Author Topic: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?  (Read 4287 times)

Toxicbunny

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #60 on: 11:40:51, 01/05/20 »

HMG needs to reinforce the message that masks are not a substitute for effective social distancing and good hygiene.  Nor are they an excuse to go out on non essential journeys.
You can reinforce all you like social distancing but many do not observe it the same goes for good hygiene and non essential journeys. I would not trust "others". You need to look after yourself and not rely on others washing their hands or keeping their distance.
I know people in my village  who are making home made masks for the NHS and carers due to lack of PPE
 The government also addressed the fact that face coverings are useful last night.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-face-coverings-useful-when-uk-lockdown-is-eased-says-boris-johnson-11981298





« Last Edit: 11:55:32, 01/05/20 by Toxicbunny »

ninthace

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #61 on: 12:28:30, 01/05/20 »
From your link


"Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there was only "weak science" supporting advice from the Scottish government that people should wear face coverings in shops and on public transport"


"She had said Sage found there was "weak evidence of a small effect in which a face mask can prevent a source of infection going from somebody who is infected to the people around them"."The answer is clear that the evidence is weak and the effect is small, and we have passed that on to our colleagues in government with which to make a decision," she said."


The science has not changed.  The benefit is weak and as Boris said when we was winging his reply:"I do think face coverings will be useful, both for epidemiological reasons but, also, for giving people confidence that they can go back to work."
The epidemiology tells us improvised masks are not a substitute for social distancing but may proper masks in a confined space are useful.  The telling part of Boris' statement is the last part.  It is to give people confidence -i.e. con them.
If the government mandate the wearing of proper masks, that is acceptable.  There is still a risk but it is much reduced if it is accompanied by an education programme on their correct wearing and use.  It they advocate improvised masks as an acceptable substitute without stressing the need to distance, they are putting people at risk.  Now please, before you argue again, go and do your own research.

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richardh1905

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #62 on: 12:39:30, 01/05/20 »
It they advocate improvised masks as an acceptable substitute without stressing the need to distance, they are putting people at risk.


Indeed.
I see no harm in wearing an improvised face mask as a means of somewhat reducing the chances of the wearer passing on the virus to others, but any marginal benefit will be undone if people relax other precautions, such as hand washing, maintaining 2m distancing etc.
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sussamb

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #63 on: 12:40:04, 01/05/20 »
If anything you wearing a mask protects others, it's generally more dangerous to the wearer than not wearing one  ;)


Note I'm talking about the general population here, not those in certain settings like hospitals etc
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Bhod

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #64 on: 12:46:36, 01/05/20 »
The governments advisory committee SAGE, isn't the best informed, Academically brilliant, Professional body it should be.  Any so called "Scientific" body appointed by government, that has Political advisors involved in it and is basically nothing more than a bunch of number crunchers (statisticians), who won't submit it's discussions and minutes of meetings for public scrutiny actually smacks of a "well if it all goes t*ts up we'll have a someone else to blame scenario".  No wonder all its so called members are being given the anonimity card to play.
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ninthace

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #65 on: 13:03:56, 01/05/20 »
I find this site interesting.
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data
It has limitations as it cannot show asymptomatic individuals and relies on self reporting.  IIRC a study conducted by the team showed that a little over half of those who reported themselves symptomatic actually had Covid-19.  I do not know how that has changed over time.


However I find it encouraging that in my area for example, only 6 in a 1000 are reporting symptoms.  It means if I limit my outings to the necessities and stay away from others as far as possible, I am unlikely to even encounter somebody with Covid-19, let alone be in contact with them long enough to catch it.  That is what I am telling myself anyway.
« Last Edit: 13:11:06, 01/05/20 by ninthace »
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Toxicbunny

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #66 on: 13:41:18, 01/05/20 »
From your link

The science has not changed.  The benefit is weak and as Boris said when we was winging his reply:"I do think face coverings will be useful, both for epidemiological reasons but, also, for giving people confidence that they can go back to work."
The epidemiology tells us improvised masks are not a substitute for social distancing but may proper masks in a confined space are useful.  The telling part of Boris' statement is the last part.  It is to give people confidence -i.e. con them.
If the government mandate the wearing of proper masks, that is acceptable.  There is still a risk but it is much reduced if it is accompanied by an education programme on their correct wearing and use.  It they advocate improvised masks as an acceptable substitute without stressing the need to distance, they are putting people at risk.  Now please, before you argue again, go and do your own research.
Before you tell someone to stop arguing and do research you should apply that statement to yourself. You should also accept the fact others have a different opinion than you do. I do not need to conduct any research. I keep up to date with everything. Trying to belittle me on a public forum just because I don't agree with you is childish and it will not change my opinion on wearing a facemask. You are free to do what you wish however learn to accept others will do what they wish.  I will wear a mask and disposable gloves as in my experience other people are not following social distancing rules. I have nothing else to say on this matter. I will leave you to argue with yourself as I wont change my opinion on it.

sussamb

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #67 on: 13:57:34, 01/05/20 »
I watched someone leave a supermarket last week wearing gloves and a mask.  As he approached his car he put his hand in his pocket, pulled out his car keys, held them in his mouth and then removed his gloves and mask. No doubt he felt safe  ;D
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forgotmyoldpassword

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #68 on: 14:38:39, 01/05/20 »
I find this site interesting.
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data
It has limitations as it cannot show asymptomatic individuals and relies on self reporting.  IIRC a study conducted by the team showed that a little over half of those who reported themselves symptomatic actually had Covid-19.  I do not know how that has changed over time.


However I find it encouraging that in my area for example, only 6 in a 1000 are reporting symptoms.  It means if I limit my outings to the necessities and stay away from others as far as possible, I am unlikely to even encounter somebody with Covid-19, let alone be in contact with them long enough to catch it.  That is what I am telling myself anyway.


Currently we have about 4% of the population having had it - which you could extrapolate from a 1% mortality being somewhat consistent across nations and the death figures reported.  If we're seeing 6/1000 reporting symptoms you could extrapolate that circa 75% are asymptomatic if we assume there is a hospitalisation rate of 5%.  This would be surprisingly close to the British Medical Journal's reported 78% of cases being asymptomatic.  If anything we can expect the asymptomatic to improve thanks to South Korea and Germany with their expansive test setup and in particular the young age of most of those tested. (https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-bmj-study-suggests-78-dont-show-symptoms-heres-what-that-could-mean-135732 )

The governments advisory committee SAGE, isn't the best informed, Academically brilliant, Professional body it should be.  Any so called "Scientific" body appointed by government, that has Political advisors involved in it and is basically nothing more than a bunch of number crunchers (statisticians), who won't submit it's discussions and minutes of meetings for public scrutiny actually smacks of a "well if it all goes t*ts up we'll have a someone else to blame scenario".  No wonder all its so called members are being given the anonimity card to play.



As someone involved with statistics many business discussions over the years have been clients trying to discern 'what is the bottom line' whilst ignoring everything else.  Only a select few are interested in methods or limitations, they make a judgement on that 'bottom line' based on how charismatic you are, how professional you appear, and your CV.  Which is exactly what I imagine you'd get from the press and public if this was to be made public and advice had to be individually 'judged' based on how much they like a particular scientist's face or their dress sense. 


They don't want or need to learn much about the limitations of and how many forms of prediction are imperfect by their very nature due to them potentially being based on bad data.  The method needs to evolve, the data sets need to be updated and doing this in a 'no blame' culture, internally, allows those models to be explored and perfected far more easily and quickly than having the government PR machine wasting time and energy in managing the public response as these are published. 


To use an analogy, when you are in hospital for something serious - doctors have a morning meeting where they discuss the treatment plan for their patients and their prognoses.  They don't invite the family in to the discussion unless it's clinically relevant because they aren't medically trained, and they are unlikely to understand much of the terminology and be able to contribute to the discussion due to not having understanding of the physiology of the body either.  I'm not sure patients or patient family demanding to be admitted to these discussions would be reasonable.  The same is true of public scrutiny of SAGE.


If discussions need to be had on the political impact of, for example, asking schools to re-open (at a potential cost of circa 1300 school children dying before we have a vaccine) - no politician is going to sign 1300+ children's death warrants and if the press/public start objecting to this then it does not help the situation.  However there are also other undesirable effects from remaining in lockdown I'm sure the modelers are working on understanding more in depth - an important point made during yesterday's briefing by the CSO was that 'comparisons should be made afterwards, based on excess deaths from all causes adjusted by age'.  That sentence alone should tell you that the modelling teams are looking at cancer, depression, domestic abuse, accidents, poverty, heart attacks, strokes, etc and of course COVID and trying to sail the ship on a narrow course to reduce all of these factors as much as possible.  You could say that the goal of the government isn't to minimise COVID deaths, but to minimise all causes of deaths even if this means having an inflated R-value (rate at which the virus reproduces) compared to other countries for a period of time.  This appears to be the Swedish model the UK very nearly went with originally until the modelers realised the vastly different population densities would likely give very different outcomes.


Before you tell someone to stop arguing and do research you should apply that statement to yourself. You should also accept the fact others have a different opinion than you do. I do not need to conduct any research. I keep up to date with everything. Trying to belittle me on a public forum just because I don't agree with you is childish and it will not change my opinion on wearing a facemask. You are free to do what you wish however learn to accept others will do what they wish.  I will wear a mask and disposable gloves as in my experience other people are not following social distancing rules. I have nothing else to say on this matter. I will leave you to argue with yourself as I wont change my opinion on it.



Looking at Germany mandating mask use and South Korea's adoption of it alongside other Asian nations (who had SARS-1 and MERS to content with) perhaps they know something we don't as to how this can be managed in the longer term.

From what I understand of it you're both right in a way, there are meant to be very limited benefits from wearing a standard face mask if your goal is to avoid catching the virus.  If you have one and you want to do it when you shop or when you're travelling on the tube (if you have to do so for work, for example) then it probably makes good sense to do so - however it won't be anything like a guarantee and you're probably better off washing your hands more often/not touching your face at all.  The key seems to be not adjusting your mask and not wearing it below your nose then fiddling around with it!


That said, if the asymptomatic rate is as high as some studies are reporting - wearing a mask is actually far more likely to reduce the spread from yourself to others when you're out and about if you have it but only a very mild case.  If we're still coughing and sneezing on people and feeling more or less fine perhaps someone might put it down to just clearing your throat, but this may be far more useful broadly speaking as a society and what SK and Germany are judging their decisions on.  I know in South Korea and Singapore in particular all public buildings and many work places use temperature monitoring to try and quarantine those employees who start showing symptoms early - and masks are a key part of reducing the spread before they start showing definite symptoms.


Definitely interesting times with a lot of changes to get used to.

ninthace

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #69 on: 17:06:39, 01/05/20 »
If one looks at the countries that have been "successful" in tackling Covid-19, some have used lock downs, some have not, some have mandatory masking, others do not and others have changed policy halfway through.  The one thing they all seem to do have in common is an aggressive policy of testing, tracking and tracing coupled with effective isolation of the infected.  This is relatively easy to do when the infection rate is low and most of these countries got on top of it and stayed on top of it e.g. Germany.  The problem occurs when the infection rate accelerates and starts to get away.  This happened both in South Korea and in the UK.


In the UK, the government was unable to test at anything like the required rate and abandoned all pretence of track and trace, flirted with the idea of herd immunity for a while and then when for a lock down.  In contrast, South Korea stuck with it and redoubled their efforts to catch up  with and break the chains of infection.  As I understand it, this not only included test, track and trace but also proper isolation of the infected.  As a result, S Korea never had a lock down but now has no indigenous cases.


Now that the infection rate is falling in the UK, it is playing catch up with test track and trace.  In my opinion this is the best approach and without it all other measures are just window dressing.
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pleb

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #70 on: 17:29:47, 01/05/20 »
If this tracking app thing comes in it may be the thing that finally prompts me to get a smartphone, so I can play ball.
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gunwharfman

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #71 on: 17:47:26, 01/05/20 »
The most 'important article' I've read today is how to stop a facemask hurting your ears!

I won't bore you with it but I'll post if it's important to someone?

ninthace

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #72 on: 17:49:41, 01/05/20 »
The most 'important article' I've read today is how to stop a facemask hurting your ears!

I won't bore you with it but I'll post if it's important to someone?
Loosen each ear back half a turn?  Pad the loops? Use thicker loops? Glue it to your face and dispense with the loops altogether?  Paperclip through both loops? ;)
Little known medical fact - headaches are often caused by having your ears on too tight.
« Last Edit: 17:55:18, 01/05/20 by ninthace »
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sussamb

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #73 on: 17:56:53, 01/05/20 »
The most 'important article' I've read today is how to stop a facemask hurting your ears!


It's simple enough, don't wear one  :)
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Bigfoot_Mike

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Re: Are you making your own face masks or anything else?
« Reply #74 on: 19:55:26, 01/05/20 »
BBC reported on the SK track and trace and said that following MERS it enacted pretty draconian laws. These enable tracking through bank accounts and other ways that would probably never be acceptable in the UK. So, it appears that SK has a head start that we couldn’t ever hope to follow.

 

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