A sock would be pretty effective at preventing STDs and pregnancy because you'd never have sex.

It's not a silly competition, it is a defense. People keep acting like states in the south are horrible and are needlessly killing people but the data doesn't support that. Certainly from the last 1-2 months.

And good for California. Seriously. I want that state opened up ASAP. They are far too important economically to be dormant.

Great point that a fellow South Looper friend of mine makes all the time:

If its just stupid Republicans not wearing masks then why are there so many maskless people in Chicago (certainly on the lakefront)?

And driving the speed limit and being a defensive driver and wearing a seat belt doesn't guarantee you won't get in a wreck and die.


When did we become a nation of fools who think they need 100% assurance they will never ever be put at any risk?

I hope you got the point, I'm not sure though. There was a time when people used animal intestines and many people today use the pull-out method. Neither prevent std transmission or pregnancy. It's like the recommendations from some places that wanted people to wear face masks during intimacy, lol.

Well, no one ever claimed that face masks completely prevented COVID-19 transmission. The point of masks is to reduce the rate of transmission. Having an obstruction over your face reduces the amount of virus going directly in or out of your nose/mouth. Just like wearing a sock over your penis would reduce the amount of semen going into your hand (because you're sure as hell not putting a sock covered penis into a vagina).

There's no need to be discriminatory, there are a lot of vaginas out there that can handle a tube sock!

Enough with the joking on a serious matter. We do agree that a cloth covering a couple bodily openings of the face (not all, the eyes are still exposed) doesn't do much to prevent the spread of an easily transmissible airborne disease, right?

Nah, I don't agree. They should've advised us to wear them earlier than they did.

I'll have to point out that "easily transmissible airborne disease" seems like evidence somebody would say to support wearing masks? :shrug:
Or is he going for "it's so easy to get nobody can get away from it"? I'll take it at half-post value.

I continue to wear and have always worn a mask while indoors and at local establishments that require them. Remember, there was a time when masks were not available anywhere. My first non-surgerical grade was purchased on Amazon for $20. I still have it because it's see-through and is funny.

My retired Army brat mom hit up her sewing machine over-time and made as many masks as possible and donated them to her local hospital until PPE caught up, retired and still contributing to the best of her ability.

Didn't the Florida governor screw with the numbers? I don't believe anything that guy says.

DeSantis had plenty of motivation. Last summer when Florida was the worst, he was getting killed by the media for not locking down. And then all of a sudden, Florida got "better'. It will always be weird.

If, as the link says, as many as half the infectious people are not detected, the environment that is supposedly made safe by this type of screening will remain distinctly unsafe. That's all there is too it. Will it be twice as safe if half the infectious people are screened out? Not really. Contagion doesn't work that way.

Taking temperatures is NOT a way to keep an environment safe and nobody should delude themselves into thinking it is. It's just something to make the management of the space feel like they are accomplishing something.

The analogies don't work. It may take only one germ-spewing infectious person in a room to infect most of the other people in it. That you screened out another germ spewer who had a fever doesn't matter.

Driving safely and wearing a seat belt may be additive in what they add to your safety but putting only half as many infectious people in a space does not come close to cutting the risk of being in that space in half.

If taking temperatures were highly effective in finding the infected, it might make sense even though not perfect, but 50% is nowhere near good enough for this purpose even to make a modest difference.

Again, it's not exactly equivalent but recall that Tony Fauci said sometime last year before we had data on the vaccines that the FDA would likely require 70% efficacy to approve them. Had they been only 50% effective, they would not have been approved (even if the vaccine had been extremely safe with almost no side effects). When it comes to a highly transmissible airborne pathogen that can be transmitted to a high percentage of people with whom one infected person comes into contact, you need a high degree of effectiveness in the methods you are using against it and taking temps doesn't cut it.

This is true of the vast majority of Covid restrictions, from masks to the 2-meter / 6-foot rule.

You either take the view that a bunch of only partly effective measures added together provide enough protection in combination to make things “safe”, or you just accept that it’s not safe for the elderly/vulnerable and tell them not to do it.

The CDC is cool with lowering it, since they did for schools....only 3 feet. For CA, some private schools were opened in January because they implemented temp checks.

Completely beside the point. The 3-foot rule is actually even more meaningless.

That's your answer to everything you don't like about COVID, though. Can you tell me why it's meaningless? I might even be nice and confirm it, but schools still have to operate under those rules. I figured the lowering of the distance would make you happy :shrug:

If I sneeze from 3 feet away from you, my snot will land on your face. I can just about reach out and touch you. Exhaled particles can easily travel 3 feet.

But the real reason it is meaningless is that, unless you’re on a crowded subway platform or boarding an airplane (in which case neither the 6-foot or 3-foot rule are observed as I know from recent experience), people are generally about 3 feet from each other anyway. Maybe 2 feet, maybe 3, but that’s just called personal space in the West.

The only people really affected by a 3-foot social distancing guideline are like this guy:

• Video Link