Quote (InsaneBobb @ Feb 16 2021 09:42pm)
Not water. "Respiratory droplets" does not necessarily mean "water". Again, covid is airborne, according to the CDC. The information put out by the CDC is that it IS spread through aerosolized vaper you exhale.
The CDC claims an n95 mask will catch approximately 60% of the virus that you exhale. It also claims that the virus can survive in such aerosolized vaper for up to 3 hours. Note: Adding a secondary mask only improves the "catch" rate an additional 6%.
So, the math seems pretty simple: Pack a thousand people in a walmart, all of whom are wearing mask, 40% of the virus they exhale is still going to escape the mask, and hang around for hours. Thus, Walmart and these other corporate locations are all superspreaders.
The lockdowns, which limit what businesses people can utilize to these giant corporations in many areas are doing more to SPREAD the virus than contain it. :)
Respiratory droplets are water. Water is the solvent you breathe out. There's going to be other things in there, like virus and proteins, but it is water.
Most of the spread is through droplets, which are effectively blocked by a mask. Masks are hydrophilic. The virus does not spread significantly outside of droplets. A bare virus exposed to the atmosphere and not in a water droplet becomes inactivated much faster than one that is inside of a water droplet. Additionally, most of the spread is not through the air over long distances, but through close contact. Remember that viral concentration will drop off with the area of the circle around the host, which means that it follows the inverse square law. So when you double the distance from the host you are cutting the viral concentration in 1/4th. Another doubling and it's 1/16th, and this also cuts down the chance of spreading. By using the mask just to limit how far your breathe travels you further cut down the rate of spread of virus from yourself if you are a carrier.
The conclusion that lockdowns limiting business access leading to increased spread is not one supported by the evidence. So far there's been, like, one study that concluded lockdowns didn't help and several dozen that concluded they do. Usually the one brought out is the one that compares Nordic countries to America, which isn't a good comparison because the Nordic counties still had what amounts to voluntary lockdowns without the government mandating it. You're taking other observations and inferring that they won't help, but that isn't the same as direct evidence.
This post was edited by Thor123422 on Feb 16 2021 09:55pm