[HN Gopher] The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom
___________________________________________________________________
The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom
Author : brk
Score : 115 points
Date : 2023-06-02 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| lynx23 wrote:
| TL;DR: If all media tell you the same thing over and over again,
| just don't do it and you should be safe. Propaganda is
| propaganda, don't get confused if many people around you fall for
| it, just stay on your path and trust your intuition and supress
| the urge to follow the herd.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The average consumer was fine, just don't start _a business_
| based on what 's very likely temporary policy. Though, I
| suppose one could argue that business is always a gamble and
| some people made a _lot_ of money off of the pandemic.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Yeah, that's why I use a charcoal grill inside. The media keeps
| saying to use it outside but I can't trust them.
| lesuorac wrote:
| And charcoal always goes on sale going into the winter so its
| just so economical to heat the whole house.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| COVID got me to wash my hands more often so I'm not angry.
| jcadam wrote:
| Watching everyone around me go insane actually made me less of
| a hypochondriac.
| Footkerchief wrote:
| Just one aspect of the huge, tragicomic waste that resulted from
| the medical establishment's position that airborne transmission
| couldn't be real because it reminded everyone too much of miasma
| theory.
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ina.13070
| loeg wrote:
| > the medical establishment's position that airborne
| transmission couldn't be real
|
| I remember droplets being the leading theory but do not
| remember a time when the medical establishment was claiming
| airborne transmission couldn't be real.
| revelio wrote:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
|
| _" Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne
|
| Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated
| that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That
| mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed
| confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the
| next pandemic."_
| loeg wrote:
| > the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was
| not transmitted through the air.
|
| I mean, I don't believe the WHO actually stated that in
| those terms. This is probably a paraphrase of a more
| nuanced statement that erases the nuance.
| gowld wrote:
| Unfortunately, you are incorrect, as a half-dozen
| comments in this thread have shared.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| >In March, W.H.O. denied outright that Covid-19 was
| airborne, posting on social media, "FACT: #COVID19 is NOT
| airborne," and calling it "misinformation." We and our
| colleagues, scientists and engineers who have studied
| airborne particles for our entire careers, met with
| W.H.O. in April 2020 to express our concern that airborne
| transmission was important in the spread of COVID-19.
| W.H.O. vehemently rejected our suggestion and painted us
| as trespassers who did not understand what was happening
| in hospitals.
|
| https://time.com/6162065/covid-19-airborne-transmission-
| conf...
| loeg wrote:
| I think you and others in this thread are reading that
| tweet significantly out of context.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think you should make that case, rather than implying
| that a case could be made.
| actuallyalys wrote:
| Here's a fuller quotation of the WHO tweet:
|
| >FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.
|
| >The #coronavirus is mainly transmitted through droplets
| generated when an infected person coughs, sneezes or
| speaks.
|
| The WHO was unequivocally stating that Covid was not
| airborne, apparently meaning that they (wrongly) thought
| it was not spread through aerosols. Instead, they were
| saying it was spread through droplets. So they were wrong
| about how it spreads, but did not go as far as saying it
| wasn't spread through respiratory routes/air at all,
| which I think might be some people's interpretation of
| "The WHO said it was not airborne."
| vxNsr wrote:
| You don't need to think too much, just go read the tweet.
| It's pretty unequivocal. At that point the WHO was very
| adamantly against the idea that Covid could be airborne.
| That tweet thread is very strongly worded to emphasize
| that point.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.
|
| - The WHO
|
| https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > but do not remember a time when the medical establishment
| was claiming airborne transmission couldn't be real
|
| I can remember scientists being accused of spreading
| "misinformation" for proposing that airborne spread best fit
| the available data.
|
| For instance, at the beginning of the pandemic, passengers of
| the cruise ship Diamond Princess continued to spread Covid
| from cabin to cabin while locked down.
|
| There was also the case of a church choir practice where over
| 50 people caught Covid.
|
| >If COVID-19 could spread so thoroughly and quickly through a
| choir, did that mean the coronavirus was airborne? And if the
| primary route for the disease's spread was through the air,
| had our initial response been woefully misguided?
|
| For researchers like Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and
| environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, the answer was
| clear: The coronavirus is airborne, and the superspreader
| choir proved it.
|
| Once agencies like the WHO established the position that
| COVID-19 was spread primarily through heavy droplets, it was
| a tall order to change it. "They'll die defending their
| view," one anonymous WHO consultant told the New York Times
| in July. Even now, "the burden of proof is much higher for
| aerosols than for any other route, and yet we have more
| evidence for aerosols in this case than for any other route,"
| Marr told me.
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/coronavirus-airborne-
| de...
| loeg wrote:
| > I can remember scientists being accused of spreading
| "misinformation" for proposing that airborne spread best
| fit the available data.
|
| This is a much lower bar. You can always find a crank on
| twitter accusing something of being misinformation.
|
| The original claim I responded to was that the medical
| establishment claimed airborne transmission was impossible.
| However, the actual take from the medical establishment was
| significantly less confident of that claim (emphasis
| added):
|
| > Airborne spread was "not _believed_ to be a major driver
| of transmission _based on available evidence_ ," the report
| [from May 2020] stated.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > The original claim I responded to was that the medical
| establishment claimed airborne transmission was
| impossible.
|
| The WHO literally made a blanket statement that Covid was
| NOT airborne.
|
| > FACT: COVID-19 is NOT airborne.
|
| The CDC also denied airborne spread for quite some time.
|
| >As the pandemic unfolded last year, infectious disease
| experts warned for months that both the C.D.C. and the
| World Health Organization were overlooking research that
| strongly suggested the coronavirus traveled aloft in
| small, airborne particles. Several scientists on Friday
| welcomed the agency's scrapping of the term "close
| contact," which they criticized as vague and said did not
| necessarily capture the nuances of aerosol transmission.
|
| "C.D.C. has now caught up to the latest scientific
| evidence, and they've gotten rid of some old problematic
| terms and thinking about how transmission occurs," said
| Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/health/coronavirus-
| airbor...
|
| The CDC's flip flopping on the issue did not inspire
| confidence.
|
| >CDC reverses again, now says Covid-19 is 'sometimes'
| airborne
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-
| agai...
| loeg wrote:
| The 4-word tweet (from March 2020) is clearly an
| oversimplification for people who are only willing to
| read 4 words. They're talking about their (wrong) belief
| that airborne transmission was not a significant vector,
| _at a population level_.
|
| If you read charitably and look at their longer,
| contemporaneous statements, they say things like airborne
| spread is possible in some limited situations but not
| believed to be a significant vector of spread at a
| population level. (Still wrong, but a lot more nuanced.)
|
| March 2020 was the first month the disease was declared a
| pandemic; it was very early on. We had a broad call to
| recognize airborne spread by July. It's worth skimming
| something like https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-
| covid19-developments... .
| eastbound wrote:
| > clearly an oversimplification for people who are only
| willing to read 4 words
|
| It's a lie. There are no excuses. It's false.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| People can be wrong without lying.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > The 4-word tweet (from March 2020) is clearly an
| oversimplification for people who are only willing to
| read 4 words.
|
| I'm not sure why you would make such a misguided claim.
|
| >Two years after the pandemic began, we finally have a
| good understanding of how COVID-19 is transmitted: some
| infected people exhale virus in small, invisible
| particles (aerosols). These do not fall quickly to the
| ground, but move in the air like cigarette smoke. Other
| people can get infected when breathing in those aerosols,
| either in close proximity, in shared room air, or less
| frequently, at a distance. But the journey to accepting
| the overwhelming scientific evidence of how COVID-19
| spread was far too slow and contentious. Even today, the
| updated guidance and policies of how to protect ourselves
| remain haphazardly applied
|
| https://time.com/6162065/covid-19-airborne-transmission-
| conf...
| danmaz74 wrote:
| "Couldn't be real" is a complete misinterpretation of the
| paper. The "medical establishment" asserts that many diseases
| are transmitted by aerosol (ie very small droplets), but many
| more - and especially those similar to covid-19 - are
| transmitted by larger droplets, which travel less far. This
| isn't anything trivial as your comment makes it look like.
| sampo wrote:
| > especially those similar to covid-19 - are transmitted by
| larger droplets, which travel less far.
|
| The medical establishment believed that (some may still
| believe). But it is not true.
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd9149
| neoflame wrote:
| Citation 3 of the linked paper is
| https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898. I don't
| see how a tweet by the WHO beginning with "FACT: #COVID19 is
| NOT airborne" can be construed as anything but a denial that
| COVID-19 is airborne.
| burnished wrote:
| They were referencing this
|
| >the medical establishment's position that airborne
| transmission couldn't be real because it reminded everyone
| too much of miasma theory
|
| In the post they were responding to
| gowld wrote:
| WHO is a political organization, not medical establishment.
| Chinese Communist Party has veto power over WHO's
| statements.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Seems like an excessively speculative theory when the
| alternative, "SARS1 infections were overwhelmingly driven by
| droplet spread and SARS-COV 2 is a close relative so we expect
| it to behave similarly" is right there..
| Vecr wrote:
| That's not correct, at least in hospitals and apartment
| buildings there was pretty good evidence that SARS was
| airborne, at least over short distances. Yes, I mean actually
| airborne, not ballistic droplets. I'm not thinking "yeah sure
| I knew that" in hindsight like people quite often do, this is
| from research I did in 2018. I wore P100 elastomeric
| respirators from the start of the pandemic, I didn't question
| for a second that it was airborne.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Looking back, it was crazy how much emphasis was placed on
| surface transmission.
|
| I remember people talking about wiping down grocery boxes left
| in front of their door with hand sanitizer and leaving it to
| sit for 72 hours before bringing it inside.
| floren wrote:
| Man, I live in the Bay Area, and my neighbors _still do this
| shit_.
| buildsjets wrote:
| What amazes me is that some people choose to continue 100%
| masking for various reasons, but wear ineffective or poor
| fitting cloth masks or generic flat surgical masks with
| huge gaps, when comfortable and effective N95s from name
| brands are readily and inexpensively available. Or they
| just chin-diaper.
| ycombinete wrote:
| You just described the entire audience at this summers
| Games Done Quick event. I think they've mandated masks
| there for some reason.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| During peak pandemic when masks were required, I saw a
| lot of people wearing their masks below their noses. I
| assumed it was some sort of protest thing.
|
| Now that masks are no longer required, I _still_ see
| people doing that. So presumably they 're just ignorant.
| revelio wrote:
| Why is that amazing? Masking is a social phenomenon at
| this point. It's about showing other people what sort of
| person you are, not about the mask itself.
| pookha wrote:
| I'll never forget the hate I got for letting my kids
| enjoy themselves at a playground OUTSIDE without those
| fucking nutty cloth masks...One thing 80's\90's punk-rock
| taught me was how to stand out in public. Served my kids
| emotional and physical development well during that
| hysteria.
| hn976827 wrote:
| Yeah, it distinguishes those understanding what science
| is and those who don't.
|
| We seem to fall on different sides of that divide.
| myko wrote:
| I don't think this is true. Prior to COVID many societies
| wore masks when sick, and a lot of folks' eyes were
| opened to the usefulness of doing so during the pandemic.
| I plan on wearing my n95 out and about when under the
| weather now, even though I don't generally wear one now
| that vaccines are readily available.
|
| And there are multitude of folks undergoing treatments
| that inhibit their immune system, where masking is
| especially important.
|
| That said, people should stay away from cloth masks or
| surgical masks and use n95s/respirators.
| majormajor wrote:
| Is this a thing in red states and areas? Like masking as
| a "fuck you I'm different?" signal?
|
| Because around me in super-liberal-coastal-land
| practically nobody masks, and the ones I know personally
| who sometimes do have underlying reasons to be more
| cautious (e.g. relatives undergoing nasty cancer
| treatments and such that they don't want to spread
| anything to). It's been like 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 people
| at the gym I go to, for instance, this year. Or look at
| the crowds in the recent NBA playoff games.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's the opposite in red states. People harass strangers
| in public for wearing masks. Same vibe as the maskers in
| blue states. It's the never-maskers vs. the ever-maskers.
| majormajor wrote:
| _What_ "maskers in blue states"? I hardly see anyone in a
| mask, let alone _harassing people not in a mask_.
|
| That was my question! Where is this happening? Cause I'm
| really having a hard time reconciling people's random
| online claims with anything I've seen while out and about
| daily near me...
|
| Is there just an Extremely Online segment of the public
| that keeps repeating 2020's arguments without actually
| getting out much to see that basically everyone else has
| adapted as case counts have died down and people have
| gotten vaccinated?
| vkou wrote:
| It's been almost two years since I've started regularly
| going places in a 'lib' town, and I've yet to see _any_
| of the thousands of maskless people around me get
| harassed.
|
| Just because there's like five videos of it happening
| back in 2021 on r/publicfreakouts doesn't mean it's a
| normal occurrence.
| lisasays wrote:
| It may make you feel comfortable to believe that's why
| they mask.
|
| But (knowing many people who still mask, under varying
| circumstances) -- that's not why they mask.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Why do they mask then?
|
| It seems a little hard to psychologically disentangle
| what one does for social approval vs for other reasons.
| For example, maybe it feels emotionally uncomfortable to
| not mask. Is it because the subconscious is worried about
| disease, or because the subconscious is worried about
| social approval? Probably some of both, but if we removed
| one perhaps the external behavior would change, hard to
| tell.
|
| Also IME it seems to cluster with other appearance
| related traits (e.g. type of dress, mannerisms, etc).
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Why do they mask then?
|
| Disposable/cloth masks that do absolutely nothing to
| prevent the spread of an airborne disease like Covid do
| still work with diseases (like the Flu) with a droplet
| based spread.
|
| > CDC says seasonal flu cases hit record lows around the
| world
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cold-and-flu/cdc-says-
| seasona...
|
| The problem was the cult of people claiming that a
| disposable/cloth mask could be effective against an
| airborne disease, and being exceptionally hateful to
| anyone who wouldn't go along with this view.
| lisasays wrote:
| Not "absolutely nothing", according to research I've
| seen. Just not very much.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| A disposable mask with open sides cannot possibly filter
| particles that small out of the air you breathe.
|
| However, it can catch the comparatively large droplets
| you produce when someone with the Flu coughs or sneezes.
|
| Which explains why global Flu cases (with a droplet based
| spread) fell to all time lows while Covid (fully
| airborne) continued to spread like wildfire.
| lisasays wrote:
| _A disposable mask with open sides cannot possibly filter
| particles that small out of the air you breathe._
|
| From basic physics -- of course it can. They don't work
| particularly well, but they do partly obstruct small
| droplet flow. In any case, there are easily findable
| studies about this asserting that even that crap-ola
| disposable masks have at least some measurable efficacy.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > From basic physics -- of course it can.
|
| How exactly does physics allow a disposable mask that
| completely lacks a barrier to entry on the sides filter
| the air?
|
| > In hospitals, the word "airborne" is associated with a
| rigid set of protective methods, including the use of N95
| respirators by workers and negative pressure rooms for
| patients. These are resource-intensive and legally
| required.
|
| https://time.com/6162065/covid-19-airborne-transmission-
| conf...
|
| Medical professionals are not only required to use at
| least an n95 mask, they are required to keep it so
| tightly fitted to their face that unfiltered air cannot
| leak in through the sides. So tightly fitted that it digs
| into their skin.
|
| > Exhausted doctors and nurses post images of their
| bruised faces after long shifts wearing protective gear
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-health-care-
| bruised...
| lisasays wrote:
| Because not all the air goes through the sides. Some of
| it goes through, you know, the mask itself.
|
| Just because N95s are clearly better doesn't mean
| disposables are useless. Because, like, basic logic and
| stuff.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Because not all the air goes through the sides.
|
| How does that prevent Covid from passing through the
| sides?
|
| > Just because N95s are clearly better doesn't mean
| disposables are useless.
|
| They are useless because they cannot possibly filter the
| virus out of the air that you breathe.
|
| I like the way a member of President Biden's Covid
| advisory group put it.
|
| If it can't prevent you from smelling cigarette smoke in
| the room, it cannot filter out Covid, since the smoke
| particles are on the same order of size.
| lisasays wrote:
| It doesn't block it entirely of course - it just means
| that you get somewhat less of it. According to
| researchers, enough to mitigate the risk by a fair
| amount.
|
| Unfortunately we're going in circles here, and I'm going
| to have to bow out. You can believe whatever you want,
| about basic physics or anything else. It's a free planet,
| after all.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| A disposable mask with open sides doesn't 'block" it at
| all.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Given that the unmasked vastly outnumber the masked it's
| not for social approval. I still mask (N95) in places
| because I haven't been sick since 2019 and it makes me
| happy. There's very few people left who mask. The social
| pressure is very much to take off the mask.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Yeah, simply "social approval" isn't the right way to put
| it. What I mean is more nuanced - a feeling of "doing the
| right thing" and demonstrating that one is "doing the
| right thing", as conditioned by one's own social circle.
| lisasays wrote:
| Surely those drivers exist. They just don't seem to be
| the primary factor, for most folks.
| lisasays wrote:
| I think you're overthinking this, especially as to hidden
| psychological motivations.
|
| The primary reason some people still mask is very simple:
| For anyone who follows basic science, not what the crowd
| is doing -- N95 masks in enclosed / crowded situations
| are still a good idea, especially for those of a certain
| age.
|
| Many people continue to wear useless (or only marginally)
| useful masks, and in non-crowded situations (even way out
| in the open). Which of course ranges from silly to, at
| best, only marginally useful. However it seems safe to
| suppose that they're doing so primarily out of strictly
| rational concerns (however faulty their understanding of
| better masking practices may be). Some partially, or
| entirely out of fear (an understandable reaction, if
| they've experienced a heavy bout of Covid, or have seen
| its effects in others).
|
| Also, some may remember the temporary shortage of N95s,
| and still think they're being good, self-sacrificing
| citizens by wearing less effective (or even basically
| useless) masks. Or they just don't like wearing N95s
| because they're too constricting (meaning, "too
| effective"). However, that is at best a secondary
| factory, and not the main reason why they choose to mask
| in the first place.
|
| But to recap: For the vast majority of folks who mask,
| it's mostly out of a (perhaps flawed) sense of pragmatism
| -- not because they are superstitious idiots, or
| primarily motivated by some subconscious desire to make a
| social statement about "who they are".
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| "The basic science" says that masking protects other
| people if I am infected with a comparatively high viral
| load and I am prone to sneezing or coughing unprotected.
| The basic science tells me to stay home when that happens
| because I am not fit for public appearances.
|
| Normal people stay home when they're sick, they don't
| infect others, and the basic science takes care of that
| just fine. If crazy people want to follow "basic science"
| and mask up and go out in public while they're carrying
| an infectious viral load, then I guess we're in Japan or
| something.
|
| If "basic science" compels the general populace to mask
| up, even when we're uninfected, unexposed, vaccinated,
| and asymptomatic, then I feel sorry for basic science
| because it's jumped the shark.
| lisasays wrote:
| It also says that it does protect you from other people's
| loads, albeit imperfectly.
|
| However everyone is tired of masking now, and prefers to
| forget this.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Phrasing
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| When masking was first being mandated, I watched a
| science-guy video as he demonstrated how to properly
| handle a mask, donning and doffing, shaping the
| nosepiece, disinfection for reusable masks, etc.
|
| Then I saw reality, where a medical professional would
| politely remove her mask to sneeze.
| hn976827 wrote:
| Or you don't understand that there are many things in
| life other than covid-19 making people mask up. Maybe you
| stink and people are too polite to tell you so they mask
| up because they prefer smelling their own breath.
| jrockway wrote:
| For me the best effect of masking was keeping my hands
| out of my mouth. I love chewing on those things, which
| have touched God Knows What disease sources. Put a mask
| on, no longer physically possible. 3 years without being
| sick. Who can complain.
| hn976827 wrote:
| Please stop this rethoric. The world has moved on from
| Covid-19 and people do or don't wear masks for a large
| variety of reasons. Perhaps they have a cold and want to
| keep it somewhat away from others. Perhpas to signal "I'm
| infectuous". Perhaps they have allergies to whatever,
| perfume oversensitivities, particles from exhausts,
| whatever. Perhaps its pollen season. Perhaps they have
| bad herpes and want to conceal it.
|
| Many reasons, not everything is about virtue signaling or
| other hyper-partisan political crap.
| [deleted]
| burnished wrote:
| Some people do. Around me it felt like it was a very
| quick way to signal that you weren't a fucking crazy
| person at the start of the pandemic, and then it became
| political (jfc), and kept on being a social signal.
|
| If I had to guess though I'd say most people mask up out
| of pragmatism, its kind of insane that our previous
| practice was to just pretend we weren't sick hard enough
| that we stopped being infectious.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Wow I guess I never found those comfortable and effective
| masks. Maybe people are different? What fits one doesn't
| fit another?
|
| It's fun to earn internet points by claiming to be
| astonished at how dumb others are, and how much we have
| figured things out. Maybe after several years of this,
| the game is growing old.
|
| Tolerance, understanding, consideration used to be
| virtues. But not internet virtues I guess.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| There is comfortable. And there is effective.
|
| The two don't match.
| Krssst wrote:
| I tried two kind of N95. One (actually KF94) uses the
| ears or the neck for support but ends up either hurting
| my ears or my nose. The second (3m aura) has two elastics
| that go around the head, splitting the load, and some
| padding around the nose. I find those very comfortable
| although I guess the airtightness could be an issue for
| some people.
|
| Just in case you never tried it and the pandemic
| situation starts warranting mask wearing again; I don't
| really care whether people mask.
| ianai wrote:
| Maybe I'm just lucky. Or maybe I'm just used to being
| uncomfortable from the decades of fighting migraines sans
| modern medicine. But I pretty easily wore N95s at work
| for entire shifts at times. Yes there are annoyances but
| I'll take it over even getting the common cold or flu.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Why did you fight them without medicine?
|
| More importantly how did you do it? I have tinnitus and
| almost all painkillers are ototoxic (I.e. they can make
| tinnitus worse). So I'm always in a catch 22 when it
| comes to treating my migraines.
| ianai wrote:
| There wasn't much that worked well especially back then.
| CGRP blockers are a new thing. Some of that time was
| college and they don't really do good healthcare for
| students. Much of the rest was unemployed and no
| healthcare. Then there's the doctors/neuros who told me
| men don't get migraines.
|
| Have you tried ginger? Maybe triphala (amla, ginger, and
| turmeric powder altogether). Ginger supposedly acts as a
| cgrp blocker for migraines, and just generally lowering
| inflammation might make stuff less apt to being
| triggered. Tinnitus does sound like quite the curse
| though.
|
| I've also wondered whether the active noise cancelling
| headphones help? Just being used to block noise and not
| play anything back. The real question there is whether
| quiet actively helps or hurts the condition. Though it
| feels a little like a pressure turning on when my ANCs
| activate and I've wondered how that'd interact with
| tinnitus.
|
| Otherwise I'd probably default to making a painfully
| tedious diary of my days and log any/all tinnitus events.
| I'd include noises, foods, time of day, weather,
| anything/everything. That'd be looking for environmental
| or similar factors/triggers. Though it's a hair in your
| ear drum or something like that and honestly tough to
| imagine what would help.
| MyHypatia wrote:
| There are lots of reasons I continue to mask that have
| nothing to do with COVID. 1) To keep the sun off my face.
| 2) if there is a lot of pollen or dust in the air. 2) If
| I want to avoid long chats at the checkout counter that
| waste my time. 3) If I want to avoid having creeps tell
| me to smile or catcall.
| raverbashing wrote:
| You're absolutely correct
|
| But just use a proper N95 mask, it's even easier to
| breath than other masks
| wincy wrote:
| I saw someone driving alone in their car wearing a mask two
| days ago. I live in Kansas.
| drdec wrote:
| I used to do that when I masked because when I took the
| mask off, my facial hair would get activated and itchy.
| So if I weren't at a place where I could wash my hands, I
| just kept the mask on as it was easier to keep my hands
| off my face that way.
| gumby wrote:
| They could be an uber driver, or someone moving their car
| a short distance while shopping.
|
| Otherwise, I do find that weird and I am an ardent
| masker. Actually, come to think of it, the other day I
| drove home that way because I just forgot to take it off
| when I left the supermarket.
|
| So there are non-weird explanations. I doubt they account
| for all the cases.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| [flagged]
| fredsmith219 wrote:
| Not the poster, but I am immunocompromised. So I mask.
| ianai wrote:
| I just plum read too much about immunology and pathogens
| during the pandemic. Plus being able to opt out of pollen
| and flu season is just a duh, why not. Yes our bodies are
| good at fighting off stuff. Doesn't mean I need to roll
| the dice with everything all the time.
| gumby wrote:
| I'm fully vaccinated but Covid cases are still widespread
| (I've never had it). There's no need to risk the ans yet
| not understood sequelae.
|
| Plus I don't get colds any more
| irrational wrote:
| Probably either forgot or it wasn't worth the trouble
| since they were on a short drive between locations.
| dwringer wrote:
| I would regularly leave my mask on in the car just from
| being too lazy to take it off and put it back on again in
| the span of 15 minutes. I definitely had a couple of
| instances where people who saw me drive by yelled
| something at me in anger about how I had it on. I am
| kinda surprised to see a similar complaint crop up in a
| thread on HN. I'd usually forget I had it on anyway. I
| guess some people count down the seconds until they can
| rip it off and have what they perceive as "freedom"?
| floren wrote:
| Oh that's daily around here still. Absolutely baffling to
| me, I could handle wearing a mask when I needed to but
| you bet your ass I was removing it as soon as I got
| outside because it's really quite unpleasant.
|
| I've got a neighbor who wears a mask to move his trash
| can the 20 feet from the inside of his garage to the
| pavement just outside. He also wears the mask when
| driving alone in his car.
|
| COVID definitely broke some brains.
| MyHypatia wrote:
| Sometimes I wear a mask to keep the sun off my face or if
| there is a lot of pollen or dust outside.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Just curious to understand how does a mask over your
| mouth keep the sun off of your face (presumably the
| eyes)?
| accoil wrote:
| Could be to stop sunburn. Hat with brim protects the top
| half, and keeps it out of the eyes. Mask protects the
| lower half.
| myko wrote:
| I wear my respirator to mow the lawn when my allergies
| are bothering me. Gets some funny looks occasionally.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Usually that person is an Uber driver between fares.
| wincy wrote:
| Maybe! I haven't driven with an Uber driver in the last
| year that was wearing a mask. Then again the only places
| I've been to in the last year are Florida and Kansas so
| it's for sure not representative of the nation as a
| whole.
| gumby wrote:
| Not sure what the Bay Area has to do with this. I never
| considered doing that kind of thing but I am still masking
| when around other people. I'm currently traveling and still
| see plenty of others doing the same.
| danmaz74 wrote:
| Hindsight is 20/20
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Arguably, there may be something to this in general, because
| grocery stores are gross, and people handle the product in
| unsanitary ways, so perhaps these are good precautions even
| in the best of times.
|
| Even without microbial infections of grocery product, you do
| have to contend with pest insects such as roaches, weevils,
| and gnats infesting groceries. Quarantining them separately
| is a good way to carefully inspect to show that you're not
| bringing new pests into the home.
| nradov wrote:
| You've got to be kidding. That's just irrational
| germophobia. The microbes that might be carried on the
| surface of groceries are of zero risk to healthy people.
| You're exposed to a wide range of pathogens all the time
| without even noticing. In developed countries it's rare to
| find pests in store bought groceries, and even if you do so
| what? Eating a worm in your apple won't do you any harm. I
| would be more concerned about the pesticides than the
| pests.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Several fires involving large amounts of unsellable hand
| sanitizer have broken out across the country in the past year,
| from Dallas to downtown Los Angeles._
|
| It's not quite clear _why_ there have been so many fires,
| especially when we 've been making and storing and shipping hand
| sanitizer in warehouses for a long time. Is it:
|
| 1) Something about these new companies wasn't following safety
| protocols, because they were new and/or rushing to market?
|
| 2) Existing safety protocols _were_ being followed at the same
| rate, but the manufacturing and distribution network of hand
| sanitizers grew exponentially, and so fires grew along with it
| and this is a non-story?
|
| 3) The fires were a result of storing hand santizier intended for
| _disposal_ rather than sale, so in different warehouses
| /locations that had different/less safety regulations or
| compliance?
|
| 4) The fires were set intentionally before the products were
| officially classified for disposal, so costs could be recouped
| through insurance fraud?
| emodendroket wrote:
| This seems suggestive... isn't it likely that some of the
| contaminants they let slide were more combustible?
|
| > On March 20, the US Food and Drug Administration announced
| that it was relaxing its regulations on hand sanitizer to
| "provide flexibility to help meet demand during this outbreak."
| Those regulations, known as the Current Good Manufacturing
| Practices, had been in place since 1994 and included regularly
| updated rules on everything from record-keeping to product
| testing to packaging. The agency also paused the requirement
| under the Federal Food Drug & Cosmetics Act that sanitizer be
| sourced from pharmaceutical-grade ethanol, which is free of
| industrial toxins that are commonly found in fuel-grade
| ethanol. Businesses were still expected to test their
| sanitizers for benzene and other toxic compounds, but
| essentially on an honor system. The FDA noted that it did "not
| intend to take action against firms" for violations during the
| public health emergency.
|
| > [...]
|
| > By mid-June the FDA had received so many complaints that it
| started compiling an online list of "hand sanitizers consumers
| should not use." Because the agency does not have recall
| authority for over-the-counter drugs, the offending companies
| themselves were expected to pull products marked as unsafe.
| Consumers had to go out of their way to find the list and stay
| up to date as it got longer and longer. By the end of that
| first pandemic summer, nearly 200 types of sanitizer appeared
| on the list.
|
| > ArtNaturals was, at that point, not on the list. Its
| sanitizer, labeled with a tasteful, millennial-friendly design
| that said it was vegan and infused with jojoba oil, was
| marketed as "safe for kids" and "a great bulk hand sanitizer
| pack for parents and teachers." At least two school districts
| on the West Coast had purchased the sanitizer to distribute to
| students, in addition to two Ivy League universities. Then, in
| March 2021, a year into sales, an independent lab in
| Connecticut called Valisure announced that it had found benzene
| in the company's sanitizer. Benzene, a widely used industrial
| chemical derived from petroleum, can be absorbed through the
| skin and is known to be a risk factor for leukemia.
|
| Then again, intentional destruction is certainly a possibility
| too.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't think so. The main ingredient ethanol is already
| plenty combustible enough.
|
| The article describes the additional toxins as simply that --
| poisonous toxins that you don't want to put in your hands or
| dump down creeks. Not any indication that they're more
| flammable than ethanol.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Of course it will be insurance fraud in most cases. The public
| pays the bill.
| rlpb wrote:
| I was very picky about the brands of hand santizer we used during
| the pandemic and I'm glad I did. I guess I can't know if my
| caution was sufficient or not.
| simonbutt wrote:
| That first photo has to be Midjourney. Have we hit the turning
| point where AI art is suddenly embedded in everything?
| pcurve wrote:
| Doesn't look like she's using MJ yet?
| https://www.instagram.com/saharrrana/?hl=en
| Mattasher wrote:
| This hand sanitizer everywhere thing was just one of the many
| unproductive insanities of the Covid era.
|
| Quick story: In 2021 I was shopping at an Office Max in Florida.
| At the counter, the checkout guy snuck two small bottles into my
| bag.
|
| Me: Wait! I didn't buy that!
|
| Him: Don't worry, it's free.
|
| Me: Ok, but what is it?
|
| Him: Hand sanitizer, we're giving them away.
|
| Me: (Takes bottles out of bag, hands back to him)
| jxramos wrote:
| what did he say / how did he react when you handed it back?
| bipop5000 wrote:
| I was thinking about all of the masks that were created super
| quickly and also dumped. Those masks do not look like they
| would recycle quickly.
| loeg wrote:
| The cloth ones? They'll break down relatively quickly in
| landfills.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Are they actually natural fiber? The surgical masks mostly
| seem like plastic, and the softer cloth masks might be
| synthetic-cotton blends.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The medical ones are not really cloth and contain synthetic
| materials.
| loeg wrote:
| Sure, but the context is industries and products quickly
| spun up in 2020. Those masks were basic cloth ones, not
| the surgical masks more common now.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There was a huge production jump for N95s and surgical
| masks in 2020, included companies that spun up and
| shipped potentially dangerous products (N95s by unheard
| of companies not actually being N95 compliant). Their
| usage is still up compared to pre-pandemic levels.
| loeg wrote:
| Ok? You can look at my original comment -- I'm talking
| about cloth ones. I'm not interested in arguing with you
| about the relative proportion of cloth masks and
| synthetic masks.
| moffkalast wrote:
| The unsterilized masses, they cannot make the judgement call.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| Can you elaborate on why you believe it was unproductive
| insanity?
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| Because it was clear early on that covid was not droplet
| transmission and that hand santizer did jack shit. But nobody
| would acknowledge this for ages, leading to other crazy shit
| like shutdown playgrounds.
| pixl97 wrote:
| > that hand santizer did jack shit.
|
| Does hand sanitizer stop other illness?
|
| If yes, then it is still very useful in a pandemic. If you
| have to go to the hospital because you're shitting your
| brains out from something else, then you are at insanely
| high right from catching covid.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Does hand sanitizer stop other illness?
|
| Do you have any information supporting this possibility?
| Because hand sanitizer also might have made children
| stronger and taller, but I don't think it did.
| pixl97 wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5091001/
|
| >Hand sanitizers are more effective than plain soap and
| water alone in preventing transmission of bacteria from
| the hands of individuals. They play a significant role
| and could be an effective alternative to hand washing to
| achieve asepsis for all the health-care professionals in
| outreach program, water scarcity areas, and in routine
| clinical practice. Hence, stressing proper hand hygiene
| is an important first-line defense against the spread of
| multiple infectious diseases.
|
| Maybe looking up studies on this would be a good place to
| start...
|
| Of course I'm sure that there is a wide range of
| different answers on this that vary over a huge number of
| factors and illnesses in question.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| A lot of gastrointestinal viruses (hello norovirus) are
| non-enveloped viruses and survive alcohol sanitizers.
|
| And non-enveloped viruses (like Noro) aren't easily
| inactivated by time and sunlight like other viruses (flu,
| corona).
|
| Makes me really worry about dependence on alcohol
| sanitizers when it's the difficult to deactivate viruses
| that easily pass the stomach and cause you bigger issues.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It wasn't clear for months, but yes it did carry on too
| long.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I wonder if it's any clearer now that hand sanitizer does
| jack shit for every other respiratory virus too, like
| influenza.
|
| The "wash your hands" was a great way to blame victims for
| catching these diseases and push the liability to them.
|
| Easy to say to an employee "you got the flu because you
| didn't wash your hands for 5 minutes" and disqualify their
| paid sick day.
|
| Much harder to blame them for... breathing at work. If we
| admit its airborne, then employees (and customers) have
| claims against the the business for work-acquired injuries.
| danmaz74 wrote:
| It was very clear from where?
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-
| br...
| revelio wrote:
| It was clear by March 2020 when the passengers on the
| Diamond Princess were all locked down in their cabins and
| COVID didn't care at all, managing to infect people all
| over the ship essentially at random. This is only
| possible if it is able to spread long distances via the
| air; if transmission were droplet or surface based that
| would have ended the outbreak immediately.
|
| Please don't cite the CDC for anything, they're utterly
| discredited.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > they're utterly discredited.
|
| I see no reason to think that. Sure, mistakes were made
| (as is expected), but utterly discredited? That's a bit
| over the top.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Not utterly discredited but definitely consider their
| press releases with the same amount of skepticism as a
| corporate press release.
|
| Like from now on, if they say "its not airborne" assume
| "it can transmit in the air" (i.e. droplets or by
| insects). If they say "there's no evidence of X" assume
| "We don't think X is false".
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > were all locked down in their cabins and COVID didn't
| care at all, managing to infect people all over the ship
| essentially at random.
|
| I wonder how much of this could be explained by multiple
| day incubation times and an asymptomatic infection being
| spread to cabin-mates.
|
| > This is only possible if it is able to spread long
| distances via the air
|
| Or people infected others filtering in and out of the
| same close quarters that are poorly ventilated (e.g.
| elevators and public bathrooms). Doesn't even require you
| to be in there at the same time if it can float around
| for a few hours.
|
| My (still valid) joke about the pandemic is to always be
| upwind of whomever you're in contact with. 6'/2M apart
| didn't matter.
| revelio wrote:
| They weren't allowed out of their cabins iirc, so public
| bathrooms and elevators were not really relevant. It was
| almost certainly spreading through the ventilation system
| and possibly drainage systems.
| slily wrote:
| Obstinate appeal to authority to shut down dissenters is
| exactly how it took years for "The Science" to catch up
| to what had been obvious from the available data since
| 2020. From the masks to the social distancing, to denial
| of natural immunity and of vaccine side-effects. I agree
| with the sibling commentator - to anyone who was actually
| paying attention and considered the evidence from a
| variety of trustworthy sources, the CDC has been
| propagating false narratives the whole time and was
| absurdly slow to correct them, leading to plenty of
| awful, damaging policies.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| When the unknowns were high, it seems reasonable that we
| would err on the side of caution, including using hand
| sanitizer. I do not see it as insanity, but rather a
| reasonable thing to do given the unknowns were high at
| the time.
| slily wrote:
| There's some nuance there. The situation was not nearly
| as "unknown" as the CDC advocates would like to believe,
| and the international community provided plenty of
| evidence for individuals to make more informed decisions.
| Even early on, the number of case reports of people
| getting sick despite following recommended practices or
| not having any contact with potentially contaminated
| objects made the droplet thesis dubious. I don't recall
| ever seeing convincing evidence that COVID-19 could be
| transmitted through produce in grocery stores for
| example... yet for a while people were told to disinfect
| them before using, and many avoided restaurants due to
| the perceived risk of contaminated food.
|
| I'll give you that for vulnerable populations it might
| have made sense in the early days of the pandemic to
| follow the most neurotic guidelines in an abundance of
| caution, but again, it took government agencies far
| longer than necessary to update their recommendations.
| And let's not forget the flip-flopping about masks which
| contradicted the available data even at the time. The CDC
| was still peddling unproven and disproved claims as of
| last year at least, and that's how the United States was
| practically the last country on Earth to maintain
| pointless mandates, like vaccination for international
| travelers, far longer than even other countries that
| acted more aggressively prior like Canada and Australia.
|
| The CDC was quick to make imprudent recommendations that
| led to authoritarian policies, and slow to retract them
| when they were shown to be presumptuous, so as far as I'm
| concerned that's grounds enough to consider them
| "discredited", in the sense that I'll be skeptical of
| what they publish in the future instead of taking their
| recommendations at face value.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| We are remembering things differently. I do not remember
| any consensus on these items within the first year of the
| pandemic. I remember things being uncertain. I think
| demanding vaccines for travel was reasonable, given the
| circumstances of the time. I do not think the mandates
| were pointless given what we knew at the time, and I
| think people who flouted them acted selfishly.
| slily wrote:
| I can see how you'd get that impression if you followed
| the news through mainstream media and government
| spokespersons who stoked fear and uncertainty to push
| their recommendations, but I paid close attention to
| research and data, and there were countless instances of
| health authorities peddling obvious falsehoods, some of
| which I've already mentioned.
|
| I traveled freely internationally throughout 2020 before
| a blanket ban was implemented to force people to get
| vaccinated. Of course, by that time, the virus was
| circulating everywhere, so it already made little sense,
| but it's even worse when you consider that long-distance
| travel was not a significant vector for viral spread (at
| that stage). If I recall correctly, the Canadian
| government admitted in court that their own travel ban
| had no scientific basis. In the US, the health
| authorities issued recommendations based on weak or
| absent data and then refused to withdraw them until the
| amount of data disproving those recommendations became
| _overwhelming_. That 's a double standard and can hardly
| be justified with "uncertainty".
|
| I'll add that many people pointed out the inconsistencies
| between government recommendations/policies and the
| available evidence at the time, and in response, they
| were fired, hidden or banned from social media, attacked,
| and demonized. Now history is being rewritten, but "in
| hindsight" there were plenty of warnings at all stages of
| this crisis.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| I think by definition, most people get their information
| from "mainstream" media. It also seems like hindsight is
| being applied here. We have perfect information now, and
| it seems that you are claiming that this whole time _you_
| had perfect information/sources from the beginning. How
| could you expect that people could reasonably believe
| this? You also seem to be implying that there was some
| sort of sinister motive to get people to do things like
| get vaccinated and wear masks. I do not think that is
| credible; I think it is more likely that uncertainty was
| high, and it was reasonable to work with a high degree of
| caution. This belief doesn't require sinister intent, but
| it does paint people who worked against the grain as
| being selfish; that seems to track.
| chaoticmass wrote:
| With respect to covid, I remember it being said that washing
| your hands with soap was the most effective way to stop the
| virus spreading from physical contact. Yet the assumption
| that many people had was that alcohol based hand sanitizer
| was more effective. Sure, hand sanitizer is better than
| nothing, but old fashion soap and water was what the doctors
| recommended.
|
| Thats my guess anyway.
| ackfoobar wrote:
| The heuristics that many people employ can be rather
| annoying. Another example regarding hand sanitizer:
|
| They used hand sanitizer _after_ picking up and eating a
| cookie. And I was probably a weirdo for not doing so.
| Greasy fingers are a problem, and I guess they see hand
| sanitizer as a substitue for hand-washing. But hand
| sanitizer doesn 't _wash_ anything away.
| pers0n wrote:
| You didn't always have access to a place to wash your hands
| or soap. Many Native Americans don't have running water and
| sanitizer was needed badly, when they asked the government
| to help they got sent body bags instead
| f33d5173 wrote:
| Many people did have access to running water, and were
| buying up supply that plausibly could have been used by
| people who didn't.
| samstave wrote:
| I=Funny I literally just wrote about this problem
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=samstave&next=361522.
| ..
|
| Basically - hand sanitzer fucks up your gut-biome and kills
| bacteria that is important for your immune system.
|
| STOP USING THEM.
|
| EAT DIRT - or you will be under dirt a lot faster.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I worry about overuse of hand sanitizer creating antibiotic
| resistant "superbugs" as we've been told for decades... but I
| sure as hell can't go to a gas station or a grocery store
| without washing my hands with hand sanitizer any more. I feel
| like I can _see_ the germs now.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Washing your hands after being in a public place is fine,
| you're not going to create antibiotic resistance with simple
| hygiene. If you're using hand sanitizer dozens of times a day
| that's a different story (mostly because it's going to do a
| number on your skin).
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Proper sanitizer - e.g. alcohol with ~70% concentration - is
| as close to "resistance-proof" as is possible. There's never
| been any indication of adaptations at that level, it's just
| too destructive to bacterial cells. Avoid the "alcohol-free"
| sanitizers since they rely on other chemicals to achieve the
| same effect but go crazy with the alcohol-based ones.
| sithadmin wrote:
| I've never encountered a hand sanitizer with antibiotics in
| it. They're alcohol-based, and kill bacteria by destroying
| their cellular membrane and screwing up proteins inside
| organisms that absorb it. They're not going to cause
| antibiotic resistance.
| bourgoin wrote:
| There have existed hand sanitizer formulations containing
| Triclosan or BZK instead of alcohol, although those
| compounds are more commonly used in anti-bacterial soaps.
| Triclosan was particularly controversial because of its
| potential to cause antibiotic resistance and also for being
| an endocrine disruptor. During the second half of the last
| decade, its usage was widely restricted by regulatory
| agencies and it was phased out of a ton of consumer
| products.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| >I worry about overuse of hand sanitizer creating antibiotic
| resistant "superbugs" as we've been told for decades...
|
| That's not a concern with hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer is
| alcohol-based, not antibiotic based. Alcohol denatures
| proteins in germs, antibiotics are more biological (IIRC).
|
| It's akin to building up an immunity to iocane vs building up
| an immunity to being shot
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Good to know, since I'm pretty set with this habit now.
| aradox66 wrote:
| I thought that it wasn't possible for pathogens to develop
| resistance to alcohol based sanitizers, but apparently I was
| wrong.
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aar6115
|
| Not the same phenomena as antibiotic resistance, which is a
| bigger problem, but apparently this is a thing.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Since you've adopted the practice, do you notice yourself
| getting sick less?
|
| I don't use sanitizer especially often, but I've definitely
| noticed a general, society-wide uptick in being cognizant of
| germs and cleanliness. I don't have any figures to back it
| up, though I'd be curious to see them if they exist, but I
| definitely notice myself getting sick (cold or flu) _way_
| less often, in fact, I think it's just been once since the
| pandemic began. Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but I think
| a lot of the habits we picked up during Covid will serve us
| positively in the future as well.
| vharuck wrote:
| Agreed. I also like seeing more sanitizer dispensers when I
| go in grocery stores or other places where I'm going to
| touch things many other people touch. Use it on the way in
| to not spread things to others, then on the way out to not
| take theirs home. Even better when they provide wipes for
| cart handles.
| pierat wrote:
| Wow, this article really makes me feel like I dodged the bullet
| for our household when I realized that 95% (190 proof) Everclear
| was available for $35/1.75l
|
| I did the chemistry math and figured 3 parts Everclear:1 part
| water equalled 71.25% ethyl alcohol, within the recommended of
| the WHO.
|
| I even tried adding in food grade aloe to help not be as damaging
| on the skin (instead of water). Worked really well too.
|
| We didn't spray down every surface, but we did grocery cart
| handles. Even outside of a pandemic, those are NASTY.
|
| But yeah, we had NO issue in sanitizer. And ours you could drink
| too! Hahahha
| perardi wrote:
| Yeah, repurposing Everclear got me through the pandemic.
|
| I cut it with Diet Coke, and a splash of lime, and drank it to
| help sanitize my system of coronavirus particles.
|
| Kept me COVID-free. I think. I don't really remember much of
| the past 3 years for some reason, drinking that every day...but
| no nagging cough!
| burnished wrote:
| Yes, for me it turned out that I had already been practicing
| social distancing for some time and had gotten quite good at
| it. Cheap beer and video games helped me be a model citizen
| hackernewds wrote:
| A period of time where everyone was required to isolate
| indoors, and cover half their face outdoors really gave me
| an edge against my tall, fit and extroverted peers, and got
| me 3 accelerated promotions. Really cut their advantages
| down.
| dylan604 wrote:
| How's your eyesight?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Really good. Came in handy for reading my liver biopsy
| novella!
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Is the joke here that you are conflating Everclear and
| [shitty] moonshine?
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| I too dodged a bullet by not buying into the fear mongering and
| continuing life as usual. No special purchases necessary
| whatsoever.
|
| Unfortunately my cash savings are inflated away in the economic
| crisis that's now following just like everyone else's.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| In all of these posts there is a strong 'what were they thinking'
| reaction. - remember hindsight. At the time, how were they
| supposed to know, by looking into their crystal ball? It was a
| fast, dynamically changing situation, everyone was getting sick,
| who a the time could say 'yeah, people are dying, but YOLO, no
| need to sanitize your hands.' Lot of freaking armchair
| quarterbacks in the 'lets criticize the medical community' co-
| hort.
| jquery wrote:
| It's akin to a master caution alarm on a plane and the engines
| just cut out. Until there's more data on exactly what the issue
| is, pilots should generally follow the checklists. Avoidable
| accidents happen when pilots make assumptions about what is
| wrong (e.g., "oh my instruments must be incorrect") instead of
| following their checklists/training. Until we knew that surface
| transmission wasn't a serious vector, it made total sense to
| guard against it.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| But, also, until we knew that it wasn't transmitted through
| the air, we should have been recommending masking with high
| quality masks. That right there could have changed the vector
| of this whole thing.
|
| Instead, 6 months in when we knew it was transmitted through
| air, we continued to make businesses sanitize their checkouts
| while people walked around in ineffective cloth masks.
|
| Really fucked the dog there.
| whitemary wrote:
| Quality masks require actual capital investments, so longer
| term commitments. Toxic hand sanitizer can turn a profit
| with practically zero capital investment. This is precisely
| how capitalism works. Socialism or barbarism.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And proper planning and motivation. My jurisdiction
| (Ontario and Canada) stockpiled 10s of millions of N95
| masks after SARS1. Instead of cycling inventory, they let
| them expire, disposed them and never replaced them.
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/6715814/coronavirus-n95-masks-
| ont...
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5530081
|
| Then, get this, a few years later, they needed them!
|
| Best part was I already worked at an organization that
| required mask fitting for all employees, but when the
| pandemic hit that this was in preparation for, everybody
| wanted them and there weren't any available.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > That right there could have changed the vector of this
| whole thing.
|
| Keep in mind the disease was already all over the world
| when it was discovered.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| It was but it became more mask resistant over time.
| Putting on masks in Jan 2020 could have made a huge
| difference instead of waiting until mid year to say mask,
| and then say mask with an n95.
|
| Obviously, there's a preparedness issue which is probably
| the base root of that issue, but early enthusiastic
| masking instead of trying to send all the construction
| workers home probably would have gone a lot farther.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Until we knew that surface transmission wasn't a serious
| vector, it made total sense to guard against it.
|
| But at what cost? We knew that benzene is toxic. Wiping down
| every surface with a toxic chemical without knowing if it
| even helps against covid is much more of an emotional/fearful
| reaction than a rational one, IMO.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Most hand sanitizers were Ethanol or Rubbing Alcohol
|
| > Wiping down every surface with a toxic chemical without
| knowing if it even helps against covid is much more of an
| emotional/fearful reaction
|
| No, it is a reaction grounded in the last hundreds of year
| of proper hygiene practice
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Most hand sanitizers were Ethanol or Rubbing Alcohol
|
| You can't know that. The regulations and testing
| requirements were suspended, so companies were free to
| use benzene and nobody would know.
|
| We already know for sure that some companies did use
| benzene, and its not hard to imagine companies switching
| to a cheaper, lower grade source for their alcohol.
|
| In any case, the government simultaneously saying "Its
| okay to put benzene in hand sanitizer" and "Everyone
| should constantly disinfect with hand sanitizer" was not
| a good move.
| hn976827 wrote:
| Had this pandemic turned out to kill 10% of the global
| population then it would definitely have been the right
| move. Turns out, that didn't happen. Because we were
| lucky regarding lethality, regarding contageousness,
| regardin speed of vaccine development. In hindsight, no
| biggy, how dare they made everybody sanitize their hands
| all the time.
|
| I worry about the real thing hitting someday. When the
| discussions start again and people refuse to do the most
| basic things (yes, some of them obviously nonsense and
| some of them perhaps in hindsight) and the conspiracy
| theories spreading and everybody being a hobby
| virologist, and when we realize that a significant
| fraction of us will die and society will collapse and we
| could have prevented it but now it's too late. Then it
| won't help me anymore to say "told you so". But at least
| society will deserve its collapse.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > In hindsight, no biggy, how dare they made everybody
| sanitize their hands all the time.
|
| I think you're really underplaying this. If the FDA
| hadn't suspended the rules about benzene, then fine. No
| biggy.
|
| But the government literally encouraged people to slather
| themselves with carcinogens on a hunch that it might help
| with COVID.
|
| I would even be fine with it if we had proof that hand
| sanitizer was the most effective way to stop COVID, and
| _then_ the FDA relaxed the regulations secure in the
| knowledge that it would save lives.
|
| But COVID is airborne, hand sanitizer does basically
| nothing to protect against it, and people are going to
| die from leukemia as a result of all this for no reason.
| hn976827 wrote:
| When the real thing hits, a few carcinogens here and
| there will be ok if it saves civilization. The air in the
| average U.S. city is full of carcinogens, on top of
| volunteer smoking and drinking. Have you been as upset
| about that recently? Been out campaigning for more trains
| and less smoking?
|
| And we won't have time for waiting for proof that it does
| or doesn't work. Of course in hindsight everybody is
| smart. But when the big one hits, there is no time for
| hindsight. By then we're all dead (or deep into a civil
| war).
|
| Start with cautious. Adjust/relax rules when knowledge
| becomes available. Sanitizing your hands and wearing
| masks are the obvious immediate solution.
|
| You make it sound like all companies suddenly poured
| toxic waste over the population, ordered by the
| government. Maybe it's not the government that was
| exaggerating here.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Hand sanitizer is almost useless. It's washing your hands
| that's effective.
| ryandrake wrote:
| COVID-19 was nature giving us an astoundingly generous
| "dry run," and humanity utterly failed at nearly every
| step. I doubt we collectively learned anything, either.
| When the real thing hits, with, say, a 10+% death rate
| and cutting uniformly across age demographics, we're
| going to blow it again. We're going to politicize,
| downplay and ignore it again. We're going to have idiots
| out protesting it again. We'll eventually acknowledge it
| and to try an ineffective and haphazard country-by-
| country, state-by-state approach again. We'll do the same
| half-assed "Stay At Home Suggestions" and "Voluntary
| Travel Restrictions" with no enforcement again. But this
| time it will be a catastrophe.
| hammock wrote:
| >it is a reaction grounded in the last hundreds of year
| of proper hygiene practice
|
| You may find it interesting to learn the first national
| hand hygiene guidelines were not published until the
| 1980s
| bluGill wrote:
| There was plenty of other hygiene guidelines before then.
| National things are easy to track, but tend to be late.
| hammock wrote:
| Would be interested to see a source showing a guideline
| of wiping down surfaces from hundreds of years ago
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I have seen a lot of people using benzene and toluene, or
| ammonium cleaners at the beginning. There was a consensus
| that domestic ethanol-based sanitizers didn't work, and
| at least around here, an entire new line of them had to
| be created.
| emodendroket wrote:
| You'd think that the regulations that were suspended were not
| invented in response to nothing.
| ikiris wrote:
| This is HN: all regulations are bad, the government is out to
| get you, and the free market solves all problems.
|
| Going by the comments at least.
| gowld wrote:
| Not "Everyone" was getting sick. An extremely small portion of
| the population getting sick can have a large impact, since most
| people are not sick, most of the time.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Quarantine only works if it is put in place fast enough. At
| the time, other countries were showing 10% mortality. If that
| gets into circulation, there is no stopping it. So quarantine
| fast, to stop it. Not, wait and see, 'hmmm, some people seem
| to just get a cough, lets let this baby roll and see what
| happens'.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Depends where you were, and when. Probably almost everyone
| got sick in China after they dropped their zero-covid
| measures, in the space of a month or so. If you're sick for
| maybe 1-3 weeks, that's easily 1/3rd of the population sick
| simultaneously.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/15/world/asia/ch.
| ..
|
| > Based on that data, they inferred that 90 percent of the
| population was infected in little more than a month.
|
| > While the figure is high, epidemiologists who were not
| involved with the project said such a rate was plausible. And
| in January, a leading government epidemiologist said on
| Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, that 80 percent of
| the population had been infected. Some European companies'
| operations in China saw infection rates of 90 percent among
| their employees in December, Joerg Wuttke, the president of
| the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, told The
| Times in an interview.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Yes, I mean they had the option of pausing air traffic from
| Wuhan. Why wouldn't you?
|
| Well of course it's not from China in any case.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| We knew very early on that plain soap and water were very
| effective at killing coronavirus (and much, much more so than
| alcohol gel hand sanitizer). It was even official advice here
| in the UK to use soap and water instead of alcohol gel for hand
| washing if at all possible I think. Yet many people still
| seemed to think the exact opposite. They still have it
| alongside soap in my office bathrooms for example. It makes a
| very interesting social study.
| emodendroket wrote:
| As a point of clarification, were they effective at "killing"
| the virus or just mechanically removing it from one's hands?
| Raidion wrote:
| It does kill it because the soap breaks up fats in the
| virus.
| hedora wrote:
| This has nothing to do with hindsight.
|
| We've known for decades that hand sanitizer (and antibiotic
| soap) kills off the beneficial bacteria on your hands, and also
| dries out skin, increasing the percentage of pathogens that
| survive contact with skin, and also increasing the percentage
| that manage to get past skins' protective barriers.
|
| We also knew that coronavirus was airborne well before 2019.
|
| The medical and microbiology/virology communities provided
| advice that was the exact opposite of what the epidemiologists
| suggested, and were ignored.
|
| Epidemiologies are closer to being historians or sociologists
| than doctors, so letting them run the show made no sense, and,
| in hindsight, what was obvious at the time turned out to be
| correct. The lockdowns were absurdly expensive, created massive
| secondary public health problems, and didn't save as many
| people as the approach dictated by conventional wisdom would
| have.
|
| Conventional wisdom said we should figure out which people were
| most vulnerable (the elderly, obese and people with chronic
| medical conditions), and aggressively quarantine just them.
| That would allow covid to spread through the rest of the
| population in a month or two, and wouldn't require the entire
| economy to shut down. Instead, something like 5% of the
| workforce would call in sick for a month or two.
|
| At this point, the excess mortality from the pandemic is above
| the expected mortality rate for low risk groups, so, in
| hindsight, we now know for sure that we should have listened to
| the medical community, and the findings of the (now retired)
| epidemiologists that studied the last pandemic.
|
| Having more supporting evidence now doesn't change the fact
| that all of this was obvious at the beginning of the pandemic,
| but that it was ignored / actively censored by our leaders.
|
| Anyway, at the end of the day, covid is a strain of the common
| cold, not some crazy alien pathogen that we have zero
| experience with. Also, humans have dealt with dozens of
| pandemics during recorded history. The whole "this was a brand
| new thing we had no experience with" argument just doesn't hold
| water.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| So, am I re-reading your post correctly. That since we dealt
| with dozens of pandemics, we should what? Do nothing? or Wait
| to 'figure out which people' get sick, then react? But
| wouldn't people then already be getting sick and thus already
| too late to quarantine? This whole line of reasoning is based
| on 'hindsight', you're fantasizing about past decisions with
| current knowledge.
| peyton wrote:
| We should plan better for the next mild respiratory
| pandemic instead of listening again to people making
| ridiculous shit up on the spot.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| If the people identified to deal with pandemics, are mere
| 'historians', then maybe the terms are wrong, or where you
| studied Epidemiology had a different take on it.
|
| Right from wiki, this sure sounds like Epidemiologist are the
| ones to make the call. : Epidemiology is the study and
| analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns
| and determinants of health and disease conditions in a
| defined population.
|
| It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy
| decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk
| factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare.
| Epidemiologists help with study design, collection, and
| statistical analysis of data, amend interpretation and
| dissemination of results (including peer review and
| occasional systematic review). Epidemiology has helped
| develop methodology used in clinical research, public health
| studies, and, to a lesser extent, basic research in the
| biological sciences.[1]
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Sounds like you also have a 'loose' interpretation of a
| 'cold'.
| oredbored wrote:
| Lol... it was known extremely early on that fomite transmission
| was practically unheard of. People were hand sanitizing for
| years after this. God knows why. The FDA still hasn't even
| declared hand sanitizer safe to use by the way.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > At the time, how were they supposed to know, by looking into
| their crystal ball?
|
| You pay attention to the news reports showing that despite
| locking down the passengers of the Pacific Princess cruise ship
| in their cabins, the disease continued to spread from cabin to
| cabin?
|
| What other theory than airborne spread fits that data?
| pessimizer wrote:
| This "hindsight" distraction can literally be used to excuse
| any mistake. It always involves completely dismissing a large
| group of experts who were right at the time, and for all the
| right reasons.
|
| > how were they supposed to know, by looking into their crystal
| ball?
|
| They certainly _pretended that they knew_ hard enough to react
| in an extreme way.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| The 'hindsight' does come into play. At the beginning of
| quarantine, they still didn't know what was happening, some
| countries were having 10% mortality, people were dying,
| bodies were stacking up. But, oh, so sorry we jumped the gun,
| next time we'll let it rampage before doing anything.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > some countries were having 10% mortality
|
| Huh? Like 1 in 10 people that caught the virus died? Where
| do you think this happened?
|
| This may have been true for very tiny portions of the
| pouplation, like people over the age of 90 (who had a 20%
| ifr according to https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/
| article/PIIS0140-6...) but otherwise the country with the
| highest ifr seems to be portugal at 2%, and even that would
| have been heavily concentrated in those who were at risk of
| death from just about anything due to age and
| comorbidities.
| JPKab wrote:
| > "BEFORE VACCINES, BEFORE masks, before much at all was known
| about how the novel coronavirus spread and whether it lived on
| surfaces (remember wiping down grocery bags with Lysol?)"
|
| There is a strong "what were they thinking" behind this because
| we found out very early on that this virus didn't spread on
| surfaces, by spring 2020. But the public health apparatus found
| that keeping people as fearful as possible (even for irrational
| reasons) was useful for getting them to follow their
| guidelines. Double bonus for highly visible, borderline
| superstitious rituals like hand sanitizer, which helped
| identify those who were compliant from the dissidents such as
| myself.
|
| I live outside of Boulder, and long, long after this was known,
| the businesses were still engaging in surface sanitization
| theater. My daughter's swim school had employees walking around
| with large devices, spraying fluid on every chair in between
| classes. This was going on all the way into 2022. I asked the
| employees if they knew that covid didn't spread on surfaces and
| that what they were doing was useless. They knew, but did it
| anyway because the owner "wanted to show customers they took
| covid seriously".
|
| As a person who was demonized by my colleagues for not wearing
| a mask OUTSIDE on a windswept hiking trail, I'm frankly
| triggered by comments like this where people pretend like the
| information and data showing how irrational and panicked the
| social reaction was didn't exist. It did, and the people who
| were the most irrational, panicked, and aggressive towards
| those attempting to be rational are the ones making excuses
| like this.
|
| There needs to be a reckoning on this insanity and the public
| health authorities who deliberately chose a "stop covid at any
| cost" strategy. "At any cost" is correct. They completely
| refused to do any form of cost/benefit analysis for the absurd
| panic they produced. I, like many on HN, had relatives who
| refused to leave their homes, and were wiping down boxes from
| Amazon for months. These were relatively young people with no
| health issues. There's a reason why the average American
| overestimated their likelihood of being hospitalized from covid
| by 50x, and that's the combination of public health and the
| overly compliant, ideologically blinded media in the western
| world.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Yo Triggered. Maybe spring 2021.
|
| Guess part of problem with any issue these days, half of what
| you say is true, the other half starts to sound like 'crazy
| old guy screaming at the wind'.
|
| Yes, there was some group hysteria, no there wasn't a group
| intent on 'scaring' the population to 'gain control'.
|
| Yes, requiring a mask out on a nature trail is little nutz,
| but also there were some going the other way 'I can cough on
| your grandpa if I want, this is a free country'.
| ballenf wrote:
| Maybe a problem less controversial was the absence of
| trusted public health figures making concerted efforts to
| calm fears. And those that did try were belittled,
| minimized and castigated. They were the ones labeled as
| dangerous.
|
| Which sometimes drove them to perceive and describe a
| conspiracy of pro-fear institutions and actors, undermining
| their believability further than just the smearing of their
| status.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I remember it differently. The medical community was
| crying out that we needed to take action, and the
| administration downplayed it and delayed. It was
| opposite, those that spoke up to do something were
| squashed in favor of those saying 'its just a cold, suck
| it up'. The government didn't do anything until private
| companies started realizing something had to be done,
| namely the NBA. Nothing was moving until the NBA
| cancelled the season, then suddenly it was taken more
| seriously.
| 6D794163636F756 wrote:
| Exactly. The reason the medical professionals weren't
| calming people down was because the general consensus was
| that we should have been panicking more. I was raised by
| a doctor and all I can remember is them being so tired.
| No one was following the recommendations, people were
| dying, and they were at an increased risk.
|
| No doctor was going to come on, lie, and tell people to
| do less. We barely did enough as was
| VancouverMan wrote:
| The obvious fearmongering and irrationality, especially from
| so-called "experts", was quite intense and prolific in
| Canada, too.
|
| Even as early as June of 2020, the public health authority in
| Canada's most-populous city (fourth highest population in
| North America) revealed that the counting of deaths was being
| done using a methodology that sounds quite dubious:
|
| _" Individuals who have died with COVID-19, but not as a
| result of COVID-19 are included in the case counts for
| COVID-19 deaths in Toronto."_
|
| https://twitter.com/TOPublicHealth/status/127588839006028596.
| ..
|
| By mid-2021, we started seeing news reports like the
| following:
|
| _" Patients died from neglect, not COVID-19, in Ontario LTC
| homes, military report finds: 'All they needed was water and
| a wipe down'"_
|
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canadian-
| mili...
|
| Stuff like that was just the tip of the iceberg.
|
| Sadly, the widespread foolishness continued throughout Canada
| for most of 2022.
|
| Even now, there are still remnants of it remaining in some
| cases, along with the irreparable long-term harm caused by
| the numerous unjustifiable policies put in place then.
| zvmaz wrote:
| > The obvious fearmongering and irrationality, especially
| from so-called "experts", was quite intense and prolific in
| Canada, too.
|
| So much death and suffering and bereavement and sorrow the
| scale of which I have never witnessed in my entire life and
| I still read comments like these. Baffling!
|
| A more serious take: excess deaths worldwide put us at 20+
| millions deaths [1].
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-
| excess-...
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Yeah, all the people saying this was a 'cold', what about
| all the dead? What do you mean we overreacted, or it was
| fake, or a conspiracy? Look at all the dead, how do you
| ignore that.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| This is bogus data, they took the officially reported
| numbers -- which were insane because they reported 'covid
| deaths' without taking into account comorbidities --, and
| quadrupled them for 'reasons'.
|
| > So much death and suffering and bereavement and sorrow
| the scale of which I have never witnessed in my entire
| life and I still read comments like these. Baffling!
|
| You should be ashamed of yourself for this hyperbole, you
| people have ruined many young people's lives for nothing,
| the least you could do is apologize. And this habit of
| constantly looking for numbers that are always wrong and
| feeding into your taste for impending doom is the
| greatest setback to science and the rational spirit I
| have ever witnessed in my entire life.
| [deleted]
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| This is looking at total excess deaths. Those numbers are
| reliable, esp in middle to high income countries, because
| you're looking at the total deaths.
|
| See https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php... for example.
| Zancarius wrote:
| I know of people who still won't go to church because of all
| of the above and are, for all intents and purposes, still
| deathly afraid to leave their homes. Regardless of what some
| might say in argument against your point(s), I absolutely do
| think that part of the public health emergency was the abject
| panic that ensued following COVID.
|
| I stopped exercising caution earlier on in the pandemic,
| because in my estimation my relatively good health, age, and
| literature that was available (D3 being an important
| predictor of outcomes) meant that I was unlikely to have a
| poor outcome. I did eventually get COVID in Dec 2021, but
| aside from a total loss of smell for 12 days and a dry cough
| it was little more than an annoyance. I isolated, as
| appropriate, for a week or so (never had a fever) and went
| about my business. Yet, nearly two months later, I remembered
| telling someone that I had had COVID, they recoiled and
| backed away as if I were still infectious. Fear is a strong
| emotion.
|
| Part of it is that the general public doesn't understand
| viruses. We can't see them. That's a problem, because it's an
| unseen enemy with (at the time) unknown outcomes--especially
| with rapidly changing information. I don't think the media
| helped either, because they relish in bad news.
|
| My mother was very nearly hospitalized last year, though. Not
| from COVID but from RSV. I suspect over-sanitization reduced
| our baseline immunity to your typical run-of-the-mill
| pathogens, but I'm neither a doctor nor a biologist so that's
| little more than a guess. I have some friends who are nurses
| who suggested the theory, and they may be right.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| To be fair, not going to church was about the most
| impactful thing somebody could to if going to church was a
| normal activity. And this is probably still saving those
| people some cases of flu and influenza.
|
| This has to be weighted against the benefit, but in a time
| of free-spread and lots of people dying, closing churches
| was a very good policy.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > There is a strong "what were they thinking" behind this
| because we found out very early on that this virus didn't
| spread on surfaces, by spring 2020.
|
| Is this a true statement? If so, do you have any sources to
| back up your "spring 2020" claim? Heck, I didn't even think
| this was a true statement _now_ , that is my understanding
| was that airborne transmission was the primary route, but
| transmission by fomites was still possible, e.g.
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-
| and-r...
| [deleted]
| psychlops wrote:
| It was fast and dynamic only because the rulebook was thrown
| out and created on the fly. There was precedent and strategy.
| Hindsight is being accurately used to review what happened and
| correctly criticize.
|
| The same would happen in the technical community if there were
| a breach and procedures were ignored and made up based on
| hunches. The medical community does not get a pass.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I think a lot of people knew how to respond, its just they
| were fired.
|
| :: Trump administration's decision in 2018 to dismantle a
| National Security Council directorate at the White House
| charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic
| would hit the nation.
|
| Trump's elimination of the office suggested, along with his
| proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see the
| threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the
| field did.
|
| "One year later I was mystified when the White House
| dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for
| pandemics like COVID-19," Beth Cameron, the first director of
| the unit, wrote in an op-ed Friday in The Washington Post.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I would like them to go on the record on if they weren't
| fired what they would've done differently.
|
| In hindsight, we had vaccines created and in testing 5 days
| [1] after the WHO called that virus a pandemic [2].
|
| [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5
|
| [2]: https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-
| covid19-developments...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I understand nobody rushed the vaccine tests any more
| because nobody could produce it on the amount necessary.
| The tests were run faster than normal, and
| "coincidentally" all finished at about the same time the
| manufacturers could supply it.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Not sure I follow what you're trying to say. But the
| trials should end around the same time the manufactures
| can supply it.
|
| If you can manufacture a vaccine that you cannot sell
| then you have wasted production space. Like the trials
| had a pre-determined duration so if you know the trial
| ends in August and you know it takes 1 month to staff up
| the production line then at the end of June check the
| preliminary data and make a call to staff up the factory
| in anticipation of the trial succeeding.
|
| But in order for the vaccines to be in a trial (testing)
| by March they had to have already been in development
| before March, I suspect a lot of these companies decided
| in like January/February to start staffing people to work
| on a vaccine; how and why would that have been faster if
| those federal people weren't fired?
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| Anecdotal: I wash my hands more now after the Pandemic. Not that
| I have OCD, but it's been documented that many OCD sufferers had
| very strict parents who demanded their children washed their
| hands at every instance, and that passed into adulthood. Maybe
| I'm a victim of the Pandemic era and continue to wash my hands
| religiously, often to the extreme?
| loeg wrote:
| Tl;dr: ArtNaturals made hand sanitizer with very high levels of
| benzene (a carcinogen) and after a fire and runoff into the
| Dominguez Channel, produced a bunch of hydrogen sulfide (the
| "rotten eggs" smelling gas). When the FDA reimposed pre-pandemic
| sanitizer rules, companies were forced to dispose of the crap
| they produced under the lax rules. Some tried to do so by giving
| it away to schools or illegally dumping it underground. Other
| sanitizer has sat around abandoned until it caught fire.
| sargun wrote:
| I'm curious, where does the benzene come from? Isn't hand
| sanitizer just ethanol with scents added, and maybe a gelling
| agent?
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Educated guess: From its use as an azeotrope breaker in the
| distillation of ethanol from water. Normally its impossible
| to achieve greater than ~95% ethanol from an ethanol water
| mixture, but it is possible to achieve ~100% ethanol from a
| water/benzene/ethanol mixture[0].
|
| [0]There of course have been methods invented which do not
| involve benzene.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Makes sense. And benzene is fine for ethanol you're mixing
| with gasoline.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Not a scientist but I mean mixing a toxic chemical with
| something that you burn around people sounds not fine.
| Sunspark wrote:
| A pet peeve of mine, I don't use public hand sanitizer
| because all the cheap stuff (probably the same stuff this
| article talks about) seems maniacally intent on adding really
| long-lasting fragrance to it. When I say long lasting, I
| don't mean an hour, I mean you can still smell the added
| fragrance the NEXT DAY despite washing your hands multiple
| times since. That stuff's got to be toxic.
|
| Something that has fragrance this long-lasting is not a
| sanitizer, it's an odorant or perfuming agent. Sanitizer is
| not supposed to be a product that makes you smell and leave
| fragrance residues on surfaces.
|
| Basic alcohol sanitizer is fine. It evaporates and then that
| is it.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Fuel-grade ethanol.
| 14 wrote:
| Now I am a little uneasy about the sanitizer I bought. I walked
| into Walmart one day and they had these giant bottles of liquid
| hand sanitizer with a 80% alcohol content and it works great
| and doesn't leave a residue. It was on for 25cents a bottle
| when normally something that size would sell for about $8. I
| couldn't believe they were getting rid of it for so cheap so
| bout about 100 bottles and have been using it for months.
|
| Wish there was a way I could test for benzene and I wonder if
| Walmart knew it was bad and decided to dump it on customers so
| they wouldn't be sitting with thousands of bottles needing
| disposal.
| burnished wrote:
| Looks like there are kits in the 60-100$ range, a local
| college chemistry lab might also be able to do it, there may
| also be a simple test you can apply - sounds like much more
| effort than what you put in acquiring, might be worthwhile to
| just cut it at a loss if you think it is a risk at all
| loeg wrote:
| Might as well just toss it unless you regularly need to kill
| bacteria on your hands away from running water.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Are you currently desperate for hand sanitizer? I would just
| buy some good stuff or go without. I would rather risk a
| little sniffles than leukemia.
| neilv wrote:
| > _an independent lab in Connecticut called Valisure
| announced that it had found benzene in the company's
| sanitizer. [...] Not long after, a horrified nurse in Arizona
| captured a photograph of ArtNaturals bottles on sale at her
| local Walmart for 50 cents, with a sign nearby saying that
| they used to be $2.97._
|
| Your heirs might have a viable lawsuit.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Chemists used to wash their hands in benzene!
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Doctors used to smoke cigarettes.
| actuallyalys wrote:
| Not sure about testing for benzene, but you can check the
| FDA's list of sanitizers that should not be used:
| https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-
| availability/fda-u....
| acyou wrote:
| This issue is a wrecking ball being swung first this way, then
| the other way, to create division, hatred, polarization,
| radicalization and the feeling of being marginalized on all
| sides.
|
| Who benefits from consuming this article? Was it not mass media
| used as a primary vector to create the hysteria in the first
| place? And will the wheel not again soon turn, so that the
| criticized can criticize the criticizers from their moral high
| ground created by manufactured narrative and invective?
|
| The lesson here is: We should not read or promote these divisive
| articles. Three years ago, Wired were contributing to this
| problem: Yes, great idea, we should just buy the methanol and
| benzene containing products online and make hand sanitizer
| ourselves.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-make-hand-sanitizer/
|
| Probably, the same lesson extends to most mass media. Consumption
| of mass media like this seems to tend to create knock-on effects
| that don't necessarily align with our best interests. We should
| find something better to do with our limited time.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| This is one peculiarly shrill post. Can you explain your
| mention of "division, hatred, polarization, radicalization"
| related to this article? I'm not saying you're wrong but it's a
| very strange opinion and seemingly entirely disproportionate.
| acyou wrote:
| It's tough to explain. It's something to do with not standing
| on any particular side, but attempting to cast blame and
| start arguments. If you read through the HN comments, and
| think about the bigger picture and what will result from the
| publishing of the article, isn't the most lasting effect
| pitting one group against another? Hasn't the article done a
| great job of doing that, and is that not the primary effect
| of this article being published? It seems clear enough to me.
|
| People who believe one thing are also reading this article in
| resentment and despair. You don't think about them, but they
| are out there. When the next crisis comes, they will remember
| how their world view was publicly shamed, and more loudly and
| actively assert their views. And the people who are on top
| now, or think they are due to the current media cycle, will
| build resentment in turn. And the cycle will continue.
|
| I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to publish it and
| sow discord. They should. I'm saying that we shouldn't
| elevate it. Unfortunately, even me commenting on this
| probably goes against that idea.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| > isn't the most lasting effect pitting one group against
| another?
|
| I honestly just don't see it.
|
| > People who believe one thing are also reading this
| article in resentment and despair. You don't think about
| them, but they are out there
|
| Again, I struggle to see that. Saying "but they are out
| there" doesn't mean they actually are.
|
| Look, I just don't get what you're saying. I know when my
| mental health problems kick in the world starts to distort
| and I can feel, to a lesser degree, something like what
| you're saying. It doesn't mean it's universally true, or
| even predominantly true. And I'm not saying you're wrong
| either, but... you leave me baffled. Are you seeing through
| a glass darkly?
|
| (For the record you're worrying about methanol
| contamination - for the past 3 years I've been using
| methylated spirits as a hand sanitiser; 90% ethanol 10%
| methanol. I haven't had any problems)
| gowld wrote:
| Where is benzene in the Wired article?
| acyou wrote:
| I think that the source of the benzene and methanol might
| have been from hand sanitizer manufacturers buying raw input
| feedstocks (ethanol and glycerol) containing methanol and
| benzene from dubious sources. If that's the case, then making
| your own hand sanitizer by buying ethanol and glycerol from
| dubious (random online) sources (that Wired actually goes so
| far as to directly link to) would also put you at risk of
| inadvertently creating your own home-made hand sanitizer
| cocktail of ethanol, methanol, benzene and who knows what
| else.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| They recommended buying isopropyl alcohol. They did not
| recommend buying fuel grade ethanol.
| acyou wrote:
| That's right. But the time, isopropyl alcohol was
| expensive and unavailable enough that people were getting
| into that business too. And the fastest movers, and most
| successful, would have been the hustlers.
|
| Awhile back, I noticed that a local liquor distillery was
| also selling hand sanitizer. I didn't think about it at
| the time, but I guess that would probably have been a
| pretty reliable source.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Yeah, but the production of IPA doesn't lend itself to
| benzene contamination. I'm also not sure I believe that a
| bunch of IPA factories were springing up overnight--you
| can't make it with yeast and a still.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Yeah, let's just have a Bureau of Information to make sure that
| nothing that upsets harmonious relations among the people is
| published, never mind that it is factual reporting.
| BitPolice wrote:
| I didn't read the article as playing blame-games or stoking
| hatred, personally. The author does kind of walk through a
| timeline from 2020 to now about hand sanitizer; but that felt
| more like just a timeline. Yeah, we all kind of freaked out
| about washing early on (I had a UV-C sterilizer in an aluminum
| foil lined box (!!!)), but each of us was doing our best during
| an emergency. That, at least, is the sense I got from that part
| of the article. I realize the article set you off, and I could
| totally see that happening to me in different circumstances, so
| just want to say that I get it. But, speaking for myself, I
| liked this article because it made me think about something I
| hadn't before so I thought I'd share that perspective.
|
| The article talks about how there's tons of left over hand
| sanitizer we now have to deal with. I personally just never
| spared a thought for there now being many millions of gallons
| of this stuff sitting around. I also hadn't ever thought about
| how they can't sell or give away or cheaply dispose of it, so
| it's just sitting there being all haz-matty and stuff. And, I
| can absolutely see some low-margin operators looking for an out
| in that situation.
|
| Anyway, I'd encourage anyone who liked the article to read the
| complaint the county filed in this instance. It's not short but
| it's a pretty quick read. Start at "Pre-Fire Violations of the
| Hazardous Materials Laws at the Property" if you just want to
| read the timeline [according to the Plaintiffs] there's also
| lots of pictures. It does sounds like the authorities were
| trying to do the right thing, but the company [allegedly]
| ignored the repeated citations. See:
| https://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/lac/1118231_CountyvProlog...
|
| That made me wonder whether there are any other facilities
| improperly storing this stuff. To be clear, this isn't
| political code; I'm not saying we need different laws, not
| drawing parallels to the Beirut or Tianjin warehouse explosions
| and saying we now suck, or drawing parallels to the Ohio rail
| fire and how we keep defunding and defanging government safety
| inspectors... Instead, this is an article talking specifically
| about an industrial accident and the many Americans who
| suffered. I had never heard about it previously, found it
| interesting, and learned something both from the article and by
| following up and looking into it a bit more myself.
|
| Anyway, while I respect your opinion, speaking for myself I
| don't see this article creating any sort of division... I mean,
| between who? You and me and everyone who reads the article
| versus people who [allegedly] improperly store dangerous
| chemicals in residential areas despite multiple citations to
| stop doing that? That's the sort of polarization I don't mind.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Interesting that everyone is talking in past tense in this
| thread. Where I live hand sanitiser is _still_ everywhere and
| people still use it all the time. I don 't recall ever seeing it
| outside of hospitals prior to the pandemic.
| kgwgk wrote:
| I miss it now. Cleaning your hands before eating is not a bad
| habit to have.
| rtsil wrote:
| I still use them (and masks). I haven't had a cold, the flu or
| any of the usual seasonal sicknesses in 3 years, and this
| spring my pollen allergy was nowhere to be seen. My quality of
| life is significantly better ever since I started using them.
| Washing my hands for 30 seconds at least also helps.
| slily wrote:
| Neither have I, outside of COVID-19-delta, and I haven't
| followed any recommendation (outside of wearing a cloth mask
| indoors when required). How do you know it's not a
| coincidence?
| pessimizer wrote:
| I hadn't had a flu for probably 3 years _before_ covid, so
| masking might have worked retroactively.
| rtsil wrote:
| It can always be a coincidence, but I would get colds
| regularly (twice a year at least) and pollen allergy,
| sometimes severe ones, for decades. Plus some coughing and
| other transmissible sicknesses. That all that has stopped
| since 2020 at the same time as I started wearing masks and
| washing my hands very frequently would be an extraordinary
| coincidence.
|
| Even if we exclude 2020 and 2021 as freak years because my
| interpersonal interactions have been drastically minimized,
| that still leaves one year and half.
|
| I haven't had Covid either, and neither did my partner, and
| it could also be a coincidence and not related at all to
| our strict masking and constant ventilation policy, but
| again that would be an extraordinary coincidence.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I had a lot of coworkers say this all the time and yet they
| would still call in sick from time to time...there's a lot of
| confirmation bias that makes people blind to their own
| experiences.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Calling in sick is a lot different than actually being
| sick. Especially if you happen to work in a place with use-
| it-or-lose-it sick days.
| thenipper wrote:
| I had this problem with a ton of leftover sanitizer that my
| parents got me. I eventually let it 'cook off' in the sun. But i
| did get to show my kids how ethanol produces an 'invisible'
| flame.
| johncessna wrote:
| https://archive.is/AjH36
| metadat wrote:
| Will the $12 million dollar fine even cover what it cost the city
| to house thousands in motels for 3 months?
|
| $200/night * 1000 = $200,000/day, 1.4 million bucks a week per
| thousand people.
|
| Times 9 weeks... That's around $40 million minimum for 3k people.
|
| Externalities are nasty.
| revelio wrote:
| _> What happened next is a lesson about leaving disaster response
| to the whims of capitalism._
|
| Companies did exactly what the government wanted them to do: make
| hand sanitizer as fast as possible and at massive scale. The
| lesson here is about leaving disaster response to governments.
| The FDA had a bunch of tactics it could have used. It could have
| continued to do inspections and changed the rules to say if you
| don't pass you have to display a notice of that prominently on
| the bottle. It could have kept the rules and just let companies
| scale up within the limits.
|
| Or most obviously, it could have bothered double-checking and
| realized that hand sanitizer wasn't going to do anything about a
| virus that spreads via cloud-like aerosols. The fact that SARS-
| CoV-2 spread this way was widely known to independent skeptics by
| the time the company in the article was applying for permission
| to make sanitizer. What happened on board the Diamond Princess
| cruise ship demonstrated that the virus must be spreading through
| air ducts, rendering lockdowns, hand sanitizers and masks all
| useless. It was also expected because SARS-1 spread this way too,
| and because masks had never had an impact on respiratory illness
| before either.
|
| All this was _ignored_ because the medical establishment didn 't
| know what to do if this fact was recognized. They preferred to
| tell people to engage in pointless and self-destructive behavior
| rather than say, ok, maybe there's nothing we can do except let
| doctors get on with it.
|
| This aerosol denial was never formally ended and so large parts
| of the population is still unable to process reality even today,
| especially in academia and healthcare. Instead they invent ever
| more bizarre and desperate attempts to try and explain the abject
| failures of all these mitigations.
| emodendroket wrote:
| How is it "leaving the response to governments" if they say
| "OK, guys, produce as much crap as you want to whatever
| standard you want, but don't put benzene in it, although we
| won't penalize you if you do"?
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
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