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Has this thread considered the Danish study which said masks have little benefit? The BMJ shot it down. The curious case of the Danish mask study But the Spectator lapped it up Landmark Danish study finds no significant effect for facemask wearers | The Spectator
The Danish study didn't say masks have little benefit. It did say this (a direct quote from the publication):
Limitation: Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.

Conclusion: The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.
My bold.
 
Just took a look at the world-o-meters tally (16:30 GMT on 3rd December 2020).

fuck me, they're bad, very bad.

65 million plus cases
1.5 million plus dead.

The new cases graph has leveled off, but at a figure in excess of 500k a day ...

Looking at the national totals, as the UK passed 60,000 dead today.

Iran has today joined the 1 million case club (the 14th member, after Poland became the 13th a few days ago)

USA leads the table with over 14.3 cases (and 280,210 deaths).

I didn't have the heart/nerve to look in any greater detail.
 
Can confirm that Western Australia has had no community transmission since April. The State was going to re-open the border to people from NSW and Victoria next week (they currently have to quarantine for 14 days), but this is now under discussion because there was one case of Covid in Sydney this week, from a cleaner in a quarantine hotel who took public transport while infected. So if that causes a cluster, the border will stay shut. The border is open to people from TAS, QLD, ACT and NT though. For now anyway, SA aren't allowed to enter yet.
 
Can confirm that Western Australia has had no community transmission since April. The State was going to re-open the border to people from NSW and Victoria next week (they currently have to quarantine for 14 days), but this is now under discussion because there was one case of Covid in Sydney this week, from a cleaner in a quarantine hotel who took public transport while infected. So if that causes a cluster, the border will stay shut. The border is open to people from TAS, QLD, ACT and NT though. For now anyway, SA aren't allowed to enter yet.

The company I work for is based in Perth, that's where the directors and managers are. It's been great knowing that none of them are gonna turn up unannounced in our queensland office since March. But next week the head honcho is flying over. Que panic, tidying up and people looking for their 'corporate' clothes and enclosed shoes :D
 
A couple of things of note...
  • UK appears to be doing better than EU average at present (in contrast to the first wave)
  • What's happened to Switzerland?
  • There's a bunch of eastern european countries suffering death rates that are substantially worse than what UK had during the first wave.

Screen Shot 2020-12-05 at 15.12.21.jpg
 
A couple of things of note...
  • UK appears to be doing better than EU average at present (in contrast to the first wave)
  • What's happened to Switzerland?
  • There's a bunch of eastern european countries suffering death rates that are substantially worse than what UK had during the first wave.
Explanation for all three of these will partly be how bad the country's first wave was. There will have been a degree of 'harvesting' in the UK and elsewhere during the first wave, and there will also now be a degree of community protection from people with antibodies, which will reduce the R number. Italy, of course, has had it bad both times, but if you zoom in on Italy's figures, the very worst hit places in the first wave like Bergamo aren't as bad this time, while parts of the south that missed the first wave have caught the second.

It is also probable that the virus has become more contagious. Will be interesting to see antibody test results after the second wave - they're likely to show very high levels in places like Czechia.

A mutation may have made COVID-19 more contagious

Because of this mutation, it could well be that people who were resistant to infection when exposed to it in the first wave are vulnerable to it in this one, which helps to explain the patterns of infection in previously affected places.
 
Seems a bit early for that. If the ski resorts are opening up now, then maybe you'd expect to see a spike in a few weeks. But the graph suggests that something started to happen more than a month ago.

As far as I know they relaxed stuff early after the first wave, and were slow to tighten restrictions again, and resistant to many of them, once it was clear they were experiencing rather a large and widespread second wave.

I dont currently have a nice article to explain all this. I have little bits of the jigsaw in articles like these:

June:


Late October:


As for ski resorts, there has been conflict between many European countries like Germany, Italy and France that were keen to shut such things, and some other countries that wanted to keep that stuff going. Switzerlands bad attitude towards pandemic regulations is probably visible in stories about that, eg:

December:


Bern, which imposed no second nationwide lockdown to control the second wave of coronavirus, has refused to enforce closures of ski resorts. As a result skiing has become an unlikely, but bitter, political faultline dividing European countries as they seek a response to the latest phase of the pandemic. Other European leaders have been barely able to contain their contempt for Switzerland’s recalcitrance. Both the French and Italian prime ministers have directly called the president of Switzerland’s governing federal council to demand it fall into line, officials in Bern told the Financial Times. Switzerland’s parliament this week responded with a motion condemning even the limited measures being rolled out to reduce capacity at ski resorts to 80 per cent as too much. Foremost in EU politicians’ minds are the events of February and March, during the first wave of the pandemic, when Alpine resorts became superspreader clusters. That Switzerland, in keeping its resorts open, may become an economic beneficiary from others’ pain is particularly rankling.
 
Because of this mutation, it could well be that people who were resistant to infection when exposed to it in the first wave are vulnerable to it in this one, which helps to explain the patterns of infection in previously affected places.

I disagree, since the G614 version of the virus has been very widespread for a long time. It made up a significant proportion of first wave cases in many places, eg the following charts, where the mutation version you mention is in blue:


Screenshot 2020-12-07 at 12.57.24.png
Screenshot 2020-12-07 at 12.57.46.png
Screenshot 2020-12-07 at 12.57.01.png

And I havent seen any suggestions that the mutation had a negative effect on the immunity picture. eg:

The other good news, says Baric, is that the structure of the spike proteins on the now-dominant G strain make it more vulnerable to being wiped out by vaccine-induced antibodies. That’s true even though the vaccines were all developed to work against the ancestral D strain. And G is probably more vulnerable to antibodies from past infections as well.

from G614 - the coronavirus strain that will challenge vaccines. (misleading clickbait title)

We still dont know enough about the immunity picture, and all manner of possibilities exist including the possibility that immune responses to some of the other human coronaviruses may lead to temporary protections against the pandemic virus. If that was the case and some places had other coronavirus outbreaks in the months leading up to the pandemic, a chunk of their populations could have been protected the first time in a way that has since worn off. I dont bet much on any such possibility actually being the case, just that it remains part of the theoretical picture unless later ruled out through increased knowledge.

I certainly dont keel like I need some additional immunity factor to explain what has happened. Because level and geographical spread of infection in the runup to initial large wave of infections, timing and detail of lockdown, timing of easing of restrictions, quality of infection surveillance, size of care homes and the extent to which they were isolated from he pandemic, and timing of reintroduction of measures to cope with 2n wave, and how strong they are seems mostly quite sufficient to explain what has happened in different places all the way through. And even in regions that were badly affected the first time, we are still only talking about fractions of those populations being infected in the first wave and having immunity as a result. No shortage of people without immunity, and many questions remaining about how long that immunity lasts. This doesn't mean that I think there is no interesting immunity picture that is part of the story, just that it isn't absolutely necessary in order to explain whats happened so far, and when discussed it is easy to give it a more prominent role despite a lack of actual supporting evidence that its made much difference.
 
Well people who volunteer for vaccine / drug trials tend not to be people with allergies and underlying health conditions.

Not strictly true, the trials have to have some of them on for validity from what I've been told. There seem to have been plenty on the trial I am on.

The allergic reactions weren't as severe as anaphylactic reaction, and expect it'll be very hard to know what bit of the vaccine or process might have triggered it.
 
Not strictly true, the trials have to have some of them on for validity from what I've been told. There seem to have been plenty on the trial I am on.

The allergic reactions weren't as severe as anaphylactic reaction, and expect it'll be very hard to know what bit of the vaccine or process might have triggered it.


Yes..I did mention that the solution could be the allergen..
I was watching an expert on RTE today who did say that the trials tended to involve people who are young and quite healthy and that people who have allergies and underlying conditions did not seem to get involved in the trials...for obvious reasons. Its the same reason they are leaving pregnant women out of the vaccine...because they have no reference to what can happen as no pregnant women were involved in trials.

I will be waiting for the Oxford vaccine. I really want to be given a vaccine but I do have a very odd immune system and it has tried to kill me a few times.
 
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