2 a.m. thoughts of an emergency physician during the pandemic

[IntoSomething]

Originally Posted by TXRunner

Seems the masks haven't really slowed down the spread of the virus at all. Everyone I see out and about is wearing a mask and it's still spreading.

The amount of virus that can be passed on is reduced with mask useage. Not down to zero, but reduced. And exposure to a smaller amount of virus means less symptoms, less illness, but still positive. So I think that it some situations, masking must be working, but in others, masking must only be reducing. Which is better than nothing, but we can't expect zero spread just based on masking up.

Originally Posted by saibot

My sister in Oklahoma and one of her sons are scrupulous mask-wearers. She isn't working at the moment, and he is in college online only, so they are both home almost all the time. They both got Covid about ten days ago with mild symptoms and are fully recovered. Her other son works at Trader Joe's (constantly in contact with the public) and he tested negative. Her husband is working in person at Boeing and he didn't get it either. Go figure.

I could see how this could happen, in a couple of different ways. 1. The son who works at Trader Joe's was infected, but was asymptomatic, passed it on to some other household members, but was no longer infectious by the time he was tested. 2. As I offered above, mild symptoms could mean less exposure to the virus, so even if they're wearing masks, if they're out somewhere, they could have been exposed.

Originally Posted by saibot

And that we really haven't figured out yet where the rising case numbers are coming from. Everyone agrees that masks don't give 100% protection, but they clearly don't provide 95%, 90%, or maybe even 75% either. I'm not saying we shouldn't mask, every little bit helps, but I wouldn't go around blaming people who aren't wearing masks, and saying that if we all masked up every second, we wouldn't have a problem.

Agreed, they don't provide 100% protection, but every little bit helps. And anyone who believes if we mask up every second we wouldn't have a problem hasn't done enough research. But masking up definitely reduces exposure.

I think that we see a lot of mask useage out and about, and are frustrated to still see cases rising even with all that masking we're seeing, because people are going home and then taking their masks off around household members who are unknowingly infected. Which of course, is reasonable. Or, they're taking their masks off when they have small family get-togethers. Which, to many is a reasonable risk to take. And sure, any one person's risk of getting COVID from a small gathering with family members outside your household is, in fact, quite small. But, not so small that it isn't happening.

I do feel like the panic, at this point, is probably more than warranted on an individual level. And I'm an absolutely vigilant stay-at-home, don't co-mingle households, mask-wearing type of person. Even I can see that the real risks are for certain groups of people and I don't think many of us should be particularly scared of infection. But, we definitely 100% without a doubt owe it to our healthcare workers to reduce their load and their risk as much as possible. What a slap in the face for the men and women who are so much braver and more compassionate than I to refuse to do everything we can to help keep them from harm while they do their work of saving lives. So yeah. Masks.

[in_newengland]

This forum is not for political bashing.