Amazon begins temperature checks and will provide surgical masks at warehouses

I thought here in the west that it was well-established that temperature checks and mask do not work against the corona?!

Unfortunately, it’s becoming more clear that the government-science bodies like the CDC and the WHO have been spreading inaccurate information.

Temperature checks don't seem to work particularly well if enough people carry the virus without symptoms, but if I'm to believe that masks don't impede the movement of sneeze droplets, then I'm the King of Finland.

I have a hard time believing that everyone wearing a mask when interacting doesn't inhibit a disease transmitted via vapor in our breath.

What's clear is that the entire system has degenerated as the competence of the average person has been eroded over the last few decades.

Failures across the board. Federal government, state government, local government, hospitals, insurance companies - no one in positions of authority saw this coming in January? No one with clout or power had the foresight to stockpile masks or other PPE, just in case?

Why isn't a national emergency stockpile being maintained when we've seen a dozen potential global pandemics in the last decade alone?

Apparently even officials aren't immune to senseless groupthink.

Given how infectious it is, even if these measures only reduce transmission by 10% that is very useful

I'm not sure if you're facetious or not, but that's not what I've read. Neither of those is foolproof for detecting/preventing coronavirus infections, but they are better than nothing.

Mask do not protect the person wearing the mask (unless you talk about the kind of masks used as PPE for medical professionals).

They do protect other people from the person wearing the mask spreading the virus. The consequence is that for masks to work at scale a large number of people need to wear them.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. These measures aren't about stopping the spread but slowing it down.

An N95 mask (if you can get one) will keep you from getting infected and a surgical mask will keep others from getting infected by you. Temperature checks won't catch everyone but will catch some percentage of sick people.

There is actually a debate about this.

A bad mask (eg a bandanna) means less virus gets out, but it is more likely to get out in the form of a fine aerosol that hangs in the air for hours. On the opposite end it is a reminder not to touch your face (prevents transmission from your hands) but won't stop you from breathing in an aerosol.

Likely still a net win, but kinda a hard thing to do good research on.

There is no doubt that masks that are designed to block things the size of viruses help. Just issues about who is the highest priority to get them when they are in short supply.

Aerosol is not any more likely to get out than not wearing anything. And a bad mask prevents droplets from getting in as well.

Facetious.

I think our politicians should have started with stuff like this rather going full on North Korea.

Any barrier in front of your mouth and nose will protect you from droplets[0], as well as protecting other people from your own droplets.

[0]: https://medium.com/@Cancerwarrior/covid-19-why-we-should-all...

I can't believe the U.S. Navy didn't implement a ban on shore leave, or allowing anyone new onto their ships, 6-8 weeks ago. Incredible incompetence.

CDC says that to the public yet in their information to doctors and nurses says a bandanna or scarf can substitute for an N95 mask but with less effectiveness.

>Failures across the board. Federal government, local government, hospitals, insurance companies - no one in positions of authority saw this coming in January?

People did see it coming. The administration ignored early warnings about the virus and publicly downplayed the severity of the issue in order to preserve the stock market and Trump's poll numbers in an election year. This after dismantling much of the infrastructure and firing the personnel needed to respond to this issue in order to cut costs.

> A bad mask (eg a bandanna) means less virus gets out, but it is more likely to get out in the form of a fine aerosol

Do you have a reference for this? I've only ever heard of aerosolization primarily being a concern around people on breathing assistance equipment.

> Just issues about who is the highest priority to get them when they are in short supply.

The root cause is offshoring safety critical manufacturing:

https://www.wired.com/story/decades-offshoring-led-mask-shor...

Who is debating this? I haven't seen a reliable "con" side of this debate, they are all weird "people will take less care", "cloth masks are not as good as N95", "people will wear them poorly and the mask won't be as effective".

These are all "perfect is the enemy of good" fallacies, not "debate".

Also, how does a bad mask increase aerosol? That makes no sense.

N95 masks need to go to hospitals first. They don't really make sense for the general public to be wearing. They are difficult to fit properly, and not comfortable for continuous wear. They are believed to be primarily needed when dealing with patients on oxygen / ventilators / etc.

Surgical masks do make sense for the general public. They are much easier to wear, and they still offer a good amount of filtration for the wearer. Plus they have the benefit you mentioned of preventing the wearer from infecting others.

Where surgical masks aren't available, cloth masks still appear to offer some benefit. And there are designs that include a pocket for paper filters.

The messaging on masks (CDC+WHO), the delay in declaring it a pandemic (WHO), beleving China (WHO), saying it's "not airborne" (in the technical sense it might not be but talking near someone can let it spread) are all abhorrent on their own. The total mismanagement and ass-covering will need to be paid for when this is over. The WHO and the CDC have lost a ton of credibility and need to be held accountable.

u/pacala's law: The competency of a government organization is inversely proportional with the size of the governed body. At 7B and counting, WHO is a sad joke.

Please link research.

China handled this quite a bit better than the US and has a multiple times bigger population.

The point of temperature checks, or any mitigation measure, is not to reduce spread to 0, but to decrease it.

Why don’t you think temperature checks work? Are you aware that even stopping 1/3 of transmissions would have a massive effect on the final outcome?

> Mask do not protect the person wearing the mask (unless you talk about the kind of masks used as PPE for medical professionals).

Please link to research that backs up your claim.

That isn't at all clear. I expect the real numbers are much worse than reported. See, for instance, the recent re-closing of all cinemas.

See http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentar... for a reliable "con" side of the debate.

Note in particular that cloth masks were tried and failed during the Spanish flu epidemic.

I can't find the source I saw it in, but the idea is this. If you cough, large droplets coat the inside of the cloth, and then are forced through the weave of the cloth and come out as small droplets. The smaller the droplet, the better it hangs out in the air.

I can't find the source on which I based my aerosol comment on, but the idea was that a large droplet which would have fallen gets trapped by the cloth. When it gets through, it comes out as a fine mist.

Given that I can't find it repeated, I suspect that it may be misinformation on my part.

My understanding is that the main transmission medium is respiratory droplets.

This failure goes far deeper than Trump. There are so many people in so many positions of authority who could have acted - administrators allocating funds for emergency stockpiles, both private and public. Police, fire, everyone was sitting with their ass up their thumb waiting for what, big brother government to tell them to do something? The administration ignored early warnings about the virus and publicly downplayed the severity of the issue in order to preserve the stock market and Trump's poll numbers in an election year. This after dismantling much of the infrastructure and firing the personnel needed to respond to this issue in order to cut costs.

This is nonsense, if you presume the administration knew what was coming then they would have known that this would last up until election season, as it likely will. Unless you're implying that they waited deliberately for it to get worse so they could "fix" it. But you'd never prove something like that. In any case that still doesn't excuse the other tens of thousands of people for individually and collectively failing to act.

I started stockpiling mid January.

>This is nonsense, if you presume the administration knew what was coming then they would have known that this would last up until election season, as it likely will.

Here is an article pointing out that Trump ignored warnings about the virus from his own intelligence services as far back as January[0].

Here is an article about his efforts to downplay the effects of the virus, and calling it a Democratic hoax[1], also going back to January.

Here is an article about Trump's efforts to quickly scale back social distancing guidelines and ending the quarantine in order to get the economy going, again, for the sake of his reelection campaign.

Here is an article about the lies, minisformation and misdirection Trump has offered about the coronavirus[3].

> Unless you're implying that they waited deliberately for it to get worse so they could "fix" it.

I'm not implying that. I will imply that Trump assumed the problem would just go away, and when it didn't, his primary concern became political damage control. FFS he's said he only willing to help blue states with funding if they stop criticizing him[4] and during a press briefing on the coronavirus he boasted about being "number one on facebook."[5] Clearly he cares more about his image and his ego than he does the health of the country.

Notwithstanding whatever other failures have occurred, when the Executive branch is being run like this during a crisis, the result affects the entire system. It affects funding. It affects procurement and distribution of goods. It affects the way people behave, whether they even believe a crisis exists, and what actions should be taken. There's an entire "coronavirus truther" thing happening now resulting in people ignoring quarantine orders and that's directly a result of Trump convincing people the scale and danger of the problem has been overblown by the "liberal media" in order to attack him. That's directly his fault.

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intellig...

[1]https://www.vox.com/2020/3/18/21184945/trump-coronavirus-com...

[2]https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-trump-wants-to-r...

[3]https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/trumps-...

[4]https://www.vox.com/2020/3/25/21193803/trump-to-governors-co...

[5]https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1245476330193518596

You are far too eager to use this as an excuse to shit on Trump.

I'm not remarking in the incompetence and/or maliciousness of Trump and his administration. I'm pointing out that it's a failure across the board.

But you clearly are unable to look at things objectively. Again, I'm not here to flame about the president. Everyone screwed up. Tens of thousands of people with power failed to act. Including Democrats. That was my while point. Stop with the partisan politics, they have no place here.

I was trying to provide some evidence and context for the part of my comment you were calling nonsense, and you'll note I never actually disagreed with you, I just think we disagree on what share of blame goes where.

But fine, I admit I get a bit heated about Trump, especially lately, but it isn't partisan politics. I don't feel the way I do about him or his leadership merely because because he's a Republican.