Nice work. Great Post.

It is…and the film also serves as a prophecy of the “war on terror” with frequent bombings for which no culprits are found…and the normalisation of the terror threat (scene in restaurant)

Thank you for mentioning. All the very best to you, Mark.

The names of the millions of job quitters will be entered into a database of those who will be first into our new “Here’s Where Your Protest Ends” machine….

After all, those millions actually have to be dealt with – we can’t have them pretending they’re on ‘welfare’, when there isn’t any welfare….

(Sorry, I was just trying to imagine what it would actually be like to BE Klaus Blob…. I won’t do that again in a hurry….)

Not really. It seems that the idea is that, since such masks make breathing harder, they are thought as more efficient.

Most cashiers, however, wear just simple surgical masks or no mask at all. I suppose they are immune to the virus.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
In this review, we did not find evidence to support a protective effect of personal protective measures or environmental measures in reducing influenza transmission. Although these measures have mechanistic support based on our knowledge of how influenza is transmitted from person to person, randomized trials of hand hygiene and face masks have not demonstrated protection against laboratory-confirmed influenza, with 1 exception (18). We identified only 2 RCTs on environmental cleaning and no RCTs on cough etiquette.

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
Our results suggest that the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers in a setting where social distancing and other public health measures were in effect, mask recommendations were not among those measures, and community use of masks was uncommon.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240287
Several previous observational studies at Hajj have failed to show the effectiveness of facemasks in preventing respiratory infections [50–52], possibly due also to poor adherence to instructions, although a recent study showed that changing facemask every four hourly reduced the chance of upper respiratory tract infections among Hajj pilgrims (adjusted OR 0.56; 95% CI 0.34 to 0.92; p = 0.02) [55]. In our cRCT, though pilgrims in both intervention and control groups were close to each other day and night, none wore a mask for 24 hours as advised. This may have been an unrealistic expectation. Mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of effective and realistic health messaging.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/covid-19-face-masks-community-first-update.pdf
 “The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect, but there are still significant uncertainties about the size of this effect. Evidence for the effectiveness of non-medical face masks, face shields/visors and respirators in the community is scarce and of very low certainty

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-politics/
It would appear that despite two decades of pandemic preparedness, there is considerable uncertainty as to the value of wearing masks. For instance, high rates of infection with cloth masks could be due to harms caused by cloth masks, or benefits of medical masks. The numerous systematic reviews that have been recently published all include the same evidence base so unsurprisingly broadly reach the same conclusions. However, recent reviews using lower quality evidence found masks to be effective. Whilst also recommending robust randomised trials to inform the evidence for these interventions.

https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-such-hand-washing-or-wearing-masks-stop-or-slow-down-spread-respiratory-viruses
Seven studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers. Compared with wearing no mask, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness (9 studies; 3507 people); and probably makes no difference in how many people have flu confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 3005 people). Unwanted effects were rarely reported, but included discomfort.
N95/P2 respirators
Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (5 studies; 8407 people) or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people). Unwanted effects were not well reported; discomfort was mentioned.

https://escipub.com/irjph-2021-08-1005/
Results: Earlier mask mandates were not associated with lower total cases or lower maximum growth rates. Earlier mandates were weakly associated with lower minimum COVID-19 growth rates. Mask use predicted lower minimum but not lower maximum growth rates. Growth rates and total growth were comparable between US states in the first and last mask use quintiles during the Fall-Winter wave. These observations persisted for both natural logarithmic and fold growth models and when adjusting for differences in US state population density.
Conclusions: We did not observe association between mask mandates or use and reduced COVID-19 spread in US states. COVID-19 mitigation requires further research and use of existing efficacious strategies, most notably vaccination.

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0057100
The results show that a standard surgical and three-ply cloth masks, which see current widespread use, filter at apparent efficiencies of only 12.4% and 9.8%, respectively. Apparent efficiencies of 46.3% and 60.2% are found for KN95 and R95 masks, respectively, which are still notably lower than the verified 95% rated ideal efficiencies. Furthermore, the efficiencies of a loose-fitting KN95 and a KN95 mask equipped with a one-way valve were evaluated, showing that a one-way valve reduces the mask’s apparent efficiency by more than half (down to 20.3%), while a loose-fitting KN95 provides a negligible apparent filtration efficiency (3.4%).

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data
Cloth masks are ineffective as source control and PPE, surgical masks have some role to play in preventing emissions from infected patients, and respirators are the best choice for protecting healthcare and other frontline workers, but not recommended for source control. These recommendations apply to pandemic and non-pandemic situations.
Leaving aside the fact that they are ineffective, telling the public to wear cloth or surgical masks could be interpreted by some to mean that people are safe to stop isolating at home. It’s too late now for anything but stopping as much person-to-person interaction as possible.
Masks may confuse that message and give people a false sense of security. If masks had been the solution in Asia, shouldn’t they have stopped the pandemic before it spread elsewhere?

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372
We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577
Conclusions This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.

That would make a great meme!

Zero carbon for zero IQs

Long ago, in order to test whether a person (usually a woman) was a witch or not, she was fastened to a stool and ducked in a lake or river. If she drowned she was not a witch and was therefore innocent; if she didn’t drown she was clearly a witch and therefore guilty, and was burned at the stake. This procedure was devised and carried out by experts, the finest, most prestigious, best-read and -educated minds of the time. In short, it was The Science – absolute, unarguable Truth.

But yesterday’s Truth is not today’s, and today is tomorrow’s yesterday. In early 2020, when the hysteria was starting, we were told that once a certain percentage (the figure varied: 40%, 60%, 70%…) of the population became immune to the Virus, it would no longer be able to circulate, and would die out. Vaccines, then in the future, were just going to help speed up the process and ‘flatten the curve’ (remember that?), along with temporary lockdowns. Now look where we are.