Jonathan Pie isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I find even if I disagree with his politics, I generally find he's funny.

This is one of his videos that is half political commentary, half public service video.

As this is the non-political thread, skip to 2:00 and watch to the end to get to the clearest explanation and rationale why we should be wearing masks that I've seen
(Watch from the start of you don't mind a bit of politics)

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CDB8Del...d=ozpdwo5tsoyv

I'm not asking for the raw data to be precisely recorded in real time, and I'm not arguing that the death counts are being falsely inflated. I don't believe that. I'm simply asking for the reporting to provide the appropriate context.

It is not accurate to state that Texas had 174 Covid deaths in one day, when none of those deaths actually occurred during the past week and at that given point, the CDC data only showed 64 deaths in the previous 2 weeks. With testing numbers, we understand that a positive test reported yesterday bakes in a period of time for someone to actually be infected, get tested and get the result. No one believes a positive reported today means the person was infected yesterday.

With death numbers, it's not that simple. If you report that 174 people died yesterday, then that's what the numbers should show. It's not being reported in a way that suggests any kind of lag - certainly not to the point where the majority of the deaths may have occurred over a week earlier.

Basically parents wanting kids to go back to school while acknowledging the risks. Gwinnett county has upper tier schools and higher SAT/ACT results in the GA.

It's tough situation for sure but think a reasonable answer is (1) combination of virtual and in-person as in kids rotating, enforce masks & social distancing, required temperature checks etc. and (2) confirmed cases are stabilizing/decreasing and not rising in the county (as it is right now).

Right now, I would vote for remote learning until it stabilizes again.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/24/us/gw...ols/index.html

This kind of thing is where I get off the bus. There is no scenario under which a LOT more than 70k weren't going to die because of the pandemic.

KSyrup has a point. I think the best answer is the one that has already been mentioned; look at trends not just what happened over a day or two. There's a limit to our data-gathering capabilities but we do get a pretty clear picture when looking at what's happening over weeks and months.

I'm curious what they would say to kids going back to school but teachers remotely teaching :D. Because the teacher risk is something that is generally ignored. Or I guess massive sneeze guards around the front of the room where the teacher teaches? But school districts are losing a ton of money and putting forward furlough days and who's going to pay for it?

I don't think you got my point. What I was saying the the people claiming the death numbers are inflated because of false reporting drive me crazy. Thats it.

Hmm. So lots of my FB feed has been taken over by people posting about various law enforcement offices stating they're not going to enforce governor-mandated public mask requirements because they're unconstitutional and didn't go through the legislative process.

Now, is it just me, or does this open a shit ton of loopholes for mandates the sheriff's office might want to enforce (like, say, curfews) in the future? I'd think a creative defense attorney in the right situation might be able to argue, "Hey, if mandate x is unconstitutional so you didn't enforce it, then mandate y must also be unconstitutional, so what you've just made here is an unlawful arrest."

I'm not an attorney, obviously. Just spit-balling here.

On the other hand, I do fully support the idea that a sheriff's office might choose to softly (or not at all) enforce a mandate because they don't have the manpower to play mask police, and they don't want the 911 lines tied up by people calling in to report that their neighbor wasn't wearing a mask while sunbathing in their back yard.

It just seems sort of stupidly political to go on the record saying you're not going to enforce something. But then again, I'm old enough to remember when the idea of a President just mandating shit instead of pushing legislation was considered controversial.

I just love how everyone is a constitutional lawyer. My understanding is that since Jacobson vs. Massachusetts (which gave local governments the right to force vaccinations), it is established law that governments can enforce laws like "masks" laws. Until someone actually gets the Supreme Court to overturn Jacobson anyway. They had full "flu courts" in 1918 to enforce mask ordinances.

I don't see the relevance of the 70k number then, but understood.

As for me, I think they're wrong and deaths are actually understated overall, but I do think it's an understandable objection. There are multiple categories of deaths in both directions which don't fit neatly into 'COVID' or 'not-COVID'. There's no clean, obvious way to definitively account for the number of deaths, and in that situation people's biases and uncertainties are going to play a bigger role in what they think.

I agree that a caveat that some deaths reported are lagging should be more of a part f coverage. At least here, that does happen when big adjustments are made. I specifically remember a day when NJ added a large number of past deaths and that was noted in reports.

Where I object is the idea presented in the chart that deaths are much lower than are being reported. We don't know that, and won't be able to verify that until later when all the deaths for a particular day are reported and counted. I think the original cited article, though not you, is trying to argue that deaths are much lower than the reported number. That's probably not right, and definitely not provable at this point.

FWIW it sounds like some of y'alls concerns about the death numbers might be best addressed by tracking 'excess deaths'? This article someone may have linked to earlier is still updated relatively regularly, lots of good stuff to chew on, and it says it's 'adjusted for lag' though looking at the charts that appears to mean that accurate numbers are lagging two weeks behind:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...h-toll-us.html

It's important to realize that deaths data is being reported two different ways:

1) by date reported - this is a mixed bag. It is inaccurate in terms of the time-table, but data trends tend to show up more quickly with this method. While the deaths they report aren't necessarily happening at one time, they are happening within a reasonably consistent period - one that's in the past, but they happened within a block of time. The exact numbers are inaccurate, but this is the quickest way to spot trends, at that's pretty important. Just don't rely on this for precise information, nor try to draw conclusions from short trends. It's also important to realize that the exact numbers usually don't wind up all that far off of what the deaths-by-date-of-death turn out to be. They aren't exact, but it's been pretty consistently evening out in the long term.

2) by date of death - this is what you'll get with state department of health data, most of the time, and from the CDC. These will be accurate by when people died, so they will tell the most accurate tale. However, that accuracy comes with a severe lag - pretty much always at least a week, and in some cases close to a month (in NW Arkansas, the lag for recent deaths reported was 25 days). This will also cause the right hand side of every graph to trend downwards. You can see past trends pretty well with this, but current trends will always be undervalued.

Media is usually careful to say which they are using: ie "the largest number of reported deaths on a certain date" or whatever. Not all do that, but from what I've noticed, it's usually the case. The fact that the average media-consumer does not know the difference between the two is a problem, but not necessarily one that is the fault of the media's. Of course, they could spend time in every broadcast or article noting the difference, and arguably should. I think in the current climate, the average person has the duty to stay informed about these things.

I really wish everyone's behavior since schools closed in March reflected the current urgency to get the kids back in school in August.

Worldometers is reporting 148K deaths vs 180K deaths. It's not the exact same time periods though. So approx 21% more in excess deaths. TBH, this doesn't seem too unreasonable with all the confusion in the past 4 months etc.

That helps, but it doesn't really address most of the uncertainty I'm talking about. For example:

** If someone dies in an accident but was diagnosed positive with the virus (either before or after), is that an accident death or a virus death?

** People who don't go to the hospital because they are close to capacity and/or they fear contracting the virus, but die from other conditions such as liver, heart issues, etc. that were treatable. What %, if any, are virus deaths?

** Excess deaths compared to the norm for pneumonia and other respiratory ailments. Again, what % are virus deaths? We know some are due to undiagnosed COVID cases, but how many?

There are many such considerations without even getting into the effects of the various economic restrictions, which are also to some degree at least indirectly caused by the virus. The best information I've seen is that we are undercounting if anything, but we don't really know and it'll be years before we even have an informed estimate.

The other thing is that Gwinnett was not mandating masks. We want our kids to go to school safely, but are not willing to take the steps. I mean, Parkview has like 3,000+ kids (probably same with Berkmar and Brookwood). How do you have safe schools and keep teachers and staff safe with those numbers and discard reasonable safeguards?

They can't.

My wife is a special ed teacher. Whereas a regular teacher can keep social distance, special ed teachers don't have that luxury. I've heard plenty of times where her kids come in physical contact with her or she has to come in contact with them.

FWIW, I went out to 3 different places today.

Got my haircut. Like the previous times, masks required to enter and while getting trimmed. Saw wiping of cc reader and good spacing. However, saw quite a few people entering/exiting the mall without masks.

Went to Best Buy to trade in my old iPad 3 (for $30 gift card). They were well organized, spaced line outside (I had to wait 10 min to get in). They had a desk at the entrance with free masks and sanitizers. At customer service, I saw the employee wipe down the table and cc reader after each customer.

Picked up Chinese for dinner. I arrived, went in and saw 7 other people (6 of them while middle-aged males) without masks waiting for pickup. The restaurant workers had masks on and could see 2 parties dining in and tables spaced apart.

But it pissed me off that the restaurant didn't ask all their guests to wear masks to enter (I get taking them off to eat while dining in). So f*cking simple to put up a sign, buy readily available masks etc. Food was good but I'm not going back anytime soon.

There’s a global pandemic, and across the globe excess deaths are far higher than reported virus deaths.

In the UK at least, deaths were below the 5-year average before Covid, and are back below average again now we are in lull after lockdown

That would be a hell of a coincidence if the vast vast majority of these hundreds of thousands of global excess deaths were not attributable to the only global pandemic in living memory

If you were living in Monaco, Andorra or on some tropical island, you may have a point about sample size and all, but the USA is too large and the data are from too long a period to not make the very reasonable assumptions about the excess of deaths being from hidden COVID-19 infections. As AlexB pointed out, more (smaller) countries are seeing the same trends.

In your example with people deciding not to see a doctor, you can still make a claim that they didn't die from COVID-19, but wouldn't have had this virus not caused them to stay at home and unintentionally decide to die at home from another illness. So if it's not that, it has to be something else that's seriously flying under the radar. Maybe we're all so adapted to global warming and the polluted atmosphere from cars and air planes (amongst others) that we're now unable to cope with fresher air? But that sounds way too out of the box and absurd that it makes more sense than to go with some of your and the hidden COVID-19 cases theories.

Sure I agree with that, but that still doesn't answer the question of how many. Since we know a LOT of deaths are caused by various economic restrictions that have been put in place. This is particularly true in developing countries who don't have the resources to minimize that damage with actions like the CARES act. All we can do right know is make rough informed guesses at how many would have died without those actions versus how many are dead because of them versus how many are dead directly because of the virus versus how many are dead indirectly because of it ...

I definitely agree that most of the these deaths are probably due to COVID and that most of the actions taken are necessary. I'm just saying there is a lot of uncertainty here. That uncertainty has fed a lot of hysteria on both wings of the issue.

India is reporting 50K daily cases, US is 55K+. My guess is it's obviously much more in India and they are going to be in a world of hurt. Having been to India and the density of cities, the huge number of impoverished etc. I don't know how India will control this outbreak.

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/...07-27-20-intl/

These are the type of prisoner of the moment statements that cause the "its a hoax crowd" to latch on.
Hell there have been 4 Flu Global Pandemics in living memory
H1N1 - 2009
H3N2 - '68
H2N2 '58

Thats not counting Aids, or more regionalized things like EBola or SARS that still qualified as Global...

Im not trying to be Pendantic, but also dont fall trap into "this in uncharted waters" it isnt.
Life is fragile. This happens every 20 years or so.
Information is just much more widely (and rapidly) diseminated this time.

I wasn’t alive for the earlier two, so I stand by my definition on those two ;)

Didn’t think that H1N1 was ever declared a pandemic, but googled and I stand corrected

I saw like 23% of Delhi residents have antibodies... No way they haven't had more deaths than the US, but CNN prefers the headlines with America #1 ;)

A Historical Look at Pandemic Flu
(sorry, it was the first page that had all the pandemics on one page)

The death count for COVID-19 in the USA is higher than 2009 (18K) + 1968 (33K) + 1958 (69K) put together. And that's if there were no more deaths after today. So I think it's also glib to say "this is something we do all the time". It's equally true that this is easily the worst pandemic in the USA since 1918.*

*You did mention HIV and I think we can all agree that it's a different kind of beast than this

SI

Considering we still don't have our hands around serology testing, I wouldn't go too far with those numbers.

I'm sure they have more but we can only go on what's reported. I'm /shocked/ that Modi would have poor testing and would try to keep numbers low like, say, other countries we know. It goes without saying that we have more cases than are reported, too - it's still hard to get tests in some places. Though I would guess they have a greater percentage that are unreported than we do, so in that regard I agree with you.

SI

Interesting read on the Wolverines from the Red Dawn team that raised early warnings.

The article doesn't do a good job at detailing the timeline, it implies early Jan but lots of emails it quoted were late Jan/early Feb. Some are even late Feb where honestly the alarm was already blaring so don't think as relevant.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/corona...ry?id=72000727

My Great Aunt died. She was I believe 90 and in a nursing home. Apparently collapsed one day (guess it was a stroke) and when rushed to the hospital they said her lungs were so filled they couldn't believe she was able to do anything. Never really recovered and died.

Weird thing is the nursing home claims they didn't have any cases. Then they tested everyone and came back with 22. Not sure I believe it or how a 90 year old shows no symptoms until they collapse. Sounds like they are covering their ass but who knows.

Yeah, that sounds very fishy.

That's how quickly COVID-19 can spread unnoticed, that's what we have to keep in mind around the elder/weak/obese or any other characteristics that make you more vulnerable.

Four weeks ago one of two nursing homes in Maassluis had 6 cases out of nowhere, becoming 32 cases (17 inhabitants, 15 employees) after second round of testing that happened the next day. Within 10 days 6 of those 17 died, despite the immediate attempt to isolate those infected.

Haven't been tracking Europe much but looks like they will face a second wave too, the severity is unknown. I assume this means they/some parts re-opened too soon or they did not follow social distancing well, similar to the US.

Europe faces down a second coronavirus pandemic wave

The problem is that we've never even finished our first wave. That implies we went down significantly. We went up then plateaued, went down a little bit, and then went up again.

SI

We were at over 2k deaths a day for the high plateau, then for a while were consistently at 300 or less. I think that's more than a big enough drop to say we finished the first wave. .02

I've read a little more, it seems the problem child is Spain and possibly UK.

not wanting to be obtuse or say the general gist isn't reasonable, but the 7 day average was 480 at it's lowest (sunday and mondays were under 300, weekdays still more like 700).

The US is a weird one due to the extreme geografical distances, but many now hard hit states really didn't finish anything. They flattened that curve, but always had community transmission at a decent clip (Texas is a prime example who were always around 800-900 cases a day, on then not that much testing. Which sounds benign, but per capita is about 3-10 times more than the level that other countries lowered it to per capita on then more testing). Which then got an issue, once that simmering 'reservoire' met looser restrictions and less cautious behavior on average.
Countries in Europe 'got away' with the same loosening better because the transmission levels were lower before and also likely due to more precautions still in place, including much better test and trace effectivenes (turnaround times for tests are much better for starters).

But even here it has been creeping up in many countries now. (and sometimes rising by a lot now). I think i mentioned it before, but one key concept here is "critical mass", which comes out of epidemiology originally. It's the same concept that explains how the first few cases didn't immediately snowball and why it being present much earlier doesn't really come as a surprise. It is also the same for the flu, although with a longer trajectory due to the lower infectiousnes (flu cases go up very linear for the longest time, but then accelerate after reaching a certain threshold).

You basically have a few different factors and transmissions really only go way up after they 'align': Behavious, supression measures loosing effectiveness (like with test results taking longer and longer) etc. And the higher the level of transmission, the more law of averages ensures that enough of those go on infecting enough other to accelerate.

Sth a bit different, i went through my old files from uni to catalog them a bit and found this story i used for a paper in a history course: A Mother's Denial, a Daughter's Death - Los Angeles Times

It's scary, how you find the same arguments not just with Covid now, but actually throughout history.

There is no "Europe" in this context, it's every country for itself. Many borders are still softly closed or travelling from country A to B is reason to go in 2 weeks of quarantine.

Opening up isn't the main issue, disobedience and lack of interest to care about others are key. It takes one 20 something year old who partied in the weekend to take out his grandmother and a bunch of her neighbours two weeks later.

Oh for sure.
I am certainly not "everything is fine"...but I just pointed out that it isnt accurate to say the only pandemic in living memory. It gives fuel to the "its a hoax" crowd.

Michigan's state HSAA is basically kicking the can on contact sports this fall. You can start no pad conditioning, but no final decision until the 20th. I think they're hoping the decision is made for them.

Washington has already pushed all fall sports back to the spring and has moved baseball back 2 months to stagger the sports somewhat.

The IHSAA here in Indiana announced this morning that all fall sports were a go. Nothing is being pushed back. Girls' Golf starts Friday, everything else on Monday.

I'm left asking myself, WTF did we gain from cancelling all spring sports' seasons?

Back to over 1400 deaths in a day. Not good.

Kentucky is starting HS football in mid-September with a 9 game season.

Yeah and yesterday was 1300 not trending in the right direction.

Alright, about why can't everyone just freaking wear masks in public when close to others ...

I've been good about wearing masks in my trips to Krogers, Publix. I've worn my mask when I went inside to pickup orders. I've worn mask while getting my haircut, worn masks going into gas station store to get a coke etc.

However, all those times I've taken off my glasses.

Tonight went to daughter's HS graduation (not perfect but thought for the most part well done with social distancing etc.) and wore my glasses & mask walking into the convention center.

My freaking glasses fogged up. I don't know if its me but I can't wear my glasses with the blue cloth mask.

It was every other row, lots of space between families etc. so when we sat down I took off my mask.

Anyone else have this problem and/or solution?

Glasses and masks suck. Can confirm.

Still wear mask, though

SI

Do yours fog up? Anything to help mitigate it?

I do believe that if Congress can't find the right answers on this stimulus bill that things could get really really rough in short order.

Australia looking in dangerous territory again. One state has been basically isolated with closed borders because it is out of control, and we had a total of 721 new cases yesterday, compared to 67 new cases one month ago (mostly returned travelers at that time). Majority of them are coming from that one state (Victoria) but we've had small clusters pop up here and there around my state also.

There's like a sweet spot where the mask is still over your nose but below the bridge of your nose and underneath the rim of the glasses. Even if I have it just right, it's not perfect but unless I'm breathing heavy it's good enough.

I don't wear mine exercising outdoors or it might be a lot more frustrating.

Also, I heard there was some trick where you put soap and water on your lenses as the soap keeps them from fogging but I haven't tried it at all.

SI

I can't wear my glasses when I have a mask on, so basically I take the glasses off when I get in my car.

A piece of medical tape across your nose is supposed to help, but I haven't tried it yet.

So we went to Walmart today to get a pickup order where we got all but 2 things on our list, and even got the elusive toilet paper :) (still limiting one/customer) Went inside to get a couple other things and everybody wearing masks. Very busy inside cause a tropical storm is due here tomorrow. Just glad I won't have to go to Walmart next week, as its Tax-Free Weekend. in SC

For wearing a mask with glasses, you need to commit. Slide the mask up further and slide the glasses slightly down your nose. Rather than fog your glasses your breath vents more toward your forehead. I learned this from my wife, who collaborated with many of her glasses and mask wearing friends to find something that works.

I just spend a bunch of time holding my breath.

I'm damn near blind but wear contacts all the time except for at home. When I went to the eye doctor last week, I couldn't believe how bad it was trying to wear a mask with my glasses. Doctor told me contact prescriptions have skyrocketed because of the mask thing.

My wife's an optician (my daughter also works in eye care), and not only contact sales are up. Glasses sales are way up as well. She recommends "Cat Crap", a waxy substance that you can put on your glasses to reduce fogging. I don't use it, personally. I use a big mask with stiff fabric, so that it is under my glasses. I don't have any issues that way.

The states will still lack the resources of the fed, but I agree with a coordinated approach:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/04/polit...gen/index.html

My high school has a student with coronavirus and is closing for the next two days to be cleaned. The state of Victoria has been suffering a second wave with about 500 cases a day while my state has kept our daily case number around 15 with most of those in Sydney. My city has had very few local cases but this new case will have the school and the city on edge for the next few days.

I thought that I keep seeing that there is extremely limited spread via surfaces. If that is the case, why are places doing extreme cleaning?

Showing the flag/at least doing something

Spread over surfaces is very easy to 'accept' because it'd be so tangible, which is why people fixate on it (not just with SarsCov2). It certainly doesn't hurt and likely prevents the odd infection. Only is a problem if people think cleaning shit actually solves this particular problem (which many do), but likely is really more for show or rather convincing yourself and others of how comitted you are. Not just grand scale like here, but in general (like a supermarket wiping down carts or a restaurant cleaning laminated menus before handing them to you etc, etc). Like said, it is tangible, cleaning the virus away physically, thus putting people at ease because they can grasp the concept much more so than other ways of transmission (especially in countries that have the luxury of largely not having to worry about this before SarsCov2. Way more people would worry about sth someone else touched than sitting in a room with coughing people, much less worrying about sth like asymptomatic spread which you can't grasp at all).

It's like driving a car with no working breaks and fixating on fixing the windscreen wipers. Sure it'll be really good to have that working next time it rains, but not if you think that makes your car safe, brakes be damned.

The cleaning is the easiest way to show that they are doing "something". I always scratched my head at the people in haz-mat suits spraying their disinfectant on roads and sidewalks. To me, it was being done for show. The same with this. When a school shuts down for a clean (they always call it a "deep clean"), parents are more likely to be placated about sending their kids back.

It annoys me when we disinfect our desks between lessons and give the students hand sanitizer when they enter the room and then they rub their itchy/runny nose.

More of a covid issue than a sports issue, but... ugh

Among complaints from Colorado State athletes staffers: Coaches have told players not to report COVID-19 symptoms, threatened players with reduced playing time if they quarantine and claim CSU is altering contact tracing reports to keep players practicing https://t.co/OMjaq7GFsK

— Kevin Lytle (@Kevin_Lytle) August 4, 2020

I'm sure it's only happening at Colorado State /s

SI

Just read Sturgis is still happening. Craziness.

Our Kroger is still struggling to fill our orders. We can no longer order any cleaning supplies, like clorox wipes or spray. Some vegetarian products have gotten hard to come by, like TVP (textured vegetable protein), which is a staple for us. The price of it on Amazon has gone from $3.60 a bag to $17 a bag. Can't find it anywhere locally right now. They tried to sub out Vegan sausage patties for actual sausage patties today. Last time I was in there, they were out of paper towels again. We had to complain about a pickup where they left off almost $80 worth of product that they couldn't fill. Some of it they had, but I'm guessing the person shopping was short and just didn't feel like finding someone who could reach it. It's pretty incredible.

Friend of mine is headed there today. Claims he is going to avoid big crowds... yeah, a biker rally is a great place to avoid big crowds!

That's happened before for us. Though my wife feels comfortable going in to grab one or two things if they leave it off because we do our pickup at 10am and there is almost no one in the Kroger at that time. Amusingly it happened for Box Wine - and when the wife went in the box wine that we ordered was stocked to the brim. On the shelf next to the other box wine we ordered that was filled. Just seemed like the bagger just didn't want to be bothered looking at the next shelf over for reds.

The my youngest son’s school district has voted to go online only for the first four weeks of the year. They have scheduled a meeting in four weeks to see where we are with the numbers.

Other than the general we will clean more and have the kids clean more, we still have not seen a specific plan for how they are going to deal with the kids being back at school. Again, we closed the schools in March and there is still no plan. So frustrating.

A 19 year old kid that played baseball and graduated at the local high school here passed away from Covid complications yesterday.

From Puyallup High, Former Standout Athlete Loses Out to Covid-19

My son's college has now stepped the restrictions for returning again. They have to pass two test before leaving quarantine. This means he will be stuck in his room for 5-7 days, only allowed to go to the bathroom and to the testing sight. They are going to be provided a mni-frig with food and snacks, with regular meals delivered. They also have some kind of on-campus ordering system for other needs.
After quarantine, they will not be allowed to leave campus through September (except to use the hiking tails). There will be no group gatherings in buildings unless coordinate with social distancing. They will only be allowed travel inside the county after September.
My son still wants to go. I worry, but then that is what I do.

Our school board decided to make online mandatory for the first 2 weeks (starting August 26th) then will meet again on September 8th to reassess in-person school starting September 14th. They had originally voted to allow parent choice of either in-person or online starting on the 26th.

COVID-19 indirectly takes another life. Bizarre story.

Rape suspect, freed due to virus, kills accuser

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/08/us/du...rnd/index.html

I thought this was interesting. Basically don't wear neck fleeces, folded bandanas or knitted masks.

Too bad it didn't test my plague doctor's mask.

Saw that story and thought it was interesting, too. Wish they had a little more detail in the story but I'm sure the paper has some.

That said, they link to the paper in the article so you can read for yourself.

Low-cost measurement of facemask efficacy for filtering expelled droplets during speech | Science Advances

I think mechanistic studies like these are going to be a little flawed in that they're black box (in this case, literally) and not literally real world application on how things spread. So it's not perfect but absolutely something to keep in mind. Also, I wish they kept the numbers consistent from the graph to the image of the masks - it's actually kindof hard to decipher which masks correspond to which results on the graph (you have to look at Table 1).

SI

My wife has made several dozen cotton masks. Glad to see they perform well because she spent hours on them.

Interesting. I have been wearing a bandana. Not sure why it would perform worse than a cotton mask since it is cotton itself.

I've got a family friend that enlisted and went to Fort Benning for basic training back at the end of May. Before they started, they were quarantined for two weeks, and COVID ran through the barracks. He got it and recovered, and started basic. But then he caught it again, and it has messed up his lungs, and he's hearing he might be getting discharged.

The "then he caught it again" part is terrifying.

It seems the CNN article got the conclusions wrong on bandanas and knitted masks (though it did correctly point out that cotton masks work very well):


Here is Figure 3 which says that bandanas and knitted masks actually tend to work much better than nothing, but cotton masks work very well:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/cont...3/F3.large.jpg

Sincere question, so please avoid assuming any ulterior motive m'kay

For the 4th time in the past week, I've seen a case (i.e. people I actually know to at least some extent) where one spouse is hospitalized with a Covid diagnosis but everyone else in their house eventually tests negative.
No indication of any odd living arrangements, absences from the household, etc. so I'm assuming normal levels of daily personal contact. In fact, beyond late March/early April (IIRC) I haven't seen a multiple case household involving anyone I know.

Has anyone seen any articles that address how that's could even be a thing, due to the reported significantly contagious nature of covid?

(Yes, I'm trying to find an article or something that address this sorta thing. I just don't know how to word my request in a way that doesn't sound like I'm trying to play gotcha about it. If that was my intention, does anybody here really think I'd bother being coy about it? )

I haven't, but I also know 2 friends in similar situations. I'm not sure it is the tests as opposed to how the virus affects them since they weren't sick and thier SO was very sick.

I have a dumb pet theory that I'm throwing out there but no studies to base it on so it's functionally useless. But I've been wanting to type it out for myself so here it is.

First, we've seen that different conditions make you more or less susceptible to catching the disease. I don't just mean the "pre-existing poor health conditions lead to much worse outcomes" from the medical journal Duh. But the whole "A blood type is much more susceptible to bad outcomes than O blood type" studies due to the ACE2 receptor and the like.
Genes, Blood Type Tied to Risk of Severe COVID-19 – NIH Director's Blog

Combine that with the viral load theory that your initial dose of virus makes for significantly different outcomes. Maybe the sick partner got a full on blast (sneezed on or in close contact for 8+ hours) at work or wherever so that hit them very hard. Whereas the spouse only got a light dose (light respiration but sleep in separate rooms?) from their spouse. The spouse might have had an asymptomatic case. That seems pretty unlikely, especially for 4 cases, though.
The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them

Do the spouses have different blood types or significantly different backgrounds (i.e. less genetic susceptibility to catching COVID)?

I even go back to the very beginning with Rudy Gobert and from what I recall Donovan Mitchell was the only one out of 50 in the Jazz travelling party that tested positive.

I was reading a New Yorker article today that look at the different positive rates and then asymptomatic rates in various mass outbreaks. In one of the prison outbreaks 70% were positive but 96% were asymptomatic. On the hand the Diamond Princess cruise ship only 19% test positive but 46% were asymptomatic. Some interesting theories in the article around vaccine history, exposure to similar virus or other genetic factors.

Thanks for that, cause I really kinda wondered if maybe I was just super lucky or something.

I know there's also indications of whole-household infections (check the average persons in household stats for some of the hotspots) but seeing so many 1-person-only cases in a week's time really had me headscratching a little.

I've read that some people in the general population might have had some immunity to Covid based on prior exposure to other things. That could explain both people testing negative despite being exposed, and people who test positive and show no or mild symptoms.

There was an Academic paper posted last month that theorized that because of this, the % of infections in an area that cause the spread to slow down, or get to at least partial herd immunity, may be much lower than we assumed. And in most areas, it seems the infection rate slows down dramatically after a projected 15% or so of the population is infected.

Pre-existing immunity to SARS-CoV-2: the knowns and unknowns | Nature Reviews Immunology

You can see this happening on the state level too. The U.S. national numbers show big numbers, a decrease, than a bigger increase, but that kind of masks the fact that states all went though their own thing. COVID barely got to a bunch of states at all until June and July, and the spread to those places was no doubt slowed by air travel mostly stopping in March. But when they got hit, they got hit pretty hard, like everywhere else in the world when it first showed up, and now a lot of those states have leveled off or are showing declines. There's been some smaller increases now in places in Europe that have opened up, but that should have been expected, and the numbers aren't close to where they were in the "first wave" for almost every localized area that was initially hit hard.

Edit: New York City, just like everywhere else in the U.S., has plenty of anecdotal examples of big parties, bars breaking the rules and losing their licenses, crowds of people, some tourists returning, etc, and their numbers haven't budged a bit. I hope that's based on partial herd immunity in the area and is a product of them being hit SO hard in a short period of time due to their unique characteristics that make any virus spread like wildfire.

I know at least three of the four situations well enough to know that there wasn't any unusual degree of physical separation or anything. Just (relatively) normal family routines/situations/etc.


The blood type thing I have no clue about but the genetics doesn't seem too likely to be very different. At least 2 of the 4 couples are from same/adjoining counties (yeah, insert mountain-folk-genetics joke here), and a third couple are pretty much standard mutts from adjoining states.

So... was looking at case counts for some reason, and noticed that Sweden... seems to have reached herd immunity, at least temporarily. I understand the real question is if you can actual get to immunity from this disease for longer than 12 months or so, but their deaths have dropped to virtually nothing after 2-3 months of a nightmare.

What do we make of this?

Haven't their neighbors death rates dropped to those levels as well, while having far far less deaths so far?

I'm not advocating that Sweden did the right thing, but it does seem they have also reached some kind of infection dropoff if not near endpoint.

Let's wait till the actual season where all infectious respiratory viruses spread much, much (add a few "much") more easily before banking on anything else as the saving grace. Seriously, for all the it "still spreading in Summer" this doesn't mean it isn't currently facing immense natural road blocks just by behaviours migrating outside (and unlike parts of the US their summer is not so scorching people go inside).

Right now the differences between Sweden and say Germany for example are miniscule with regards to overall 'behaviour' (how many people meet how many others in which sort of environments) with some stuff being more of a factor here or there (masks and reduced capacity in germany, way more working from home and generally less crowded work places in Sweden for example). Sweden isn't operating that much closer to "normal" than others overall and their normal isn't as problematic in the first place, as evidenced also by the comparatively small impact that flu season has compared to other countries. (For a plethora of reasons from social norms, workplace behaviour to low levels of pollution and thus weakened lungs). If there was a region that would halt it's spread at a low % and especially in summer, it's the scandinavian countries. That's not necessarily translatable to others, especially come fall.

This theory* might well be true OR might end up holding up about as well as the "kids theory" where it turns out that them not being diagnosed largely was due to circumstances (like schools and social gatherings like youth sports etc not being a thing), not actually because they can't physically catch it.

*Which is just that. For a primer on why this shit is complicated: The Pandemic's Biggest Mystery Is Our Own Immune System - The Atlantic

EDIT: As to the original question: it becomes more and more clear this spreads more effectively via aerosols than droplets, which is why household transmissions are way less than you'd expect (has been that way all along).

To add: The question isn't even if there is an effect, the question is how much and where does that leave us for the sum total. Assume that Rt under normalcircumstances in season for Influenza is 1,5ish for a bad year (there are multiple viruses and strains that mix and change year to year) and for SarsCov2 in the spring it was about 3. Now, we know that purely voluntary and untargeted change in behaviour along with 'saturation' from (short term) immunity is enough to lower it to sth well under 1 for Influenza making it disapear completely within 3,4 weeks of the peak in winter (bit earlier in the US than Europe btw)
Now, what we already know is that the same is not true for SarsCov2. We do know it continues to at least 'simmer' along in the population, so even along with further behavioural changes (both voluntary and not) it stays right around 1, a bit lower here or higher there.
Now the question is what % of this is caused by behaviours and what by some sort of immunological mechanism ?

Say a region is at or slightly under 1 right now through a mixture of both, will a change in behaviour (not even 2019 level, but maybe 25% less caution, 25% more contacts and more indoors) be offset to the degree it only goes to a bit over 1 or is the end result it being 1,5ish come fall ? Which is still way lower than 3 but also basically the spread speed of a bad Influenza season, only with a much more potent virus.

Now the CDC comes out and says avoid masks and people with breathing valve type masks. Saying that they do not protect others well enough. Just after I bought a bunch of them for us and for the kids for school. In fact, EKU just passed out virtually the same mask to every new kid coming in (theirs didn't even include the carbon filters that mine have).

This is not good to hear.

{edit: but it's still apparently ok, to just use whatever kind of cloth to cover your face, as long as it's covered, no filter, or material restrictions. Which makes almost no sense.}

Breathing valve ones are like a potato cannon for germs. I’ve long been avoiding people wearing those

Yeah, it just seems obvious that is only protecting the wearer, but not good at all for protecting others.

The idea about existing immunity I mentioned above was developed more in another study, which Dr. Fauci had positively chimed in on. Immunity could be developed not only by vaccines, but by previous exposure to other virus, particularly other coronaviruses. This could help explain why children rarely show symptoms, since children typically catch many colds a year, many more than adults.

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/cor...244852012.html

At the start of this, my wife and I joked that, with a now 5 year old, we've already had COVID 18, COVID 17, COVID 16 1/2, COVID 16, and COVID 15 3/4 so maybe that would help.

SI

So did that flu I caught in February increase my immunity?