Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[Tubey]

So 2 in 5 wearing them incorrectly versus nobody wearing them at all? Which is better?

I think at that point any benefit from an epidemiology point of view is wiped out due to an increase in risky human behaviour.

I was reading about a drug called PrEP which, when taken, basically prevents HIV from being caught. It's prescribed to gay/bisexual men. It works near enough 100% of the time. A proper miracle drug when you think about it, mad how it's not front page news.

Anyway, what happened was those given it started 'barebacking' because the HIV risk was effectively gone... and of course that meant in the six months immediately after starting treatment there was a 25% to 50% increase in every other STD in those using PrEP. Because risky behaviour was encouraged.

Masks do the same thing; they are a visual cue to people that they're 'safe', even though they aren't, so they'll do things they wouldn't otherwise do. That's why the mask mandate in Wales is doing basically nothing, because any positive effect is cancelled out.

 

[grandjoeblue]

In the UK we can’t fly without a negative PCR which you need to check in

Thats not true any more. The only test you need to do is a PCR test 2 days after getting home for most countries.

You could pretty much get away with not doing the day 2 test as well. Its never followed up on.

 

[JLW]

Thats not true any more. The only test you need to do is a PCR test 2 days after getting home for most countries.

You could pretty much get away with not doing the day 2 test as well. Its never followed up on.

I flew last Thursday and had to provide my PCR at checkin. Maybe it depends on what country you’re going to

 

[grandjoeblue]

I flew last Thursday and had to provide my PCR at checkin. Maybe it depends on what country you’re going to

Yeh each country has its own rules but most of the popular european ones are mostly just asking for double vaccination.

 

[LinekersLegs]

They're more careless too. False sense of security, less aware of space and what they're touching, more likely to go places they would have avoided before etc.

A large and detailed study came to the completely opposite conclusion and also found that mask wearing was successful in reducing case loads, especially among the elderly. The quality of the masks is important though.

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www.poverty-action.org

Physical Distancing Contrary to concerns that mask-wearing would promote risk compensation, we did not find evidence that our intervention decreases distancing behavior. In the second panel of Table A4, we report identical specifications to the first panel, but with physical distancing as the dependent variable. In control villages 24.1% of observed individuals practiced physical distanc- ing compared to 29.2% in intervention villages, an increase of 5.1% (a regression adjusted esti- mate of 0.05 [95% CI: 0.04,0.06]) Evidently, protective behaviors like mask-wearing and physical- distancing are complements rather than substitutes: endorsing mask-wearing and informing people about its importance encouraged rural Bangladeshis to take the pandemic more seriously and en- gage in another form of self-protection. The increases in physical distancing were similar in cloth and surgical mask villages.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02457-y
Critics of mask mandates have cited the lack of relevant randomized clinical trials, which assign participants at random to either a control group or an intervention group. But the latest finding is based on a randomized trial involving nearly 350,000 people across rural Bangladesh. The study’s authors found that surgical masks — but not cloth masks — reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in villages where the research team distributed face masks and promoted their use.

 

[TN Toffee]

Thats not true any more. The only test you need to do is a PCR test 2 days after getting home for most countries.

You could pretty much get away with not doing the day 2 test as well. Its never followed up on.

Isn’t the PCR requirement being changed to just an LFT from next week sometime?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

It scares me how content lots of people are for the removal of personal liberties to become normalised. Exceptional times allowed for exceptional measures, but we have to move on.

Personal liberties are fine when the only person affected is yourself. This is an infectious disease so your behaviours affect other people. We've never had personal liberty when our actions could harm other people and I'm not really sure why people think we ever have.

 

[ToffeeTim]

Personal liberties are fine when the only person affected is yourself. This is an infectious disease so your behaviours affect other people. We've never had personal liberty when our actions could harm other people and I'm not really sure why people think we ever have.

We have vaccines so we are the most protected we are going to be. Unless you believe covid can fully be eradicated (I don't).

At some point we move, the experts need to realise this. The negativity is getting me down.

 

[tsubaki]

Personal liberties are fine when the only person affected is yourself. This is an infectious disease so your behaviours affect other people. We've never had personal liberty when our actions could harm other people and I'm not really sure why people think we ever have.

Absolutely, and of course the worse a crisis is the more power the government has over its citizens lives (often for really good reasons, eg: locking all the Nazi sympathisers up at the start of the last war).

 

[Neiler]

I think the concensus is if the vast majority of people (90%+) wear effective masks efficiently and follow all guidelines with them then they have some effect.

But back in the real world, people wear them as chin warmers. Just from a random stillframe on that tweet I quoted, 2 in 5 people are doing exactly that.

View attachment 143434

So it's not going to be doing much except give people a false sense of confidence.

Its a bug bear of mine. But such things will happen when you put responsibility on people. 2 in 5 is 75% odd doing it correctly.

Its bizarre to me, i wear proper high grade surgical masks, highest grade, every day all day in work and a face covering everywhere else. One use, i have about 50, lash on a daily wash and trained in IPC and how to don and doft properly. Im in a lucky position of having a lot of knowledge and training on the benefits and risks. I actually feel wierd not wearing one now at home or in the gym.

Knowing what i know, I can only say the UK approach to face coverings is bananas in my opinion, i was terrfied recently in the UK recently and thats not to say im anxious - ive been in high risk clinical setting around the virus since the start of this and no stranger to wearing full clinical ppe, gowned up goggles, etc im very exposed to high risk.

Case numbers were close to 50k in the UK yesterday and comparatively to other vaccinated nations that's a spike and a trend of exponential growth,, so that would suggest taking a look at what's in place form a mitigation point of view might be the clever play. Seems just silly, not to request face coverings as a public health measure in flu season.

But i suppose people have the luxury of making thier own mind up, i think thats the UK approach right, we all have a human right in regard to making informed choice and taking on personal risk. Like you point out there is a measure of personal responsibility, if your waiting for someone to tell exactly what to do or rescue you to keep you safe, think we will all be waiting. Id use the analogy of wearing a seat belt, 9 times out of 10 no one will know if your wearing one or not, but you may as well as it offers protection for very little effort.

 

[grandjoeblue]

Isn’t the PCR requirement being changed to just an LFT from next week sometime?

It might be this weekend I think.

 

[Tubey]

A large and detailed study came to the completely opposite conclusion and also found that mask wearing was successful in reducing case loads, especially among the elderly. The quality of the masks is important though.

Loading…

www.poverty-action.org

Physical Distancing Contrary to concerns that mask-wearing would promote risk compensation, we did not find evidence that our intervention decreases distancing behavior. In the second panel of Table A4, we report identical specifications to the first panel, but with physical distancing as the dependent variable. In control villages 24.1% of observed individuals practiced physical distanc- ing compared to 29.2% in intervention villages, an increase of 5.1% (a regression adjusted esti- mate of 0.05 [95% CI: 0.04,0.06]) Evidently, protective behaviors like mask-wearing and physical- distancing are complements rather than substitutes: endorsing mask-wearing and informing people about its importance encouraged rural Bangladeshis to take the pandemic more seriously and en- gage in another form of self-protection. The increases in physical distancing were similar in cloth and surgical mask villages.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02457-y
Critics of mask mandates have cited the lack of relevant randomized clinical trials, which assign participants at random to either a control group or an intervention group. But the latest finding is based on a randomized trial involving nearly 350,000 people across rural Bangladesh. The study’s authors found that surgical masks — but not cloth masks — reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in villages where the research team distributed face masks and promoted their use.

In rural Bangladesh, not the United Kingdom.

 

[LinekersLegs]

In rural Bangladesh, not the United Kingdom.

Why wouldn’t the same dynamics apply if it is about human psychology ?

The bay area where I live had, despite a comparatively high vax rate, started to have escalating case rates over the summer and in early August the indoor mask mandates was reintroduced, including in schools. By end of August case rates had started to peak and that was despite schools going back during the period which elsewhere seems to be linked to rising case rates.

There were other things that were implemented that probably increased vaccine uptake for the previously hesitant adults but the rapid turnaround wouldn’t really be explained by that given the time lapse before vaccines kick in. I don’t have the data to back it up but seems like a lot of the reduction was due to behavioral changes and anecdotally people seemed far better at social distancing here in shops once the mandate came back in.

I agree that masks are not a magic bullet but I believe there to be evidence they do have a mitigating effect.

 

[Tubey]

Why wouldn’t the same dynamics apply if it is about human psychology ?

Because villagers from rural Bangladesh aren't shopping in Asda or popping into a McDonald's for lunch. They aren't comparable.

It's the same as trying to compare effective mask usage between the UK and South Korea, or infection rates between the UK and New Zealand. There's too many variables for one situation to be remotely comparable to the other.

In that study for instance, you can teach effectively a few dozen people each time best practice, but in a country of 60m+ people with high urban density and a massively different culture then it's a completely different story.

 

[coollino]

I think at that point any benefit from an epidemiology point of view is wiped out due to an increase in risky human behaviour.

I was reading about a drug called PrEP which, when taken, basically prevents HIV from being caught. It's prescribed to gay/bisexual men. It works near enough 100% of the time. A proper miracle drug when you think about it, mad how it's not front page news.

Anyway, what happened was those given it started 'barebacking' because the HIV risk was effectively gone... and of course that meant in the six months immediately after starting treatment there was a 25% to 50% increase in every other STD in those using PrEP. Because risky behaviour was encouraged.

Masks do the same thing; they are a visual cue to people that they're 'safe', even though they aren't, so they'll do things they wouldn't otherwise do. That's why the mask mandate in Wales is doing basically nothing, because any positive effect is cancelled out.

delighted that i have just read the word 'barebacking' lol