Please don't break the site guidelines like this. Note that they contain: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Following that rule, your comment would shortened to nothing, therefore you should not have posted it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You'll get 99+% of the possible wins in reducing your chance of being infected simply by avoiding being indoors with others as much as possible, wearing masks when you are unable to do so (e.g. when grocery shopping), and by staying away from large crowds outdoors except when wearing masks.

So agreed, this routine is excessive. Instead of going to all of this hassle, just source N99 masks and wear them when in unavoidable close proximity to other people. Boom, you're practically guaranteed not to get it.

> Boom, you're practically guaranteed not to get it.

Not without eye protection you're not. You're also practically guaranteed to wear the respirator incorrectly. Wearing them correctly requires training, absence of facial hair and enduring a very significant degree of discomfort.

You're completely ignoring the part about not being indoors with others unless necessary. You're practically talking about dressing up in a biohazard bunny suit like you're going into a COVID ward, but that's just flat-out not necessary if you aren't remotely putting yourself into those kinds of hotspot situations to begin with. I assure you, someone taking these kinds of sanitizing precautions is already not putting themselves into close contact with other people, and is thus already getting most of the gains even being considering masks at all. Then add on wearing a good mask when necessary and you reach the 99+%.

I deliberately made no comment on the necessity of wearing the respirator in the first place - that's a separate question. I'm simply saying that if you're going to the trouble of actually wearing a respirator, do it properly.

As for the need for them - anything at or above the N95 respirator level (including eye protection) is only useful in environments with a high probability of contamination. That's mostly healthcare facilities with known C19 patients (particularly in proximity to aerosol-generating procedures), patient rooms, etc.

EDIT: I think I may have misunderstood the intent of your original post. You said "N99", so I assumed you were actually talking about respirators. If you just meant surgical masks, we're mostly in agreement.

> You'll get 99+% of the possible wins

Can you provide hard evidence for the 99% number? It agrees with my intuition, but I don't think we have a very complete view of the effectiveness of different measures, and in the absense of such evidence it seems strange to authoritative call someone else's measures "excessive".

To be clear, I don't think what the commenter is doing is very useful, but I can't prove it either.

You missed out handwashing, which is an important part of preventing the spread of infection.

Cloth masks are mostly about preventing spread. Droplets carry the virus well, so preventing them at the source goes a long way towards reducing overall spread and infection rates.

It's been a common approach to public safety outside of NA for a long time.

It's not perfect and certainly the messaging about it was continually bungled in a way that only a government can bungle.

>This Corona is total Bullshit

The people in hospitals are real people. You can go down to one and see for yourself. I don't think most modern governments are capable and competent enough to fake that.

You just don't seem to understand droplet transmission. It's not a new concept, it's the same way tons of illnesses get around. Prevent those droplets from getting in to your mouth, and prevent your droplets from getting in to other peoples mouths, and you've done the bulk of the work necessary to avoid spreading disease.

It's really that simple. It's not about being perfect or 100%. It's only about reducing the rate of transmission of the virus and masks are probably the easiest way to do that.

EDIT: And in terms of mass protests, NYC easily had among the largest protests over the course of a month and saw absolutely no increase in the transmission rate of the virus. Why? Probably because everyone wore masks. So don't blame protests, facts don't back that up.

Total LOL, The amount of screaming, spitting and close contact at these riots -- they've all should of been infected and marked as covid patients already. No one is transmitting anything other than their stupidity.

Why didn't anyone get sick? Cause it's not real or as serious as the media is making it as*. How is that there is all these protestors and not a single one of them ended up in the damn hospital from attracting Covid? It's total bullshit

I'm sure some people got COVID-19 at protests, but all data shows that it did not drive any major uptick in the transmission rate. The assumption is that outdoor transmission is pretty rare and that masks help reduce the chance even further.

As for it not being "real", I'm not sure why 100+ different national governments - ranging from far left to far right - and medical professionals around the globe would all conspire to make something up. Hard to imagine. Impossibly hard to imagine.

Hard to imagine that we went from a total lockdown 1 month ago to suddenly racial wars/ BLM the next month. Absolute clown world. Toxicity of this has already spreaded all over the world, people advocating for the same crap. Corona! BLM! Masks! Vaccines!

> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> not a single one of them ended up in the damn hospital from attracting Covid

You got hard data to prove this claim? No? Then don't make the fucking claim and jump to the "great" conclusion that "It's not real!"

Hard data? I'm in the heart of it and have been dealing with it for 2 months now. Try living this shit instead of reading about it on all your favorite manipulated news outlet. I got my whole HN reputation wiped out clean just for speaking out on it Smfh!

Most HN readers are geeks, geeks are usually scientific, your single observation/conclusion that it's all fake, without any data, and that no one has died contradicts thousands of data points of 13 million sick and half a million dead. So your reputation being wiped out clean is, IMO, deserved.

Then again, flat-earthers think they also have the scientific method behind them... and that all those thousands of scientists saying "Please, let me show you why the world is spherical." are in some sort of giant conspiracy to... what, protect the lizard overlords?

Yeah I forgot people want flawed backed-up statistics to support their claims... just go on WorldoMeter and look at how many recovered versus to how many died. It's just a fucking flu.

You think my reputation deserved to be wiped out just for sharing my personal experiences working at the hospital during this covid fad? Ok, dude.

You're not getting downvoted from "sharing personal experiences", you're getting downvoted for screaming your flawed conclusion "It's allll fakeeeeeddd!" from your bubble of observation. Against thousands of other conclusions backed up with data. Which you are dismissing as invalid or is a giant conspiracy.

Do you wear the seatbelt while in a car? From my experience I would've been fine in all the car journeys I've ever taken if I hadn't worn the seatbelt, but I keep wearing them and I don't go on the internet and scream "Seatbelts are unnecessary!!!!". From your car ride experiences, you'd probably agree, so why do you keep wearing it? Is it because you trust the (scientifically done) experiments that show how badly hurt or dead you can be if you don't wear it?

How many more people need to die before you change your mind?

There were about 35,000 deaths in the US during the 2018-2019 flu season.

There have been about 135,000 deaths in the US from COVID-19 so far. And the number of deaths per day is going back up.

So how many people do you think need to die in 2020 from COVID-19 before we should be taking it seriously and not considering it "just a fucking flu"? Another 35,000? More?

Apart from a CFR many times higher than flu, and an infection rate many times higher than flu - somewhere in the region of a third (!) of all COVID-19 infectees suffer long-term, maybe permanent debilitation. We're talking lung scars, chronic fatigue, neurological difficulties. The flu doesn't do that, not at that kind of rate anyway.

Great comment... (I say this sarcastically).

It's like wearing seatbelts. Would you have survived your last drive without seatbelts? You probably would've, there were probably no extreme manouvers/accidents that could've hurt you. For I don't know what high-90's percentage of passenger miles driven this day, the seatbelts didn't protect them any extra.

But for the rest of those passenger miles, the ones that did end up in a bad wreck, the seatbelt was probably the difference between life and death. If the wreck was bad enough, some people would still die even with seatbelts on.

The difference between mask and no mask is probably none for a high percentage of wearers (they wore them but they never ran into anyone infected/they didn't get a high enough dose), but if no one wore them, well, statistically there will be more sickness and death.

It's strange how everyone has their own theory about the virus and level of risk comfort. Some think a particle of virus is deadly, others think you need to have a huge viral dose from an infected person to get sick. And whatever you think, you can probably cite an evidence online to back up your conclusion. I'm more of the latter, so I feel secure to be outdoors, but don't make me spend time in a stuffy bar with others in close proximity.

From what you said then, we should all be living in air-bubbles for the rest of our lives like Bubble boy. There's your evidence.

If that's your takeaway from his excellent explanation, god help you.