least that this was a major source of spread. Now imagine that your average idiot with one improperly fitted mask was told to use masks. They would touch contamination surfaces, touch their mask, and then bring that mask into their car and their house, contaminating those surfaces as well. Given what we knew at the time, this was considered a very serious risk.
Once we understood that airborne spread was a bigger threat, they updated the science. If they are guilty of anything, it was failing to properly explain the nuance of the above reasoning, though in their defense, there was a giant orange idiot taking up most of the oxygen in the room.
The worst part is it was very clearly worded. People had to purposely, disingenuously misinterpret it. So of course they did.
Let’s be real, the misinfosphere would’ve have found something else to misguide the morons. He didn’t even say “you don’t need masks”, he said “don’t buy all the masks, stay inside”
It’s such a bad idea to prioritize medical personnel having masks. There’s no way they would become high-risk vectors with the multitude of sick people they handle daily. /s
I think the much deeper reason is, that stupid people can’t fathom that knowledge can change. They can’t understand that scientists legitimately didn’t know better, despite their best efforts. They can’t accept, that scientists come to other conclusions based on new data, instead they assume some ulterior motive.
It didn’t change. Why are you taking nonsense.
Fauci openly admits he lied. He knew they protected people and he didn’t essential workers aren’t people. Best to save the life boats for the important people.
https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-directive-coronavirus
Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected
Dr. Fauci
Seems a totally reasonable response when we had folks hoarding and scalping toilet paper. Stay home was always better advice than go out masked, esp at the beginning.
It must have been nice to have that privilege to stay home.
And folks who could not were folks who needed masks - not sure why this is so hard.
Also - that’s your goto? Shaming folks for doing what was recommended when they could? How did we even get here from pretending Fauci was doing anything other than dispensing what was believed to be the best advice available at the time.
What a ridiculous response. Please just move along. I know I am.
Yes, but the point is, a government official GASLIT THE PUBLIC, which gave a HUGE validation boost to the conspiracy nuts.
He directly aided morons in spreading their moronery, which is the exact opposite purpose of his entire fucking job. IMO he was criminally neglegent.
Except the public official didn’t gaslight anyone who actually paid attention to what he said. Fauci made the right call asking people to prioritize social distancing over masks in the initial phases of the pandemic so that medical personnel would have enough.
He didn’t say “you don’t need masks”
He didn’t say “masks don’t work”
He didn’t say “don’t wear masks at all”Furthermore, the WHO also advised against wearing masks initially, for the same reasons. They were actually more against the efficacy of masks, but backtracked that opinion after more data came out.
Like what is this take? Really? The only people who have a hate boner for Fauci coincidentally don’t know a fucking thing he said, and are going to believe what makes their fee fees hurt less anyway.
He was handed a deadly pandemic while dealing with the most corrupt and incompetent leadership our country has ever seen. He did alright. If only Obama was still in office at the time.
Right, because dishonest actors exist, his job as a public health policy communicator was directly subverted by himself for making such an increadibly unwise blunder of giving them ammunition.
His job is to not give public health measures a bad image, and he failed completely.
Just because professionals made a mistake does NOT magically absolve them of the blundering mistake.
I mean, I’ll reiterate this- he made the right call. At the very first stage of the pandemic, shortage of medical supplies was a big deal. Gloves, respirators, masks, everything.
Medical providers need to have those things to do their jobs. Otherwise, they get sick. And when the doctors are sick, you start to have real problems.
Faci’s only downfall was existing in a world filled to the brim with dipshits, in a country being led by a dipshit that encouraged the worst of the dipshits.
He told people, “the doctors need the masks”, which was 100% true- then the fucking president refused to wear one. Blaming Fauci for the army of dipshits following trump is disingenuous, he was the only person in that administration that ever spoke any kind of factual information.
You can declare he made the right call all you want, but it well never evaporate the fact that it caused many, many idiots to not wear masks throughout the entire time people were paying attention to covid.
The ENTIRE DIFFICULT PART of communication is not being easily misconstrued. He hedged his words so poorly and clipchimped himself to hell. That is utterly irresponsible out of a professional communicator. That’s his job, and he failed.
Those idiots would have never worn masks in the first place regardless what Fauci said.
Comprehension of the underlying reasons for a particular set of events or advice isn’t really a conspiracy nut’s bread and butter. That’s why they’re idiots and professionals aren’t to blame. Keeping the healer alive is a pretty basic strategy and Fauci was right to do it.
His one job is to not give public health measures a bad image, and he did the exact opposite by gaslighting. It’s amazing how people are defending being gaslighted. Pathetic.
Your understanding of gaslighting isn’t quite right.
He started with gaslighting. Then he EVENTUALLY corrected himself in poorly phrased ways that were far too easy to clipchimp his message ib to oblivion.
I do not care how much anyone respects him or doctors. I don’t care what word you think would apply. His job was a communicator, and he failed miserably.
In a March 8, 2020, interview, Fauci stated that “right now in the United States, people [who are not infected] should not be walking around with masks”, but “if you want to do it, that’s fine”. In the same interview, Fauci said that buying masks “could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need” them: “When you think masks, you should think of healthcare providers needing them”
Yikes. Apparently he did gaslight people in the time between stating his position and then explaining it.
What really happened was bad actors circulated edited clips of this video, out of context, around Facebook and other social media sites. Lots of folks, apparently you included, ate it up and have been happy customers at the propaganda buffet ever since.
Fauci is a human being who gave advice, then changed his mind when more information became available. He did not invent the virus.
Well you have to let the virus out if you want to get rid of it. Why do you think there’s that saying about having to pass a cold along?
Big Cold is just a dolled-up ponzi scheme, I tells ya
People act like their mamas never told 'em to cover their damned mouths when they cough or sneeze. It’s the same damned thing, only masks work much better at keeping your filthy germs from infecting other people.
Common sense ain’t common, they say, and this anti-mask nonsense is just proof that it’s true.
People act like their mamas never told 'em to cover their damned mouths when they cough or sneeze
Nor to wash their hands before eating (or even after going to the toilet.)
You learn that most people are disgusting the first time you use a crowded public bathroom.
I tried explaining universal precautions to a pastor of a church I was attending, and pointed out that there is a Christian commandment to love one’s neighbor that overrides one’s personal desires. He could not dispute my points, but he also didn’t do anything to implement safety procedures.
Guess who left the church after the unsurprising COVID outbreak?
I realize a lot of people here aren’t believers, but my point is that even within the context of religion or common wisdom, masks make sense.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how decades of lead in gasoline, pipes, and in other places likely damaged generations of people’s ability to reason. I’m sincerely beginning to think this is a bigger problem than we’ll ever truly know.
Or lick their hands when handling money
But don’t you know? Having symptoms like “drier mouth,” “fogged glasses,” and “smelling your own breath” are much more dangerous than a virus that killed a million Americans at least.
What it really tells me it that the mouth breathers are crazier than we gave them credit for.
Lot of over lap with anti-maskers and young earth flat earthers.
Are we really still pretending the mask I got from the front bin of Home Depot actually works?
Can we look at the other claims the government “scientists” claimed to see how they were not real scientists?
What? Yes? Home Depot sells N95 masks. Protection is why they exist.
Are we really pretending this metal saw blade I got from the front bin of Home Depot actually cuts things? I’m skeptical.
Most people didnt use N95 masks, they used random cloth ones and the surgical looking ones. The N95 masks are actually really good for dust, I use them all the time.
they used random cloth ones and the surgical looking ones. The
While not as good as a properly fitted N95, they are still more effective than no mask at reducing the spread of airborne particles from the wearer.
Remember that masks were always mostly about protecting others, not so much about protecting the wearer. And I think that’s where the loudest resistance came from - selfish people who don’t give a fuck about the wellbeing of other people.
Great, can you quantify how effective they were? So the issue is that if almost all infection happened not in public and cloth masks are marginally useful, what the point of wearing them in public if there is no measurable benefit?
Imagine still trying to start mask debates in 2024.
And yet here you are…
If you don’t know the difference between starting a debate and pointing out the ridiculousness of the topic then I guess that explains the obsession.
Just out of curiosity, what is a real scientist?
The one that aligns with and confirms your personal bias; as all real science works.
Someone that takes in data and comes to a data driven conclusion, not an ideological driven solution.
Pretty much every study agrees, cloth masks are not as good as n95 or surgical masks. They don’t however say that cloth does nothing. Also I have not been able to find even 1 study that looked at multilayer cloth masks. Some even state that multilayer would probably do much better than single layer, but they weren’t even going to test them to see. Pretty much every study is focused on how well masks protect the wearer, but very few focus on how well they protect others from you. The only study that I found that does talk about it, says that while less than n95 masks, that even cloth masks have a significant affect on your spreading of the virus.
damn i uh. Yup i read that statement.
Ok im going to go jerk off to furry porn or something immensely more productive than what i just spent time doing.
The cheap, dumpy masks are still going to somewhat reduce your intake of particles and significantly reduce your output, which is their main point.
Thats great, but did they actually prevent spread is the question to ask. We can start out with the hypothesis that they do work, then we need to actually confirm if that is true.
That people can still type in these word salads in 2024 is beyond me. Real actual scientists all over the world have answered these questions years ago. Stop asking Facebook for answers. Try Google
So you think that google is unbiased?
No. Google helps you search the web. It’s up to you to look for trustworthy sources but that’s not too hard. Just sticking to Wikipedia is fine most of the time.
But that involves reading and this may prove challenging to some.
Facebook is a cesspool.
Is Lemmy and Reddit not cesspools?
Only if the people using it are making it into one. I am looking at no one in particular…
Answering everything with a question isn’t as smart as you think.
here. just the first two research results for a simple google search “did masks work research.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10446908/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8499874/
i mean… you could look into it? know that it’s difficult to set up a statistically ideal study during a pandemic.
edit - also, it’s hard to take you seriously in this debate when you aren’t bothering to ACTUALLY LOOK AT SOME RESEARCH yourself. but i see you making lots of comments making a show of concern.
From all that I have seen and heard its at best split or the impact is so small that it is not noticeable. I think most of the ones that say it worked involved healthcare setting where trained people used good masks, not me at home depot with a mask from a box.
What I can say is that during the “mask years”, I seriously never got a cold, flu, or Covid. I usually get a cold at least once or twice a year. I think it’s still been a while since I’ve had one. My sister actually just got Covid about 2 weeks ago, I wore a mask around her for a few days and never caight it, tho I had a booster 6 months before, and she was about a year out. I took 3 home tests over 5 days and they were all negative.
Cool, I dont really know how this relates to the overall effectiveness of masks. I am going to guess that you were very cautious and took all kinds of precautions.
From your own source: ‘Ninety-one per cent of observational studies were at ‘critical’ risk of bias (ROB) in at least one domain, often failing to separate the effects of masks from concurrent interventions.’
The whole “masks don’t work at all” argument is pretty much still a strawman argument, because the actually good criticism was for mask mandates. Can masks work, if you use them correctly (don’t touch them more than you have to, don’t use one mask for too long and do not have a beard when it comes to n95, change them frequently when it comes to the other ones)? sure they can. Can mask mandates work, if everybody adheres to the rules and uses them correctly? probably, yes. do we have any reason to assume that everybody will do it that way? not really, no.
so my assumption and criticism was always: masks may work, when used correctly. mask mandates do not get people to use masks correctly, rather than just mandate to have some piece of cloth over your mouth, which you may have used for the last 3 months, at which point they do not really do anything anymore and may even become a public health issue in themselves.
so mask mandates are annoying as shit, don’t do much to prevent spread and even have the potential to do more harm than good. if you can find a study that actually is able to isolate the effects of mask usage from other interventions, I’m happy to look at it, too.
even the German government classified the effectiveness of their own mask mandates as controversial in the official committee.
I get why bashing conservative anti-intellectualism can be fun and I can only assume that there were lots of idiotic arguments made against mask mandates, but it’s actually not that easy.
Even the guy he was replying to said nothing about mandates. I’d argue that’s a related but different topic.
you are probably right. I’ll see myself out.
Well I wouldn’t have said you needed to delete the comment, I just didn’t want the antimasker taking support from it when it was dubiously related. 🙂
Are we really still pretending the mask I got from the front bin of Home Depot actually works?
Are we still pretending <100% effectiveness = worthless? (Just kidding, I know folks are.)
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-mask/art-20485449
The issue here is that people pretended masks were very affective, and I have not seen any actual data that they were very useful. I have seen a lot of memes like the one above that pretend they were essential when the only data I ever recall seeing was they were overall 4% useful, by a pro-mask source. And if you look around there are lots of sources that said they did nothing, I dont know which is true, but lack of solid evidence seems to point to it was pointless.
Do you think masks should have been mandated indoors if they had a 4% impact? How about 0.1%?
Twentyish studies are sourced at the bottom of the article I linked, and it details the effectiveness of each mask type in the body of the article. Why we are discussing mandates now I don’t know, feels like a bit of the ol’ goalposts on wheels to me, it’s not what I replied to.
I think this is the most important part of the article “Yes. When used with measures such as getting vaccinated, hand-washing and physical distancing, wearing a face mask slows how quickly the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads.” It essentially says do all the things and it will be impactful.
At what level of impact do you think masks should have been forced on people?
I’m not going to re-litigate mask mandates with you. I’m sure you’ll find someone happy to have that argument. You can keep moving those goalposts, but I’m not following.
That was really the big question back in the day, and when I see spotty evidence at best for mandating something that really is the key question.
It certainly works better than nothing at all.
Nothing at all Nothing at all nothing at all…
Stupid sexy N95’s…
But surely you must understand how someone, having failed all of their classes and then dropped out of school altogether, understands complex matters better than the people who are brilliant, have international acclaim, and devoted like 5 decades of their lives to study that same thing?
Or you know, at least watched this 11-minute video?
And if you do, can you explain it to me? :-P So far all I have is “Might Makes Right”, but somehow that seems to be lacking something…
Elon musk is college educated and successful, please trust everything he says.
Well, I was going to argue against that, but then I remembered that he is rich - which I guess is the same thing as smart? - so… okay! :-P
My point was that being educated doesn’t necessarily make you smart or correct either. Being uneducated doesn’t necessarily make you stupid. I know plenty of well educated people who I wouldn’t ask for advice from. Basically: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
Yes this is very true. IQ is not the same as EQ, and neither are quite the same as “wisdom”. The latter comes from evaluated experiences - as in, if you fail to learn from your own mistakes then you will simply get dumber as you age, whereas if you seek out knowledge & learning & evaluate the mistakes of others, then the trajectory of your life will make you SMARTER as you age (up to a point ofc).
Truthfully, the only way to spot a counterfeit is to know the real thing so extremely well that nobody can pull a fast one on you.
Speaking of, don’t forget: GWB (the 2nd Bush president) only graduated Yale b/c his father donated a massive amount of $$$$ to the school - his grades (that he had sealed but at some point got leaked) reveal that he flunked out on his own merits. So even “educated” does not mean “educated” if you catch my drift.
As far as a “guarantee” though… nothing is every truly guaranteed, so that might be asking too much. Still, it’s a good reminder to look at someone’s character - did someone get rich merely b/c of accidents, or b/c they truly deserved it. Though, do any of the recently rich truly deserve it? Bezos who won’t let workers pee (even pregnant mothers), Musk for taking a truly fantastic idea and turning into something that literally kills people, and Zuckerberg who… (shudder), just not even going to go there.
Getting a higher education is one thing, call me when he has published multiple peer-reviewed studies in any field and I just might take his opinions in said field to heart.
🤓
They failed because they’re obviously smarter than science and not the other way around.
Also, are we not going to discuss the conspiracy theory that many of the people espousing this ideology were mysteriously killed!? And their families too! In fact, anyone even so much as near them had a chance to be affected, possibly some still here but with permanent brain damage!
Sounds pretty sus if you ask me…
The oligarchs have not decided that Mars can be made into a culture war issue… yet.
They are on their way with how Musk and the other Silicon Valley idiots are going
It probably didn’t help that at the beginning they said the cloth didn’t help, then changed the messaging later on.
The messaging could have been clearer but I’ll spell it out for the dumb.
Phase 1:
Don’t panic buy medical supplies expecting them to protect you. We don’t have enough, and frontline healthcare workers need them to protect themselves and others, you don’t know how to wear them and they probably don’t fit you properly.
Phase 2:
We still don’t really have enough medical grade masks but just fyi: any sort of mouth covering will reduce the risk of a contagious person sneezing into the mouth of a vulnerable person. If you have to go out, please wear something over your face. Cotton is better than nothing.
Phase 3:
A tight fitting mask really is best, it limits a contagious person’s generation of aerosolized clouds of viruses, and limits a vulnerable person’s exposure to clouds of aerosolized viruses.
The problem with messages 1 and 2 is that too many people will not give a shit about other people, and will also assume they can put a mask on correctly. If your goal is to prevent panic buying and hoarding long enough to build an adequate stockpile for medical workers, you probably want to avoid anything that makes those supplies sound superior and valuable.
If I were crafting such a message, I’d say something like this:
"At this time we aren’t recommending the use of disposable masks by the general public. For now, those who will be wearing a mask should wear one that’s made of tight knit, layered cloth, with a fit that fully encloses the nose and mouth. Cloth masks can be cleaned and reused, and will be easier for most people to wear properly, especially when worn for extended periods of time.
These guidelines reflect our current understanding and will be updated as we learn more."
IIRC, that initial “don’t use surgical masks” statement was because hospitals were already facing shortages, and a rush on the supply would have caused massive widespread longstanding shortages. Basically, the hospitals needed disposable masks, so the CDC told people not to use disposable masks.
But it was also in that brief time period between surgical masks and reusable cloth masks. So the messaging was basically just “don’t use
disposablemasks” because the “disposable” part was implied because it’s all that was commonly available on the market. Plus cloth masks hadn’t been studied yet. So when cloth masks were proven to work and the CDC started recommending them, the naysayers fell back to that initial messaging from when the cloth masks were unavailable and unproven.that initial “don’t use surgical masks” statement was because hospitals were already facing shortages, and a rush on the supply would have caused massive widespread longstanding shortages. Basically, the hospitals needed disposable masks, so the CDC told people not to use disposable masks.
That makes it worse that they said/implied masks won’t protect you, not better. If CDC public health statements are driven by an intention to manipulate public behavior rather than disseminating the best available info about what is true, that means that those statements are unreliable and can’t be trusted, regardless of the good they are hoping to do by trading their long term credibility for temporarily adjusting purchasing habits.
Just because there was an explanation doesn’t magically make it acceptable to lie out your ass and give a HUGE boost to conspiracy nuts while one fucking helms the white house…
The way I recall it seeing thing unfold and not really following the political stuff at the time:
CDC said that cloth masks don’t stop viruses. You need a medical mask for that, but please don’t use those because hospitals need them. That was all true.
In other countries, notably South Korea, almost everyone wore masks, and the numbers showed their effectiveness.
So CDC realized that indeed, if everyone wears one, it greatly reduces transmission of the virus. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be efficient.
