h/t Not Telling You, out of sheer pity
Shooting Fish In A Barrel Dept.:
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| Hamfistedly fucktarded. QED |
Look, kids, I get that science is hard. There's logic, math, and shit, right? But this is embarrassingly bad, and stupid.
First of all, as anyone who ever used a microscope knows, 25x is what you use to look at coins, stamps, currency, etc. And the mask in question, at 25x, would be a solid blue wall. Not a trawl net for whales.
That's a picture of a blue fishing net, FFS, or a volleyball net, not a picture of a surgical mask. If I had a standard microscope with a photographic function, I'd take the pic myself, just to prove it to you.
But here's a polyester surgical mask, at something like 500X, under an electron microscope.
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| Notice how this, at probably 20x greater magnification than the meme fraud, doesn't look anything like the pic of some guy's aunt's knitted afghan. That should be a cluebat. |
Secondly, to be fair to the autists out there, that alleged (and recockulously so) "virus" in the picture is pure hokum and horseshit. Take a look at the lower right corner of the image. That horizontal white line is a scale bar, alleging a measurement of 2mm.
Using a standard ruler and calibrated eyeballs, that makes the "virus" in question in that picture something close to .28 millimeters, or 28,000 nanometers, across. Why this will become important will be explained presently. The scale of the fraud could best be explained by imagining an African bull elephant that was portrayed as being 672 ft. tall.
[UPDATE: My mistake. I dropped a zero. 0.28 mm would be 280 micrometers, or 280,000 nanometers, not 28,000. So that elephant would actually have to be 6,720' tall. That's an elephant over a mile tall. That's how recockulously huge that faked "virus" is. Entirely my fault for whipping up the math just before bed time. Mea culpa. But I still caught the math error before anyone else did, albeit four days later, including ahead of all the brave anonymous trolls. Pthththththththbt. :P]
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| For reference, St. Louis' Gateway Arch is only 630' tall. |
So...anybody hereabouts seen any 672' tall elephants lately?
More to the point, if you think viruses travel dry, like powdered cocoa, rather than encapsulated in huge globs of saliva, which the average surgical mask stops from flying outwards at between 100 times and 1000 times better than wearing nothing, I can get you a prime deal on beachfront property in South Dakota.
For reference, here's a picture of a human hair measuring 75 µm (micrometers) across, at 1000X magnification, taken by a scanning electron microscope. It's about the size of any of the fibers in the bundles in that actual mask pic above.
Light microscopes (the kind that use simple light, that most of you think of as a microscope), are limited to a resolution of about 1000X.
The most advanced scanning electron microscopes can see fuzzy pictures of atoms, at magnifications of 10,000,000X.
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| Atoms of oxygen, scandium, and praseodymium at 10,000,000X. Image © Cornell University |
What passes for common sense and basic scientific understanding these days wouldn't have passed middle school health class a generation ago.
Whoever made the original meme, and the picture it's based on is a total fucktard, and is bullshitting the gullible at world-class levels. And the gullible are swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. Don't be That Guy.
And it only took me about 4 mouseclicks and three trips to the calculator app to work this out, in about a minute and a half. And maybe twice that to type this reply.
The enstupidization of the nation hasn't got far to go before the average IQ is on par with fungi. But it doesn't have to be this way.
And for the Common Core Posse, nota bene this has nothing to with masking pros and cons. As we pointed out in comments the last time, we already covered in blistering detail how and why masks work, but masking wouldn't ever work, years ago.
BONUS: Two years later, even the Babylon Bee has figured out this problem.
This is simply a plea for people who don't know what they're spreading on the net, to STFU until they actually know what they're talking about, if only to spare their dicks more cleat marks. This stuff isn't hard to find, if you make the effort.
If you can't be bothered, then as Will Rogers said, "Never pass up a good opportunity to shut up."
Or at the very least, be like Timmy:
27 comments:
The fake right likes to think that the answer to fake news/disinformation is to make up equally implausible BS and then claim anyone who challenges them is “brainwashed” or “dajoooo” or “cuckservative”.
Frankly, equal and opposite stupidity + ego is a very compelling argument for calling these mouth-breathers “controlled opposition.”
Are you still unvaccinated Aseop?
Do you wear a mask outside of work?
What situation would cause you to mask and please describe the mask you would use.
Are you clean shaved daily as we both know a quality mask is disabled without a proper fit.
As you said masks work. Do you use them and why?
So take a mask, any mask, and take a drag on a cigarette, put the mask on and exhale. You will see some smoke pass through the mask (which kind of implies the mask doesn't filter out small particles), but most of the smoke comes out the sides all around not being filtered at all NO MATTER HOW TIGHT THE MASK WEAVE IS!!! In fact the better the mask the more likely it is that all of your exhausted air flow eludes the mask completely. But, that's OK because you really believe in masks so they must work, right!
So you are saying that masks don't stop virus. The meme just got the sizes wrong.
Rick
Yes, they stop one method of transmission, spittle. That is good. But, one is none. As far as an aerosol transmission, they appear to be ineffective. There's a fair amount of information about it at www.swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/
You're doing God's Work, Brother; though it may be casting pearls before swine. Perhaps you may reach someone for whom the light will shine, good on ya.
Boat Guy
@Brave Anonymous Idiots (standing in for literal hordes more Gilligans),
1) Aerosolized virus in saliva is not cigarette smoke. The proper test you wanted to use, but were too hard-headed or ignorant to try, because it didn't advance your narrative, is coughing or sneezing through a mask.
As noted in the OP, that's actually been done and tested, and the results are a decrease of viral transmission of between 100x and 1000x over wearing nothing, measured at 6'.
The standard was never "complete seal". It's "drastically reduced transmission". When you attempt recockulous solutions, you get recockulous answers. Thanks for playing. If you want a total seal, wear a plastic bag over your head. Please, try that for 24 hours, and get back to me on how it worked for you.
2) COVID isn't airborne, it's droplet transmission. Jackasses like Fauci and the lying fucktards at the CDC trying to redefine definitions that stood in place, absent political monkeyfucking of those definitions, for literally decades, doesn't make that not so.
3) You clearly missed the part where I pointed out this is not a polemic for or against masking anywhere or anytime, because most people are spring-loaded to stupid about masks, which is why I explained over two years ago that you can't teach monkeys to mask when and where it's appropriate, let alone correctly. I ridiculed jackasses wearing masks alone in their cars years ago, and they're still fucktards today. And I see them every day.
4) For the Slow Learners, this is about braindead vacuous jackholes swallowing obvious bullshit by the gallon, and thinking incorrectly they understand science at even a grade school level.
For the love of God, people, put the tankard down, and stop chugging. You're just demonstrating that you're not smart enough to talk about anything even vaguely scientific, which just gives the idiots on the other side more hope that if they find the right combination of flavors to tickle your idiot switch, they can bamboozle you back to the other side. And they're not entirely wrong there.
5) Not vaxxed, never will be, clean-shaven, wear a mask at work (it's mandatory), which would be an N95 for any respiratory complaints, with the patient in a negative airflow room. I never wear a mask outside work, but if I did, it would be an M40 with CBRN filters, of which I have several, and it would be because I perceived a potential CBRN threat, like a chemical leak or unspecified nuclear event. And would then, in haste, GTFO of the area, because those types of masks and gear, like 4WD, are to get you out of trouble, not allow you to stay and play in it, as anyone who's ever done MOPP IV in 100° heat and 99% humidity in the tropics can explain to you in about 0.2 seconds.
If I'm someplace where I'd need an N95 outside the hospital, that's someplace I need to leave, and it includes the stupid motherfuckers or their hellspawn brats coughing their flu virus all over the store because they're too stupid to stay the fuck home when they're sick. And if possible, I'll crop-dust the area before I leave. Turnabout is fair play.
@Rick,
Define "stop". See #1-2, above, and get back to me.
Viruses aren't smart cruise missiles. They're ejected in a straight line. If a COVID droplet is ejected, its chances of passing through even a simple surgical mask are about the same as shooting a tennis ball through a full Christmas tree lot 250' long, and getting out the other side. (Bonus points to anyone who gets a baseball or tennis ball shooter and tries that, and YouTubes it.) That's the actual math on a viral saliva particle enlarged to the size of a 3" tennis ball, and going through a polyester weave 0.5mm thick. (i.e. 20,000 times thicker than the size of the virus, and nominally 1,000x thicker than the spit globule. 3" x 1000 ÷ 12 = 250'. QED.) Look at the pic above of the bundle of polyester fibers, and show us how the virus is going to bounce through that. If you're really dedicated, take the mass of a saliva drop starting at 300 MPH, explain its speed and direction with each successive impact with the fibers, and how far it will travel, using physics, for the 1-in-1000 particles that might successfully bounce through all that.
The referenced study suggests empirically it's virtually a non-event at 6'.
That would be actual science.
Not photoshopping a volleyball net or grandma's blue knit afghan stretched out over a mold spore on a piece of muffin.
@Boat Guy,
Yes, I'm pissing into the wind here, but the anonymous idiots are all downwind from me, so...
So when you get sick from covid transmitted through a mask you should be joyous that the mask "drastically reduced transmission". Or maybe you are less sick because the mask "drastically reduced transmission". But the bottom line is you can still get sick because all the mask does is "drastically reduced transmission". Can you imagine a water filter for hikers that touts it's product "drastically reduced transmission" BUT leaves enough bacteria in the water to kill you.
Using the "logic" of several of your correspondents, if a ballistic vest is not proof absolute against any firearm ever man portable, it is useless.
I don't think I can explain "harm mitigation" in one syllable words.
So, I simply wore a kevlar vest under my shirt, so long ago when I worked as a street medic in Da Murder City.
And, wear a mask when the threat profile suggests that it would be prudent.
Oh, yeah. I'm a mid level in a covid clinic.
Carry on, smartly, Mr. Aesop!
Applying your statement that if you want to "protect you" you should be wearing an N95 properly without facial hair. Also you drew a (valid) distinction between airborne and droplet borne pathogens. I am acquainted with someone who works with biohazard level 4 pathogens- droplet borne pathogens and wears a full BSL 4 suit. I asked her about this and her response was they do that so they don't die. I further asked about the effectiveness of properly used N95s in such an environment. The laughter was immediate. What she did say was covid is so statistically non fatal that something as "basically useless" as an N95 was acceptable but not particularly helpful.
@Xzebek,
Sing it with me: "♫One of these things is not like the other...♪"
COVID is not a BL-IV pathogen, and wearing an N95 amidst those that are is asinine.
Not because of protection offered, nor lack of it, but because of consequences of error or mishap.
Covid had, initially and on average, about a 3% fatality rate; later mutations have been notably less than that, down around 0.3%. (For reference, annual flu is 0.1%.)
A BL-IV, like Ebola, ranges from 66-90% fatality rate.
A COVID mistake means you get sick, with a relatively small chance of dying in 2020, and an almost negligible chance in 2022.
That's why it's not a BL-IV pathogen.
A mishap in the BL-IV lab, handling Ebola, and exposure means you're totally fucked, because even those who live can look forward to Post-Ebola Syndrome, which includes eventual blindness.
So see if you can figure out why your acquaintance is wearing a full biohazard encapsulating suit amidst that sort of thing, rather than an N95.
Then look up the level of protection worn by field responders in Africa months on end in Ebola wards, with minimal risk when the MSF/DWB guidelines for donning and doffing were followed scrupulously. (Hint: Not a BL-IV fully encapsulated suit.)
The BL levels are assigned based on lethality of the pathogens. IIRC, COVID is posted as a BL-III pathogen, and in an ordinary bio-safety research lab, the standard is zero exposure, ever. For most hospitals, COVID and associated testing is a BL-I to -II, at most.
-I is gloves, a mask, and safety splash goggles.
I.e. exactly what they wear every single day, for everything.
When the hospital in Dallas tried to use half-assed precautions barely adequate for COVID during their Ebola incident, they failed miserably, and infected two ICU nurses within the 21-day R-2 window of Ebola in the wild, which is the same as not wearing any protection at all.
That's what happens when people fuck this up, and it's also why most hospitals (99.97% in actual fact, and that's precisely 4 out of 6,090) aren't adequately equipped and staffed with enough trained personnel to handle any cases, and of those four, they can only deal with about a dozen serious bio-hazard patients, nationwide, at any given time.
Welcome to what I've only been telling people on this blog since 2014.
Still trying to convince folks you never said the covid was the death sentence? Mkay.
That is rather what I'm saying based upon what the acquaintance said, what you have said, what I have read and experienced (I'm an EMT). Those pathogens are extremely deadly- hence the protective suits. Covid, and many other garden variety (for want of a better term) not so much. So one should be careful, and use threat level appropriate precautions. In retrospect, covid was not the deadly bug we at first feared it to be. People who thought otherwise , on both sides of the risk assessment curve now have historical data to revaluate it. I think that at times you have drifted over into the masks are more helpful than they are school of thought. And I read your blog regularly so I have read the post about why masks won't work . Memes aren't science and many of them are readily mockable. I think that we should be careful not to adopt a dog in a fight, which fight should be less emotional.
Aesop,
interesting post as usual. However, the top image is likely correct. I got curious and looked at an actual "household" mask, as labeled in the image, not a surgical one, under microscope (optical, 90x magnification). It does look like the top image, only threads are not bunched up together. Threads are 10 um diameter, 80-150 um gaps between them.
Do they work to reduce transmission? Maybe, if worn correctly. Do they work in general population - not a chance. BTW, I am in bioscience, virology even, and used to wear those masks every day in the lab.
@Hedge,
Still too lazy or stupid to look it up and see the dozens of times I said exactly that? Mkay.
@Xzebek,
Covid was just about exactly the the non-deadly bug we expected it to be. If you're an EMT, you should also be aware of average ambulance hold times, because EDs are full. Dumping a pandemic with a death rate thirty times the annual flu, and a seriously ill rate 50 times that, is a recipe to sink the system, the prevention of which was the only rationale that made any sense.
But never letting a crisis go to waste, TPTB, esp. on the Left side of the aisle, turned it up to 11, by shoving infected elders in with healthy ones, which jacked the infection and death rates up, and which blood they danced in to demand draconian mandates, in order to steal an election they were going to lose by 50 points otherwise. Trump's biggest talking point (and 800# hammer) was the total economic turnaround, and energy independence. They killed the economy, put rules in place to outright hijack the voting, tried to make him look like a renegade (two failed impeachments) and then crashed energy independence. All in about a year and change.
Protective masks are very helpful. Face diapers work--if everyone wears them, correctly, indoors/close proximity to others only -- which is three never-gonna-happens for the price of one.
My dog in the fight is that stupid kills, particularly in a pandemic, but if people are just as stupid after it as they were during it, they insure the next one will be as bad, or worse.
@Anon 9:49P,
For the top pic to be correct, the virus would have to be nearly big enough to see with the naked eye. 25x is paltry, and no virus in world history is 28,000 nm across.
The meme is total bullshit.
A household mask, i,e, a layer or two of cotton t-shirt material, would need to be magnified several hundred times to see that level of space between individual cotton fibers.
And the virus would still be all but invisible at such a low magnification.
Yet again, 25x is bullshit.
To see the virus clearly, you'd need 200,000x.
This isn't up for debate, it's demonstrable.
Also, wearing correctly for simple masks means mouth and nose inside. it's not much more complicated than that, because you're just trying to keep the cough and sneeze droplets contained. And yet it still keeps kicking Joe and Jane Average's ass, as we can see every time anyone wears the damned things anywhere, for two years plus.
We'd have been far better off to tell people to do whatever the fuck they wanted, and just put the sick ones in a tent to die or get well, as random chance decided. Everybody who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, or saw an episode of Scrubs or House, thinks they've got this, because they don't know what they don't know, and they're too smart to listen to anyone else about anything. And they're the ones that always drive the bus in a pandemic, just like with Ebola in West Africa. If I'd had six months pay in cash sitting in my desk drawer when the serious covidiocy hit, I'd have taken a leave of absence for that amount of time, and just skipped the major stupidity altogether.
Which is what 1/4 of my co-workers, and half the ICU did, and why covidiocy isn't done killing people, and won't be for years, between that and the not-a-vaxx.
With each new version of COVID apparently getting more transmittable and less potentially fatal, I get the giggles at the mask Karens. ESPECIALLY when I see them driving alone in their cars.
BTW, what does one call male Karens? Kens?
Seems like everyone's missing the fact that viral quantity/load exposure has been directly and scientifically linked to COVID-19 severity. And further that exposure to very small if not controlled amounts of the virus results in natural immunity not unlike some of the earliest and what was formerly only defined/classified as "vaccines".
Pretty sure Aesop's hit on this previously.
Looks a little like polyester twine.
Back in the 50s 60s and 70s most masks were woven cotton fabric. Today 80 to 90 % of bash are air laid nonwloven fabrics that have precise filtration characteristics. None of the micro graphs presented represent modern filtration masks.
Granted. And if you can source a SEM image of one, I'll happily post it.
Of course surgical grade masks catch droplets made by coughing and sneezing. When worn properly. When replaced regularly (after every serious sneeze, for example).
And of course we have scores of studies conducted over the past 100 years, each and every one of which conclusively shows that masks don't stop the spread of respiratory diseases. Nor even slow the spread. At all.
@McChuck,
Name one that's scientifically valid, and repeatable.
There are shittons of "studies" that are so scientifically dubious a 5th grader could spot the flaws, yet "peer reviewed". Idiots validating morons.
The reason I keep pointing to the study posted in Nature is because, AFAIK, it was the only valid test, which looked at actual mask performance, factoring out 5 million ways average dumbshits could and did fuck up the results, and results showed an improvement with mask use of between 10,000% and 100,000%, over using nothing.
Hundreds of other tests didn't look at masks, they looked at populations, ignoring that people could fornicate a crowbar in a sandpile, and leaving 100 variables unaccounted for. Or they surveyed 20 other tests, all invalid and poorly constructed, and then averaged the results, which is the difference between taking a poll of pollsters, versus holding one actual election.
I haven't seen one so-called mask study in two years, other than the one mentioned, that controlled for all variables except mask efficiency, which is the only way to do a proper study of mask efficiency.
Retards constructing invalid tests, and "journalists" too fucked in the head to recognize the difference, isn't the same thing as science, which was the whole point of this and subsequent posts.
Half-assed "science" is to the real thing as gold paint is to actual gold bars.
Aside from medical professionals who know how to fit and wear their prescribed masks….Never wore a mask, never will for this sort of panic-driven idiocy, even if the Covid BS was released as a bioweapon. 62 years on the planet and NOW I have to wear a mask? For what? It’s risky to get out of bed in the morning, as always. Stay home if you’re sick. Stay away from those that are and tell them to home. Reduce your risk using rational means. But this masking up is downright moronic…for this. I use my N95 in the wood-shop for sanding, otherwise the canister for heavier needs. Wearing paper or cloth masks all day everyday is harmful to one’s respiratory system. We will see the result in the General Public down the road…the ones who wore their SAME mask all day out of fear, creating a perfect bio-bat rebreathed, let alone the total inability to properly communicate. Walked into a clinic for a quick test, was told to put on a mask. Nope, never did when ever going to the doctors before, and I wasn’t sick, hacking or coughing…sat in the corner chair away from everyone and made a call. Masks are the new crutch, and people LOVE their crutches.
"And of course we have scores of studies conducted over the past 100 years, each and every one of which conclusively shows that masks don't stop the spread of respiratory diseases. Nor even slow the spread. At all."
Weird. I spent a dozen years asedic and ED RN in Da City, hotbed of TB, among other transmissible and generally uncommon ailments, wearing a "surgical" mask.
My PPD (TB) test remains negative, every year, to this day, after 47 years in clinical practice.
But, of course, "masks don't work".
Is McChuck listening, still, to that idiot Faulci?
None so blind as those who screw their eyes shut and chant, "La la la! I can't hear you!"
Scores, if not hundreds of studies on mask effectiveness at preventing or slowing the spread of respiratory viruses, beginning in 1919. Look them up yourselves. Oh, wait, you won't because you're emotionally invested, not logically consistent. More recently: The entire world just conducted a study, with hundreds of millions wearing masks, and they still caught Covid and the flu and colds.
As for TB: It's not a virus. And it's remarkably hard to catch, else the entire world's population would have contracted it before 1900. You know, back when one single person in an entire family could have it for years and not spread it to their loved ones. Nice try to shift the goal posts.
As for Aesop himself working in an ER and not contracting Covid: He did. He's one of the considerable of people who get it and don't notice, because their body treated it effectively as just another minor cold. According to basic epidemiology, over 90% of the population have contracted Covid by now. Many several times.
1) Point to one valid study showing that, McChuck, with a methodology so foolproof I can't poke ten holes in it inside of thirty seconds. One. I triple-dog dare you.
2) The entire world just showed you how not to do it, for exactly the reasons I outlined two years ago.
3) Nice try, but epic fail. I had to test for COVID twice a week for a year, because I refused the vaxx. 100 COVID tests. Negative x 10². Every. Single. Time. Never had it. Not once. And most of those who've contracted Covid several times are the vaxxholes.
You're shooting airballs. Nothing near the net.
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