I never said it was intentional. But given all the reports of false positives for covid, and how inaccurate the testing has been, it seems inevitable.
Actually what happened:
Ah. Masks work on the flu, but are pretty anemic on Covid.
Covid being very contagious, the only way typical consumer masks would work is if everyone wore them consistently in the recommended situations, instead of only 60% or 70% of people. Because having 30% without masks is plenty to allow the contagious virus to spread significantly.
Here's what it looks like, right now, to have a more contagious variant (such as the U.K. variant that is now widespread in the U.S.), but *without* much mask wearing or much vaccination!
Our daily new case peak was fairly close to today's number from India actually, but we were topping out, and they don't look to be yet. While it's still a bit early to be sure, it looks like our outbreak of the U.K. variant in Michigan is starting to respond to people being more cautious. But definitely right we shouldn't be overconfident. If a large portion remain unvaccinated, it's going to be a summer with plenty of suffering even if they don't get up to the surge level peaks from earlier.
In India more than 300,000 got COVID in one day. The hospitals are full. Some do not have enough oxygen. People are dying in hospital parking lots. It is not the flu, but a much worse respiratory illness.
Covid 19 is almost 3 times as contagious as the flu having an R number of 3 compared to an R number of 1.3 for normal flu. The Spanish flu had for example an R number of 1.8. The R number is about how many people are likely to catch the desease from one infected person, if no anti infection measures are in place.
