DecaturNature @DecaturNature@qoto.org

@freemo Good evening Dr. Freemo -- are there any plans to install Mastodon v4 on Qoto? The edit function looks pretty handy. Thanks for maintaining the site! #qoto

@Tatiana_Trifan When The calculator also does not seem to let me calculate risk from members of my household - there's a setting for a 'live in partner', but not for a 4-member household. The categories for the partner's risk were also insufficient -- for some reason the "harm reduction budget" (2000 mC) was not included, and the person with 4 close contacts was given a higher infection rate than 'average person', implying that the average person has fewer than 4 close contacts. The calculator is a nice start, but quickly runs into limits that stop it from being useful to most people. It's a shame that we don't have anything better... but thanks for sharing it anyway.

@Tatiana_Trifan
One thing I found off with the calculator was their 'risk budget' -- their highest category is 10% per year, yet most Americans are probably operating at 30-50% per year and my suspicion is that even very cautious households will only get down to about 10% per year. Their pre-defined scenarios don't include things like classrooms, offices, or dormitories. I tried to estimate the situation in my kid's classroom, and found that simply being in the classroom (fully vaccinated; KN95 mask) it gave them about 4% chance of getting covid over the year. And that did not account for indoor lunch, indoor gym class, pep rallies, etc.

@Tatiana_Trifan Thanks for sharing that -- it's very helpful, especially since they link back to their evidence for the various estimates they provide, even if there is a lot of uncertainty in those estimates.
#COVID #masking

@john Mask mandates and such.

@swcollings The craziest thing about Christian Science is that they manage to put together a pretty good newspaper, despite seeming to reject basic reality.

Never fall for the politician's lie that their party (Dem or Rep) represents half of the USA. They may get almost half of the vote, but that doesn't mean shit. Half of the eligible voters stay home, so the politicians only get about one quarter of the potential vote. Even those voters are frequently voting for the "lesser of two evils", after the political-economic elite eliminates any chance for decent people to rise to the top.
#elections #USA

While Trump solicited treason, half of the Republican party went along with him, while the other half mumbled "that wouldn't be prudent". #elections #USA #Trump #GOP

In 2016, the Libertarian Presidential ticket featured two former Republican governors. They got 3.3% of the vote, while the Republican party rallied 46% of the vote for an inexperienced demagogue. Even as this crowd cries about their precious 'liberties', they lined up behind an authoritarian President in 2020 who was consolidating power wherever he could. These people are no friends of liberty -- even in its most conservative form. #elections #USA #liberty #freedom

@Bertrecords @dankennedy_nu I've seen some good science reporters at the Atlantic. I've never noticed Tayag before. But I am losing a lot of trust in the magazine -- especially once I found them publishing a sympathetic article about advocacy being performed by a paranoid conspiracy theorist without mentioning that fact -- and even linking out to those conspiracy theorist websites as though they were legitimate information sources.

But I did check the updated report (Jan 2023) and see that both of the COVID studies included in the test of surgical masks showed that these masks did have a protective effect (Abaluck and Bungaard: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/references#CD006207-fig-0005). The 'negative results' are completely from flu studies.
A few studies can be highlighted based on the weight given in the meta-analysis -- none of the main studies cover situations similar to American-style mask mandates (whether institutional or general), nor to the masking behavior of the 'covid cautious' in the US.
#covid #masking #journalism