Now that it seems everyone understands the importance of wearing masks to prevent COVID spread, the Gov. of Georgia has banned cities from requiring masks. Is there any wonder this thing is out of control?
Well, to be perfectly scientific about it, there is no evidence yet that wearing masks cuts infection rates for COVID-19, nor for whom. Inductive reasoning suggests it likely will, under the right circumstances, but there's no evidence.
People like to drone on about doctors and nurses wearing masks as if that's just the very pinnacle of logic. But there is a protocol for medical professionals wearing masks, without which the mask not only fails to protect against infection, it in fact becomes a vector for it. Most people have no idea what the protocol is.
And as for your average bandanna protecting you or anyone else? Forget it.
You make some solid points to prove Dean's post. Upon further review, I'm going to continue seeking perfectly scientific advice from actual scientists and people who, you know, study diseases and how to control them.
Oh indeed, I just finished my first of four meetings today with those kinda people.
Just remember that it was scientists who told us masks wouldn't help before they told us to wear masks. I won't make any jokes about John Kerry here, because he's a politician and we expect stupid from politicians.
Science is more like radar than video. There's something out there. Could be an incoming nuke, might be a flock of geese.
Good that you can vent here. Need an outlet for stress...and that seems to be one thing we're pretty good at.
Meeting with Epis doesn't stress me out. Doctors drive me fucking crazy, because they think they are scientists, they are absolutely certain they know everything about everything, and anyone who disagrees with them is automatically stupid. Kinda like LTG.
But scientists? Scientists are great.
Problem with us scientists is that we know a bit, but communicate poorly. In industry, dealing with marketing and management folks who only care about issues with dollar signs attached there is a fundamental disconnect. When scientists feel they are not being heard, they reflexively offer more data which is just the opposite of what their target audience wants. Dealing with politicians with their tremendously short attention span and need for black and white can't be successful with scientists that live in the gray. Biological sciences is the worst of all.
Indeed. And then there's the fact that humans, including scientists, simply can't deal with "Well, it's complicated, and it depends on various factors."
I've made some scientists mad over the past few months because I had to tell them our disease-tracking systems weren't scalable to handle a flood of negative results data. "Then why were these systems put in place??" they demand.
"Because these are the systems your colleagues chose, and insisted we implement."
That somehow never goes over well.