Apparently all medical facilities continue to require masks for both patients and staff, regardless of the fact that the flimsy paper masks are not N95 nor properly fitting. Therefore the whole patient care medical establishment is perpetuating phony, virtue signaling that is medically worthless as has been proven by numerous studies. Properly fitted N95 or similar surgical masts - yes. Everything else is worthless virtue signaling nonsense.
The outside risk of catching covid (or any other airborne virus, for that matter) is significantly lower than the indoor risk, but it’s still non-zero, particularly in crowded areas. And depending on what type of masks people were wearing, they would have varying degrees of protection indoors.
So I don’t think it’s accurate to assume that the only ones who caught covid at OSH were indoors and unmasked. But I do assume a degree of complacency was a common factor in all of them, since complacency affects everyone.
“It was completely political from the beginning” and THAT proves denialism does not work. The virus doesn’t care about your politics or your beliefs. The virus is real. It threatens, hurts, disables, and kills people in the population and statistical research shows vaccines help avoid hospitalizations and death. Just because the currently-spreading variant is less-deadly does not mean the COVID pandemic is gone. Americans seem to agree somewhat on acceptable risk, like AirVenture and the upcoming Annual Sturgis Spreader Event. But I agree we should leave politics out of it.
Talk to the doctors and nurses at the hospitals that were overwhelmed. They are true heroes. Sad that so many have quit from burnout or PTSD.
Ditto!
Bleach?
Paul, I enjoy AVweb but… You may be knowledgeable about most things aviation but I don’t think you have the chops to pontificate about Covid-19. It’s been described as a novel virus from the beginning so almost by definition we’re learning as we go along. I mean the experts are learning. If the populace can’t accept that and can’t handle a change of expert opinion based on the data, shame on them. Your mention of weak mitigation such as masks (good quality) reminds me of what they were saying about masks during the influenza pandemic of 1918. Wearing a good quality mask indoors isn’t so much about protecting yourself but about transmitting the virus to others. So those who “imported” the virus to AirVenture and were among the 99% (by my estimation) who were maskless, Bingo! You mention vaccines and boosters. I’ll bet a significant percentage of attendees had neither. Those represent the great majority of hospitalizations and deaths from Covid. And long Covid is real. See John P’s comment. Finally, your photo shows you wearing a helmet. Since you’ve been citing statistics on Covid, I wonder what your thoughts are, other than “Freedom”, about the hospitalization and death rate among the helmetless Harley riders in Wisconsin.
Omicron is the dominant variant now, and its incubation period is only 3-4 days. (That’s CDC data, but NY epidemiologists think their data shows a shorter incubation period.) Any vendor who brought COVID with them to the show would have been symptomatic by Monday.
I absolutely have the chops to write about the perceived personal risk COVID represents based on the available data. I don’t have to be an epidemiologist to make that determination for myself, as apparently 650,000 others who did go to AirVenture made for themselves.
We are at the point in the evolution of this disease that people are not being significantly cowed by scare headlines, of which there are actually very few now anyway. They have the available information to make this decision and not you or anyone else can make it for them, regardless of expertise. Earlier in the pandemic, the risk was much higher because prevalence was much higher, hence we all had a responsibility to share in what mitigations were available. We did this to protect ourselves and to ease the strain on the medical community. We were right to do it.
As I said above, I always believed masking was a weak mitigation but a mitigation nonetheless and was thus worth doing. I’m not doing it now and wouldn’t have at AirVenture because I believe it’s effective only if everyone masks and very few did. Anyone who thinks they are owed masking by others shouldn’t attend those events. I felt differently in the fall of 2020.
I follow two epidemiologists, Michael Osterholm of CIDRAP and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford. They are absolute polar opposites. Osterholm is a traditionalist, Bhattacharya a libertarian who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration. I am perfectly capable of listening to both, looking at the data and deciding the proper course of action based on my own risk framework.
I suspect you are, too.
Agreed.
Common sense is in short supply right along with baby formula. We live amongst many who need a “government expert” to tell them what to do.
From Bertorelli: “My view was always that mitigations such as masks and distancing were weak at best, but just worth doing.” Worth doing? Yes! “Weak at best”? Totally not true. As we all know, the devil is in the details. Wearing a properly fitted N-95 mask is incredibly effective. That is why doctors and nurses wear them when caring for active tuberculosis patient. The problem comes with the square (usually blue) surgical masks whose inhalation filtration is negligible, and they don’t fit closely enough (especially around the nose) to be protective. They were designed to keep moisture ladened exhaled bacteria from infecting the surgical site. And we also know that distance works. The more space between you and an infected individual, combined with masking, is very effectiver
Appreciate the reply. I too follow Dr. Osterholm, and just read the Declaration and some comments by Dr. Bhattacharya. Indeed, polar opposites. And yes I believe in having an open mind and listening to both sides, and personal choice. Yet I can almost hear Dr. Osterholm weep when he talks about the front-line workers, the deaths that could have been prevented, the possible mitigation measures that are ignored, the reliance on herd immunity, etc. And he readily admits to being labeled as Dr. Doom, such as when he says we may not be so lucky if a variant presents that is both highly transmissible and more lethal. Sorry, I just think we’ve become too complacent.
I was referring to the aggregate, not in the clinical environment where medical N95s are used and people are trained to wear and handle them correctly. In the wider world, people wear all kinds of masks, including N95. The best designed study, to my layman’s eye, was the 2021 research done in Bangladesh. It estimated an 11 percent reduction in infection. Good, but not great. From the study:
“A randomized-trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that the intervention increased mask usage and reduced symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, demonstrating that promoting community mask-wearing can improve public health.”
And helmetless riders are…idiots. Sorry, that’s a thing with me.
How did your trailer fare in the Saturday night storm? Did you tie it down before the storm came through? Sorry you caught Covid, my wife and I had it in March 2020 just as things were shutting down. I got over it in 10 days and she 2 weeks, but had some long Covid issues with breathing. Took awhile to solve that. I made it up Friday with a pilot bud, actually flew the Fisk arrival, so got to see it from the pilot’s end.
I sited it the previous Thursday – just jacked it up onto jack stands – and left until Sunday evening. When I got there, it was fine. LAST year during the Wednesday storm, it was also fine AND a great dry enjoyment while people tenting were having a bad time.
I once saw a woman walking her dog in the middle of nowhere wearing a mask. THAT was bad enough but … her DOG had a mask on, too. Geesh!
Paul … I wandered the grounds all seven days. I don’t think I’d need all my fingers and toes to count the number of masked people I saw.
Interesting times. I have N95s now but did not at the outset of the COVID pandemic. I used whatever was available then. I continue to wear a mask when in crowded environments even after having been vaccinated 4X. Somehow, masks relax me. Additionally, I keep recommended distances as best as I can and have stayed healthy and free from COVID. So far, at least twelve in my family have caught the virus. Four of the unbelieving and antivaxxer “Team Red” crowd have experienced the worst symptoms. Some caught the bug more than once, all recovered. They are now believers. I think. Others, of the liberal crowd, even after being fully vaccinated got infected enduring the disease under more benign conditions. Go Blue! Sadly, seven of my friends have died of COVID. One in his 50s, two in their 60s, the others were in their 80s. Unpredictably, under COVID, life changed for all, life ended for some.