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Native Answers Coronavirus Related Basic Science Questions

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Masking. Important or virtue signaling.

A short opinion/perspective: By Native

So.... I am probably going to give an unsatisfactory answer, cause the answer is yes and no.

All aspects to me fall in the area of risk mitigation. Is all risk going to be removed? No, we are just trying to alter it so things are less. All masking studies are basically flawed in that there is too much uncontrolled. What type of mask, how long is it going to be worn, how well is it worn, etc. etc.

If everyone worn N95 masks completely correctly for 2 weeks solid, I think we would have things squashed pretty good. Problem with this is EVERYBODY, completely, correctly. 3 things that aren't going to happen. So any study that finds masks don't work, to me is something that is trying to drive an agenda..... cause they work. Not a doubt at all in my mind. However, in real life, they aren't perfect and are just one arm of risk mitigation. The top choice is vaccination, given once you are compliant there, you enter a really long window of compliance and have achieved a lot of risk mitigation.

To me, the term that is left unexplained is infectious dose. If we think that airborne spread and aerosols are the primary source of transfer then doing our best to reduce them makes the most sense. This is why wearing mask if sick is most important as it most strongly reduces the transfer. Less virus around, the less dose you get exposed and the less sick you become and you infect fewer people. Now, if I am wearing a lesser mask and the virus is in the air(either from masked or unmasked sick person), we are already at the situation where the mask is going to lose effectiveness (sans N95) and the virus can still sneak in, through, around, etc. So this is why mask for protection of self is lesser.

I think the masking itself should be required for unvaxxed only, but there is no way to enforce compliance and have a half the population policy is super hard and doesn't work. So to achieve unvaxxed with a mask everyone has to wear one. The transmission amongst the vaccinated population, by every logical reason and in practice is going to be greatly reduced. We can't point trace where one got infected cleanly enough to have data that XX% of infections are passed on by unvaccinated individuals. (I have seen no data on this, but my gut says 90%)

Now do I believe people who want everyone to have a mask on understand this and feel this way? not at all. There are groups with exorbitant fear and they will bring up the any death/disease is too much. This doesn't fall into my personal level of acceptable risk. All that said, I don't have much difficulty wearing a mask and as a vaccinated individual, I try to match my masking to the the person I am with, whether for their mental comfort or for need. And I wear a mask at work (medical environment) as is required. However, my office is lonely, and I don't see many people, so that means I don't actually wear one most of the day.
 
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Paper that discussing masking. I don't think I need to change/update my opinion/perspective after reading this.
 
Next I submit to you a tweet, that coulda been a whole seminar series. 1/82! #EPICTWITTER

 



Interview Blog about #LongCovid This is a really interesting topic for scientific understanding as answers are currently missing.

My alternate hypothesis is sorta in the area of the autoimmunity area, however, I don't think is fully autoimmune. My hypothesis is an alteration of immunity set point which then has ongoing effects that persist. This still is the autoimmune side of things, but isn't requiring an internal immune target like classical autoimmune diseases.

 
The vaccine fence seems harder to sit on as data accumulates.




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Next level epidemiology humor here.
 




Conclusion:
"As noted, the activity of ivermectin in cell culture has not reproduced in mouse infection models against many of the viruses and has not been clinically proven either, in spite of ivermectin being available globally. This is likely related to the pharmacokinetics and therapeutic safety window for ivermectin. The blood levels of ivermectin at safe therapeutic doses are in the 20–80 ng/ml range, while the activity against SARS-CoV2 in cell culture is in the microgram range. Ivermectin is administered orally or topically. If safe formulations or analogs can be derived that can be administered to achieve therapeutic concentrations, ivermectin could be useful as a broad-spectrum antiviral agent."
 



Fairly detailed, but important read here concerning arguments that the vaccine leads to viral evolution and immune escape.

TL: DR
Unfounded concern, at least, not a major enough concern at all to dissuade vaccination.

Paper link included for myself and anyone who "enjoys" a good technical read.



Just ran across this: Much better to read this one as written for a different audience. I know the lead author and has been a source of my learning on COVID and evolutionary genetics.

 

Link for me and the interested. Bacterial antibiotic resistance vs vaccine escape. this thread is a wealth of information!

 
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