Masks

Wibbs · 07-04-2020 09:00AM

Yes: other

Yep M, but that's been known since February from reports in Asia and by the end of February "superspreaders" were already a thing. A widely published report in medical journal circles looked at a German case where the guy was asymptomatic and infecting others. And yet in early March we had that HSE mouthpiece Cormican state in a press conference that this was not an issue, to the point that if you were living with a coronavirus contact person, so long as they weren't exhibiting symptoms you should live your life as normal. Yup. Oh and to compound this idiocy he went on to reference runny nose as a symptom, when it's been known since early January that runny nose is one of the least reported symptoms. That's the kind of "leadership" we're dealing with here.

Wibbs · 07-04-2020 09:05AM

Yes: other

Here's the above video in question. Under two minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmKfS2TkrSo

Now forget about what we know now and how unbelievably bad advice this is and consider what we knew then, at least any body with a working search engine did. This is our leadership. You could not make it up.

WoollyRedHat · 07-04-2020 09:16AM

No: I don't care enough

Wibbs wrote: »

https://www.virustaticshield.com/Made the link active for you W. Looks like an interesting idea, where instead of going for filtration the fabric is coated with an antiviral substance which they claim deactivates the virus. I notice the coating only lasts three hand washes, so that's a limitation, but still. Getting one may be an issue. I'd say they're flying off the shelves. Personally I'd be looking at looking at any of the well thought out homemade and washable ideas out there that can be made with few materials and tools or skill. Anything that reduces the amount of snotters you may cough out, and reduces the amount you may breath in.

Oh sorry didn't spot the 3 washes thing, agreed that is a drawback.

I reckon in the not too distance future that non-thermal plasma air purifiers which you can attach to your face which will filter and kill virus will be the solution. But not there yet, first there will be a more industrial version which is placed in big communal venues and then when they finally mange to make a device that's small enough to attach to your face it will be significantly expensive and will only be used in medical settings first.

Bob24 · 07-04-2020 09:37AM

Wibbs wrote: »

Here's the above video in question. Under two minutes long.
Now forget about what we know now and how unbelievably bad advice this is and consider what we knew then, at least any body with a working search engine did. This is our leadership. You could not make it up.

Now is probably not the time to shuffle leadership, but TBH just this short clip would justify removing him from this job once the mess is over.

He’s basically saying the exact opposite of what the few countries which had early exposure to the virus and have managed to somewhat control the outbreak have been doing. And as you said, while we are getting increasingly more confirmation that this was bad advice, a lot of the information was already known then.

otnomart · 07-04-2020 09:52AM

WHO doc published yesterday 6 April:
Advice on the use of masks in the context of COVID-19
https://www.who.int/publications-detail/advice-on-the-use-of-masks-in-the-community-during-home-care-and-in-healthcare-settings-in-the-context-of-the-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)-outbreak
I pasted some excerpts below:
"Wearing a medical mask is one of the prevention measures that can limit the spread of certain respiratory viral diseases, including COVID-19. However, the use of a mask alone is insufficient to provide an adequate level of protection, and other measures should also be adopted. Whether or not masks are used, maximum compliance with hand hygiene and other IPC measures is critical to prevent human-to-human transmission of COVID-19. "
"Medical masks should be reserved for health care workers. The use of medical masks in the community may create a false sense of security, with neglect of other essential measures, such as hand hygiene practices and physical distancing, and may lead to touching the face under the masks and under the eyes, result in unnecessary costs, and take masks away from those in health care who need them most, especially when masks are in short supply"
"In some countries masks are worn in accordance with local customs or in accordance with advice by national authorities in the context of COVID-19. In these situations, best practices should be followed about how to wear, remove, and dispose of them, and for hand hygiene after removal."
"the wide use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not supported by current evidence and carries uncertainties and critical risks."
"WHO stresses that it is critical that medical masks and respirators be prioritized for health care workers.
The use of masks made of other materials (e.g., cotton fabric), also known as nonmedical masks, in the community setting has not been well evaluated. There is no current evidence to make a recommendation for or against their use in this setting."

Kivaro · 07-04-2020 10:01AM

Yes: valved

Wibbs wrote: »

Here's the above video in question. Under two minutes long.

Now forget about what we know now and how unbelievably bad advice this is and consider what we knew then, at least any body with a working search engine did. This is our leadership. You could not make it up.

Even then, it was obvious that the advice did not make sense.

The HSE were behind the curve (in preparedness) on this, so they issued dangerous guidance to the residents of this State instead.
I said it weeks ago; every household in the country should be receiving free masks ............ like they are doing in many other countries. They keep telling us that we are a first world country, but they are behaving as if we have 3rd world resources.

Arrival · 07-04-2020 10:53AM

Kivaro wrote: »

Even then, it was obvious that the advice did not make sense.

The HSE were behind the curve (in preparedness) on this, so they issued dangerous guidance to the residents of this State instead.
I said it weeks ago; every household in the country should be receiving free masks ............ like they are doing in many other countries. They keep telling us that we are a first world country, but they are behaving as if we have 3rd world resources.

Yet so many fools are praising Leo and Simon saying they've done such an amazing job throughout this. We're actually a nation of thicks if people genuinely believe that this early into this, and we'll learn nothing from it as a result

khalessi · 07-04-2020 10:59AM

Yes: surgical

The way I see it, I have the equipment and we know public should be wearing them. But I will just wear mine and encourage nearest and dearest to wear theirs

Wibbs · 07-04-2020 11:42AM

Yes: other

I'm doing similar with folks I know, but it's hard to get through to many of them because of the frankly retarded HSE "advice" up to now and many naturally feel weird if they're the only ones wearing one. Sadly the wearing of face masks is not unlike vaccination programmes, you need the most amount of people possible involved to really increase "herd immunity" as it were.

fr336 · 07-04-2020 12:19PM

Yes: surgical

Ive only had to go to my local shops past 2 weeks (south east England) but every time I've been out more people have had some kind of mask or scarf on. Yesterday whole shop had one apart from the staff (disgraceful)

Bob24 · 07-04-2020 12:29PM

fr336 wrote: »

apart from the staff (disgraceful)

Disgraceful indeed :-/ They are not nurses and doctors alright, but their health still is being exposed to keep society running (and they aren’t exactly the best paid employees in a country).

The very least society should do (being the state or their employers) is to provide them with basic protection.

Now, realistically due to previous poor panning we currently don’t have the masks for them (and rationally medical staff still takes priority over them). But still it is disgraceful.

Wibbs · 07-04-2020 12:30PM

Yes: other

There seems to be more mask uptake in the UK compared to here alright.

fr336 · 07-04-2020 12:32PM

Yes: surgical

Wibbs wrote: »

There seems to be more mask uptake in the UK compared to here alright.

Understandable. Even taking into account population difference, it is far smaller a problem where you are and you're far more spread out than we are. Doesn't mean people shouldn't be wearing PPE though, corona only has to be lucky once we have to be lucky every time.

greasepalm · 07-04-2020 12:33PM

Yes: other

Everybody should cover up with something to be safer and in wearing gloves.

Gynoid · 07-04-2020 12:57PM

Just had a thought. With masks going to become most definitely a growing part of humankind's future are we going to epigenetically modify for bigger, stronger, stickier-out ears? :eek: Selective evolution of faulty antihelical folds?

Okay. Back to not thinking again. It is better for everyone that I stop!

Wibbs · 07-04-2020 12:58PM

Yes: other

greasepalm wrote: »

Everybody should cover up with something to be safer and in wearing gloves.

Actually gloves is where I agree with the HSE and others. I'd personally actively suggest people don't wear gloves, but instead follow hand washing on the regular and sanitiser where no water is available. For a start on average viruses and bacteria last longer on gloves than they do on human skin. Human skin is designed to be a harsh environment for most of them. Wearing gloves does seem to give people more false feelings of safety.

Now that's been an accusation pointed at masks too, but even with improper use an infected person breathing or coughing into the air will have that load of viral laden exhalation stopped by a mask, even a home made cotton one.

Put it this way if I had to be in a room with an infected person I'd not bother with gloves if I had a way to wash before and after going in, but no way would I not wear a mask. And would insist they did too.

Wibbs · 07-04-2020 01:01PM

Yes: other

Gynoid wrote: »

Just had a thought. With masks going to become most definitely a growing part of humankind's future are we going to epigenetically modify for bigger, stronger, stickier-out ears? :eek: Selective evolution of faulty antihelical folds?

Okay. Back to not thinking again. It is better for everyone that I stop!

Coronavirus-van-Gogh-no-ear-for-mask.jpg?resize=485%2C473

Seanergy · 07-04-2020 01:07PM

Yes: valved

Wibbs wrote: »

Here's the above video in question. Under two minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmKfS2TkrSo

This is our leadership. You could not make it up.

Bob24 wrote: »

Now is probably not the time to shuffle leadership, but TBH just this short clip would justify removing him from this job once the mess is over.

I don't have any trust in the HSE finding a suitable replacement.

For a National Clinical Lead of Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control the spew that he exhausts is appauling.

I was shocked by his comments last thursday on primtime too.

It seems the HSE is social distancing themselves from having to educate casual mask users. And by taking all their lead from the WHO they have the perfect excuse to wash their hands of any responsability. That's what you get for playing follow the leader!

Cormican on Primtime "Infection prevention and control is very much about human behaviour."

"It’s the way people use masks that introduces another risk. Typically what people are doing walking up and down the street it there continually pulling them up and down and leaving them on for hours and essentially what you end up with is a dirty piece of paper around your neck, that your pulling up and down your face, often contaminated."

After describing his observations, instead of a little education Cormican choose to waste our valuable time describing how difficult his job is.

"One of the challegenes for us in terms of prevention protection control is trying to communicate with people as clearly as possibly that we are invested in protecting people and the advice that we are giving is what we believe is the best advice to protect people. It sometimes seems like it’s counter intuitive and I understand that is really difficult for people."

me blood is boiling............

railer201 · 07-04-2020 01:09PM

Yes: valved

Gynoid wrote: »

Just had a thought. With masks going to become most definitely a growing part of humankind's future are we going to epigenetically modify for bigger, stronger, stickier-out ears? :eek: Selective evolution of faulty antihelical folds?

Okay. Back to not thinking again. It is better for everyone that I stop!

Pierced ears would be a lot simpler methinks.

Seanergy · 07-04-2020 01:23PM

Yes: valved

Bob24 wrote: »

Disgraceful indeed :-/ They are not nurses and doctors alright, but their health still is being exposed to keep society running (and they aren’t exactly the best paid employees in a country).

The very least society should do (being the state or their employers) is to provide them with basic protection.

Now, realistically due to previous poor panning we currently don’t have the masks for them (and rationally medical staff still takes priority over them). But still it is disgraceful.

Dunnes staff here now armed with masks on advice of or by the HSE?

"'Since the outbreak of Covid 19 Coronavirus, Dunnes Stores has been in regular contact with the HSE.......We continue to take all our guidance relating to Covid 19 Coronavirus from this trusted and expert source.

We have made available a substantial quantity of gloves and masks for our staff to wear, and also gloves for customers. We offer this choice because some people feel safer wearing gloves."

Maybe some people feel safer wearing masks!

Would like to hear from any Dunnes staff regarding instructions when given masks.

Seanergy · 07-04-2020 01:49PM

Yes: valved

The best mask for Cormican to hide behind would be a cabbage mask, Cormican the Cabbage

Wibbs · 07-04-2020 02:13PM

Yes: other

Seanergy wrote: »

Dunnes staff here now armed with masks on advice of or by the HSE?

"'Since the outbreak of Covid 19 Coronavirus, Dunnes Stores has been in regular contact with the HSE.......We continue to take all our guidance relating to Covid 19 Coronavirus from this trusted and expert source.

We have made available a substantial quantity of gloves and masks for our staff to wear, and also gloves for customers. We offer this choice because some people feel safer wearing gloves."

Maybe some people feel safer wearing masks!

Exactly. The joke is gloves are much more of an infection risk than masks and nobody in a shop is using them correctly. Yet masks...

Seanergy wrote: »

I don't have any trust in the HSE finding a suitable replacement.

Nothing will happen S. For a few reasons. First they are no way going to lose face by replacing anyone, and who would the replace him with? They'd just wheel out another singing from the same hymn sheet. Plus we love "authority" overall in our culture and we still touch the forelock to it. How do you think the English held sway here for so long and we promptly replaced them with the Church and when cute hoor politicians were caught with their hands in greasy tills, their popularity usually went up. And many of us laugh at Americans who support Trump? Even when authority talks half nonsense the average person will still swallow it wholesale. Ah shure isn't he a greeeaat men at all. Shure lookit those litters after his name, comes from greeaat peeple y'know. And in turn him and his fellows in the HSE will touch the forelock to the WHO, an organisation that has made too damned many errors in this crisis from the get go and people have died and will continue to do so because of those errors. This is not 20/20 vision hindsight either. Everything he said in that video was known to be either dubious or outright wrong back then.

Bob24 · 07-04-2020 02:26PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Actually gloves is where I agree with the HSE and others. I'd personally actively suggest people don't wear gloves, but instead follow hand washing on the regular and sanitiser where no water is available. For a start on average viruses and bacteria last longer on gloves than they do on human skin. Human skin is designed to be a harsh environment for most of them. Wearing gloves does seem to give people more false feelings of safety.

Agree, gloves are for very specific use and misunderstood. I think a misconception might be that some people think contamination can happen through the skin which is not the case.

Gloves act like a "second skin" and prevent actual skin from being covered in pathogens, but that "second skin" is then causing the exact some issues as our own skin does: it also gets covered in pathogens and needs to be washed/sanitised regularly (no difference between touching your face with bare skin covered with the virus or with gloves covered with the virus - both are causing a risk of infection).

So I am not sure how much value they are bringing in day to day life (unless someone has no hand sanitiser and loads of gloves - if they fit/unfit them properly and change them very often them they could bring sone value).

Masks on the other end are directly protecting two of the main contagion vectors (nose and mouth), which is a key difference with gloves.

greasepalm · 07-04-2020 03:47PM

Yes: other

I wash hands before going out to shop,+ have a box of gloves in the car which are put on when leaving car to enter shop and removed in car into bin and rubbed hands in sanitizer.Full facemask respirator to hand if it looks busy and this i think is about as safe as i can get.

spookwoman · 07-04-2020 04:10PM

No: I don't care enough

Bob24 wrote: »

Agree, gloves are for very specific use and misunderstood. I think a misconception might be that some people think contamination can happen through the skin which is not the case.

Gloves act like a "second skin" and prevent actual skin from being covered in pathogens, but that "second skin" is then causing the exact some issues as our own skin does: it also gets covered in pathogens and needs to be washed/sanitised regularly (no difference between touching your face with bare skin covered with the virus or with gloves covered with the virus - both are causing a risk of infection).

So I am not sure how much value they are bringing in day to day life (unless someone has no hand sanitiser and loads of gloves - if they fit/unfit them properly and change them very often them they could bring sone value).

Masks on the other end are directly protecting two of the main contagion vectors (nose and mouth), which is a key difference with gloves.

I can't get sanitiser so use new gloves. If heading into a shop i put them on in the car if santiser in shop will use on gloves and same when leaving shop with use their sanitiser. I take the gloves off the proper way before I open the car and dispose of them in a bag. I zap the car usually through the lining of the coat and have alcohol swabs used for injections to wipe keys. When i get home I wash my coat and top that would have come in contact with gloves.

khalessi · 07-04-2020 04:16PM

Yes: surgical

Wibbs wrote: »

Here's the above video in question. Under two minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmKfS2TkrSo

Now forget about what we know now and how unbelievably bad advice this is and consider what we knew then, at least any body with a working search engine did. This is our leadership. You could not make it up.

caveat emptor · 07-04-2020 04:50PM

Yes: to protect others

Just found this report from week 12 2020. Week starting 16th of march.

HSE say transmission is airborne but masks not effective. ? huh. WTF.

this shows airborne outbreaks in hospitals
may explain some of the HCW transmission
shows what's reported publicly is not necessarily accurate

https://www.hpsc.ie/notifiablediseases/weeklyoutbreakreport/2020Wk12_Weekly_Outbreak_Report_WEB.pdf

Also everyone on here arguing that it is not airborne and to follow guidelines.

Harry Palmr · 07-04-2020 06:19PM

WHO still disagrees

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/07/no-need-for-healthy-to-wear-face-masks-says-who-after-review

The World Health Organization has held off from recommending people wear face masks in public after assessing fresh evidence that suggested the items may help to contain the pandemic.

The WHO reviewed its position on masks in light of data from Hong Kong indicating that their widespread use in the community may have reduced the spread of coronavirus in some regions.

But in updated guidance published on Monday, the organisation maintained that while masks could help limit the spread of the disease, they were insufficient on their own. There was no evidence that wearing a mask in the community prevented healthy people from picking up respiratory infections including Covid-19, it said.

William Keevil, a professor of environmental healthcare at the University of Southampton, said governments felt under pressure to be seen to be doing something, even if it was a waste of time and valuable resources.

“Cloth masks and poor quality surgical face masks will not filter fine respiratory droplets, and certainly not aerosols, which some are now claiming to be an infection risk,” he said. “The major question that needs to be addressed is: what about protecting the eyes, a known route of entry?.”

2u2me · 07-04-2020 07:19PM

That's the advice from Destin from Smarteveryday on youtube.

Interesting video about PPE and anything else our frontline healthworkers might need for anyone who's been talking about community drive.

Wibbs · 07-04-2020 08:30PM

Yes: other

2u2me wrote: »

That's the advice from Destin from Smarteveryday on youtube.

Interesting video about PPE and anything else our frontline healthworkers might need for anyone who's been talking about community drive.

It's a good video 2u and fair play to him and that community, but there are two different strands to this. The PPE and tactics for health workers to protect themselves. The PPE and tactics for everyone else in the community to protect themselves. This in turn reduces the transmission rate and therefore the numbers of patients that the health professionals have to see in the first place, which in turn reduces their risks. It's why we're doing social distancing and hand hygiene. To "flatten the curve". Adding masks to those two tactics will also help flatten that curve.

Secondly, while that community liaising with the local health services might work in the US, it's highly unlikely to work here. As it stands the HSE won't use publicly donated PPE. I seriously doubt they'd be open to community made PPE any time soon and if they did I'd bet it would be a reactive measure if and god forbid it doesn't - things got much worse. They're very much mired in bureaucracy for both some good and a fair bit of ill. The issues and expense in the Irish health sphere that's gone on for decades is not the fault of the frontline workers, nor patients.

So as it stands the HSE gets their supply of PPE through official channels and we as a nation are going to spend over 200 million quid for starters on it. That leaves the rest of us doing our bit with the tactics laid out above. On the mask front that means either sourcing them from somewhere, which could impact supply for the health workers, or making them ourselves.

Masks

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