COVID-Free, masks worked!

I don’t know how long will COVID be destroying lives for.  At the rate we are going, we might be dealing with this also next year.  Hope it goes away soon!

 

Dodged the virus… this time.

Thank goodness, my family and I remain COVID-free after our last close scare.  Though I would have preferred that my wife’s COVID test would have not costed a whopping $126.oo dollars, the peace of mind is definitely priceless.  Both our results arrived around the same time.  She had a rapid test in a pharmacy, I got mine in a hospital drive-through site a few days prior.  Still, I will be returning to work next week in case this was a false negative result.  I did have some instances of headaches, and felt as though I had some fever, and some other mild symptoms… maybe it’s something else – after all, it is the cold season in this hemisphere.  This could very well have been part of the anxiety we were experiencing while waiting for these results.

Whatever that was, I am happy that we are not positive for COVID.  This is especially important to me, because that means that the kids are also COVID-free, and that we were not an infection vector to the people we came in contact before the test.  I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the person who tested positive for COVID, and who was near Sammy.  This person did in fact take precautions to minimize spreading the virus during our interactions.  And I appreciate that, because that prevented our family from becoming a number in this rapidly growing static.  I’ve said it before, I will say again.  When we (as a collective) take precautions this help us prevent giving COVID, not necessarily getting COVID.  It is about helping the people around us not getting infected.  If we all work together, then we can prevent the spread, together.

As I type this there are 23,323,615 confirmed COVID cases in USA with 388,887 resulting deaths.  Back in 13JAN, here in USA we were at 22,864,103 cases resulting in 381,513 deaths.  So, in the last two days we have seen 459,512 new cases and 7,374 peopled whose life came to an end because of this disease.  People still think this is either “a hoax, that it is not real, or that even if it is real – the mortality rate is so low to even worry, that it might not happen to them, etc.”  Those statements, among many others I keep hearing are misguided opinions – and trust me, I wish they were right, but unfortunately that is not the case.

For those families who got infected and especially those who have lost loved ones, or got stuck with expensive bills to test and/or treat the disease… this was most definitely not a hoax, it caused many of them very real pain and suffering, and even if the mortality is “low,” those who died were part of that “so called-low mortality rate” –  I am sure would have preferred to have more days of enjoying their life, which was cut short in a very dramatic way – often by receiving a virus from somebody who thought it was not real.  Many deniers of this reality though this has not happened to them, but it did, and in extreme cases they had to say their last goodbye from a hospital bed.

I’ve asked this before, and I will continue to repeat it…  why would anybody put somebody else (even if they don’t know them) in a life-damaging situation?  It is much easier and altruistic to err in the side of caution.  Again, it is simple – wash your hands for ~20 seconds and cover your mouth & nose with a cloth mask for the little time you’re around somebody outside your “bubble.”

This easy concept has been proven way too hard to enforce, and that’s why we will continue to see these cases spike. Why is it so hard? Because many people in our world will rather ignore or defy what science is telling us, and in some cases even make policy that is based on convenience, not on science.   When it comes to science, you can prove a fact using different disciplines because they are logical, measurable and demonstrable.  The problem is that getting the facts might take a multi-dimensional understanding of a subject, and our society largely prefers a one-dimensional-solution.  The latter is easier, but not seldom accurate.

 

The problem with unintended consequences

Most of the arguments I’ve seen against wearing a mask or preventing COVID from spreading stem from misinformation.  There might be – some part – of the argument that those who are opposed to the COVID mitigation guidelines are correct… but that is not the entire story.  Correlation is not causation.  For example, all schnauzers are dogs, not all dogs are schnauzers.  The fallacy with the masks lies on the fact that there has been misinformation broadcasted far and wide, and mistakes made by the leadership in charge of handling this crisis.  But that does not mean that in the midst of that confusion there were not some viable solutions.  Remember, when this started in USA, this virus had more unknowns than knows.  And people do stupid stuff when they are scared.

Do you remember when we could not get toilet paper to save our lives?  Yes, aisles and aisles of toilet paper gone everywhere. The same was true with hand-sanitizer, you could not find that anywhere, not even online.  This panic bulk buying created a shortage on a consumable product that was not even affected by this pandemic. In contrast, at the same time there was also a no-$#!^ shortage of medical and protective equipment in USA. The COVID task force (which was led by Republican Vice President Mike Pence) stated that masks should be only saved for first responders and medical personnel. The language they utilized was effective in the sense that it discouraged the population from buying every mask in existence at the time.

The COVID Task Force later come up with the idea of wearing a cloth face mask over your nose and mouth.  I remember seeing the press conferences, where the COVID Task Force were teaching you “how to make” your mask utilizing every day garments found at home.  And guess what?  The scientific minds AROUND THE WORLD, not just USA have been advising to wear a cloth face covering (preferably more than one layer) when around other people. This was happening in countries affected with COVID before it arrived in the US.  Anti-mask people keep bringing back this argument as an example of misleading language by the COVID Task Force.

Mask-deniers often forget that COVID Task Force discouraged masks when we had a nation-wide shortage of medical supplies.  That shortage fortunately is in the past, the companies that can generate and supply those items had plenty of time to meet the demand.  The difference is that these cloth masks are for the most part reusable, and washable… just like underwear – Yes, people do need to wash the cloth face masks.

 

 

Are there more effective ways to prevent COVID than wearing a cloth mask over the mouth and nose in public and washing their hands often?  Of course there are… for example:  Using more expensive N-95 mask, staying the hell away from everybody, moving your family to live in the wilderness, sanitize the hell out of everything every minute of the day, avoid touching anything when you go out, talk to other human beings only remotely (video chat, online, or on the phone), staying in a closed  bubble, become a hermit, don’t touch your face – ever, shun all your friends and family until this disease disappears or one or more of them passes away, work from home… or, or, or people can just thoroughly wash their hands and put a cloth mask whenever we interact with others… even if they don’t understand why.

I’ve talked to many of them (mask deniers), and they place their trust in some ludicrous stuff, if they could just place their trust on these principles, then their help will contribute to collectives healing to take place.  It took some time to create this level of damage, so it will take some time to rectify it, or even see the fruits of progress.

In a previous rant I was taking about how it is each one of us who actually control the course of this disease.  That is still true today as it was back then.  The cognizant authorities only provide guidance to help formalize the request to their constituents.  Some of the cognizant authorities are more in tune with the reality of science, while some of them don’t’ quite understand it either – thus lower the guard by putting convenience above science.

The ones who understood how to combat this disease echo the same thing… “wear your cloth face mask covering mouth and nose, wash your hands, and stay the hell away from people as much as you can until this situation gets under control.”  And you know what?  This approach WAS ACTUALLY WORKING for some time (remember the “flatten the curve argument?), then people got tired and went the other way – and it got worse, because there were a lot more vectors of infection walking among us – it is simple arithmetic.

These virus spreading vectors continued to grow…  A quick google search for “COVID spread diagram” will give you plenty of examples of how this infection can grow exponentially.  That’s why the numbers get much higher each passing day.  Yes, I Said that already, I hope that if I repeat it a couple of times those who need to listen will.  Even if they don’t personally like me.

 

This is a nice graphic I randomly got in my google Image Search (Yes, I followed my own advice).  As I selected the graphic, I saw it was posted by the New York Times back in 26MAR2020 and updated in 03APR2020.  Even if you don’t like their politics, the graphic is spot-on.  It shows how a person can potentially spread the disease, when they become “patient zero” (depicted by the red figure and passing it to each gray figure with the red lines).   And this graphic is only using as baseline an infected person who is interacting with two (2) people in each sequence.

The reality is that we tend to interact with a lot more people on a daily basis.  For example, if a person is infected (knowingly or unknowingly) and goes to a grocery store with no mask, this person could have just infected dozens of people.  There are plenty of other graphics floating out there that will explain this concept.  When a person wears the mask, they help stopping the spread of this disease.  It is really that simple.

 

Why I keep pushing this issue?

Just like you, and everyone else, I want our lives to get back to “normal.”  But in this case, it is a team effort, and every weak link perpetuates the problem.  It is not something we just can look away and wish for it to disappear.  We have been fortunate in USA to have a lot of other afflictions that caused suffering to people around the world to one day disappear– as if it was magic (it was not magic).  Or at least being squelched enough to not think about these afflictions hurting other people.  This time is different, because when those other afflictions disappeared SOMEBODY was taking action to make it better for everyone involved.  This time around it takes ALL OF US to contribute to making it better, we are that “somebody.”  That’s why we are where we are at this point in our history, we cannot just look for someone else to do the work for us this time.  The frustrating part is that the easiest thing we can do is to taking heed, wear a cloth face mask covering our mouth and nose when we are around other people outside our circle (because mask deflect the air we exhale from our mouth and nose, making it harder for the virus to reach somebody else).  And wash our hands with soap and water for ~20 seconds, #1 because of COVID is a lipid virus and the soap breaks its protective “skin,” and #2 because not washing your hands thoroughly is just gross. HLC