By Bob Tannenhauser
The Upper West Side shows higher COVID-19 positivity rates for zip codes 10023, 10024, 10025, and 10069 than last month, according to the weekly data reported by the NYC Department of Health today. This does not take into account unreported self-tests.
Average 7-Day Positivity Rates
Zip Code 7 Days Ending 7/3 7 Days Ending 6/13
| 10023 | 11.2% | 14.55% |
| 10024 | 7.63% | 11.97% |
| 10025 | 9.06% | 15.56% |
| 10069 | 10.6% | 16.26% |
For New York City, the daily average COVID-19 positivity rate for the seven days ending July 6th was 14.1%, compared to the 7-day daily average ending June 16 of 8.06%. Total average daily cases increased to 3,628 for the seven-day period, up from the seven-day daily average of 2,856. Daily average hospitalizations increased to 71 from 19, and 7-day daily average deaths decreased to 5.
DOH current alert level had been lowered to Medium, when we last reported on June 16, however the city has discontinued its color coded alert system. The CDC alert level is Medium for NYC and Westchester County, and High for Nassau and Suffolk and counties.
Keep masking in stores, subways and buses.
Masks curtail spread, spread enables mutations, mutations give rise to new variants. Direct correlation.
CNN Medical Consultant Dr. Leana Wen: “Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci in personal email to Sylvia Burell (former HHS Secretary under Obama): “Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection. . . . The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you.”
https://www.city-journal.org/the-failed-covid-policy-of-mask-mandates
If you feel safer personally wearing a mask, by all means do so. But I’m not going to continue to constrain my oxygen in order to make others feel better. We have created so much waste in landfills, oceans, public parks and other places with discarded masks that have provided absolutely no statistical benefit. Meanwhile the number of children needing speech therapy has exploded. And I wouldn’t be surprised at all if somewhere down the road there was a significant mysterious uptick in respiratory diseases due to all of us breathing in plastic nanoparticles from surgical masks all day, constraining our oxygen for lengthy periods, etc.
Cherry picking facts to support your desire to not wear a mask is dangerous misinformation. The key information in this comment is that studies show that cloth masks and surgical masks do not protect the wearer from catching airborne illness. We know this. That’s why one should be wearing an N95 or KN95. Again, you can pretend that it’s theatre, and that you can’t breathe, and that children are having social issues (all things you have no scientific “sources” for), because you don’t want to wear a mask and find them uncomfortable. But you don’t need to push your opinions, misguided or not, on others.
No, thank you.
You are welcome to continue doing whatever you like to appease your fears, but I’ve now given up three years of life, had three shots, and HAD COVID (despite wearing the magical face napkin).
Covid is never going away. Never. Never ever. And you’re going to get it, no matter how many masks you wear, or how fearfully you live your life. It’s the fifth endemic coronavirus. We will all get Covid, multiple times in our lives. The good news is: if you’re vaccinated, you’ll be fine. Even if you’re elderly, if you’re vaccinated with a mere two doses, you have the risk of an unvaccinated teenager.
The only other things you can do to further minimize your risk: lose weight, and catch Covid while you’re as young and healthy as possible.
So sure, you can continue living in fear. For the rest of us, it’s time to move on now.
(and before you say something snarky: yes, I’m an actual expert.)
Even if you are unvaccinated and you get it the odds are that you will be fine..just like the flu.
There’s a middle ground between living in fear and moving on. I partake in all my pre-Covid activities but have no problem popping on a mask if I’m in a store. Doesn’t change the experience so what’s the big deal? I’m sure you’re definitely an expert if you refer to masks as “magical face napkins.”
Quite the assumption you are making that one who masks “lives in fear.” I don’t live in fear while wearing masks indoors, I simply don’t want to get sick. I had Covid in Jan 2021, completely unvaccinated, I was very ill for three weeks and had long haul symptoms affecting my sense of smell until just recently. And I am a very healthy and active 33 year old. It shouldn’t have affected me like that, but it did.
Some of us just don’t want to get sick because we don’t want to play Russian Roulette. Also, I don’t want to miss out on work. Really can’t afford it at the present moment. So, I wear a mask indoors, and I don’t judge others in the process.
You’re wrong. Go read about what’s happening with BA.5. Facts and science matter.
What precautions would you recommend if you’re going to meet someone who’s 80 or older?
“yes, I’m an actual expert”
Yes, “magical face napkin” definitely conveys expertise and years of cultivated judgment.
Wearing a mask in indoor public spaces to reduce transmission and spare your neighbor isn’t living in fear, and it’s exhausting to hear entitled elderly children throwing such temper tantrums over the idea of such a modest concession to the idea that we live in a society.
Please stop spreading harmful misinformation. Although vaccines help tremendously, it is still possible to get seriously ill and have long-term health impacts from Covid. It is a novel virus we are still learning more about, but the data already show how damaging it can be.
(and yes, I’m an actual expert too.)
I see people wearing the flimsy cloth and surgical masks. Will they help with BA, 5 which is vastly more transmissible? I doubt it. Theatre.
Do you mind sharing your credentials. you are an expert in infectious disease?
You don’t have to lose any more years of your life! Wearing a mask actually helps you live your life. As an example: over the past 13 months, I have made 4 trips to Europe for a total of 2 months – did everything I wanted to do but just took some common sense precautions like masks when indoors, social distancing and eating outside. No worries, no covid and had a nice time. Everything doesn’t have to be so binary – life is too short to be annoyed all the time 🙂
If you’re an expert, you should know better, viz, vaccines are to protect you, and face masks are to protect others.
This is the problem with ‘equity’. If we constantly require 100% of people to be on board before moving forward, we’ll never move forward.
See so many young people unmasked in elevators when we’re so close up. Extraordinarily inconsiderate of the disabled and elderly.
I’ll never understand how masking is a hardship
Please read carefully on the NYC DOH covid site, There was inadequate testing for area codes 10024 & 10023 which means that the data is not truly accurate. Yes, the rate of positivity is up, but it’s the hospitalizations that is the indicator of how well we are dealing with this, and that seems to somewhat up in Manhattan but because of the holiday weekend, reporting seems to be delayed. As far as masking, I’ve been on buses and trains, and the compliance rate is dwindling fast.
Masking doesn’t seem difficult or painful and doesn’t, to me, at least, feel like “giving up my life” or “living in fear”. I’m grateful that masks are so inexpensive now, so easily obtainable, and more comfortable than in the early months of the Pandemic. I’m protecting myself and others — even if just a small amount — with almost no effort.
Correct me if I’m wrong:
You self-test at home, and you’re negative. You do nothing, you’re fine.
You self-test at home, and you’re positive. You run to a test tent/office and get a PCR test, to confirm.
If this process is common, then of course the percentage of positives will go up.
Perhaps the better metric is hospitalizations?
Masking when it’s about 105 degrees down on the subway platform is 100% a hardship.
More seriously, it interferes with video surveillance and facial recognition softwares that help law enforcement capture offenders
COVID restrictions are an opening salvo to a feudal society. First sacrifices for COVID, then for climate change by restricting people’s mobility and living choices and comfort. There’s a real risk of a slippery slope to perpetual sacrifice. I understand concerns about public health and earlier versions of COVID were worse than the common cold, but there are real civil liberties concerns here. First it was COVID, next the bike lobby wants us to sacrifice for the climate which will never meaningfully be cured in our lifetimes.
Yeah, can you believe these guys? After the bike lobby spread black plague throughout Europe in the 1300s, made people sleep in the London subway for 4 years and ration butter during WWII, now 80 years later they want to build another bike lane and forced Fauci to get you vaccinated (like kids did dozens times before school age)? I mean, talk about perpetual sacrifice, right? Makes me think what they’ll ask of our kids and grandkids in their lifetimes – maybe go to Mars? Slippery slope…