The messaging from #LACounty is ridiculous. On the one hand, they opened up all of these restaurants for outdoor dining & made people feel like things are getting better- but they aren’t allowing outdoor TVs to play the Super Bowl? People are going to meet indoors instead...
2/ This is bad public health. It’s just like when beaches were closed during July 4th. We need to mitigate risk & create safe options for socialization - bc people have shown time & time again that they will socialize either way (not blaming them)
3/ Alternatively they could have set up outdoor viewing sites at parks etc; created distanced pods— many ways to get creative here as was done in other places. But just assuming that people won’t congregate when they have been told it’s getting much safer now...?? #covid19
4/ I completely respect the crowding situation that could occur— which is why outdoors + limited capacity + creative distancing measures would have been a better option. My concern is that the alternative- people throwing parties at home indoors- will be worse. #covid19
5/ And the weather is SUNNY and 70 degrees when the game starts this afternoon @lapublichealth@MayorOfLA — what are you guys doing??
"And there’s another problem: too much filtration becomes unbreathable. “Are you breathing through the material, or are you breathing through the gaps in the material?” Zangmeister says.
3/ "In lab settings, Zangmeister and his team have found these areas where air escapes tend to be behind the cheeks, or right above the bridge of the nose, which can look like a droplet exhalation geyser, he says. "
1/ One of the issues w/ public health policy making is the lack of accountability or even full understanding of the effects of those policies. Yesterday was an example of this when #LACounty@lapublichealth@MayorOfLA restricted outdoor TVs from playing the #SuperBowl.
2/ I personally know of multiple unvaccinated friends who decided to gather indoors as a result.
It was 70 degrees & sunny in Los Angeles yesterday.
The state already opened outdoor dining & made people feel like it was 'safe' to do this.
But then- they ban TVs outside.
3/ What they are essentially telling the public is that they aren't responsible enough to do this.
That the government decides how responsible you are, rather than mitigating risk & giving you ways to socialize more safely.
1/ This story saying that a local health dept has changed their exposure time to any contact without masks ("1 second") doesn't mean that you will get infected in one second- but it does point out that 6 feet/15 min is not a hard/fast rule & never was.
2/ There are many possibilities for why new variants are "more transmissible"; but in the real world, figuring out the "why" takes time- and we don't have time. We must utilize the best protections we can right now- mitigation of risk is name of the game
3/ With vaccinations, it seems like our attention to other protection measures have fallen to the side- understandably bc there are only so many resources that public health departments have. Doing one often means not doing another (staff, funding etc)
I think of masks the same way I think of any risk mitigation. Better is better. Unregulated cloth masks not the bar to settle on
2/ we even specifically asked CNN to change the headline (they initially chose N95 masks) bc the idea behind this movement was always to provide folks w/ a multitude of options- N95s are one of those. But so are high grade surgical masks w/ mask fitters
3/ The arguments saying “just get more people to wear any mask”- guess what?
We should do both
& getting “anti-maskers” to wear a mask is actually IMO a harder problem than getting someone who already believes in masks a #BetterMask (which helps them around those who don’t)
THREAD
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The key points from our recent op-ed @CNN pushing back (respectfully) against Dr. Fauci & @CDCDirector who earlier this week on #CNNTownHall were asked about #BetterMasks
2/ -new more contagious #covid19 variants could mean infection w/ less exposure time - better viral transmission needs better protection; cloth masks better than no masks, surgical better than cloth, but the bar must be raised now
-still transmit by droplets & aerosols
3/ -aerosol transmission better stopped by N95 masks (or equivalents, KF94, KN95, FFP2) or some surgical masks; electrostatic charge traps small particles; cloth masks not designed to do this