There's pretty good evidence that a combination of airborne precautions -- running the total air volume through a HEPA filter every 600 seconds or less -- and fitted (= has a gasket, practically) N95 or better masks, continuously worn, will prevent spread. Either precaution individually will not. P100, if absolutely everyone is in them and stays in them, won't suffice by itself to prevent spread, either; eyes are a significant route of transmission. So it becomes a combination of masks and goggles if you're trying to avoid being infected on what you personally can do, and it's frustrating that this is not generally recognized.
I do not believe the combination of filtration and masking will work in practice in any habitual environment because people will not do the continuous part of "continuously worn". Even leaving aside smokers, putting a mask on and leaving it on for eight mortal hours in an office gets you dehydrated and hungry.
In terms of political stability, I think you've got to abstract a stick.
Representative democracies work, to the extent that they work, on a willingness to lose among the wealthy and powerful. You have to accept the result of the vote and work with sincere energy and skill to enact it even if it wasn't what you wanted (or leave public life). If you're not in public life, you have to accept that you don't always get what you want, that the civil power can tell you want to do, that paying taxes is a duty of citizenship, and that your vote isn't better than anyone else's. Once you lose that, the system fails. We lost that no later than back in the 70s over the decision to keep the status quo rather than accept fundamental change in response to oil dependency. (And probably earlier; too much of the population could not accept civil rights.)
Which is the problem we've still got, two generations later; the people with relative advantage won't give it up for anything. Global mass extinction? increasingly probable human extinction? Sure, fine, but I'm still the richest.
no subject
There's pretty good evidence that a combination of airborne precautions -- running the total air volume through a HEPA filter every 600 seconds or less -- and fitted (= has a gasket, practically) N95 or better masks, continuously worn, will prevent spread. Either precaution individually will not. P100, if absolutely everyone is in them and stays in them, won't suffice by itself to prevent spread, either; eyes are a significant route of transmission. So it becomes a combination of masks and goggles if you're trying to avoid being infected on what you personally can do, and it's frustrating that this is not generally recognized.
I do not believe the combination of filtration and masking will work in practice in any habitual environment because people will not do the continuous part of "continuously worn". Even leaving aside smokers, putting a mask on and leaving it on for eight mortal hours in an office gets you dehydrated and hungry.
In terms of political stability, I think you've got to abstract a stick.
Representative democracies work, to the extent that they work, on a willingness to lose among the wealthy and powerful. You have to accept the result of the vote and work with sincere energy and skill to enact it even if it wasn't what you wanted (or leave public life). If you're not in public life, you have to accept that you don't always get what you want, that the civil power can tell you want to do, that paying taxes is a duty of citizenship, and that your vote isn't better than anyone else's. Once you lose that, the system fails. We lost that no later than back in the 70s over the decision to keep the status quo rather than accept fundamental change in response to oil dependency. (And probably earlier; too much of the population could not accept civil rights.)
Which is the problem we've still got, two generations later; the people with relative advantage won't give it up for anything. Global mass extinction? increasingly probable human extinction? Sure, fine, but I'm still the richest.
Wading through blood is becoming a positive duty.