Showtalk said:

Except paper and cloth masks don’t really do much to prevent the spread. They also knew that.

Initially the public was asked to wear cloth and paper masks so that there were enough of the N95 masks for healthcare workers.  Cloth and paper masks are not the best protection but they do help in stopping droplets that can infect others.

They can help some.  Of both g else comes out of this, hopefully people with colds and flu will stay home when they are contagious.  

WALTER784 said:

Ahhhh... but the hassles you have to put up with unprepared companies!

And often totally unprepared for other things - like ransomware when you are running one of the most important pipelines in the US that supplies nearly all the gasoline to the East Coast, and some bunch encrypts all the files everywhere needed to function.

I still think that they need to track down whoever masterminded that, even though they did manage to hack back a good part of the bitcoins - grab him, and then give him a good old fashioned Wild West style public hanging - but in the 21st century, hang him on camera and post it everywhere as a warning to others, much like the legend of Vladimir the Impaler, who also left particularly gruesome and stark warnings to his enemies of what happens to those who might dare think to cross him.

Here's a modification of that skit that Bill Engval did in the mid 1990s.

I just hate stupid people. They should have to wear signs that just say "I'm stupid". That way you wouldn't rely on them, would you? You wouldn't ask them anything. It would be like, "Excuse me, oops, never mind. I didn't see your sign."
.
My conspiracy theory neighbor found out I got my Covid shot.
He asked, "Does a magnet stick to your arm now?"
I replied, "Nope. But now my 5G is absolutely fantastic. And here's your sign."

Why can't they get the picture?
Why don't they understand?
We're not dealing with the planet of apes
We're talking about the modern man
So you people with them itsy bitsy teensie weensie tiny minds
Here's your sign
Here's your sign

YWN666 said:

Initially the public was asked to wear cloth and paper masks so that there were enough of the N95 masks for healthcare workers. Cloth and paper masks are not the best protection but they do help in stopping droplets that can infect others.

And if you modify a cloth / paper mask to add a layer of microfiber cloth inside, you increase the stoppage of droplets and even loose virus by a factor of 10 or so. In electronics we would call that a 20 decibel insertion loss of virus that doesn't get through the material versus the paper / cloth without the microfiber insert.

(skipping a bunch of technical physics as to how it works) in essence, the microfiber ends grab onto dry virus by electrostatic charge, and can utilize the VanDerWaals force to hang onto them. The second effect is that all the air passes along nearly a quarter inch of dense ultra-fine hairs on the cloth surface, lengthwise, to pass through. This provides a lot of opportunity for droplets much smaller than the spacing between fibers to touch at least one, and immediately the surface tension causes the droplet to stick to the fiber fuzz.

The surface area of clean microfiber is staggering - some of the finer microfiber cloth can have a half acre or so of surface area, all folded up into this tiny square of material inserted into a mask. Each of these fibers are only a few microns across. Even though viruses are measured in tens of nanometers, smaller than a wavelength of light, the electrostatic effects are enormous, and the droplets most of them are floating inside of are several hundreds of times larger, in the multiple micron size.

The virus doesn't survive being dried out very well.

But using the electronics / radio communication analogy further, essentially a cloth / paper mask can attenuate the virus stream entering your body by about 3 to 6 decibels. This can make a big difference in whether or not there is a sufficient initial viral load to take hold infectiously, versus a much lower initial load that either results in a mild case or asymptomatic infection, or what is often called an "incomplete infection".

The decibel scale is logarithmic. So each new layer that reduces by, say, 6 decibels, you cut the number that get through that layer to 1/4 the number that reached that layer in the first place.

Social distancing is another decibel attenuation process. So is outdoors with wind or with very high ventilation rates - the air changes quickly shorten the half-life time of a viral load expelled into the air that could potentially reach your nose and mouth.

The combination of masks, even simple ones, distancing, and avoiding indoor crowds, add up to a lot of decibels. 30 decibels is only 1 in 1000 viruses that can get through. 40 decibels, 1 in 10,000. 60 decibels is 1 in 1 million. 90 decibels is 1 in 1 billion.

Even a reduction by a factor of 1000 is enough to halt the chain reaction spread by bringing the number that one infected and contagious person can spread it to, to a number somewhat smaller than 1.

It will still spread, but it no longer has a case explosion that progresses exponentially like a nuclear weapon undergoing prompt neutron criticality. You have reduced the number of new plutonium atoms struck by neutrons that also undergo fission - um - new uninfected victims getting viruses and becoming infected and spreading them to more - to a rate where it peters out.

He won’t be hung, but may be cancelled.

I’m running into some like that. It’s hard to reason with them.

Did you see articles posted in the bacteria found on children’s masks?  It is dreadful.

http://forums.delphiforums.com/opinionpolls/messages/4851/1

$1,661.87 in cats (ROCKETMAN_S) said...

And often totally unprepared for other things - like ransomware when you are running one of the most important pipelines in the US that supplies nearly all the gasoline to the East Coast, and some bunch encrypts all the files everywhere needed to function.

That should be true of any virus/malware that infects a network such that it cannot function properly... regardless of whether ransomware or not.

If you have a recent CD or DVD image of the basic operating system and all programs required to operate that business/factory, you can usually turn up a new machine in 30 minutes. And... if you have all the data automatically backed up into a cloud... then it shouldn't take too much time to entirely rebuild the entire network and get it back up and running. (Several hours max.) Even if you only have one CD/DVD in Atlanta, but need copies in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, DC, Nashville, Norfolk, Charleston and Miami, burning a dozen new copies doesn't take that long at all. Then you schedule flights from Atlanta to each of those destinations and you should be back up and running within 15 ~ 20 hours (worst case... next day)!

Regardless of whether it's ransomware or other malware, one needs to discover how it got on to the system in the first place. How did it circumvent current security measures. For example, if somebody brought it in on a memory stick with the malware on it, then weren't the machines set up to only allow authorized USB devices to be inserted? If they were, then somebody had to have access to an authorized device. That would mean they had inside help and/or lax security concerning the authorized device.

But that gets into forensics which takes time. But the need to get the system back up and running is of utmost importance. So if they have enough spare disks to swap out the infected disks with new disks and re-image them, that's the quickest way to preserve everything and get back up and running again. It's a lot cheaper to swap out a disk than the entire machine.

$1,661.87 in cats (ROCKETMAN_S) said...

I still think that they need to track down whoever masterminded that, even though they did manage to hack back a good part of the bitcoins - grab him, and then give him a good old fashioned Wild West style public hanging - but in the 21st century, hang him on camera and post it everywhere as a warning to others, much like the legend of Vladimir the Impaler, who also left particularly gruesome and stark warnings to his enemies of what happens to those who might dare think to cross him.

Well, lynching is a bit outdated and until his identity can be discovered, we won't know whether he/she is an American citizen or not. If they're not American and currently reside abroad, then getting extradition paperwork ready might take a while as well.

Just look at Snowden as an example, even though we know he's an American, because he's abroad, we still cannot get to him.

FWIW