Hello everyone and congratulations on surviving another week of 2020. As reopenings charge blindly ahead in the face of rising COVID-19 infections I wanted to bring some continuing rumors into the forefront and deal with them. Every day seems to bring either new theories or rehashes of old ones, so here’s some information for those who seek it.
Is COVID-19 a Chinese Bioweapon? No! COVID-19 evolved from a naturally occurring virus in bats that made the jump to humans sometime in the second half of 2019 and was identified in December of 2019 in Wuhan, China.
Due to a virology laboratory in Wuhan conspiracy theories have erupted that claim the virus that causes COVID-19, known as SARS-CoV-2, must have been generated in the laboratory and either accidentally or purposefully released. The basis of the conspiracy theories are some communications from 2018 which stated less than ideal safety practices being followed in the lab. [link] There is no credible evidence that the virus was engineered, no matter what readers of Natural News and watchers of Plandemic think they were told.
Recent analysis finds high amounts of similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and coronavirus in bats in another part of China, Yunnan province and low similarities to the original SARS and MERS outbreaks. While the patient zero and the true origin of the disease may never be known, evidence suggests that the disease made it’s way from bats into pangolins due to the high similarity of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the coronavirus spike protein in pangolins. Recombination events like this are possible and have been shown in other diseases, while rare this happenstance is the most likely cause of the severity of COVID-19 rather than purposeful engineering. [link]
Do masks help? Yes! Are they harmful? Nope! A lot has been said about masks since the beginning of the outbreak which is probably the cause of our current confusion and dissent. While there are plenty of people who don’t like masks there is little evidence that they impede normal breathing. Articles and pictures are circulating social media platforms talking about the supposed “dangers” of wearing a mask with scare words like “hypoxic” to make the post sound more official. These are posts are wrong as N95, surgical, and cotton masks allow for the passage of air through the mask with a filtering effect. While it may feel harder to breathe it is more likely that your brain is interpreting the mild resistance of the mask as far greater than it actually is.
Speaking as someone who had to get used to wearing a mask for laboratory work, wearing a mask is more of a mental challenge than a physical one. No surgical or cotton cloth mask should provide enough resistance to cause any breathing problems but they sure will feel strange and awful the first time you have to wear one. Take a mask you have and hold it up to a strong light, you should be able to see tiny holes. These holes large enough for your eye to spot are more than large enough for air to pass through, both in and out. No mask properly made would be able to hold in enough CO2 to cause any damage. What can happen is that the air inside of the mask becomes warmer and has more moisture than you may be used to breathing which can cause you to feel like the mask is suffocating but the change is minor and you will be okay.
If you’re having problems wearing a mask then I advise practicing at home until it becomes normal. To do this it’s best to wear a mask during a normal activity like watching TV, reading a book, or playing games. Doing something else while wearing your mask will help normalize it more than sitting on the couch and focusing on wearing the mask. Allow the mask to fade into background noise as your mind becomes engrossed in another activity. Give yourself a time limit to reach and allow yourself breaks; as the mask becomes more normal try to leave it on longer before taking it off. These are also all good tactics to help any kids you have get used to masks as well. Acknowledge that it feels weird and uncomfortable, but keep wearing it anyways just like you have to wearing any other piece of clothing.
In past posts I delved into scientific papers that support the ability of masks to filter out the droplets carrying SARS-CoV-2 but today there is new evidence of just how much of a difference masks have made in combating COVID-19. Since the end of May there have been ongoing protests against police brutality and there was wide concern about the effect these large gatherings, sometimes tens of thousands of people, would have on the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic. Case trending shows that masks have prevented the rise in cases that were expected in some major metropolitan areas. New York City and Seattle have seen large ongoing protests but haven’t shown a spike in COVID-19 cases and masks are the current explanation as photographs show a majority of protest attenders wearing them. [link, link] Pushes for increasing testing in these and some other cities show that the protests were not areas for transmission of the virus so long as people wear masks and if protesters walking and chanting while wearing masks are safe we’re a lot closer to establishing a path forward than we had previously thought.
Before we can have reopening and resume our normal activities we must stop our current climb in cases. The United States is beginning to see an increase in daily cases of COVID-19 that cannot be explained away as just increases in testing. The virus is here and it is gaining traction in much of the United States, urban and rural North, South, East, and West where precautions were removed swiftly. To eliminate the threat there must be action but for those of us who are not in government the best we can do is to wear our masks, wash our hands, and proceed with extreme caution. More states are seeing an increase in cases this week, so now is the time to take personal responsibility even if local governments are taking no action.
Chin up and masks on people, we’ve got this.
-Your friendly, neighborhood scientist, Colleen
PMP in the Lab 