Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

Post Reply New Topic

I lived in Hong Kong during the first SARS outbreak and mask-wearing was very common.
It was not a government requirement, it was just generally accepted as good practice to protect oneself in public places.
There's certainly a difference between the East Asians and western nations with regard to self-directed mask wearing.

I would say there was also a much heightened awareness of potential disease spread - probably because everyone was living in densely-packed cities, so they've learnt to be so much more careful.

Maybe they're not calling every death of someone infected with covid, a covid death this second time around.

In other words people who happen to be infected with covid can die of other things.

^ That also is a YouTube video.

When mask wearing started becoming a thing in Europe and North America, the claim was that most everyone in Asia had already been wearing facemasks for years. Hundreds of hours of footage of Asian city walkthroughs proves otherwise.


For evidence that most in Tokyo do now wear masks post covid, that is also available:

People of East Asian descent certainly wore masks starting in 2002 in NYC.....it was not an uncommon thing to see—though the majority didn’t wear them.

Went to town today. I swam a mile at the YMCA and ate at a sit down dining restaurant. It might be the last time for several months because the weather is turning colder. We only eat at restaurants with outdoor seating. I was surprised to find N95 face mask for sale at Lowes Building Supply Store. They were in the Paint aisle. That is a good sign.

Generally the boxes will say "not for medical use". But in my humble opinion, these will provide very good protection from the coronavirus.

4 Reasons Why WHO Won’t Admit Coronavirus Is Airborne

1. Historical reasons
Frustrated that health authorities like WHO and CDC were downplaying the risk of airborne transmission, some of the scientists who signed the open letter. "These organizations have been flat-out refusing to consider if aerosol transmission is important, which leaves people unprotected." According to aerosol researcher Jose-Luis Jimenez, "Aerosol transmission is the main way this virus spreads: the only question if it's 70%, 80%, or 90%. Ballistic droplets are a negligible way to spread the virus. They only spread if someone coughs or sneezes on you. They drop to the ground, whereas aerosols linger." Jimenez said the belief that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is mainly spread via droplets over short distances is a myth. That idea stems from a 1910 book by pioneering public health researcher Charles Chapin, The Sources and Modes of Infection, which led to a bias in how people assume that viruses are transmitted.

2. Sociopolitical factors
But the idea that the advice provided by authorities is purely based on science alone is a little naive, because the decisions made to protect public health are also influenced by social and political factors. Politics plays a part because WHO is made up of almost 200 member states that provide funding. To avoid alienating the various stakeholders, WHO has to use diplomacy when making politically sensitive decisions, which can come into conflict with what may be the best course of action from a scientific perspective. If WHO made an official declaration that 'Coronavirus is airborne' it could create panic, for example, or affect whether the public would be less likely to comply with guidelines like 'wear a mask'. In some societies, changing your mind is also perceived as a lack of confidence and could cause a loss of trust in WHO, which might in turn lead to less compliance for health interventions such as mask wearing.

3. Scientific evidence
While CDC has acknowledged airborne transmission, we shouldn't praise it too soon. The agency says it "continues to believe, based on current science, that people are more likely to become infected the longer and closer they are to a person with COVID-19." But the fact the virus is more likely to be transmitted when someone is near an infected individual was never a point of contention.

4. Bureaucratic inertia
WHO must stop being a slow-moving bureaucracy. One of the big differences between a scientist and a politician is how they respond to new information. A 'good' politician will try not to admit being wrong because if makes them look weak to political opponents and changes in policy are perceived as a U-turn by the public. A good scientist, on the other hand, will change their views when fresh results contradict previous data. Organizations like WHO must act more like scientists. Public health authorities must be faster and more flexible, giving recommendations that reflect the fact we now better understand how Coronavirus is transmitted.

PM announces four-week England lockdown

Canada on track to see 8,000 new COVID cases a day if contacts not cut by 25%

Some positive news ...

JAB HOPE GPs preparing to give Covid vaccine ‘to over 85s and NHS staff next month’

Terri-Ann Williams, Digital Health & Fitness Reporter
3 Nov 2020, 16:39Updated: 3 Nov 2020, 16:59

... According to Pulse Today, a magazine for GPs, two vaccines are currently being prepared for release.

One of the jabs is said to require two doses, while another will need to be stored at minus 70 degrees.

But it's not just NHS staff and the elderly that will get the jab, it has also been reported that teams will also be delivering the jab to care homes.

It is not yet clear if the vaccines will be rolled out to certain trusts, or if this will be on a local authority basis.

GPs will receive a "directed enhanced service" (DES) from next week which sets out how they deliver a service above their usual contract.

It has been told the DES on a potential Covid vaccine rollout is "imminent, potentially by next week".

Last week it was reported that the Oxford University jab produces a "strong immune response" in elderly participants.

Experts said information from an earlier stage of the jab trial suggests "similar" immune response among younger and older adults.

It raises fresh hopes that the Oxford University and AstraZeneca vaccine candidate will protect all sectors of society

Read in Full ...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13098129/ ... ext-month/

The COVID Question Test

Because demand perpetually outstrips supply, there needs to be a way to discriminate between people who likely have COVID from those who do not. To that end, a team of scientists led by Saar Shoer and Eran Segal published a study in the new journal Med that determined that the answers to nine simple questions can predict with 74% accuracy whether somebody has COVID. The nine questions are:

1. Have you lost your sense of taste or smell?
2. Do you have a cough?
3. How old are you?
4. Do you have shortness of breath?
5. Do you have a sore throat?
6. Are you male?
7. Do you feel well?
8. Do you have prior medical conditions?
9. Do you have a fever?



Source: Nine Simple Questions Predict If You Have COVID

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO), one is fairly safe when outdoors. Coronavirus is spread primarily indoors. So I follow the rule of wearing a high quality face mask when I am up-and-about in various stores, movie theaters, churches or other public buildings. But as soon as I leave a store, I generally take off my mask. But there is one area that I view as dangerous for exposure. That is eating indoors. It is nigh impossible to eat while wearing a mask. As a result I never eat indoors. I find a restaurant that has outdoor seating and I limit myself to those.

There was an interesting study out of England that I read today.

In July, the U.K. launched a discount dining incentive program to promote spending at restaurants, bars and cafes that were devastated financially from closings earlier this year due to COVID-19. The subsidized meal program, called “Eat Out to Help Out,” boasted half-priced meals (up to a certain monetary value) from Monday to Wednesday, to get more people interested in dining out.

Thiemo Fetzer, an economist at the University of Warwick and author of the paper “Subsidizing the spread of COVID19: Evidence from the UK's Eat-Out-to-Help-Out scheme,” published in the Centre for Economic Policy Research, discovered that the coronavirus spread faster in concentrated areas with restaurants that participated in the discounted dining program, and the infection rate slowed in those same areas once the program concluded. “Areas with higher take-up saw both, a notable increase in new COVID19 infection clusters within a week of the scheme starting, and again, a deceleration in infections within two weeks of the program ending,” Fetzer noted in the paper.

it could be to blame for between 8% and 17% of coronavirus cases.

Source: UK's increased coronavirus cases linked to discount dining program