COVID-19 Masks and Spread
It is now clear that this deadly virus is spread mostly by aerosol transmission. That means places like bars and restaurants are the most dangerous especially because you sit there without a mask for a prolonged period of time. Due to their indoor location and minimal air circulation it has been shown that even someone several tables away can infect you.
If you are in a high risk group you must avoid these exposures until we have found a vaccine or good treatment. I think, based on the ongoing studies, that we will have something by December and can hope that things will go back to normal by early 2021.
Even if you are not in a high risk group, about 1/200 to 1/400 healthy young adults can die of the disease. If we are not prudent then, in a city of 500,000 young adults (that is a small city in the US), if 1/2 the people get the disease, 2-3 thousand young adults can die!
Wearing masks and social distancing works. I have been driving cross country in an RV to get back to Las Vegas and avoiding contact. But in Florida it looked like no one was wearing a mask anywhere. We are now in Kansas and everyone was wearing one; in Colorado it is a state mandate like Nevada. That is the way to stop the spread.
You know, heroes come in many forms. Most people consider the military heroes who protect us from terrorists and risk their lives. But you can be a hero by wearing a mask to protect your fellow Americans. Refusing to wear one is a cowardly act, not an act of freedom. Not protecting your fellow Americans places you in the same category as those terrorists and murderers our President feels he needs to keep out of this country.
The no mask attitude of this country has resulted in an explosion and now schools are in limbo for the fall - for no good reason.
In a recent study (Nature 2020 Jun 8) A multinational team of social scientists modeled data on the effects of large-scale anticontagion policies in six countries. The team estimates that these measures already have prevented 285 million cases in China, 38 million in South Korea, 49 million in Italy, 54 million in Iran, 45 million in France, and 60 million in the U.S. — a total of 530 million cases prevented or delayed, thus far. If COVID-19–related mortality is 0.5% (a conservative estimate), such measures have prevented 2.65 million deaths. We need to continue this!
In another study, JAMA Intern Med 2020 Jul 1, researchers have found that there have been an excess of 120,000 deaths between March 1 and May 20 of this year; likely all due to COVID.
Wear a mask!!
