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This will be a funny one to explain to grandkids one day
(startrek.website)
General rules:
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
Which was always overkill because Covid doesn't really transmit by touching contaminated surfaces like the flu does.
But we didn't know that at first. Even the experts had no clue how it transmitted and had to just be like "assume it spreads in all the ways until we can figure out how it spreads." And then of course once they knew people needed to mask, they told people not to mask for a good while. At least in the U.S..
The logic was "medical workers need masks more than anyone else, so we have to tell everyone not to mask to save our reserves of masks." But they didn't say "don't mask to save reserves for medical workers." They said "you don't need to mask." (Fauci himself was saying this knowing full well people needed to mask.)
There was an early scientific paper that suggested the Covid virus was surviving for 5 days on surfaces. Turned out only to be in extremely optimal conditions, but still very sobering
Can’t believe they didn’t ask us to make homemade masks… some would’ve still made a run on store-bought masks, but we could’ve been a little better protected. (Protected better by how much much still seems to be hard to determine exactly?)
Yeah. I certainly made my own homenade masks when bought ones were scarce.
They did! There was a a video by the US surgeon general showing how to make a mask out of a t-shirt and rubber bands. That was an unexpectedly spooky video.
https://youtu.be/PI1GxNjAjlw?si=nEKQbzqis8XQnKGq
I remember that!
I should’ve been clear that I was referring to only the earliest days of the pandemic. Wikipedia's summary jives with my memory:
That was not a "known" thing right when the lockdowns kicked off.