CDC Says Fully Vaccinated People Don't Need To Wear Face Masks Indoors or Outdoors in Most Settings (cnbc.com) 445
Fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a face mask or stay 6 feet away from others in most settings, whether outdoors or indoors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in updated public health guidance released Thursday. From a report: There are a handful of instances where people will still need to wear masks -- in a health-care setting, at a business that requires them -- even if they've had their final vaccine dose two or more weeks ago, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters at a press briefing. Fully vaccinated people will still need to wear masks on airplanes, buses, trains and other public transportation, she said. "Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing," Walensky said.
"If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic. We have all longed for this moment, when we can get back to some sense of normalcy." Walensky said unvaccinated people should still continue to wear masks, adding they remain at risk of mild or severe illness, death and risk spreading the disease to others. People with compromised immune systems should speak with their doctor before giving up their masks, she said. She added there is always a chance the CDC could change its guidance again if the pandemic worsens or additional variants emerge.
"If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic. We have all longed for this moment, when we can get back to some sense of normalcy." Walensky said unvaccinated people should still continue to wear masks, adding they remain at risk of mild or severe illness, death and risk spreading the disease to others. People with compromised immune systems should speak with their doctor before giving up their masks, she said. She added there is always a chance the CDC could change its guidance again if the pandemic worsens or additional variants emerge.
Science everyone understands... (Score:2)
...thanks for catching up to the rest of us non-CDCers, CDC people.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's their risk. I am fully vaccinated. They can't spread covid to me. So for me it is live and let live at this point.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it's not just their lives at risk.
Vaccines are not 100% and not everyone can get vaccinated safely. That's why it's so important for as many people as possible to get vaccinated.
If you're only motivated by self-interesting: Groups of idiotic anti-vaxxers are the perfect breeding ground for variants of the disease that the vaccine doesn't cover. That will put you at risk as well.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Vaccines are not 100% and not everyone can get vaccinated, but when you overlay that percentage of people atop the COVID survivability rate it drops to a fairly mundane risk for the population at large.
Most of us undertake activities with a non-zero survival rate every single day - it's all about assessing and managing the risk not avoiding it entirely. The COVID risk is NEVER going to be zero. If we ever intend to return to normality now is the the time - having an effective vaccine available to anyone who wants it was the end-game and is basically going to be as good as we ever get when it comes to fighting a viral infection.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
80 years ago your 7 million year developed immune system would have had a well more than non-zero chance of being destroyed by smallpox, or crippled by polio, or debilitated by measles or any of the other viruses our immune system has never built a defense for before vaccines. That idea of natural immunity is worthless in the face of something it has never developed a defense against.
If you hate modern technology so much stop posting on this website, throw away your phone and go live in the woods and leave the rest of us the hell alone.
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Then by all means stop using the internet, agriculture, electricity, air conditioning, plumbing, soap and all the other technology humanity has developed to help itself survive versus nature.
Your so gung-ho to go primal natural selection about it you should stop giving yourself any unfair advantages.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Natural is a win-win. If I survive and have offspring, I make the human race more resilient. If I don't survive, I can't pollute the gene pool with my weak dna.
The ability to survive a covid infection is not exactly something that I think humanity vitally needs to be selected for. For instance, you likely have the ability to survive covid, since most people do. But you lack intelligence. Not pruning out the person who is vulnerable to covid, but intelligent enough to understand the worth of vaccines, is far more beneficial for humankind.
Nature isn't conscious, and the fitness function it picks for us doesn't necessarily makes for better humans. It makes for humans better suited to that environment, but we're humans: we modify the environment to suit us. That's what allowed us to go places so hostile we couldn't possibly survive in, such as the moon. That's a far more valuable trait to our continued species success than whether we can weather the newest virus that evolved to attack us.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of us realize that we have an immune system has been under developed for around 5 to 7 million years.
The rest of us realize that vaccines work **because** of that. Your immune system needs to be trained against what it's defending you against.
You can choose to train it by being infected, which puts you at risk because it allows the virus to replicate while your immune system ramps up, or you can train it safely with a vaccine.
Just watch your own lane and get your nose out of others asses.
That's what I'm saying. I don't want you to be forcefully vaccinated. But you don't have a right to go to school, or enter private businesses. If those places want to require vaccines to keep people inside safe, they can, and they should. If you want to be an idiot, you can stay home and be excluded, that's your business. You don't get to increase the risk of others just because you're exercising your right to be a moron.
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That's what I'm saying. I don't want you to be forcefully vaccinated. But you don't have a right to go to school, or enter private businesses. If those places want to require vaccines to keep people inside safe, they can, and they should. If you want to be an idiot, you can stay home and be excluded, that's your business. You don't get to increase the risk of others just because you're exercising your right to be a moron.
This is factually incorrect. People do in fact get to increase the risk faced by others for reasons ranging from good to patently ridiculous.
Some risk must be accepted by all members of society with the costs and benefits objectively characterized and subjectively weighted by whatever consensus process exists.
What is missing from these worthless absolutist abstract philosophical declarations is presentment of any meaningful objective data characterizing risks or meaningfully weighing both the benefits and
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:4, Interesting)
You need more than data; you need data *in context*. The issue isn't the *raw number* of deaths and injuries, it's the number of *preventable* deaths and injuries.
For example in 2020, 690 thousand Americans died from heart disease compared to 345 thousand COVID-19 deaths. Just be sheer coincidence, you were almost exactly *twice* as likely as an American to die of heart disease than COVID. The thing is we've been working to reduce heart disease for decades now. In 1964 when the famous Surgeon General's report on smoking came out, 40% of Americans smoked; today less than half that number smoke. We could and probably should try harder to prevent heart disease, but there aren't many easily preventable deaths on the table.
The thing about COVID is that researchers who studied this estimate nearly 40% of COVID deaths in the US were *preventable*. That's 138,000 people who died in 2020 needlessly. COIVD is also different in that it's not just a matter of personal responsibility and personal consequences. Its an infectious disease. Even if *you* escape any serious consequences from getting infected, if you pass that infection on there will inevitably be people who die as a consequence.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just leave the rest of us the hell alone.
The problem with this is you ask of others what you do not grant to others.
You want others to leave you alone wrt vaccines. But by not getting vaccinated yourself you provide a pool of people where the virus can mutate to a point where the vaccinations don't work. At that point your actions are not leaving the others alone.
If you want to have others leave you alone, you need to grant others the same privilege. But when it comes to viruses, for you, an unvaccinated person, to do that, you would have to not interact with others at all.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think its doing pretty good at a 99.98% survival rate for my age. I trust it more than I trust some yahoos that pushed out a vaccine in under a year which has around a 3% adverse rate.
You are a selfish ignoramus asshole.
If you get infected, you might very well end up in an ICU and on a ventilator at a cost of north of $100,000 which I'm guessing you don't have, so guess who has to pay for it? Oh yeah, the rest of us. Also, long COVID is very much a thing that exists. It can cause lung damage, cognitive impairment, and a whole host of other problems that could very well hamper your ability to earn a living. Guess what? Then we have to support you on disability. And as mentioned, you then become a vector for mutations that the current vaccines don't work against. That puts us right back to square one, doesn't it? Or, you could get one of the very highly effective vaccines and do the rest of us and yourself a favour, but oh no, you just have to be an American, don't you?
Sometimes, living in a civilised society comes at a price, whether it's paying taxes, (mostly) obeying the law, jury duty, or getting vaccinated so that you're not spreading lethal pathogens.
(Yes, I'm feeling pissy today)
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Informative)
It's their risk. I am fully vaccinated. They can't spread covid to me. So for me it is live and let live at this point.
Unless unvaccinated people get the virus, the virus mutates and the vaccine you got is not effective against this new mutant strain.
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You can't force people to get it...I just try to tell others positive things about it and hope they make that decision.
No, but you can certainly make it harder to not get it, e.g. not let them fly on airplanes, go on cruise ships, attend school, go to work, or maybe even make them legally liable for infecting others. It's not purely hypothetical either, I'll bet most foreign countries will block unvaccinated travelers for a long while. Of course some methods are up to individuals to enforce, but you can create a social narrative that is less friendly to antivaxxers, as opposed to telling people "it's their rights not to get
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, at some point, and that point may be now...the onus for people that are not vaccinated (whether by choice or medical reason) to protect themselves.
The people that are vaccinated are going to be free to go back to normal life.
Its happening already.
I just recently went to a hospital and there they did require you to wear a mask, which I happily did.
But the mask mandate was lifted in my state and I hardly see any normal business require masking anymore...so I don't bother doing it.
At this point, I figure I"m as safe as I can get and I"m back to enjoying life again.
Either the vaccines work as promoted, or they do not.
I've spent one very precious year of my life cooped up at home, not seeing friends.
I'll not get that year back.
We have a very limited time on earth, and life is a risk, and I want to live what I have left of my life to the fullest and have the most fun I can while I still process oxygen.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's their risk. I am fully vaccinated. They can't spread covid to me. So for me it is live and let live at this point.
COVID's dangers is in our immune response's overreaction to the virus. The vaccine preps the immune system so when COVID enters your body, it is prepared to fight it. Thus, it does not prevent you from getting COVID, it minimizes the risk of the side effects that will put you in the hospital.
The vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing COVID infection. They are 94 or 95% successful at minimizing COVID related symptoms. You can still get COVID when vaccinated. Odds are you will not have side effects ,but you could have side effects as severe as a bad case of the flu. Odds are you will not need to go to the hospital. But that is not for sure.
Even if you have no symptoms, you can still be contagious and spread to unvaccinated people. Children in the US have not been vaccinated. While they appear to not be as susceptible to COVID, that is seeming less true with the UK variant B.1.1.7. That variant is more contagious and can spread to kids, although it does not appear to be more deadly, just equivalent.
So fully vaccinated, you can still get COVID, you likely will not have symptoms but you might, and you can be contagious and spread to other people who are vaccinated or not, and not all unvaccinated people are anti-vaxxers, like young children.
You need to be careful with your assumptions. it is categorically untrue that "they can't spread COVID to you", and it is not really a "live and let live" situation.
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I seem to have trouble posting links, so you'll have to look it up, but the answer to your question is actually quite mathematical. The SIR Model for Spread of Disease attempts to predict contagion spread. SIR uses 3 core functions, S for Susceptible, I for infectious, and R for Recovered. All of these attempt to come up with an R-value, which is the expected number of new cases based on a single inf
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You're right -- the question is valid. Unfortunately, there are a group of people who simply cannot tolerate question or debate on issues surrounding COVID-19, associated policy and anything to do with the vaccines. These people are vaccinated, not only because they believe they need it; not only because they believe it will protect others,
It will protect them and others, though. We know this, through science.
but also out of duty to please policy makers, social conformity and so they can virtue signal. Indeed, much of their self esteem seems to be, currently, based on their perception of the nobleness of their actions.
I am vaccinated. Many of my friends are. Those motivations you attribute are not the motivations that I have noted people have. In fact, many are quite sceptical with regards to policy makers and are somewhere between quite and very socially unconforming, but can see the scientific validity of the research and thus the value of the vaccine.
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Wow, that sounds great. Wait. So, if it doesn't prevent infection, and it doesn't prevent spreading it to others... why do we need to be vaccinated again?
It seems to reduce the chance of being infected if exposed. It seems to reduce the chances of spreading the infection if you are infected (reducing the chances of new infections as R0 will be much lower), which also lowers your risk of being exposed in the first place. It reduces the ill-effects of the illness if you are infected. What's not to like?
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I got a BC gov issued card that says I'm vaccinated, next commrade...
Now they just need to kill the limo/cab loop hole over the border that lets people skip quarantine when coming in from US.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Funny)
There is no way to check on the spot if someone is vaccinated.
Walk into the room and have a five minute coughing fit. Everyone who leaves is lying about their vaccination status.
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I'm vaccinated and wouldn't want to hang around somebody having a prolonged coughing fit.
Nevermind the fact that my vaccine is around 95% effective, not 100% effective, and for all I know they're dying of Ebola rather than COVID-19 ...
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For many this will be a reason to lie that they are vaccinated. There is no way to check on the spot if someone is vaccinated. It would be invasion of privacy anyway. For an average ashole antivaxer or conspiracy theorist this opens a door for them to lie and feel smarter than the rest of us.
Who cares? Masking as a simple precaution to avoid death or massive organ damage is an intelligence test. The stupid are just accepting that that, and those of us with intelligence won't get it.
After all, the risk of death in a car crash is small - so why wear a seat belt? The risk of catching HIV is small, so why worry about risky sex? Do not wear a condom, it is a liberal hoax.
It's all a continuum, and if not wearing a mask is acceptable to a person, I'm accepting of their death or massive organ
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This appears elsewhere written by Anonymous Coward: It's 100% accurate and I think it deserves a level 5 judgement.
Unfortunately, it's not just their lives at risk.
Vaccines are not 100% and not everyone can get vaccinated safely. That's why it's so important for as many people as possible to get vaccinated.
If you're only motivated by self-interesting: Groups of idiotic anti-vaxxers are the perfect breeding ground for variants of the disease that the vaccine doesn't cover. That will put you at risk as well.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:4, Interesting)
For many this will be a reason to lie that they are vaccinated. There is no way to check on the spot if someone is vaccinated. It would be invasion of privacy anyway. For an average ashole antivaxer or conspiracy theorist this opens a door for them to lie and feel smarter than the rest of us.
...and get COVID from another a-hole/antivaxer/conspiracy theorist.
Once everyone that wants to get vaccinated has access to it, I say fuck them. Open everything, remove all the restrictions and let get catch COVID and restraint medical access and let them die. I just don't fucking care about them anymore.
As long as you're not one of the unlucky 5% (Score:2)
Re:As long as you're not one of the unlucky 5% (Score:5, Informative)
Except...that isn't what we see happening in real life.
Covid rates are going down...even in states like TX which lifted the mask mandates early, the rates of infection/death are going down.
Re: Science everyone understands... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
On the other hand Seychelles is nearly 100% vaccinated and there hospitals are overrun with covid p
Re:Science everyone understands... (Score:5, Informative)
The majority of the people in Seychelles were vaccinated with the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, which probably says more about the efficacy of that particular vaccine than anything else.
We are not seeing this in the U.S. with the Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines.
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Why do you wish they would die? Are you a psychopath?
For me it is not a wish. But I feel no sorrow, as they made the choice, freely and with understanding of the consequences.
Just like wearing seat belts, or risky sex - the science is there. Rejecting it is acceptance of what might happen.
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I also don't hope anybody dies but I kinda do hope they get hit with a big fat bill from not being vaccinated and catching covid.
I don't support the death penalty and also support universal/socialized healthcare but people who refuse to be vaccinated for no good reason deserve some amount of karmic reaction.
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I have to agree, some people really have fallen into a routine of mask all the time for whatever their thinking is. I have been prudent about masking indoors for the past 14 months but have never worn it outside, the risk calculus just never seemed to make sense in open air.
That said I think now that the idea of masking is less foreign in America we will see it more during the winter months as all the precautions seemed to have a good effect on common flu and colds. Would be great if people who are feelin
Re:May not help with the science deniers (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on the number of people I've seen recently still wearing masks outdoors, nowhere near someone else, I think I have to believe it. I mean come on, six feet indoors was being cautious, fifty feet outdoors is beyond germaphobe.
It turns out that there are lots of non-covid reasons to wear a facemask outside when nowhere near anyone else. For instance, wearing a mask outside has helped with my seasonal allergies, which I'm sure lots of other people have discovered as well.
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From personal experience of people I know, sadly, some are "waiting" on getting vaccinated based on the following reasons:
* They think it's new technology (mRNA), and therefore may have unintended long-term side-effects (forgetting the J&J vaccine, of course)
* They think it may compromise your body's long-term immune system because it's not "natural" (again, forgetting all the vaccines that have eliminated horrible diseases)
* They don't like the possibility of two days of side-effects
* They've heard of
Well, no shit. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just like people fully vaccinated against the measles don't need to wear a mask.
Nice that they are stating the obvious now that they aren't being asked to undermine the executive branch.
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Re:Well, no shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most countries realize this and people still wear a mask until all of the people who want to be vaccinated are vaccinated.
Sadly, and unsurprisingly, the US has pretty much reached that point or will within the coming days or weeks. We are around 40% fully vaccination and the daily doses being administered is trending done at a rather alarming rate. Even ignoring the CDC who some claim are dubious in their reporting, just talking to people around you shows people either have one/both shots, or they aren't getting it at all, for reasons.
Basically, in the US, if you get the rona now, it's your own goddamn fault (for the most part).
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-da... [cdc.gov]
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Basically, in the US, if you get the rona now, it's your own goddamn fault (for the most part).
The biggest exception being 12-15 year-olds, who just this week became eligible for the vaccine and those under 12 who remain ineligible. Collectively, those represent about 20% of our population.
Anyone have insight on the percentage for which it would be against-medical-advise?
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We missed the greatest chance in a century to purge our society of the weak and useless and instead we set our country on fire. Idiotic.
I thought that was why they were re-introducing wolves.
Re:Why is believing in science bowing to pressure? (Score:5, Informative)
If you think being vaccinated means you still have to wear a mask to protect you, then you are officially an anti-vaxxer, no better than any other lunatic who doens't believe in science and thinks vaccines do not work.
Curious why you don't believe the vaccine protects you from Covid. Well not really; I don't actually care a whit for your idiotic anti-science opinion that justifies wearing a mask after being vaccinated. Just thought it would be polite to let you express yourself.
I know this has probably been said directly to you multiple times over the last year, but since it apparently didn't sink in, I'll repeat it again:
Me wearing a facemask protects you. You wearing a facemask protects me. It's part and parcel of being a participating member of society that members sometimes have to do things that benefit the group and not just their own selfish ass.
A vaccine does not make one immune to a sickness. It gives your immune system instructions on what the virus looks like so that it doesn't get caught flat-footed if you do get infected and can mount a defense more quickly. That means that the time you're infected is reduced (sometimes drastically!), but not completely eliminated. There's still a chance that if you get infected you can still pass along the infection to others while never feeling sick yourself. There are lots of people out there who can't get vaccinated because of health reasons (like compromised immune systems) or because they're too young, and if you're infected but asymptomatic, you could pass it along to them. Every infection is a chance for the virus to mutate into a strain the current vaccines don't work against, putting us back to square one.
Re:Well, no shit. (Score:5, Informative)
Just like people fully vaccinated against the measles don't need to wear a mask. Nice that they are stating the obvious now that they aren't being asked to undermine the executive branch.
Not really anything obvious about this. The original studies which allowed the vaccines to get fast tracked approval didn't go far enough to confirm vaccinated people didn't spread the virus. Now we know they are very successful as stopping spread and not just health complications, so they can be more lax with their recommendation. While they were quite confident these vaccines would stop spread because that is what most vaccines do, wearing a mask takes such low effort it makes sense they would keep up the recommendation for so long.
Re:Well, no shit. (Score:4, Interesting)
Now we know they are very successful as stopping spread and not just health complications
Actually we do not know anything about this.
Because it would need a few requirement - obviously:
a) a person needs to be vaccinated
b) it needs to catch the virus
c) it needs to be under circumstances that one actually investigates the blood for viruses - super unlikely
d) he needs to be in circumstances that he could transmit it, e.g. his spouse/children
e) we need enough evidence that d) happened but his spouse/wife did not get infected
So: we know nothing about the question if a vaccinated person can spread the disease.
But, common sense tells us: yes, he can. Why the fuck would he not? You can only argue the virus load will be super low so the likelihood will be super low, too. And that's it.
Re:Well, no shit. (Score:4, Informative)
I think this was pretty obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
It was pretty obvious that this is the case for a long time, and they knew it too. But I can't blame them for being hesitant about allowing a huge number of aholes to claim they had the vaccine as an excuse to not wear a mask.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Just last week I caught tremendous shit for saying that by july 4th (when enough time has lapsed that the only remaining at-risk people are anti-vaxxers) I am done wearing a mask. If they want to fucking risk their lives, fuck them. Its not my job to constantly make changes to keep them safe just because they are afraid of a little shot. So to everyone that gave me shit, see? Now the CDC is saying it too. So fuck you. You werent as smart as you thought you were. One person even made the claim that even tho
Re:I think this was pretty obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not keeping my mask on to protect anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers. First and foremost, I'm doing it because the people quickest to ditch the masks are the anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers. I want them to be forced to continue to wear their masks. I also don't want to have to prove I'm vaccinated all the time. So I want everyone to continue to wear their mask.
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Last I heard the Moderna and Pfizer shots were effective against the India variant.
Re:I think this was pretty obvious (Score:4, Informative)
It was pretty obvious that this is the case for a long time
"Obvious" != "Proven". Most other vaccines ensure that the vaccinated don't spread the disease even if they still get it, but it took time for the study results to provide evidence that this is the case with COVID vaccines.
But I can't blame them for being hesitant about allowing a huge number of aholes to claim they had the vaccine as an excuse to not wear a mask.
Their hesitancy or lack of hesitancy on this point isn't what changed the recommendation. What change it was evidence that vaccinated people don't spread the disease.
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Yes I agree that "obvious" is not the same as "proven", and waiting for actual tests is a good reason for their delay.
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Exactly, you are now free to get COVID all you want I suppose since the un-vaccinated will be spreading it around to all the other un-vaccinated.
Just don't clog up the hospitals too bad there buddy. I sure hope you get a hefty bill from our capitalist healthcare system as well. Wouldn't be fair to shift the bill onto the rest of us now that there's a solution you wont accept now would it?
Re:I think this was pretty obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
What's crazy is that in most areas, 100% of the people hospitalized for COVID now are unvaccinated people.
If that's not enough to sway an antivaxer's mind, being one of those people might be the only remaining things that could.
Re:I think this was pretty obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
What's crazy is that in most areas, 100% of the people hospitalized for COVID now are unvaccinated people.
What's crazy is that we are all paying for their hospitalization, either through taxes or higher insurance premiums.
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What's crazy is that in most areas, 100% of the people hospitalized for COVID now are unvaccinated people.
If that's not enough to sway an antivaxer's mind, being one of those people might be the only remaining things that could.
There are only a few reasons to not wear a mask.
One is political - I know a number of people for whom going maskless was in support of their leader, One D. Trump, who gave them their marching orders that it was a hoax early on.
A certain amount of peer pressure.
Contrariness
Low intelligence manifested as stupidity.
There is a lot of overlap.
Re:I think this was pretty obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
It never ceases to amaze me how many people even on slashdot don't understand how vaccines work.
1) Vaccines do not protect anyone 100%
2) Non vaccinated people provide a foot hold into the human population for a virus to hide in. This can lead to a mutation in the virus the could possibly render the vaccines in-effective for everyone. We've already seen a ton of variants of this disease pop up already, thankfully the vaccines have also worked against them so far.
As for people downvoting you for spouting off about not needing a mask, wearing a mask was the official recommendation from our government's top medical expert. Now that recommendation has change. You shouldn't be surprised that people prefer to follow the advice of incredibly prominent medical experts over a random on the internet that doesn't even know how vaccines and the protection they provide work.
Re:I think this was pretty obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the non-vaccinated are harming everybody.
Say the vaccine reduces your chance of getting COVID to 10%. If you have two people and only one is vaccinated, then the chances of each getting it from the other are reduced to 10% of what they were before (the vaccine person for obvious reasons, the other person because the vaccinated person now has only 10% of the previous chance of transmitting the virus).
If *both* had the vaccine, then the chances of each getting it from the other is reduced to 10%×10%, or 1% of what they were before. The first person has 10% of the previous chance of transmitting the virus, and the second has 10% of the previous chance of catching it if it was transmitted.
This is why the vaccination is such a success. If they worked the simplistic way you are thinking, and only 1/2 of the people got it, then the death rate from COVID would only have gone down to somewhat more than 1/2 what it was before. The vaccinated are exponentially helping each other.
Oh well (Score:3)
Being able to identify science-denying morons from a distance was nice while it lasted.
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Being able to identify science-denying morons from a distance was nice while it lasted.
But I fear that it did damage to many. I am now a whole lot less accepting of the people who are so stupid, who for many, is a red flag of their fascist tendencies.
I ended up believing that if they do not care if they kill me or others, I am going to have very little sympathy for them.
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. Masks work. They have always worked, and evidence from dozens of pandemics going back hundreds of years prove they work. You are making an extraordinary claim here, you need to provide an extraordinary amount of proof.
But you're another 10101010101 sock puppet, aren't you? Just here to shit in the yard and make try to make everything as shitty as your life is. But that can't possibly work.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Informative)
These morons imagine the virus to be just floating in the air by themselves. "But, muh mask only filters out particles of X microns, muh virus is Y microns! Fake! TDS!".
The virus is almost exclusively transmitted in a liquid carrier, which the masks are reasonably effective at catching, and slowing the spread even imperfectly makes a large difference from an epidemiological standpoint.
I realize I'm preaching to the choir here, but I'm hoping even one of these fucking nimrods will read this and maybe apply at least a few of his several brain cells to the problem.
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How do you explain so few cases of the flu over the past year?
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Social distancing, more hand washing/sanitizing, and the general restriction on social events?
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You could link to proof but you don't. Curious.
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Except that's wrong. Enough airborne particles get filtered out by any decent mask that, in conjunction with social distancing, masks work. Masks save lives. If Republicans leaders had said masks work, you'd be defending their use. I can't believe that basic hygiene has become a political issue.
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Your empty words proved nothing. Science has proved, again and again, that masks work. You fail. You've convinced no one.
Do you have a humiliation fetish? You must. You seem to love losing, and being proven to be a manipulative, childish troll.
Grow up. Join in honest dialogue with other people. It's much more rewarding than nursing a persecution complex.
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I love the arrogance of people like you. The global medical community comprised of likely hundreds of thousands of people from doctors to medical scientists who have been educated extensively on medical matters have almost unanimously agreed that masks were something that were necessary to fight covid but you, likely with little to no medical education, know better than all of them.
What's it like being the center of your own universe?
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The idea that your nylon mask was preventing transmission of viruses was laughable in the first place. There was no science backing that up.
Next time you get surgery be sure to tell your surgeon and team that they don't need to bother wearing masks, because there's no scientific evidence that masks prevent the spread of infectious disease.
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The idea that your nylon mask was preventing transmission of viruses was laughable in the first place. There was no science backing that up.
And somehow we managed to effectively eradicate influenza this year.
Mind you the fact that you think there's no science backing this up is your own ignorance. There was plenty of science backing up the use of medical masks (which is why they exist in the first place). In March there was no studies about the use of home made masks so (and this may shock your ignorant little mind) studies were commissioned by the WHO. And low and behold after universities around the world did actual scientific researched and
Suddenly everyone is vaccinated (Score:5, Funny)
So pretty much (Score:2)
There are a handful of instances where people will still need to wear masks -- in a health-care setting, at a business that requires them -- ... Fully vaccinated people will still need to wear masks on airplanes, buses, trains and other public transportation.
So pretty much all public places like it is now?
Studies were legitimately needed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like studies are still finalizing for children's groups in vaccine trials. Children tend to be the last group allowed to be tested on, after it has been proven safe at scale for adults, which makes sense if you think about the media reaction for any cases of children having any complications before it is tested on adults.
The same logic applies to recommendations for mask usage.
That said - I'm still going to be wearing my mask two weeks from now (just got my second dose a couple days ago), when I go to places like Walmart.
Not because it's medically necessary - but because until we get to 65-70% vaccination, it's still a good idea to consider basic considerations for others as 'normal'.
We eliminated smallpox, at great cost - this is a lot cheaper and easier than that. Polio was also mostly eliminated world-wide, at a similar great cost. Until we get a disease on our regular childhood vaccine regiment, and reduced to pockets that can no longer spread/perpetuate - it's fair to take simple precautions.
Not out of 'virtue signalling' - but out of shared spite for the lives the disease would caused if left unchecked, after all the lived it has cost us.
If we can share a cultural spite for terrorist incidents that cost far fewer lives, we can allow it to be OK to wear simple cloth on your lower face until the population is safe long-term.
No matter how willfully absurd people are - I'd rather work to make it OK to protect them where I can than do otherwise. Because really, screw COVID - fight it until it's dead.
And fight any similar illness that pops up, sooner and better than we did for Covid. Far better to do so than the alternative. looking at a huge number of instances in history..
Ryan Fenton
Meanwhile, in Canada... (Score:2, Interesting)
The vaccine is 95% effective (Score:2)
Re:The vaccine is 95% effective (Score:5, Insightful)
Then truly, what are you waiting for to remove the masks? A 100% effective vaccine? Not going to happen. Coronavirus to completely disappear? Also not going to happen.
You might as well be waiting for someone to invent a time machine to go back and kill that one damned bat that caused of of this. The genie is out of the bottle now. If having very effective vaccine available to anyone who wants it isn't good enough to go back to normal, then you've basically decided that we can never do so, and that's a reality I can't live with.
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Wait, first it was a bat, now it's a genie? I'm confused!!!1
Re:The vaccine is 95% effective (Score:4, Informative)
Then truly, what are you waiting for to remove the masks? A 100% effective vaccine? Not going to happen. Coronavirus to completely disappear? Also not going to happen.
Herd immunity, which is expected to happen somewhere around 70-90% of people are vaccinated.
And if your answer to that is "never going to happen," then mask mandates should never be lifted. Social pressure with angry people wanting to go back to normal and blaming the anti-vaxxers can only help.
Keep the message simple (Score:3)
Re:Keep the message simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Just make everyone wear masks in certain settings until the pandemic is over.
Under what circumstances would you consider the pandemic to be over?
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When there are no more possible carriers for it.
The US Lockdown is finished (Score:3)
At this point anyone in the US who takes the pandemic seriously is vaccinated, probably both shots.
The intersection of people are both not vaccinated and who would respect a wear a mask & social distance if you don't have both shots rule is pretty damn small.
Basically this means that social distancing and masks are gone for everything except those high risk settings like public transport.
That means life is almost back to normal.
Mask triggering amuses me (Score:3)
Much of the (modern) world wear them in flu season without losing their delicate little minds. It's only a mask. If you bothers you that says more about your personal crazy than the mask itself. Stop being weak because weakness is degenerate.
Surgical and lesser masks don't weigh shit and they certainly don't restrict breathing as much as military masks (which I've many hundreds of hours in during exercises, the Cold War era sort where you work 12-hour shifts then process through simulated decon wearing your full NBC ensemble not just the mask). If a wittle piece of cloth somehow restricts breathing find one that's not trash. Not rocket surgery...
Before the situation was better known I had no butthurt and some entertainment fabbing a spigot mount for a medical respiratory HME filter to use as a prefilter for my NATO gas mask cans then wore those masks without a problem. I continued using valved industrial half-facepiece protective masks (which protect the USER not just spectators and redirect exhalant downward therefore away from them) until vaccination.
For techies especially it's fucking pathetic not to embrace useful technology (including study of military CBRN warfare tech data, civilian mask filter data and figuring out competing filter standards) rather than listening to gasworthy idiot slug politicians).
Even more hilarious are yokels who rage at masks but don't realize they're a legal way to protect against ubiquitous camera surveillance. It's fine to be a lunatic if you're some Walmartian but techies have no excuse (unless you're Terry Davis, and insanity disposed of him).
Anti-maskers should learn from their prepper kin who stockpiled CBRN gear many years ago. We didn't have to search for gear because we had obtained it long ago in readiness for the inevitable. (If you live long enough you'll see more than one pandemic.)
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You don't understand enough about the subject matter to open your mouth.
No, 95% efficacy does NOT imply that 5 in 100 get the disease anyway. At all. And furthermore, making sure you don't get the disease is not their primary benefit.
The 95% number comes, for example, from the Pfizer study where indeed 5 in 100 got sick despite the vaccine (I think the sample size was in the neighborhood of 45k people). However, since this was a controlled study, what that means is that each time a vaccinated person comes i
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One nit - in a KY nursing home [businessinsider.com], 20 of 26 vaccinated residents got covid, and one of them died.
1 in 20 is a 5% mortality rate; granted this demographic probably has a 20%+ mortality rate, so the vaccine did provide some protection. However, in the only demographic for which a serious risk of death exists, it provides only a modest improvement over unvaccinated people. It is far from the total safety provided by other, more developed vaccines.
The folks against vaccination, I suspect, are coming from the
Re:TL;DR (Score:4, Informative)
However, since this was a controlled study, what that means is that each time a vaccinated person comes into contact with enough viruses to cause an infection, they have a 95% chance of the infection not taking hold!
They have no way of knowing how many times anyone was exposed to enough viruses to cause infection. All they know is the number of people reporting symptoms at a specific time.
The interesting part of this is that almost the same percentage of people didn't even get asymptomatic infection.
This is statistically relevant. If you come in contact with the right amount of viruses only once in your life, then yes, you have a protection of 95%... but you come in contact with these fuckers every day. So you roll the dice on the infection each and every day.
What are you saying? Is it 95% protection each time or 100% each time? What is the aggregate risk?
Say I come in contact with someone who has an identical virus daily long enough to get sick each and every day for 20 years... what is my risk of becoming sick after 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? What is it specifically that you are claiming?
The number is insofar irrelevant as the Pfizer study was done during summer in the US. Other vaccines with efficacy rates of 67% have been done during a corona wave in South Africa and Brazil. It is very much expected that under those circumstances, the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine ALSO would only reach only 67%.
This is total BS. Substantially similar efficacy figures for Pfizer/Moderna have been repeated many times over in different parts of the world since the clinical trials and the JJ clinical trials included regional efficacy data including the US specifically.
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When a disease is spread through aerosolized droplets a mask stops spread because people are still just gross apes and when we talk or sneeze or cough or do anything we spew particles everywhere. Even a cloth mask helps stop those particles from spreading.
Anything less than an N95 won't protect you from an airborne virus but if you have an indoor space and everyone is wearing masks the collective action will reduce spread of the disease. That's the science and it's pretty clear cut. Nothing will reduce od
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Your post cracks me up. You're citing the same medical experts who said we should wear masks up until just now as a source to make the claim that the masks do nothing. You went back for a second bowl of stupid this morning didn't you?
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I don't get slashdotters obsession with masks
For me, anyway, the mask deal has been kind of fun. I don't wear a surgical or medical mask. I tie a big purple or red bandanna over my face. I feel like a bandit out on an adventure. It's sorta been a lark.
It is really unfortunate that having noted I wear a mask in my workshop when working with wood or metals, that the poor Trumpers are not healthy enough to do so.
I've worn a mask for as much as 8 hours at a time, with no ill effects, yet so many of these poor people start asphyxiating the second they put one on. Sad.
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Go hide behind your sofa with all the other infantile neurotics for another year wetwipe. Meanwhile the rest of us will get back to normal.
Your troll game is as low as your intelligence. Seriously child, give mommy and daddy back their laptop now. And make sure you erase those special pictures you keep downloading. You know how upset mommy got when she found out you were into shemale midget scat pr0n.
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In America, science is based on politics.
FiveThirtyEight did an excellent podcast on the subject. [fivethirtyeight.com] They were critical of both Republicans and Democrats in the handling of the pandemic, and point out that neither side was "following the science".
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Duh. Biden is just as political. He's just the other brand. Its like a Ford/Chevy or Coke/Pepsi thing. Don't say so to the wrong person, though. They take their team sport VERY seriously.
Both sides are political, obviously. But if you're implying that there's no difference between the way they approach facts, you're definitely wrong. As a conservative of sorts I really wish this weren't true, but the fact is that at present the left regularly engages in the typical political spin and truth stretching but the right is okay with making shit up out of whole cloth and insisting on it in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (c.f. the "stolen" election).
One of these things is not l
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Is this a trend we can look forward to going into the future!?
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It's almost as if recommendations can change over time as more information is known.
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I don't wear a bullet proof vest.
Assessment update: Avoid St. Louis and Baltimore.