Everyone else walking around, eating, drinking, working, like it's 2019.
My lawyer tells me how cautious & risk adverse she is so she can't answer some points on the spot.
She says this with no irony at all, as she & her coworkers are busy rawdogging the inside air, just after the second largest peak in wastewater signal since the pandemic started.
In 4 years of surreal moments, this was right up there towards the peak of Mt. Surreal.
About 20 years ago I was convinced enough that our societal trend of ignoring scientific and medical advice en mass (read: #JennyMcArthy /#AndrewWakefield / #climateCrisis) would inevitably lead to the resurgence of preventable disease, such as #TB.
I wrote Tom Brokaw Part I and Tom Brokaw Part II to explore these thoughts.
Where as in TBP I the orator can't seem to shake his "sentimental" cough, TBP II finds him perishing in a Tuberculosis wing of a hospital, as friends and family all come to visit unmasked.
I took careful steps to ensure I understood how to do a complex process. Great.
Go to execute - blam - instructions were wrong. From a bank. 🙄
Had to run to a bank branch on a shot clock to get it done.
This is where risk increases, & mistakes happen. This is exactly what I meant by "sailing to a schedule".
Downtown financial district right where I used to work. Not as busy as pre-pandemic but way more people than I have seen in a looong time. Branch was full.
Zero (0) masks. Not on staff, not on customers. Pandemic is clearly over for the financial district.
I made a mistake of not taking my CO2 meter to assess air quality in the rush.
I have resigned myself to the mental model that my respirator is now no different in society than a wheelchair, cane or other ability assist for those of us who care about managing #COVID#massinfection#risk.
I used to have a sail boat. One of the most important #safety rules in sailing is "don't sail on a schedule".
What this means is that if you have a destination & a deadline, you will override safety signals (like weather) & travel in unsafe conditions due to deadline pressure. This is how serious accidents happen while sailing.
Planning for sailing puts an emphasis on having a checklist that includes having situational awareness of issues like boat condition, charts, & weather by explicitly checking the marine weather forecasts.
Also you have to be prepared to bail on your destination & schedule if the safety signals change. You have to know where your closest port is to seek shelter if a storm arises.
It occurred to me that the #airbornePrecautions equivalent is "don't be task focused on a deadline".
The need to get a task done by a deadline causes you to lose situational awareness, & accept risk that you would not otherwise accept if you thought your safety plan through ahead of time.
This is exacerbated by the total lack of a danger signal in society right now. No mitigations visible. Out of sight, out of mind.
This bit me yesterday getting a vaccination from an unmasked pharmacist in a small room. I took a risk I should not have, because I lost situational awareness under the drive to get the task done. I never would have accepted that risk in my pre-thought out safety plan. But it just popped up in the middle of the task, & I let it slide because I wasn't situationally aware.
Now, ofc I was wearing #P100#elastomeric so the risk here is relative. My event was ocular exposure during high water mark for community transmission, not being maskless. But it is not a risk I would have taken in a pre-thought through safety plan.
And that's the big deal now. Every little ordinary task needs a safety plan.
It's frustrating. It's exhausting.
When it goes wrong, when the safety signals change, when you get off plan, you have to be prepared to "bail". Halt a task, walk out, cancel, reschedule. Find a safe port in the new storm.
I should have refused entry with a maskless pharmacist. Cancelled, requested accommodation & rescheduled.
This is a kind of risk "velocitization" that happens. I am getting velocitized into one-way masking even during high #community#transmission periods. Everyone else but me unmasked is the new normal.
This is how accidents happen - a bunch of little issues leading to an unwanted, unplanned outcome.
I did the riskiest thing I have done in 3 years today especially given where
I let two people in my house to do an assessment for maintenance work that I had been pushing off for quite some time. It was do it now or lose the resource.
I asked them to wear head strap #N95. They did. They both had beards so the fit wasn't great.
I turned up the 5 HEPAs we own to full. Plus kept the furnance circulation (which has a central HEPA) running full.
I opened the windows throughout the house.
We both wore our GVS Elipse #P100#elastomerics in our own house the whole time.
I left the house empty for an hour post-vist: windows open & #HEPA cranked.
Then checked my #ARANET4 CO2 before re-entering to confirm the rate of decrease of CO2 over the hour to make sure I was getting good ACH.
If I'd not seen the example set by proponents on :deadbirb: I would not have known that people actually wore elastomeric respirators in public to ward off SARS-CoV-2, nor had the courage to use them myself.
SARS/COViD not mentioned, but truth seeping out, nonetheless.
> Researchers analyzed 1,048 CT scans from individuals aged 50 to 64, all of whom were participants in the Swedish cardiopulmonary bioimage study, or SCAPIS. Analysis of the scans also considered data such as diet and physical activity, as well as examination of immune cells in participants’ blood.
> The results showed that those with fatty degeneration of the thymus, as shown by the CT scan, also had lower T-cell regeneration, an indicator of immune system aging.
“This association with T-cell regeneration is interesting. It indicates that what we see in CT scans is not only an image, it actually also reflects the functionality of the thymus,” explained Lena Jonasson, another of the study’s authors.
> They also found that other factors, such as age, sex, and lifestyle, affected the appearance of the thymus.
> “We saw a huge variation in thymus appearance. Six out of ten participants had complete fatty degeneration of [the] thymus, which was much more common in men than in women, and in people with abdominal obesity. Lifestyle also mattered. Low intake of fibres in particular was associated with fatty degeneration of [the] thymus,” said Sandstedt.
What I am appreciating and #grateful for about #mastodon today is getting to know a few more #covid and #ventilation knowledgeable people who are trying their best to avoid Covid.
There's one layer of swiss cheese that I would never omit:
Respirators.
This is the only layer that can prevent close-proximity transmission.
As long as you're wearing one that you know seals to your face and isn't soaked or super old, it's going to protect you from all the invisible ways #TrojanAir can get into your nose and mouth.
And even if you haven't proven that it seals, it's damp, or you've worn it a bunch of times before, it's still going to provide more protection than any other layer(s).
Please, please don't think you can compensate for being unmasked by utilizing combinations of other layers.
All the other layers are designed to make a respirator more effective or provide backup in the event a respirator lets a bit of something through. Even vaccines were trialled in the context of universal masking; their original efficacy numbers are a product of that environment.
If you can't get your hands on any respirators, reach out and I'll connect you to someone in your region who can help. If I have to ship you some myself, I will.
I think we'd best have a conversation about mask efficacy in the context of time-to-infection, viral load and other highly-speculative estimations that have been proffered over the course of the pandemic thus far.
You cannot build a rock-solid scientific model on top of such things.
@eyesquash it's true that #BaggyBlues aren't great at protecting against airborne pathogens / bioaerosols, either for the wearer or those around them, though if everyone was wearing them in shared air, levels of transmission would still be much lower.
Even imperfect, incomplete masking with non-respirators by a majority of the population contributed to the eradication of a particular strain of influenza in 2020-21. By now, however, SARS-CoV-2 has mutated to be far more contagious than any strain of flu; it's probably neck and neck with measles -- the most transmissible pathogen we know -- at the very least.
Respirators, otoh, are incredibly effective at protecting the wearer, though they are even better at protecting others.
In practice, an #N95 can achieve upwards of 99% inward filtration efficacy. #P100 is even better -- upwards of 99.97% -- rendering scv2 impotent, as long as the fit+seal are good.
That's why hospital infection prevention and control policy specifies N95s, elastomerics, or PAPRs in the presence of airborne pathogens -- and why it's unconscionable that they've continued to stick their collective heads in the sand, ignore science and the relevant in-field experts, and deny that #CovidIsAirborne.
It's unfortunate that so many have fallen victim to the deliberate mis/disinfo that masks don't work, especially given that so many of us have gone 3+ years without contracting #SARSCoV2 -- or any other respiratory infection, for that matter.
3M elastomeric half face masks are lightweight & reliable respiratory protection when paired with the various P100 filter options & properly deployed/worn. They come in 3 sizes & are reusable with user replaceable parts. These (using the disc style filters) are also excellent for MRI & CT scans, as they contain no metal.
I see #P100 but not #N100 or #N99 in the hashtags on the right hand side of this novid magazine page. How concerned should I be about oil-based particulates?
"The device ... allows electrical potentials of up to 40,000 volts to be obtained in a compact device ... The efficiency of the masks was tested after being washed in water; efficiency was significantly restored after brief exposure to the electric field generated by the device."