outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

dude, that's a nightmare.

more silver linings:

Fewer babies being born premature

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/fewer-babies-are-being-born-premature-during-covid-19-1.5056815

A couple theories floated:
lower stress & more balanced lifestyle lead to full-term
less exposure to viral infections that may cause early delivery

Lower stress?

don't want to speak for Al but while the virus is stressful and other stuff in the world is stressful, as a parent, the elimination of the day-to-day scramble from sun up to sundown - and as a non-parent, just the elimination of all the different places i am supposed to be, and all the running between those places - has relieved a lot of the stress i didn't necessarily know i was feeling ... or maybe i knew it but didn't really know how to get rid of it.

not having anywhere to go/be and working from home has definitely given me a more balanced feeling in my life, even as the bullshit rages outside my home.

maybe that's what that means?

Thanks for posting that article JiC.
The decrease in premature births is mindblowing. I'm definitely dubious about claims of lower stress in anyone with at least one existing child!
It highlights how much we don't know about what causes labour to start and how we can't really study it by normal means.

lower air pollution early in lockdown has also been posited. lack of commute would be a fairly common factor but not sure what that tells us.
pregnant friends have been anxious about logistics e.g. partners not being allowed or limited at scans or the birth, childcare of existing child etc

i used to get pretty regular shoulder pain, neck pain, and migrane-like headaches that would flatten me for the day. this would happen maybe once a month, sometimes twice. now, working from home, trying to deal with two young children, without a standing desk, hunched over my laptop... i am pain and migrane-free. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

really highly recommend this article if you’ve been curious at all about the differing philosophies, especially early on, when it comes to off-label treatments in COVID. have had so many of these conversations irl and on twitter over the past few months

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/magazine/covid-drug-wars-doctors.html#click=https://t.co/hn6Jj18RaV

don't want to speak for Al but while the virus is stressful and other stuff in the world is stressful, as a parent, the elimination of the day-to-day scramble from sun up to sundown - and as a non-parent, just the elimination of all the different places i am supposed to be, and all the running between those places - has relieved a lot of the stress i didn't necessarily know i was feeling ... or maybe i knew it but didn't really know how to get rid of it.

totally! one thing my wife and I used to complain about before this was how our days were just micromanaged down to the minute, with an hourlong commute to work and bus pickups and day care drop offs and a long bedtime routine, when it came down to it we had basically half an hour to 'socialize' with our kids and one hour to relax at the end of the day, any more than that and you're not getting a good night's sleep. COVID-19 has legitimately added about 2 hours to our day and it's been nice!! not worth it of course but still!

That WaPo article is fascinating, and hopeful, if true.

hey cool, masks work really well, except for bandanas, which do almost nothing, and ski bro gaiter-style neck things, which are worse than no mask at all?!

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/07/sciadv.abd3083/tab-pdf

I don't know how people are wearing those gaiters in summer.

I like their method.

It has however been criticized for sloppiness in conflating fabric types, and for blurring some important distinctions between test subjects. Biologist Emily Willingham writes:

PSA: You might see headlines about a study that is purported to have assessed different types of masks and particularly found those neck gaiters to be "worse than nothing." So, that's not what the study found or even truly examined.

This study [linked in the first comment] was published in a journal called "Science Advances." Its real purpose is to illustrate the application of a pretty straightforward way of measuring droplet transmission through masks made of different materials--it's "proof-of-concept" that their setup for doing this works.

It is not, however, proof of anything else. Here's why.

They tested their process on 12 masks. For each mask, one person--the same person throughout--put the mask on and said a sentence. For each mask, this (same) person did this 10 times.

For a subset of three of these masks, the authors added in three more people, so they also have data for transmission averaged across four people (including that one person they started with) for three masks types: surgical, one type of cotton mask, and bandana.

They averaged the 10 test results for that one person and presented the results in a graph. That graph does *not* show that this one person's results for a gaiter were worse than "wearing nothing." The standard deviations overlap, so for this single person wearing this single kind of gaiter and saying the same sentence 10 times, it's about the same as if *this person* were wearing nothing.

One catch among many: They also show how this person and the other three people transmit while wearing nothing. Turns out, the person they chose for testing all 12 masks is a Loud Talker or a Big Spitter or something, because the curve for that person is really, really different (higher) than for the other three people, whose curves cluster together. So, the one person who did all the mask testing for the 12 masks, saying the same sentence 10 times running, per mask, with only a sip of water in between, is also a Big Spittin' Loud Talker. Probably the PI [academic scientist joke]. This guy didn't even *himself* transmit the same on different days.

Another catch: when you look at how the four people transmitted in each of the masks, there's no clear pattern for any of them. Some of them transmit more through one kind of mask than another. Sometimes, one of them transmits more than another through the same mask and other times, it reverses. Regardless, transmission in these comparisons was ****always reduced**** with a mask on.

Yet another: When the values for all of this are log transformed, which removes some of the chaos from the data, the gaiter they used and "nothing" are almost identical. All the cotton stuff is pretty similar in performance. The only mask that really stands out as having a much bigger transmission inhibition effect is the N95. Which we knew. The other masks all do *something*, and none of them is "worse than nothing."

Finally, the authors are extremely opaque about the materials in these masks. They call the gaiter a "fleece," but it's not what regular folks probably consider "fleece." From the picture, which is small, making the fabric difficult to discern, it looks like a single-layer shiny stretch fabric gaiter. The same applies for the other masks: it's not clear what the fabric is. There's one that they call "knitted" that is actually, I think, "knit" rather than something you made with knitting needles and yarn.

At any rate, the masks are all singular examples, each the same mask used for the 10 tests in the one person who was the test subject. There is no information about whether the testing was standardized in some way, such as fit of the mask to the face, etc., or readjustment after each sip of water between the tests. One reason for that is likely that this study was not intended to test *these masks* or *these materials* per se but to demonstrate that this process could work to measure droplet transmission.

A study designed to genuinely compare masks and materials would have included far more participants, a standardized approach to donning the mask, probably longer breaks in between tests and water sips, and more detail (or, really, any detail) about the masks themselves. The authors overreach, I think (and others agree) in drawing *any* conclusions about broad categories of masks based on this work.

All of which is to say, this study likely shouldn't change much about what you're doing unless, of course, you're planning to set up a "low-cost" and "simple optical measurement" process to test masks.

Of course I have no idea who's right but it may not be as simple as "bandanas are useless" or "gaiters are worse than nothing." I know everyone wants simple actionable guidance (and science reporting wants to feed that desire).

One catch among many: They also show how this person and the other three people transmit while wearing nothing. Turns out, the person they chose for testing all 12 masks is a Loud Talker or a Big Spitter or something, because the curve for that person is really, really different (higher) than for the other three people, whose curves cluster together.

Another catch: when you look at how the four people transmitted in each of the masks, there's no clear pattern for any of them.

Yet another: When the values for all of this are log transformed, which removes some of the chaos from the data, the gaiter they used and "nothing" are almost identical.

Finally, the authors are extremely opaque about the materials in these masks. They call the gaiter a "fleece," but it's not what regular folks probably consider "fleece." From the picture, which is small, making the fabric difficult to discern, it looks like a single-layer shiny stretch fabric gaiter.

i popped into a shop (a small co-op) on the main road earlier this morning and nobody (except me) had masks on. it might just be that it was the kind of shop people pop into on their way past (as opposed my usual sainsbury local in the back streets which is more of a destination)

corner shops are like 25% masking up ime

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-reports-record-numerb-covid-19-hospitalizations-n1236286

CNN headline I saw: Florida reports lowest daily increase in cases since June. It's still going up, just not as fast. Mission Accomplished!

Florida reports lowest daily increase in cases since June. It's still going up, just not as fast. that stat juking still needs time to ramp up imo

I'm all for us tripping our way out of this, but this is a pretty wild idea.

You know, secretly drug the populace into submission - what could go wrong?!

i am fairly certain there have been multiple Batman plots based on that idea

xpost sales of Metal Machine Music will go through the roof

Can anyone in the UK recommend a mask for people with big faces? I have a big head. A very big nose too. I can never find a mask that stretches from nose to chin properly. Any recommendations?

(The best mask I have is the one I sewed myself, but I don’t have a sewing machine so it’s a hassle to make them.)

this is my favorite. https://propercloth.com/products/the-everyday-mask-991.html.

i have backups that i wear if it's being washed or whatever, and i don't particularly like the way this one looks, but it fits me so much better than any of the others (i have a massive head apparently). it's expensive. they ship to the UK although i dread to think of the price. last resort for you probably.

I have a cloth mask that ties behind the head with 2 straps. It's a bit harder to put on and off, but I don't like having elastic bands putting pressure on the backs of my ears. Of course I always wear it when going inside shops or anywhere, but walking around, especially early in the morning or late at night when not many people are out, I usually keep it around my neck, so I can quickly pull it back up over my face if I see someone coming towards me on the sidewalk. Once I was a bit slow in reacting, and someone stepped off the sidewalk to pass me, and I was mask-shamed, by them muttering under their breath. Fair enough, I deserved it. Now I am vigilant. I notice a lot of people seem to follow the same protocol, because I see them quickly reaching to pull up their mask when they see me coming.

I wear a size 7 3/4 fitted hat (pretty large) and the disposables plus an earsaver are the most comfortable for me.

I "sewed" the earsaver out of a strip of nylon and two buttons.

Like this
https://sewing.patternreview.com/images/thumbnails/pattern/163744/photo1.jpg

Those propercloth ones look nice - elastic bands around the back of the head are nicer (to me) than the ones that go around your ears.

I'd like a nicer, more breathable mask, but it's hard to justify the cost of paying that much for a mask vs. $0.50 in bulk for the disposables, which is arguably safer anyway

NSW is playing whack-a-mole with cases in schools popping up all over the place, leading to mass isolation on student bodies and faculty. If NSW goes back into lockdown it will probably be cause of school outbreaks.

Also the case profile in Victoria, where our big outbreak is and where I am in lockdown skews very young

The Victorian government has just released data on Covid-19 cases by age group: pic.twitter.com/RZU1jFRZVG

— Melissa Davey (@MelissaLDavey) August 11, 2020

None of this looks great for reopening schools elsewhere

Russia has just registered the first COVID-19 vaccine, though there is a huge amount of scepticism as to how many shortcuts might have been taken in getting it out.

In theory, available to the public in January.

It's been approved before the completion of clinical trials. What happens if those trials conclude that the vaccine is either ineffective or unsafe?

This is of marginal interest but it looks like deaths in the home have gone up in Scotland (where there is more data to play with, in itself a question as to what else could be missing from English data).

Yes, that's what I meant, apologies if I wasn't clear.

The displacement of cardiovascular deaths seems to have reduced in a way that hasn't (yet) happened for cancer.

This plot maybe shows it even more clearly: pic.twitter.com/8Nco2yeWiv

— Colin Angus (@VictimOfMaths) August 5, 2020

First new cases in 102 days in New Zealand tonight, all in the same family in Auckland. Also a care home in Christchurch has gone into isolation due to an outbreak of "respiratory illness"

Russia has just registered the first COVID-19 vaccine, though there is a huge amount of scepticism as to how many shortcuts might have been taken in getting it out.

In Soviet Russia, vaccines test YOU.

This is of marginal interest but it looks like deaths in the home have gone up in Scotland

Seems like the overall numbers for cancer deaths align with the 5 year average but the location has moved, meaning (presumably) either more people are being sent home to die from it or are simply not being admitted to hospital.
Perhaps in the current climate people are less likely to phone an ambulance?
With many cancer screening and treatment programmes suspended we may still see a rise in cancer deaths in the coming months/years.

Also people are just afraid to go to a hospital or to the doctors. It's a disaster in the making.

Will read this later

if you're interested in how national Coronavirus responses integrate with political systems, this is really good: https://t.co/6JjDteVQnO

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) August 11, 2020

xp, FWIW, in the US, deaths of children are lower this year than last. less travel, less cars on the road, etc. i assume the same thing has happened in the UK.

Peter Hessler is fantastic, only a little way through that piece and now I have to start work but I’m looking forward to the rest.

xpost I *think* I saw somewhere that road accidents are down but deaths are ... up?

yes, I saw that too. i think speeding is assumed to be the explanation.

The few times I've ventured out on the highways there have been at least one or two cars passing by at 90+mph when the flow of traffic was 65-70mph.

The Hessler piece is great.

I always thought it was going to be some combination of the climate emergency and peak oil that was going to doom faith in classic corvettes-n-beer liberal democracies but this pandemic has really shot from the back of the pack.

pre-covid FDA report on drugs and vaccines that have failed phase 3 trials. seems like it's rare but it happens.

https://www.fda.gov/media/102332/download

4 new cases in NZ after 100+ days of 0. they are talking about it coming in on freight, which is worrying.

Occam's Razor indicates it probably came in from a person.

The 1976 flu vaccine and attempted mass inoculation debacle, the one that in a lot of ways really set the anti-vac movement in motion, how far along in the testing process did that vaccine make it before they gave the go ahead?