How do we know a pandemic's over?

[Rolfe]

Well now, if your better masks are uncomfortable, that's at least a concrete reason. (The FFP2s I bought are probably more comfortable than the cloth masks I had at the start of the pandemic, but seldom if ever used.)

 

[Chanakya]

...And there are some drawbacks to the N95s. They are uncomfortable. This discomfort can be born during the pandemic because it's a much lesser problem than catching the disease. After the pandemic is over, however, when the necessity of masking at all is in question, then downgrading to a more comfortable alternative is not so unreasonable.

Afraid I disagree with the rest of your post, afraid none of that actually makes sense. But that's okay, those are incidentals, so let me not go splitting hairs over them. This here portion that I've quoted is the key part, so let's just go with that. And absolutely, basis this, your position does seem reasonable.

That is, I don't say I agree with your assessment. But then I wouldn't know, because I haven't actually even worn a cloth mask ever. N95s all through; and surgicals in the very early days when there was uncertainty plus availability was less plentiful than now; but cloth never; so I have no way to assess whether you're right, and no reason to disagree with your assessment. And in any case, my subjective opinion on that is irrelevant, obviously, it is your assessment that is relevant for you.

Agreed, given your assessment about the relative comfort of cloth masks vis-a-vis N95s, and given your assessment of the risk at this time, and given the subjective value you assign to the comfort factor --- and, naturally, regardless of what I might think about any of these three factors --- your decision to wear cloth masks does seem reasonable.

 

[bignickel]

To my mind, the pandemic is over if the percentage of fatalities of those who got sick with Covid19 are the same (or less) as the percentage of fatalities for those sick with the flu, AND the numbers of people catching Covid19 has dropped down to about the same number of people who've caught the flu.

Has it? Has that occurred? Has Paxlovid, etc been successful enough in saving the lives of those with severe Covid that the fatality % has dropped below the 1.5% or so fatality rate that we've seen since 2020?

I've read that with the flu, USA loses about 30K people a year. According to https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 we've lost 12K to Covid19 in the last 28 days. That really doesn't sound to me like the pandemic is over yet...

 

[Rolfe]

Agreed.

 

[dann]

Biden: ‘The pandemic is over’

President Biden is an idiot!

The Biden administration had a promising start on its pandemic response. Now, the president is saying the pandemic is over as more than 500 people, on average, are dying each day from Covid-19. MSNBC medical contributor Dr. Kavita Patel and epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding join Mehdi to discuss Biden’s comments and the state of the pandemic.
Mehdi: No, President Biden, The Pandemic Is Not Over | The Mehdi Hasan Show (MSNBC on YouTube, Sep 20, 2022)

Why A Top Doctor Says Dining Indoors Still Isn't Worth The Risk | The Mehdi Hasan Show (MSNBC on YouTube, Sep 8, 2022 - 10:27)
As America steps confidently into being done with Covid, UCSF medical school professor Bob Wachter has decided that – for him – some of the risks many of us are now taking aren’t worth it.
He joins Mehdi to share why.
Why A Top Doctor Says Dining Indoors Still Isn't Worth The Risk | The Mehdi Hasan Show (MSNBC on YouTube, Sep 8, 2022 - 10:27)

The "top doctor" from the Mehdi Hasan Show:

I’m not doing indoor dining, and I still wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces. While most in US have chosen to be less careful, in this I’ll review the logic & math behind my decisions, hoping that some of you will find them useful in navigating today’s Covid landscape. (1/25)

Here’s my bottom line (in case this is TL;DR):
I’ll begin eating inside and removing my mask in most indoor spaces when the local reported case rate falls below 5/100,000/day.
You can find your local rate of cases/100K/day here
@nytimes: https://nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases-deaths-tracker.html (2/25)
(...)
Clearly, many will find my threshold too conservative; others too risky. Now that mandates are gone, we all need to make our own choices.
I won’t go into detail about why I’m still trying to avoid Covid– it's mostly Long Covid, as I explained here: https://washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/28/long-covid-calculating-risk-masks/… (4/25)
(...)
I estimate that the chances of getting Covid from a moderate exposure to an infected person (sitting in my row on a plane or a nearby table in a restaurant) is ~5-10%. That's a rough guess – & would vary depending on things like exposure time, ventilation, distancing, etc. (8/25)
Dr Bob Wachter (Twitter, Aug 28, 2022)

See the thread to find out about how he calculates his risk of catching Covid on a plane or in a restaurant to be 5-10%.

 

[dann]

There are still morons that think it's no big deal just because it doesn't dominate the news anymore.

And the president of the USA is now one of them.

 

[TragicMonkey]

And the president of the USA is now one of them.

A president is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't: if he says it's over then he gets crucified for downplaying the current spread, if he says it's not over then he gets crucified for exaggerating the current spread. And if he says nothing he gets crucified for having nothing to say.

I wouldn't put too much weight on any politician's statements about whether this is "over" or not. There's not a lightbulb in the Oval Office that is lit when there's a pandemic then it goes dark when there's not.

 

[dann]

So damn him! Nothing forced Trump to downplay the pandemic. Nothing forces Biden to so so.
Especially when it obviously isn't: Omicron sublineage BA.2.75.2 exhibits extensive escape from neutralising antibodies (bioRxiv, Sep 16, 2022)
For Scandinavians: Ny coronavariant (BA.2.75.2) undslipper i ekstrem grad immunitet, siger eksperter (TV2.dk, Sep 20, 2022)

In the USA, the pandemic has been at approximately the same level since May (Our World in Data). And Winter Is Coming.
It is not as if the pandemic has a habit of peaking in September: Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people (Our World in Data).
But Midterms Are Coming!

 

[Puppycow]

Honestly, I don't know why anyone messes around with cloth masks, or even those useless surgical masks

I honestly have never even heard of “FFP3” or 2 masks. I don’t think we have those in Japan. I don’t know why you would call surgical masks “useless” or put them in the same category as cloth masks given that there are actual studies that prove that they work better. I’ve still not have Covid yet and those are all I have ever used. That includes regular use of crowded commuter trains.

Ultimately I guess it’s hard to really know much for sure. A mask is only effective when you use it and we all end up taking it off eventually. You cannot eat or drink while wearing a mask after all.

 

[Rolfe]

The FFP (fitted face protection, I think) standard is what is used in Britain, also in the rest of Europe I think. FFP2 is equivalent to what the Americans call N95. The FFP3 is a 99% rated mask.

I agree with you about the masks, I was being a bit hyperbolic to illustrate the difference between the surgical masks and the respirator-standard masks.

It's definitely possible to use masks intelligently to avoid infection. I carry a CO2 meter and only take the mask off to eat when the CO2 level is below 700 ppm. It's surprisingly easy to manage this most of the time. While we were in a plane my friend was thirsty and got a glass of water from the steward. She undid her mask only for a few seconds each sip, and tried not to inhale in that time. Not perfect, but that's the sort of thing that works. (Then she spilled the water all over me, and that was the end of that.)

I'm pretty sure I know how we got the virus. There was a lavish afternoon tea spread laid out on our river cruise boat, on the last day. This was three days after the concert in Vienna which was a slam-dunk superspreader. I think others on the boat who had not masked for the concert were infectious that day, and my friend and I got too near one of them in the scrum for the cakes, even though the CO2 meter was reading OK. If we had masked to collect the cakes then taken our haul to a table a couple of metres from anyone else, I think we'd have been OK. We'd just got too used to being unmasked on the boat, because all its public spaces were well ventilated and had good CO2 levels.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

[dann]

I honestly have never even heard of “FFP3” or 2 masks. I don’t think we have those in Japan.

I think you do! (Amazon.co.jp)

Even cloth masks are better than nothing, but it depends on the circumstances. I get the impression that most Cubans, for instance, are using cloth masks. In addition to their vaccination campaign, it seems to have done the trick because the contagion there is as low as it is at this point.
However, in circumstances where the contagion is high, many people don't mask up, and you thus need to protect yourself from those who go unprotected, I would recommend face masks with a higher level of filtration, i.e. FFP2 or FFP3.
At this point, I would recommend the better masks on public transport or public indoor settings in Japan.
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people: USA, Japan, Cuba (Our World in Data)

Coronavirus: Face mask, face shield, FFP2, N95, KN95 — what's the difference? (DW, June 29, 2021)

 

[lobosrul5]

I won't make a fuss where masks are mandated or whoever's premise I enter requires them, but other than that I'm done with them.

We are down to 3 deaths a day (7 day rolling average) from COVID, up from two a day a few weeks ago in my state. Most of those people are likely unvaccinated or have serious health risks anyways; I'm vaccinated (3x) and have no conditions that would make COVID more serious. I figure my odds of dying from COVID at this point are miniscule compared to many other causes of death.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/...eaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~All+ages

Looks like the death rate for all people, no matter their age is .4 per 100,000 per annum if fully vaccinated and boosted. By way of comparison, the murder rate in the city I live in is about 30 times higher (were on murder #128 of the year so far, in a city of 600k). The motor vehicle accident rate in my state is about 58 times higher (it was 23.5/100k in 2021) than the vaccinated covid death rate.

Biden might be wrong that is over, but with rates like this, its no longer a serious concern for the vaccinated and healthy part of the population.

 

[novaphile]

I use a mix of N95 disposable masks, and washable cloth masks which hold disposable N95 filters.

The reason why I use the cloth masks, is that there are situations that require a lot of conversation.

I find that the N95 disposables climb up my face, and jam the sharp edges into my eyes while I'm talking. (Crossing over the elastic straps reduces, but does not prevent, this problem)

The cloth masks with the disposable filter pads, are much larger and cover my whole face from the bridge of my nose to underneath my chin, and most importantly do not climb around on my face.

I notice that all of the 'cloth mask useless' comments seem to ignore the idea that cloth masks may be holding filters in place.

Given where we're at in the pandemic, and the fact that I still haven't caught covid, I'm happy that I'm doing the right thing.

Happy accident...

The N95 disposable masks are absolutely brilliant for when I'm working with power tools and timber.

 

[dann]

Most of those people are likely unvaccinated or have serious health risks anyways; I'm vaccinated (3x) and have no conditions that would make COVID more serious. I figure my odds of dying from COVID at this point are miniscule compared to many other causes of death.
(...)
Biden might be wrong that is over, but with rates like this, its no longer a serious concern for the vaccinated and healthy part of the population.

Good for you that you're healthy and not one of those people, but some people (even some people in this thread) are those people (and not because they're unvaccinated), and others are now no longer healthy due to the virus. Besides, you may not be as well protected as you think.
You do know that face masks work on both the air going in and the air going out, don't you?! They protect others when you are the one shedding the virus.

 

[Rolfe]

That last is why I didn't go near anyone for a week once I realised I had it. My FFP3 masks have exhalation vents, so they're useless at protecting anyone else from me. Once I was testing negative I bought a box of FFP2s without exhalation valves, although I have no intention of letting this happen again.

 

[Chanakya]

I use a mix of N95 disposable masks, and washable cloth masks which hold disposable N95 filters.

The reason why I use the cloth masks, is that there are situations that require a lot of conversation.

I find that the N95 disposables climb up my face, and jam the sharp edges into my eyes while I'm talking. (Crossing over the elastic straps reduces, but does not prevent, this problem)

The cloth masks with the disposable filter pads, are much larger and cover my whole face from the bridge of my nose to underneath my chin, and most importantly do not climb around on my face.

I notice that all of the 'cloth mask useless' comments seem to ignore the idea that cloth masks may be holding filters in place.
Given where we're at in the pandemic, and the fact that I still haven't caught covid, I'm happy that I'm doing the right thing.

Happy accident...

The N95 disposable masks are absolutely brilliant for when I'm working with power tools and timber.

I had no clue you could have cloth masks that can hold N95 filters. Are you sure those filters stay effective even after washing? If they do, then agreed, those cloth masks would then be no less effective than the regular N95s, and what's more they'd then look like a better proposition (in terms of both the ecological impact, as well as the cost). Add to that the comfort factor that both you and TM speak of --- and that I've no opinion on, never having used them --- and absolutely, cloth masks would then come out as decisively better than the disposables.

eta: And add on top of all of that the eshetics of it, because I'm sure cloth masks can be made out to look better than these disposables.

 

[Chanakya]

Good for you that you're healthy and not one of those people, but some people (even some people in this thread) are those people (and not because they're unvaccinated), and others are now no longer healthy due to the virus. Besides, you may not be as well protected as you think.
You do know that face masks work on both the air going in and the air going out, don't you?! They protect others when you are the one shedding the virus.

Very true. This is the part that people keep forgetting, somehow, even after all this time.

And this is exactly why when there is a question of doubt, a question of subjectivity, then it is better to err on the side of caution than on the side of ...going bare. Because you may well be cavalier about your own wellbeing, and see it as your business and no one else's; but you have no right to endanger others. ("Right" in ethical terms, I mean to say, and regardless of the law. As far as the law what is your "right" is pretty much clearly laid out, and needs no thinking over. But if the law leaves it to you, and if there's still risk, then while you may not care about your own safety, but do you have the right to not care about others' safety and wellbeing?)

 

[TragicMonkey]

I had no clue you could have cloth masks that can hold N95 filters. Are you sure those filters stay effective even after washing? If they do, then agreed, those cloth masks would then be no less effective than the regular N95s

I think they'd still be less effective regardless of filters because that's not the only criterion for masking quality: there's also the adherence to the face. N95s are serious and attach very firmly (mine have two pretty tight straps that go across the back of the head). Most cloth masks are of the loop-over-ears type, which provide inferior attachment.

eta: And add on top of all of that the eshetics of it, because I'm sure cloth masks can be made out to look better than these disposables.

I actually wear my nice black cloth mask over my N95, not because it adds any protective value but because it looks nicer. My N95s are industrial ones and look a bit alarming. Also I didn't want to inspire envy among those who might not have gotten any N95s. At first glance it looks like I'm just wearing the cloth mask, until you notice the yellow straps going behind my head, and the white edges sticking out behind the cloth.

 

[Chanakya]

I think they'd still be less effective regardless of filters because that's not the only criterion for masking quality: there's also the adherence to the face. N95s are serious and attach very firmly (mine have two pretty tight straps that go across the back of the head). Most cloth masks are of the loop-over-ears type, which provide inferior attachment.



I actually wear my nice black cloth mask over my N95, not because it adds any protective value but because it looks nicer. My N95s are industrial ones and look a bit alarming. Also I didn't want to inspire envy among those who might not have gotten any N95s. At first glance it looks like I'm just wearing the cloth mask, until you notice the yellow straps going behind my head, and the white edges sticking out behind the cloth.

Oh, is that what you were talking about? That's a clear win-win, no question.

They did ask that we use two masks at one time, but I confess I did that only rarely, because I found that too uncomfortable. (Could be psychological. In any case, it can be argued that my comfort shouldn't have figured so strongly in my decision, especially back then. Whatever, I generally went with just the one, the N95, even back then; and now as well, obviously.)


eta:

I think they'd still be less effective regardless of filters because that's not the only criterion for masking quality: there's also the adherence to the face.

True. Although arguably that could be addressed by getting cloth masks that have straps, because why not; but on the other hand it's a question of what's available, I guess. I've no clue myself if they make them with straps at all, but I guess not, else you wouldn't have said what you did.

 

[dann]

I had no clue you could have cloth masks that can hold N95 filters. Are you sure those filters stay effective even after washing?

It isn't clear to me what kind of filters TragicMonkey is talking about. I have a cloth mask to be used with paper filters. The cloth mask is washable. The filters aren't.