Does the coronavirus merit investment, or personal, concern or consideration?

Don’t be silly. WWIII is going to be fought with iPhones.

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With even more advanced viruses.

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Here’s why Sam’s Club never has anything in stock after 10am

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/asia/japan-sex-workers-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html

While those numbers are likely made up (google image search result points to a deleted tweet, there are a few studies that confirm that masks generally slow the spread of cold and flu -like diseases, but I didn’t see any stats specific to covid), the point it’s trying to make is that everyone should always wear a face mask in public. According to pretty much everyone, it won’t protect you 100% from getting sick, but it will definitely reduce the number of people you might infect.

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The general consensus is that wearing a mask gives you a slight decrease on your chance of getting sick. However, it provides a much larger chance of you not spreading the virus if you are sick or unknowingly a carrier that is not yet showing symptoms. Those percentages may not be accurate but are relatively consistent with what I have been hearing.

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Right. But even considering the percentages are just for illustrative purposes, 70% of what?

I guess what I’m getting at is one key comparison is missing - no face mask to no face mask. 70% of 100% seems like a big reduction, but with an “r-value” estimated between 2 and 3 we know that an infected person does not spread it to everyone they come in contact with anyways - think of all the contact/exposure on a single subway ride (and while people are more conscious of the risks now, life went on uninterrupted for over a month before precautions and restrictions started to appear). In which case, 70% may still technically be a big decrease regardless, but practically speaking it’s effect on the absolute numbers would be significantly less. But this is a detail that is curiously absent from all reporting, and all sales pitches as to why all this drastic action is necessary and should be accepted.

its a graphic some random anonymous person made up and threw on Twitter. For all we know an 11 year old in S. Korea made that thing.
Trying to analyze what it means and then draw conclusions from that about “sales pitches” is wasteful and unproductive and meaningless.

Unless you’ve got some actual legit source from the thing and if you do then let us know. Otherwise I’m assuming 11 year old in S. Korea.

All I’m saying is that it is pretty representative of ‘the sales pitch’, from (parts of) the government to the mainstream media to peer pressure on facebook.

Maybe I should’ve asked “XX% of what?” Because (obviously, I thought) it’s about not the specific number in that particular illustration, it’s about the concept itself.

And your response is pretty representative of the issue I’m talking about - instead of responding to the point being made, you dodge the actual point by trying to invalidate a premise that wasnt even relevant to the question.

Nope. It isn’t

You did. More than once. I quoted you.

Did you mean to say “shouldn’t have” instead?

You’er not really making any points. Actual points don’t start with questions about the meaning of random meme style graphics you find on Twitter.

If you’re looking for someone to tell you the exact % chance of getting the virus by doing some specific actions then you’re not gonna get that.
Lack of that % figure does not matter.

And more dodging.

If I am sick and ride the subway, and cough around 10 people, how many of those people are likely to get infected? Is it 9 or 10? Or is it 1 or 2? Because applying mitigation efforts to those two numbers produces vastly different net effects. If it’s 10-of-10, a 70% reduction is pretty significant. But if it’s only 1-of-10, then the effect of a 70% reduction is more of a rounding error.

70% is arbitrary. I havent wanted the “actual” number or taken “70%” as being official, the actual number doesnt matter. What matters, at least to my question/point, is that the higher-level factor everything else is based off is completely missing. Masks, social distancing, closing schools, reducing travel all reduces the transmission risk. But to reduce requires a starting point to reduce from, and that starting point is never mentioned.

NOBODY FUCKING KNOWS

I’m not dodging. You keep asking for a number that there isn’t an answer to. Lack of the number doesn’t prove shit.

Also, 7% is not “rounding error”

Also the 70% from that made up graphic from a random anonymous Asian tween Twitter account was almost certainly a reference to the effectiveness of a mask. Not the % chance of you getting sick of Coronavirus in any specific/given/ general situation. Gerneral effectivenss of surgical masks is in the 70% ballpark as measured by the % of "0.3 micron size particles that the mask prevents in some sort of control test. The 95 in N95 masks is a 95% figure from that same measurement.

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Then why the hell is all this stuff being preached as if it were gospel? If nobody fucking knows, then nobody knows if relaxing restrictions will have one iota of effect on deaths. But the mere suggestion that maybe some things arent all that necessary produces countless claims that you must just not care if everyone dies. You cant claim nobody knows, when the reactions are based entirely on knowing what’s best.

I’m not dumb or ignorant, I know that there are positive effects, and that some mitigation is necessary. I just get sick of the constant implications that if there’s a theoretical risk benefit then the measure must be essential to the survival of the human race and you’re suicidal to suggest otherwise. (Yes, I’m being hyperbolic. But a lot of reactions do start to sound like that.)

I dont know where you got 7% from? But surely you can agree that potentially preventing 70 infections (per 100 people) would be vastly different scenario than potentially preventing 7 infections per 100. (and again, it could be 80 and , 20 and 2, whatever number you want to plug into the equation - the effect, and point, remains the same)

There is a difference between not knowing exact % risk of something and something having no risk or assuming not doing it won’t “have one iota of effect”

What is the % risk that I will die if I don’t wear my seat belt?
If you don’t know that # then can I say that wearing seatbelts is a sham and that they shouldn’t tell us to wear them ?

I’m not personally saying that

We may or may not be over reacting. Its a good question. But its impossible to know if we’re overacting too much or too little with the information we have. Given the uncertainty the safe option is to overreact on purpose.

Nobody knows the EXACT % chance of stuff happening.

Yeah thats the point. And it seems like your arguing against that point.

Thats hyperbole as you say.

7% is from you talking about 70% of 1 in 10. then dubbing it ‘roundoff error’

The fact that 70 > 7 is not effectively making any point.

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@glitch99 you might look at this paper reviewing the infection spread in a Chinese restaurant for how many people and how close (or not) they may be to actually get infected. In particular, be sure to check out the graphic with the layout of the restaurant and where the people were sitting vs the one infected person.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article

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"We also did not perform serologic studies of swab sample–negative asymptomatic family members and other diners to estimate risk for infection. "

In other words, if ~80% of infected are asymptomatic, then everyone at that restaurant got the virus. No?

Glitch sorry if I’m being an ass about it.

I understand the point that its hard to know if the measures are appropriate if we don’t know the risks.

I mean what IS my risk of catching Covid if I go to the grocery store? I don’t know. Its not 0 and its not 100%. I mean maybe on average nationally its a 1 in 1,000,000 risk. Or is it 1 in 1,000 ?
I mean I don’t know. Maybe they could come up with some sort of national average figure but then that would be like any national average #. It wouldn’t really fit for Nebraska or NYC.
It would also vary greatly depending on half a dozen variables. how big is the grocery store, how many people are there, how many items do you need to buy, how fast ar you? Are you breathing too heavy? How well are they cleaning the place ,etc etc

But still I’d like to know the ballpark risk. I honestly don’t know if its 1 : 1000 or 1: 1,000,000

If nothing else I can have a good excuse to stop my wife demanding unnecessary trips to Home Depot that she’s afraid to make herself.

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I couldnt care less about an exact percentage; again, I’m not dumb or ignorant. My problem is that step is completely non-existent in every argument against taking a step back.

It’s the underpants gnomes all over again.

It says “sample negative asymptomatic”

I read that to mean negative test results and no symptoms.

Might be like differentiating from “sample positive asymptomatic”.

Exactly. Ignoring the two week lag between all the infections (which could mean anything), that’s between 30% and 100% of the people in the room at one meal being infected. How could contagiousness that extreme possibly result in an estimated “r-value” of 3 for the term of the infection? Especially if the infected person is unaware (or unaware that the virus even exists, as was the case for weeks early on), that would indicate potentially hundreds being infected over a week’s time.

So much stuff contradicts. And so much pain is being inflicted based on “we dont know what the hell is going on”. Yet so many people are insistent that this will continue for “(a long time)”, and to suggest otherwise is dismissed as being delusional, or having a death wish.

I guess I just think there needs to be more focus on why we’re seeing the reality we are seeing. Rather than act on theory, then focus on projecting where that theory might take us.