221–230 of 432 posts
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Yes. How many people die in car accidents each year?
And that's why I'm unironically for banning cars in the long term. They're a terrible mode of transport, trains and bikes are all we need.
> Travel bans are not evidence-based: It may seem like travel bans for individual countries are a necessary step, but I cannot stress enough that they do not work. This one point compromised the article for me. The standard for “working”, like all measures, is to slow down the spread. We all know travel bans got a bad name because you-know-who proposed them. But all countries imposed travel bans and we ought to be co…
From the article: >A travel ban is not an evidence-based solution unless you stop all travel from every country. Okay, why not do that? China's done it. Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand require a week+ quarantine for international travelers. It obviously works: it stopped two Omicron carriers at the border in Hong Kong. Why not do that? If COVID-19 is such a serious threat that it requires shutting down all schools…
2) When would you ever open then (since you need a proactive approach)?
3) How would trade look? I can't think of a single way of halting a contagious virus between countries that wouldn't completely shut us down as a race. The cost to humanity would be beyond imagination. Perhaps on the order of 100x-1000x that of corona.
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All current evidence is that masks have a minor effect, measured in tiny fractions of a percent. https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/do-masks-reduce-risk ... To date, I'm aware of no study that has quantified a difference in infection, hospitalization or death that is attributable to travel bans.
The recent Bangladesh study with 350k people found a ~10% reduction in cases, from only 40% mask adoption. The two-cities trial early in 2020 in Germany saw a ~20% reduction. Those are in the number of infections - the number looks low but can make a massive difference in the actual transmission rate. In the German case, after a month infections dropped close to zero.
Be interesting if anyone has done a proper comparison between say Glasgow and Manchester.
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Yes, you need to show that the new vaccine works against the new variant but not that it’s safe. So it will be much faster
Why would you not need to show it’s safe? A new mRNA vaccine would be introducing different mRNA, which produces new antigen proteins and elicits a different immune response.
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According to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard, as of now, Sweden has had 15,145 deaths; Norway has had 1,050 deaths; Denmark 2,863; Finland 1,309. With populations from Wikipedia (10,402,070 for Sweden; 5,402,171 for Norway; 5,850,189 for Denmark; 5,536,146 for Finland), this yields deaths per 1,000 people of: Sweden 1.456 Norway 0.194 Denmark 0.489 Finland 0.236 Saying Sweden has "just survived" doesn't capture…
The aggregated over-mortality rate for Sweden at this point puts it in the lower part among the EU, at place 21 of 31 compared countries IIRC. The covid-related death-count at 15000 has been more or less constant since May even while it's surging now in the other countries. Besides, people keep comparing Sweden to Norway, Denmark and Finland, which is a bad comparison as the demographies are very different.
Rather surprised you don't think Norway and Denmark are appropriate peers against which to compare Sweden. So please provide better suggestions for peers, rather than comparing it as you are, apparently, against Greece.
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Read past the title. It covers all masks, not just cloth facemasks.
I have. I've skimmed through the PDF, and it seems he wants to highlight the "ineffectiveness" of cloth masks, and downplay benefit from other types. It is also odd to put "cloth masks" in the title, if that is not the main focus of the review.
Regardless, the paper covers pretty much ~all of the prior literature for masks and respiratory illness.
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Read the study, not a press release. It said quite explicitly that cloth masks had no effect , and surgical masks had an extremely minor overall effect (11.3% reduction in symptomatic seroprevalence), with an absolute effect size of 0.09%: https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publicati...
Why is poverty-action.org more reputable than Stanford?
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You're missing the forest from the trees here; no one's suggesting that. Instead, we're saying that perhaps you shouldn't use Sweden as evidence supporting non-intervention when their deaths per capita was an order of magnitude higher than similar countries with more aggressive policies.
Potentially you're also missing the forest from the trees: it may be an order of magnitude higher, but in relation to the population size, the number of deaths is minuscule regardless.
Could you post a clarifying remark on what you consider the correct place to draw the line where more inconvenient quarantine measures are warranted?
It's pretty obvious that this is a very contentious subject. But it's also very obvious that a considerable democratic majority in most Western countries seems to agree on where the line should be drawn for their community, and that this line is much more conservative (on the side of public health getting priority over business as usual) than with most earlier pandemics. This is an interesting policy development.
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The recent Bangladesh study with 350k people found a ~10% reduction in cases, from only 40% mask adoption. The two-cities trial early in 2020 in Germany saw a ~20% reduction. Those are in the number of infections - the number looks low but can make a massive difference in the actual transmission rate. In the German case, after a month infections dropped close to zero.
Cases in Scotland with mask laws and Hugh adherence seem higher than in England which doesn’t have laws and has low adherence. Be interesting if anyone has done a proper comparison between say Glasgow and Manchester.