this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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I'm still afraid of long-c. I insisted that we wore masks in airports and on flights when we took a trip last month. We live life in a normal fashion everywhere else (because we're vaxxed and boosted), but I wasn't willing to risk that environment.
Why just planes? Surely this would apply to all public transport.
If they're US American, a plane is likely the only public transportation they've ever taken. If they live anywhere remotely rural, it's likely the only one available to them.
Signed, -An American
I was going to say "almost every American takes a school bus at one point in their life" then I looked it up and was disgusted to find that recently more children are driven to school than take the bus.
It's absolutely ridiculous how many people drive their kids to school. The traffic reduction during fall break last week was astounding.
It's absolutely ridiculous how hard the school systems make it to get on a bus route.
You basically have to stay at the same residence and at the same school for their entire education. Even just moving within the district and they use it as an excuse to "put you on a wait list".
Add in the shortage of drivers (who wants that job) and any excuse they can use to change boundaries or cut a route.
It's like the fucking DMV on steroids.
I am curious where you are located, this has not been my experience working closely with our schools.
That is crazy. I didn't realize how bad it is in some areas. I live in a red state and have moved every year or two, and was able to get bus service with very little issue.
However, that does sound like the struggle with getting after school care. You pretty much need to get in the back of the line for every school and hope you'll get a spot so you can continue to work and pay rent.
It is honestly necessary sometimes. My daughter was eventually taken out of school by us entirely and put in a (public) online school because of how severely she was being bullied, but before that, we had to take her to school because she could handle getting on the bus with all the kids being horrible to her every morning and afternoon.
For a while, she was allowed to listen to an mp3 player with earbuds, but then they started just shouting over the earbuds. And bus drivers barely give a shit considering how low they're paid.
So yeah, sometimes people drive their kids to school for a reason.
But 53% of people??
Considering the current division, yes. There's also a lot of homeschooling because they don't want their children taught anything from 'state'.
The school buses don't have seatbelts.
Airports and planes see a lot of traffic from all over the world constantly rotating through. With some variation depending on the size of the city and your personal schedule, you're running into more of the same people on normal public transport.
And you're in very close proximity for a very long time. I don't know how HVAC works on an aircraft but I assume there's a large amount of recirculation.
I was on buses and trains this morning. They weren't nearly as crowded, the trips were a lot shorter, the air moved around at every stop, and like you said, they're all pretty local, so low risk of someone importing weird diseases. At least on the subways, you should still wear a mask if only because of the air quality. There's a lot of brake dust floating around.
The filtration system on an airplane makes it one of the safer places to be for almost any airborne infection. The airport itself is much more dangerous, longer flights notwithstanding.
I walk to work ten minutes to work. Partner and I each have cars. We take uber when we want to avoid driving.
Do masks help the wearer? Last time I heard it didn't. Probably wrong.
Either way, good for you...even if it only helps others that's a good reason!
N-95 masks are protective, and to a certain (most likely lesser degree), KN-95 masks are also protective.
They still block droplets from reaching the wearer.
N95 masks block more than droplets too, they are quite effective
The droplet theory was dropped within the first few months. It turns out it's not just COVID; many infections we thought were spread by droplets are actually airborne.
Oh, thanks for the info. How effective are n95s and/or surgical/cloth masks given that information?
Surgical/cloth are pretty much useless for COVID. N95s buy you temporary protection unless you've got the special face fittings needed to actually seal your face. It depends on the environment you're in but the worst case scenarios (like enclosed spaces without high airflow), the last study I saw was on the Delta variant and they said about 15 minutes if both parties are masked. It does get better from there though, with good ventilation you might have a few hours, and being outdoors you're actually pretty safe.
It helps to check whether or not the things you say are true before you declare them.
In this case, it is not true that they are "pretty much useless for COVID."
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7510705/
This article is from before they dropped droplet theory later in 2020. In the section titled "Factors to Consider when Using Cloth Masks to Protect Wearers and to Prevent Spread of Infection during the COVID-19 Pandemic":
They then go on to explain that cloth masks are the option of last resort and are not very useful. Surgical masks with proper fitting around the face and a certain minimum rating for water resistance will help, but most of the "surgical" masks we were all buying do not have enough layers and no water resistance ratings, and who among us got training on how to properly fit a mask to our faces?
Dropping a link and calling it information when you don't understand the content or haven't read it is not productive.
Masks help, but Masks plus Faceshield or some sort of eye protection is best.