Are masks really protecting us?

We have been led to believe that COVID-19 is spread by people who do not have symptoms. Symptoms appear from the second to the eleventh day with most having symptoms on day five.

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove is head of the World Health Organization’s Emerging Diseases and Zoonosis Unit. In Geneva recently, Dr. Kerkhove told the audience that WHO no longer believes that the primary method of infecting people with COVID-19 is by people who are asymptomatic.

She believes that can happen – transmitting the coronavirus from a person without symptoms to another – but it is very rare. Were we not testing health-care workers properly in nursing homes? Did people without symptoms infect and cause all the deaths in nursing homes? I think that question needs to be answered.

We have been under quarantine, wearing masks, and observing the proper social distance to protect us from those people who had the disease but had no symptoms. Now, we find out that this offers no protection!

The difficulty of containing COVID-19 was exacerbated because we believed that asymptomatic people passed the virus on to others. We thought we were safe if a fourteen-day period elapsed and no further symptoms were noted. What is right?

We do know that most (over 97%) have no symptoms or mild symptoms. Those with mild symptoms are treated at their homes by quarantine. Maybe two percent (serious cases) need hospitalization.
Does this mean that nursing homes are not required to maintain strict house arrest? I do not think so.

I think they require extra protection until there are better and more accurate testing methods.
As the quarantine ends in many states, new cases of COVID-19 are being uncovered at record levels.

Some level of hospitalizations is growing, but that statistic is not available. New COVID-19 cases are to be expected when large-scale random testing is done. However, there are no headlines about hospitals being overcrowded or the death rate growing by leaps and bounds.

This COVID-19 outbreak has a lot of unanswered questions. We make decisions with uncertainty often. We adjust based on new information. Will this latest WHO report cause a shift away from masks and social distancing? I do not think so. Fear and panic keep most under control.

Live Longer & Enjoy Life! – Red O’Laughlin – RedOLaughlin.com

 

4 Responses

  1. The W.H.O. yesterday walked back/withdrew its conclusion 24 hrs prior that asymptomatic COVID 19 cases are actually are rare and a rare form of transmission. There was misinformation released that was put out by someone not authorized to release info. Your information based on said conclusion is out of date and not based on any reliable, autthorized data regarding asymptomatic frequency and communicability from W.H.O.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *