A little bit of warning about the pandemic

[BIT-BENDER]

I would like to suggest can there be something like a little bit of instructions about the current corona virus placed in a visible place on the forum like the one we see during April fool's or some special time or events

Why do I think it's necessary
+ Ignorant about the pandemic: some people still think that this whole thing is just a flu or a ploy so they really don't pay attention to it. But with the forum high reputation coming into play can help instill more seriousness to it.
+ A reminder that the forum cares about the current situation: right now the slogan we see more this days is about safety at this strange time.  A slogan doesn't necessarily show ones amount of care but it's a good step in the right direction.

+ There is no negative side to it: it would not really cost the forum anything to do it but the impact no matter how little can just help enlighten few.


The slogan or write up doesn't have to be something enormous a simple
#stay at home, stay safe
# social distancing, wash your hands.
Or something drawing attention to the situation.


A very little gesture from the forum just to show they are in this together with the world would not be bad..

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[tranthidung]

I don't think so because the forum is designed for Bitcoin discussions. All of health recommendations are responsibilities of health authorities. I am not surprised to know that all of us heard or read at least once (much more than once) about those basic preventive measures. So I don't think it is a must thing to do by the forum.

Knowledge - Attitude - Practice. There are people who can easily change attitude from knowledge they are exposed to but there are sort of people who hardly or never change attitude no matter many times they are exposed to information. For such people, we (the forum community) can not change their attitude, then practice.
OP, if one has bad practice after exposing hundred of times, he or she will not be changed by a short phrases on the forum. It is not a slogan of the forum, I think you are wrong when calling it as a forum slogan.

[Jawhead999]

IMO everyone is surely know about this pandemic. You will easily know it on everywhere, like in twitter, facebook, youtube, TV, and many more.
So, no need to make a slogan for this forum, I think no one doesn't know about this virus.

There are so much news related this pandemic, usually I get bored to see that

[BIT-BENDER]

I don't think so because the forum is designed for Bitcoin discussions. All of health recommendations are responsibilities of health authorities.

I think you wrong on this. For example my network provider whose business is not about health care still took it on them self to change there sign to something about the current situation.
I think there is no bad side to it. The situation is alarming and the smallest gesture is welcome at this point.
This is a large forum and reach a vast number of people. A sign or signal from here hold much value

[bullrun2024bro]

I personally would prefer a big slogan or warning message not to create 50 new Covid-19 topics per day. Can't we get that instead theymos?  

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

On a personal scale, one can always use his personal text (or signature) as a seamless manner to give some type of visibility to some simple, yet concise, sort of related message.

Specific forum backed instructions or recommendations could be a little bit tricky, lest some of those turn out to be void or counterproductive as time goes by, and developments and studies refine (or contradict i.e. to wear or not to wear a mask) what is already being said. Perhaps a link to an external good reliable source of information would do in any case.

[BIT-BENDER]

. Perhaps a link to an external good reliable source of information would do in any case.

A link also could to the job, just something, that could relate to the situation Officially from the forum and visible to all.
Signature or personal is part of the forum members individual contributions

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

I don't think we should leave the creating of awareness or informing the general public on precaution measure to help prevent the spread of the virus to just the medical professionals. In our little ways we should do anything humanly possible we can to educate the general public. I don't think the OP suggestion is bad that's why I loved the April fool stunt irrespective of it been a prank, it did pass a simple but clear message on how easily the virus can be spread/contacted if social distancing or self isolation isn't practice.

In my own little way I try to refresh my signature participants minds on the importance of staying indoors and washing their hands as frequently as possible also to avoid touching thier faces with their hands. It might not be as much as what others are doings in regards to charity donationa but it shows atleast I care. I even took it a step further by imputing some useful information as I did carry-out my April fool's signature campaign prank. I give my support to the suggestion.

[20kevin20]

I hear this message on radio & during almost any TV news, I see it on gov press conferences, TV commercials, received it on my phone Emergency Alert System, received anonymous SMS with it, seen it on my city's walls and street ads, seen it on someone's t-shirt in a supermarket, my friends have started changing their profile photos with pics of them wearing masks, I received a message from Viber about it, even campaign managers sometimes post messages about it, I see it on almost any article I read ETC.

Isn't it just a little bit too much? I just feel like I'm starting to lose sanity, it's literally everywhere I look, anything I try to listen to or read contains this "wear mask, wash hands, don't go out" message.. I don't want BTCTalk to be another one on the list above. It's my only relief from this situation. Someone who reads a Bitcoin forum most likely did hear these tips enough times already..

[BIT-BENDER]

I hear this message on radio & during almost any TV news, I see it on gov press conferences, TV commercials, received it on my phone Emergency Alert System, received anonymous SMS with it, seen it on my city's walls and street ads, seen it on someone's t-shirt in a supermarket, my friends have started changing their profile photos with pics of them wearing masks, I received a message from Viber about it, even campaign managers sometimes post messages about it, I see it on almost any article I read ETC.

Isn't it just a little bit too much? I just feel like I'm starting to lose sanity, it's literally everywhere I look, anything I try to listen to or read contains this "wear mask, wash hands, don't go out" message.. I don't want BTCTalk to be another one on the list above. It's my only relief from this situation. Someone who reads a Bitcoin forum most likely did hear these tips enough times already..

It would not be something bogus just a small space above if you had seen it once it would not make it a burden to you. And it can also reduce numerous post about the pandemic by drawing people attention to it. And any further post about it can be seen as unnecessary.

You speaking from your own perspective or country there are developing countries that are delusional or ignorant about it. Even those educated, or those that knows about Bitcoin they would find it more legit come from a forum they believe in
 And mind you there are tons of people that feels this news agency are pawns for political means the corona virus has been frequently thought to be a ploy by China. So they may not pay attention to the news agency,
It's not going to blind any one if it's made possible. Rather strengthen what has already been known

[UserU]

IMHO, this wouldn't make any difference. Most, if not all of us members are already aware of COVID, what more could a simple slogan do?

Even if one's in place, Bitcointalk holds no responsibility over us.

[LeGaulois]

At the same time, Bitcointalk is one of the very rare place where we can breathe a little without reminding us about COVID-19 (except the topics)
I know how the situation is dramatic unfortunately but if there are persons who still think it's the flu, it's their problem, not mine.

Everything is COVIDed currently, it's good to talk and think about something else to not get our mind overcharged with COVID19

[tranthidung]

China is a liar. They blamed on the US. Army delivered the virus in China. Then about a month later, they talked the virus firstly appeared in Italy. I am sorry but what China is talking about. We all know the virus first reported in China.

Honestly, if people have a device and connection to the Internet (it is right for people who use the forum), they obviously read hundreds of times about basic preventive methods on the virus. If people say Oh I have never read it after about four months, it is a lie.
I do not say all of us knew that "Washing your hands and maintaining healthy habits are very classic preventive measures" before the pandemic but now we all have known that well.

https://www.who.int/ should be a good place for information on the pandemic. I know there are right and wrong information or recommendations on the Internet but the forum can not provide an all in one guideline here. For a short warning, I think it is unnecessary because we all know it.

Face mask, by now there is no evidence that it helps to prevent or reduce virus infection, according to the latest research on it (but in the past, researches have same results).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2. There is no statistical difference (for Coronavirus, influenza virus, rhinovirus with droplets, aerosols) between with-mask and without-mask groups, in a good controlled condition, not in real life where we have so many negative biases on efficacy of face masks.

* The forum can not display the Figure 1 from that research on Nature, so if you are curious, please visit the link to see it.

[rhomelmabini]

I think it's best if we can see it occasionally like an ad on every OPs thread below it seems text ads has been there for quite sometime and I think that will work. Besides, if you look most of the most visited board in the forum we can see this threads relating to COVID-19 pandemic, hmmm just my two cents.

[20kevin20]

It would not be something bogus just a small space above if you had seen it once it would not make it a burden to you. And it can also reduce numerous post about the pandemic by drawing people attention to it. And any further post about it can be seen as unnecessary.

You speaking from your own perspective or country there are developing countries that are delusional or ignorant about it. Even those educated, or those that knows about Bitcoin they would find it more legit come from a forum they believe in
 And mind you there are tons of people that feels this news agency are pawns for political means the corona virus has been frequently thought to be a ploy by China. So they may not pay attention to the news agency,
It's not going to blind any one if it's made possible. Rather strengthen what has already been known

It will not reduce posts about the pandemic. The subject about BSV and CSW has been brought upon numerous times and yet his name is still everywhere on the forum. New users will always create these threads when their alts run out of topics to reply to. In fact, this may worsen the amount of topics and people would start creating ones asking "why do we have a new announcement about covid??"..

Politics have nothing to do with what is heard about China or whoever else the pandemic prevention information. The ads and notifications you see & hear about the virus are not even related to any politics - they're just pieces of information for prevention measures. As tranthidung said two replies above, anyone who has a TV, an internet connection or - in my case of receiving the EAS notification - just a mobile phone without even a SIM card or internet connection in it has heard of the virus and about the prevention measures for it.

Moreover, I'm not even sure what the hell is right or not anymore. Too much contradictory information. Have you thought for just a minute that maybe washing your hands too often may make things worse because constantly rubbing the protective layers of your skin may do damage to them? Have you thought that it may be safer not to wear a mask than wear it improperly? I'm not a doctor - I'm just thinking logically. Let's do a very quick rewind of what we've been told:

• The virus is just a flu. Later: it's not.
• Test as much as possible! Later: tests have been found to be contamined with the virus.
• Herd immunity is better! Later: Let's lock the country down..
• I said that China was OBVIOUSLY covering up numbers and I was told to "fuck off" by most and to shut my mouth up. Today, on the news: China has been hiding numbers big time..
• You'll call me a conspiracist with this point. I personally do not want to think & believe that 5G is in any way related to the pandemic, but take the 5G worldwide map (archive, archive backup) and put it right next to the COVID-19 Outbreak map (archive, archive backup). It'd be no surprise to me if in a matter of time 5G will be officially linked to the pandemic.

I'd sincerely not advise anyone anything. Let the governments do their job. We may do it wrong, and we don't want to take responsibility for it.

[examplens]

I personally would prefer a big slogan or warning message not to create 50 new Covid-19 topics per day. Can't we get that instead theymos?  

I support this initiative. Maybe to create a separate section on the forum dedicated only for COVID talker, where they can open new Covid topics and discuss how much they want. Now threatening to be more invasive than "Lauda's xxxx something" topics.

[tranthidung]

I personally would prefer a big slogan or warning message not to create 50 new Covid-19 topics per day. Can't we get that instead theymos?  

I support this initiative. Maybe to create a separate section on the forum dedicated only for COVID talker, where they can open new Covid topics and discuss how much they want. Now threatening to be more invasive than "Lauda's xxxx something" topics.

Please do not create a new spam section for spammers. Moderators will not like it.

Have you thought that it may be safer not to wear a mask than wear it improperly?

This is what I said above, even in perfect controlled condiitons, there is no statistical difference of face mask efficacy. In real life conditions, with improperly practice, it turns out to be terrible. Most people thought of face mask as a weapon to beat the virus and they feel safer by wearing it. I think what they feel is a placebo effect.

I am fine with face mask but please don't overvalue it.

I agree with you that it is a task for governments and health ministries.

[gmaxwell]

I don't think so because the forum is designed for Bitcoin discussions.

You can't discuss Bitcoin if you are sick or dead.

I get the impression that the anti-authority streak of many contributors here results in the forum having more than its share of participants who are covid19 deniers.

Just like it's important for the health of a geographic community to be well informed, it's important for the health of an online community to be well informed.  Due to conference and events its even possible for BCT members to transmit the virus to each other! ---- though, I agree that is much less of a concern.

by now there is no evidence that it helps to prevent or reduce virus infection,

That is a phenomenal piece of misinformation.  Because it's unethical to conduct a randomized-controlled test for live infections, all the studying in actual humans is extremely underpowered-- it's stuck with very few participants, poor compliance, testing too late when they're probably not very contagious, etc.  When you have an underpowed test the most common outcome is that the finding is not statistically significant.

It's like saying that "there is no evidence that parachutes improve survival when jumping out of planes" -- because virtually no one is jumping out of planes without them and some of the few that do survive.

So, instead we get stuff like natural experiments where an aircraft flies from NY to China with a person with swine flu on it, and zero people on board with masks get sick while 47% of the unmasked "control group" people got sick. Was it due to the masks, or was it simply that people with masks were more careful in general? We can't be completely sure.  The purpose of having a randomized control trial is to eliminate issues like that, but we can't go around intentionally infecting people with swine flu.

The particular study you're linking too was frustrated by detecting extremely low levels of viruses in *all* samples. For example for coronavirus (OC43) they  only detected the virus in droplets in the breath of 3 of 10 parties with the virus and no mask, while they detected it in 0 of 11 with the virus and a mask. Yet we *know* these viruses spread via dropplets. Their problem was that they either weren't testing people while they were contagious-- e.g. because the most contagious period was before symptoms showed, as is believed to be the case for sars-cov-2-- or their measurement approach was just busted. But regardless, in every case the mask reduced the levels they detected.

The problem was that their test was so underpowered that even an infinity fold reduction in rate was not statistically significant.

If the same approach study had also tested a six foot thick lead lined concrete wall, it would have also concluded that there was no evidence that it prevented the spread of OC43!  No virus particles would have been detected on the other side of the wall, just like the mask.  It would have been nice if they did include that, because then we could go around saying that there is no evidence that a mask works less well than a six foot thick lead lined concrete wall, and we'd be just as technically correct. And while it would also be a stupid and misleading claim, it would probably be less misleading than the claim that masks are completely ineffective which you've extracted from that paper.

Here is the image you couldn't link:

[tranthidung]

I agreed that face masks reduce viral load, and I don't say face mask is completely useless but even in good controlled conditions, the efficacy is not much different but in real life, how many of people use face mask properly. Many people wear face mask improperly (touch/ adjust mask and face too often) as same as how they wash their hands.
Face touching: a frequent habit that has implications for hand hygiene. People tend to touch their faces 23 times per hour, on average.

There are more outliers in without-mask group, both droplets and aerosols. If we exclude outliers, two groups are nearly the same. In the Supplementary Table 2, there are not many statistically differences of viral load, and maybe (just maybe) they are false positives. The more hypotheses are tested, the higher odds for false positive. For example: if we test only one hypothesis, the chance of at least one false positive is 5% (if we choose the statistically significant threshold is at 95% or p-value = 0.05). However, if we test 2 hypotheses at the same time, the probability to have two true positives will be: 0.95*0.95 = 0.9025. It means, the probability of at least one false positive will be 1 - (0.95*0.95) = 0.0975 > 0.05. It will increase to about 10% (with 2 hypotheses), not only 5% (with only one hypothesis).

To reduce the probability of false positive, there are suggestions to apply stricter threshold of p-value to 0.005 ^[1] or 0.001 ^[2].
See:

• The Proposal to Lower P Value Thresholds to .005
• Revised standards for statistical evidence

If we apply the threshold of p-value at 0.005, there is no statistically significance from the above research.

From the table, we can see results are very inconsistency between groups. Honestly, I think results satisfy both sides, support or not support and this probably is a reason why governments have very different recommendations on face masks. One can say "Governments recommend don't wear masks if you are not infected and leave them for health care workers because the lack of face mask supplies". That statement is not completely true. The perspective on it was there before the pandemic, based on scientific results, I guess.

As I said, I am fine with face mask, just don't think it as a magical stuff that can protect you from the virus and don't pay attention on how you wear it.

I used some misleading words above, so I am sorry but my opinion still remains:
     Even with minor statistically significance + many biases (bad practices, is.) ~ no difference in real life (not lab conditions).

I know the pandemic put all of us under uncertainty situation but I believe in science.

At the ends, within the uncertainty about face mask efficacy, we have to base on local government recommendations and personal choice to wear face masks or not. I am not in a position to make any recommendation here.

[UmerIdrees]

I would like to suggest can there be something like a little bit of instructions about the current corona virus placed in a visible place on the forum like the one we see during April fool's or some special time or events

I don't support this because there is already too much information about this coronavirus on this forum, that we do not need another set of instructions. We are all in lock down and all day on tv and social media we see news and information only about this virus. If there is anything new , then maybe it is good to share but rest everyone knows the do and don't to prevent the coronavirus.