"Wargaming & Masks" Topic

You were asked – TMP link

In the age of Covid-19, are you wearing a mask while wargaming?

27% said "I've temporarily stopped wargaming"

19% said "no, I am not wearing a mask while wargaming"

14% said "yes, I am wearing a mask while wargaming"

I'm not wearing a mask, period!

If I were gaming with non-family, yes I'd have a mask on. Foolish to do otherwise. I wonder how bad COVID is in your part of the country von Schwartz?

My gaming group here in Pennsylvania has stop. We were gaming every Wednesday night till about a month ago without masks. Since several of us are over 60 we decide to stop till sometime next year.

Guess what, people who wear masks also get COVID. If you are truly concerned about not getting COVID then maybe you shouldn't be Wargaming just now.

Masks help you stop passing covid on,they don't stop you catching it. So wearing a mask is doing a public service, not trying to gain a personal advantage.

+1 advocate; although I'm not gaming with others atm, just painting & occasionally a little solo-gaming.

Up until the end of June I gamed a little with a couple of friends that were essentially shut ins. Now that our local covid rate is 20 times higher than it was, I don't even meet up masked. We talk, others have done some on line games, and we strategize for bigger things next summer.

I wear a mask all the time in public, I love the anonymity. Now I understand why Those Islamic women like to keep their face covered all the time. It's nice when nobody can see your facial expressions.

The cloth masks I see are mostly fashion statements or virtue signaling, the rest are just dust or particle masks and ARE NOT protection against a virus. Also, if you wear a fabric mask, do you wash or change it daily, and if you wear the blue or white paper masks, do you change them daily?
If CO2 is killing the planet, as the "Climate Change" crowd proclaims, what do think rebreathing your own CO2 is doing to you?
Oh, and BTW, since you asked, I currently live in Florida, our restaurants and bars are now 100% open and schools are open as well, THANK GOD for a governor with some brains and common sense.

Just for your enlightenment, I am retired from 40 years as a occupational health and safety engineer for various industries so I have some creds regarding filter masks, SCBA, single and double cartridge masks and the like.

@USAFpilot
Guess what, people who wear masks also get COVID. If you are truly concerned about not getting COVID then maybe you shouldn't be Wargaming just now.

@advocate
Masks help you stop passing covid on,they don't stop you catching it. So wearing a mask is doing a public service, not trying to gain a personal advantage.

If masks are so effective why do 85% of those who test positive claim they are wearing their mask regularly.
Also, reports claim that mask usage is on the rise everywhere, they also claim that positive test results are on the rise everywhere. Since masks are soo effective in preventing disease transmission shouldn't there be a decrease in positive tests?

BTW, I am well over 60! regretably

If masks are so effective why do 85% of those who test positive claim they are wearing their mask regularly.

Self reporting shows that everybody is a safe driver. All the time.

And all obese people are strictly following their doctor's diet and exercise recommendations. Just ask them.

I'm curious how many occupational safety incident reports you encountered where people said they were following all the precautions. My favourites are the ones where people faithfully follow all the hazmat requirements don't actually have MSDS* for the stuff in their lab.

* – If you don't recognize – Material Safety Data Sheet. It's the little piece of paper for a hazardous material that tells you specifically which precautions need to be taken with it.

So … story time. DOM, a junior engineer, got put in charge of the 3D printer. She had done some work with them in her undergrad, nobody else wanted to be bothered, and did I mention she was the junior engineer?

So, there's a bucket of cleaning solution that doesn't clean anymore because it hasn't ever been changed out. Basically it's overused and saturated. So she orders some new stuff and goes to the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) guy and asks where to dump the old stuff.

He goes high-order detonation on her. What do you mean you have this? How are you storing it? How much is there? Why did you order more? Who is your boss?

So, she's upset. She gets a call from her boss. "Well, the OSH guy came by. He stormed in here demanding to know when we got the 3D printer and materials. I told him just over three years ago … or to put it another way, the printer and all the materials have been sitting out in plain sight for six of your documented six-month periodic walkthrough inspections of the lab. So, anyway, he's going to get a storage container and ventilation hood and have them installed wherever you want them. Please give me a call if he raises his voice in your presence."

Please, don't confuse me with the OSHA guy. Although most were good at their jobs there were many…substandard individuals. I actually applied to MnOSHA (the Minnesota state OSHA, Minnesota and Michigan have their own OSHA, the rest all make due with the Feds version)I was apparently overqualified because I actually had 1 full year of working with the OSHA Standards but they insisted I take their 6 week course. Having just finished 2 years general education and 2 years in my major (Occupational Safety & Health) I was kinda sick of school and wanted to get to work. Had many a spirited discussion with some of the more bureaucratic minded OSHA reps cuz I didn't dot my "i"s properly or cross my "t"s by the book.

WAIT a minute!!! What happened?? Took a hard turn and ended up here, WAAAY off the track, sorry, I guess I got carried away.

Like many in the UK, wargaming has been off or moved to online for months, now. We did get some games in, outdoors, over the Summer, though.

If I could wargame face-to-face by virtue of wearing a mask, I would. I volunteer in a charity shop and we all wear masks. That's the rule at the moment.

In the UK, not wearing a mask (for most people without a respiratory condition) is simply childish. Seriously. It is allowed for young children who can't be expected to know better. Adults are expected to wear one, and to know better.

By the way, one of my responsibilities is as a Safety Officer and advisor. I try to keep up with the analysis. As far as I am aware, there has been no identifiable super-spreading associated with wargaming, gaming shops, military heritage events, shows and conventions etc (or arts-wise, in oue exhibition space). So this is not about direct defence, this is about complying with accepted behaviours that have been introduced to help protected the whole of the community.

Phil

As far as I am aware, there has been no identifiable super-spreading associated with wargaming, gaming shops, military heritage events, shows and conventions etc (or arts-wise, in oue exhibition space).

I am surprised the UK is keeping such granular data. That degree of government surveillance is illegal in the US.

Joking aside (since that type of surveillance is illegal in most countries (but not necessarily for most people) on the Earth), the only thing that self-reported data is good for is understanding what people say as opposed to what they do.

Great for Family Feud and 100 Latinos Dijeron, but not much else by itself.

not wearing a mask (for most people without a respiratory condition) is simply childish.

Why? As I said before, the disposalble paper masks are for dusts and larger particles, NOT bacteria and especially not viruses, and the popular cloth masks are now no more that a fashion statement and as such are completely worthless except for virtue signaling. The only really effective mask against a virus would be a SCBA and that would be totally unpracticable.

I am surprised the UK is keeping such granular data. That degree of government surveillance is illegal in the US.

Er. We have a system of track and trace (indeed for most places it is mandatory) triggered by a QR code on the entry. All the events I have hosted require logging of contact details. Any positive Covid-19 triggers a report and I will be one of the contacts. Now, OK, we all accept that some contacts will slip through the net, and some will willfully avoid the responsibility BUT nil responses over thousands of visits and nil responses after dozens tour participants (despite active reporting in parallel sectors) can only lead to one conclusion.

As for the last comment, it is better to just park that … however, in the UK and a lot (all?) of Europe, not wearing a mask is an exception allowed for children. People who stubbornly don't wear masks define themselves as children.

Phil

Er. We have a system of track and trace (indeed for most places it is mandatory) triggered by a QR code on the entry. All the events I have hosted require logging of contact details.

Mandatory? So, no one without a cell phone is allowed to go anywhere and GDPR protections go out the window?

the disposalble paper masks are for dusts and larger particles, NOT bacteria and especially not viruses,

Which is why all surgery is conducted in SCBA.

The cloth masks I see are mostly fashion statements or virtue signaling, the rest are just dust or particle masks and ARE NOT protection against a virus.

As I said before, the disposalble paper masks are for dusts and larger particles, NOT bacteria and especially not viruses, and the popular cloth masks are now no more that a fashion statement and as such are completely worthless except for virtue signaling. The only really effective mask against a virus would be a SCBA and that would be totally unpracticable.

The purpose of wearing a mask is NOT to block individual virus particles free-floating in the air. The purpose is to block aerosol droplets and larger respiratory particles, because each aerosol particle or larger droplet can contain MILLIONS of virus particles.

Since a COVID-19 virus particle has a diameter of ~0.1 microns, a 10 micron aerosol droplet will contain ~100,000 to 1,000,000 virus particles (this is simple geometry). A larger 20-30 micron respiratory droplet can carry ~10,000,000 to 30,000,000 virus particles.

A single-layer cloth mask, made of almost any piece of fabric, will work against large respiratory droplets (i.e., > 20 microns in diameter). A multilayer cloth mask (i.e., a cloth mask with two or three layers) works against both large respiratory droplets and also against aerosol particles (diameter < 10 microns).

The CDC has quantified how effective a multilayer mask is at filtering out aerosols and large droplets:

"Multi-layer cloth masks block release of exhaled respiratory particles into the environment, along with the microorganisms these particles carry. Cloth masks not only effectively block most large droplets (i.e., 20-30 microns and larger) but they can also block the exhalation of fine droplets and particles (also often referred to as aerosols) smaller than 10 microns; which increase in number with the volume of speech and specific types of phonation. Multi-layer cloth masks can both block up to 50-70% of these fine droplets and particles and limit the forward spread of those that are not captured. Upwards of 80% blockage has been achieved in human experiments that have measured blocking of all respiratory droplets, with cloth masks in some studies performing on par with surgical masks as barriers for source control."

link
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "Scientific Brief: Community Use of Cloth Masks to Control the Spread of SARS-CoV-2")

So a multilayer cloth mask (which is the type of mask recommended by the CDC) will filter out 50-70% of aerosol particles.

And each aerosol particle blocked is equivalent to blocking 100,000 to 1,000,000 individual virus particles from being exhaled into the environment.

Thus the CDC recommends that people wear multilayer masks:

"Wear masks with two or more layers to stop the spread of COVID-19"

link
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), " How to Select, Wear, and Clean Your Mask")

Mandatory? So, no one without a cell phone is allowed to go anywhere and GDPR protections go out the window?

Pretty much, although GDPR covers the data collected by the Phone App. If you visit a 'shop or venue' (such as our exhibition space … there's a list of venues by type) you are required to scan the QR code. If you can't (don't have the App/don't want to etc. and it is entirely your choice) you can instead leave contact details with us. If neither of the above, then you can't come in.

Non compliance is very rare, although last week we did have to decline someone who did not want to wear a mask (and did not claim an exemption, just a preference). All very polite, of course. For us, following the guidelines is a condition of being open.

Phil

you can instead leave contact details with us.

And you give them GDPR notice and track it, with identity verification before you enter their data into the application.

And you give them GDPR notice and track it, with identity verification before you enter their data into the application

No, you probably don't understand this as well as you think you do. But I think I have explained how the system (which is applied through Government guidelines, endorsed by Parliament and applies principles commonly accepted throughout Europe) works. It does allow people to draw general conclusions about how (and where) the virus is transmitting, and, relevant to my original comments (which I happily stand by) identify hotspots and 'not-spots'.

All the best (stay safe and wear a mask )

Phil