Actually, it was Flavor Aid, not Kool-Aid, that the Jim Jones cult used to commit mass suicide.

Mask is spelled mask. Proofread your stuff. It will make you look more intelligent and believable. Or not.

he said it's 2021? wtf are the masks?

I'm OK with mask off to those fully vaccinated for 2 weeks (so the wearer get full protection) and governments and businesses figure out as much incentive to give to those vaccinated to bring up the herd community thing as much as possible. Nothing works better than free-stuff incentives.

Me, in Canada, living in its largest city, with infection rates at its most severe but vaccinations rate near the bottom of the barrel in the G7, I still couldn't get my 1st shot yet... vaccine hesitancy is such as cruel joke for too many in the world.

Haha, got what she deserved lol.

I am at the point though where I think ALL mask mandates should be dropped except maybe in schools being kids cant get the shot yet. Vaccines are widely available now for the adult population and sadly it seems that vaccination rates are plummeting. I got mine and do not care to have to wear a mask all the time when out just because a bunch of loons wont get vaccinated. Let them burn...

these anti-vax idiots are gonna keep us in permanent lockdown and masks as this virus mutates around our countermeasures

Actually I now see that I replied to the wrong comment. I was attempting to reply to BSR but must have messed up. Sorry for the confusion.

https://videosift.com/video/Track-Coach-Fired-After-Refusing-To-Make-Athletes-Wear-Masks#comment-2239733

Yes, I see that.
My point being the training masks don't do a thing for covid beyond training the body to operate with air resistance. It's a big issue, people who don't care about safety ignoring reality to "comply" with mask mandates by wearing fishnet masks or other non filtered front discharge masks, then pretending they don't understand the difference.

I doubt these kids had trained with them anyway, they're more for high level athletes, so in this case they were not especially prepared to compete wearing effective covid masks....but likely neither had their competitors.

this mask isnt for stopping the spread of infection. its for training in low oxygen environments or at altitude, so you perform better when surrounded by more oxygen.

I thought I addressed that. Travel was also open between states, and many countries with "free travel amongst nations" had no-travel/stay at home orders in place, unlike the U.S., and afaik, mandatory quarantine for all international travelers.

Again, because he eradicated the international Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, I can legitimately ascribe every single non Chinese death and most Chinese deaths to his actions directly. A pandemic on this level WAS foreseen after SARS, Ebola, and Swine Flu, it's why we created the GHSB. It's why we had a pandemic response plan that Trump completely ignored and actually denied it existed for months and months.

I also am going by facts. My facts say that at least four things Trump did against professional advice took us from prepared to minimise any pandemic to at worst a foreign epidemic to a place where months after pandemics start our leader denied any danger and made no moves to stop it.
1) Eradication of the GHSB, missed opportunity one to have zero US cases and avoid a pandemic completely.
2) Repeated early public denial of the danger while encouraging others to do the same and go about business as usual, missed opportunity two to have zero US cases, and a missed opportunity to minimize any spread if quarantining travelers (something else he failed miserably to even consider early on) failed.
3) Encouragement of those who trust him to ignore all mitigation efforts, don't mask, don't social distance, don't shut down non essential businesses, don't close schools, don't listen to medical professionals....missed opportunity number three to minimize US infections to thousands instead of hundreds of thousands. Remember the many months he said grandma would gladly die to get people back to work, pretending many months in that only feeble octogenarians get sick?
4) Denial of a prepared response plan, never following it and claiming total ignorance, missed opportunity number four to follow prepared plans based on science from day one, missing the opportunity to keep our infection rate at S Korean levels.

That's four well researched and vetted moronic, irrational, and irresponsible mistakes he personally made that multiplied our infection rate by 100- infinity times (if we could have had zero without his multiple massive and stupid mistakes, which is not just possible but likely, he can be said to have CAUSED every single US case, multiplying our infections by infinity.). There were more, but I'm beating a dead horse.
Remember, his real plan was natural herd immunity, with an expected 3-60 million deaths depending on who you asked.

I say if intelligent decisions could have avoided all US infections, and that's undeniable IMO, you can lay the blame for as high a percentage as you like on the leader who made bad dangerous decisions out of pure narcissistic ignorance and hatred of his predecessor...up to 100%. 80-90% still seems like I'm coddling him, at least two failures could have made cases zero, and others minimized it to under 10% of what we have. All four I listed almost certainly allowed >90% giving every doubt and giving him all possible credit....so yes, I'm satisfied I'm not exaggerating.

Obama's responsible and responsive planning and execution stopped Ebola from ever spreading here despite it making it to our shores, and it was FAR more contagious and deadly. Had we had Trump then doing the same things, there would be tens of millions dead and likely still spreading disease, imo.


Edit: let me try analogy...If a mayor removes the stop signs from 4 way highway intersections, they are responsible for every wreck that happens, even though other towns with stop signs still have wrecks at intersections. Trump pulled the signs, removed the flashing red light, and cut first responder funding, and claimed there never was a highway code to follow and he takes no responsibility for the jump in highway deaths.

Yes, they had isolation we don't, but also had fewer resources to work with by far, and are much closer to the outbreak in China with tons of travel between countries. I would say having a reasonable, thoughtful population that wanted to avoid being someone who spread the virus and killed people, so followed instructions nearly without exception, compared to the U.S. who had a leader denouncing closings, masks, and social distancing and a population that was happy to spread the disease for political reasons. I think that has WAY more to do with our horrific , worst on the planet per capita despite the most resources by far outcome.

We only have two borders to close. Canada is easy, just ask nicely and they'll stay home. The border with Mexico is a problem, granted, I found it odd Trump didn't use emergency powers to finish his fence when he had a legitimate reason, but that would mean admitting Covid is dangerous, but if we cooperated with Mexico to secure the border we could have minimized all international travel early.

Back to Canada, with two open borders. They have 23000 and a population of 37.59 million, so they also have a per capita death rate well under 1/2 ours, close to 1/3, and they also could have done better if we had done better. It's impossible to figure out what percentage of their infections came from the U.S., but it's definitely a significant number.

Other nations have divisions, if not states, provinces, prefecture, or some other separation of areas. I don't agree that because we have states in our country we are like the EU, because a federal law or executive order covers all states and territories, the EU has no such mechanism as far as I know.

We were the only nation with an international Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, with teams in China and elsewhere, designed to identify new diseases early to avoid pandemics. Trump is totally responsible for dismantling that office, meaning there's a likelihood every non Chinese death and most Chinese deaths would have been avoided had Trump not been butt hurt over a good system set up by Obama. His racist and political hatred put the planet at risk. That alone puts most deaths, U.S. and global, directly on his hands.

Also, the EU population is double ours, meaning with all the multiple open borders and haphazard mix of regulations from different countries, and the enormous immigrant populations, and some actual temporary lockdowns in some of their countries (but not all by far) their infection/death rates are barely over 1/2 what ours are per capita. That's not on par, sorry.

Some of their leaders have some blood on their hands because of poor or slow decisions, but few actually fought against all science and public health measures, denying the mortality rates and doctor's recommendations to convince their populations to do nothing at all to mitigate the pandemic...Brazil did....look at them now. Yes, the president of Brazil absolutely has blood on his hands, and his response mirrored Trump's.

I'm regurgitating the numbers Dr Birx used, and comparing our outbreak to other nations that took it seriously like S Korea and New Zealand. If we had used the same serious action S Korea had, our death rate per 100000 would be an astonishing 1/60th of what our death rates were in the first 6 months or so. Just universal mask wearing would have cut our deaths by an estimated >1/4, 130000 fewer deaths, and slowed the rate of new cases significantly, but Trump fought against them.

Here's the link on that data...., granted slightly dated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/23/how-many-coronavirus-deaths-are-truly-attributable-trump/

Remember, the Whitehouse said 100000-240000 possible deaths, around the same time Trump said deaths would never rise over 20000, using the lower of those numbers and blaming Trump's policies for the excess we are >80% his fault now, using Trump's promised numbers over 96% are blood on his hands.

There's also the fact that after knowing about the uncontrolled epidemic in WuHan Trump let over 40000 people (just not Chinese nationals) back in the country from that region with no tests available and no quarantine except for those obviously extremely sick. An immediate and actual travel lockdown could have made our deaths zero, and definitely would have made them exponentially lower.

Then there's the dismantling of the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit he closed that likely could have identified the outbreak in China much earlier and again, made our numbers zero. It's exactly what they were created to avoid.

I honestly feel 80- 90% was being generous, in fact there's a real possibility that a thoughtful adult president would have made any number of intelligent decisions, any one of which could have avoided the pandemic altogether or minimized infections enormously, even minimizing the Chinese epidemic.

I do agree, Biden is doing much better at taking it seriously and acting like rapid vaccination is important, but still isn't doing enough. I would prefer an enforced national mask mandate, mandatory social distancing, school closings until vaccination saturation, etc until we have herd immunity....not half assed measures like 50% capacity at bars and restaurants, with few business shutdowns and zero enforcement, pretending it's over every time infection rates dip.

Way I see it, while Trump is a major contributor to USA Covid-19 deaths, yes, but the MAIN reason is the overly libertarian, short-term economics driven policy and false "human right/freedom" anti-masking rhetoric that caused the rise of the pandemic to the levels countries like the USA & Brazil is at. There are many levels of government, people's behavior and economic factors to blame, not just Trump.

Just calling it the "China virus" doesn't solve the pandemic, nor absolve Trump of blame, he hardly ever tried to get things under control.

All Trump did was letting 0%/low tax paying Wall street mega-corporations profiting handsomely during the pandemic, while the mom & pop main street stores & its staff going under. You know, because MAGA!

unfortunately they all have front mounted discharge valves, allowing spit and phlegm to spray out at face level when you breath hard, cough, or sneeze, almost like there's no mask at all. These masks are useless to stop the spread and should be labeled clearly indicating that. It's similar to the idiots who wear mesh masks pretend they're functional.
For a mask to work against covid spreading, it must filter exhalation of all droplets, those with exhaust ports do nothing.

There are training masks already people use for that exact purpose. https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=training+mask

I would think if you practice with a mask on you would train your body to breath with the restriction. When the time comes to safely remove the mask you'll be that much stronger. Like training with a backpack on.

"People should NOT wear masks when exercising as masks may reduce the ability to breathe comfortably."

"Comfortably"? Fuck! Cowboy up already! Pansy.