Masks are to reduce aerosol inhalation. Nothing to do with washing, touching or snot. As I’m certain you well know.

4. If a big, snotty sneeze did land within a mask, change the mask (just like one would throw the snotty tissue out if it caught the sneeze). Sanitise hands before putting the fresh mask on.

1. Wearing a mask will prevent many sneezes as dust and pollens won't get up the nose to cause sneezing. 2. Not all sneezes produce copious snot. 3. If a child is unwell, they should be home, not masked at school.

As you know very effective piblic healtj can be built from very imperfect measures. Masks are one such P.S. if you sneeze, and the mask is dirty, either wipe with a tissue, or swop masks.

CDC has conducted at least 2 large real-life masking studies in public school systems; Yale and partners did an enormous study in Bangladesh. These all support efficacy of masking. Also snot/hand-washing questions are a distraction; disease is predominantly airborne.

German research demonstrates using an FFP2 once a day every week for five weeks works (provided you're not a heavy user). Now that's physics, science, chemistry & using a platform to promote life!

Dear Prof, We’re you aware that this tweet has an anti-mask tone? I hope this was accidental. Would you be able to share proven methods of good face mask hygiene so others can benefit maximally from this potentially highly effective measure against SARS2 inhalation? Thank you

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is stepping up efforts to address a looming deficit of syringes for Covid shots, providing about $4 million to help Kenyan manufacturer Revital Healthcare more than triple production.

Gates Foundation Offers $4 Million to Fix Syringe Shortage for Covid Shots

Join us for the Scope and Scale of Online Intimidation: How social media is a tool for both supporting and disrupting the circulation of credible info and analysis. With @CaulfieldTim, @whkchun @gruzd @JuliaMWrightDal Register here: https://events.myconferencesuite.com/RSC_COEE2021/reg/landing

I don't have any positives to end on. Today I just want to mark the mega-failure to protect England's children. "Me paenitet, filii mei", as our PM might (should) say.

We're now recognising that the UK's early response to the pandemic was the worst public health failure ever. But it's largely the same people in charge, and they haven't finished failing.

But what's the point? We seem to be a nation bent on self-harm. We kill off our old people, and practically force our young people to be infected with a disease that we still don't fully understand, and which seems to have long-term consequences for a disturbing number.

Nor does there seem to be much point in noting yet again how readily we could've done things differently, and still could, and how this would allow us to greatly reduce Covid transmission in the same way that other nations have done.

I don't really see the point of reiterating why it's a bad idea to allow so many children to be infected -- I don't expect to change anyone's mind at this point.

And the numbers don't show any sign of slowing down. There was a brief dip after the initial meteoric rise in September, but cases are rising again now, and the rolling rate for 10-14s today is higher than it has ever been.

All the same, a million cases is a lot of children. Over a third of these cases have been reported since the start of September this year (i.e., the last month and a bit).

And the figure doesn't include all children (15-17 year olds are in the same age band as 18 and 19 year olds, so it's hard to cleanly separate children and young adults).

This number underestimates the number of infections, of course, because a) there wasn't really any testing of children in the first wave (the graph shouldn't be flat prior to Oct 2020), and b) many children (especially younger children) are asymptomatic when infected.

Today marks a milestone of sorts: the number of children under 14 who've tested positive for Covid in England just passed one million (1,003,787 to be precise).

UPDATE: The @SciBeh and @jitsuvax team has created a new page "COVID-19 Vaccines and Pregnancy". Learn more about the risk of the disease, the safety of vaccination, breast-feeding and common myths about fertility https://c19vax.scibeh.org/pages/pregnancy

To explain the observed phenomenon that most SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs indoors whereas its outdoor transmission is rare, a simple macroscopic aerosol balance model is developed to link short- and long-range airborne transmission. The model considers the involvement of exhaled droplets with initial diameter ≤50 µm in the short-range airborne route, whereas only a fraction of these droplets with an initial diameter within 15 µm or equivalently a final diameter within 5 µm considered in the long-range airborne route. One surprising finding is that the room ventilation rate significantly affects the short-range airborne route, in contrast to traditional belief. When the ventilation rate in a room is insufficient, the airborne infection risks due to both short- and long-range transmission are high. A ventilation rate of 10 L/s per person provides a similar concentration vs distance decay profile to that in outdoor settings, which provides additional justification for the widely adopted ventilation standard of 10 L/s per person. The newly obtained data do not support the basic assumption in the existing ventilation standard ASHRAE 62.1 (2019) that the required people outdoor air rate is constant if the standard is used directly for respiratory infection control. Instead, it is necessary to increase the ventilation rate when the physical distance between people is less than approximately 2 m.

10.1111/ina.12946

Poor ventilation worsens short-range airborne transmission of respiratory infection

10.1038/d41586-021-02110-8

Survey results show that many white-tailed deer, a familiar sight on US lawns and golf courses, have antibodies to the virus that causes COVID-19.

The coronavirus is rife in common US deer

Many thanks @FWhitfield for hosting me this Saturday AM @CNN In case it's helpful, I've prepared an informal "fact sheet" on COVID in children and COVID vaccines in 5-11 age group. Highlights attached...feel free to RT or repurpose the information

It was the first country to vaccinate, the first to reopen, then the first to widely implement a booster shot. Now Israel is returning to life close to normal only six weeks after the peak of its worst COVID-19 wave yet.In mid-September, new infections of the Delta variant had surpassed 10,000 per day and hospitals were groaning under the pressure.But today, its restaurants are bustling, cinemas and theatres are packed, university lecture halls are full and the major airport is heaving.Deaths and new infections have plummeted to the single and triple digits, and the country will be welcoming overseas tourists from November 1.As Australia prepares to begin delivery of a third dose of the vaccine from next week, Israel's turnaround offers a glimpse into a possible future of the pandemic.So how did the country go from a cautionary tale to a success story in less than two months? The answer lies only partially in vaccines.

COVID-19 is here to stay, but Israel shows that boosters, masks and vaccine passports can tame the virus

Newly-published minutes from JCVI meetings show that the group first looked at whether letting 12 to 15-year-olds catch Covid naturally was better than vaccinating them on May 13 (shown above). It looked at a range of reasons against vaccinating people in the age group, which included the argument that natural infection might be better and less risky ‘Zero Covid’ scientists have slammed the Government’s coronavirus vaccine advisory panel as being ‘anti-vax’ for considering the benefits of herd immunity over vaccination in children.

‘Zero Covid absolutists’ accuse JCVI of being ‘anti-vax’ for considering herd immunity in children

Life went on except for those who died.

A very disturbing read on the recent JCVI minutes released. They seem to consider immunity through infection in children advantageous, discussing children as live 'booster' vaccines for adults. I would expect this from anti-vaxx groups, not a scientific committee. twitter.com/karamballes/st…

Some of the UK JCVI deliberations are deeply disturbing, eg arguing against childhood vax so that they can get infected & boost immunity in adults. Also imply that vax doesn’t have an individual benefit! How much of this warped thinking is present in Australia? #COVID19Aus

The JCVI has finally released some of its minutes. Shockingly (but perhaps unsurprisingly) they show wildly contradictory positions and opinions based on poor and discredited science. They make for alarming reading. https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Fapp.box.com%2Fs%2Fiddfb4ppwkmtjusir2tc

“Circulation of COVID-19 in childhood could therefore periodically boost immunity in adults through exposure” When I say childhood vax ALSO benefits adults, folx say “you can’t use benefits to adults in your argument!” JCVI uses benefits to adults of letting kids get infected

This week, two Tennessee state representatives introduced bills that would restrict the state's physician licensing board when attempting to discipline doctors who spread inaccurate information about COVID-19 and COVID vaccines. Katrina Green, MD, is concerned about the bills. She is an emergency physician in Nashville and Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and also part of a group called Protect Our Care, which advocates for public health measures in the state.

Tennessee Bills Would Shield Docs Who Spread COVID Misinformation — Would dampen state board efforts to discipline such physicians

So now we know JCVI considered deliberate infection of children to be helpful for adults. Just appalling. And I suppose now we know why they’ve been so keen to drop all protective measures in schools, and even stop testing in primary schools. They WANTED our children infected twitter.com/Dr2NisreenAlwa…

does there maybe need to be more distinction between points raised for discussion and any actual decision? without knowing about votes etc., it's maybe a bit strong to say "JCVI wanted x..."? I've sat on many bodies with minutes documenting positions I disagreed with

as the fallout from the JCVI minutes build, it's worth considering that the corresponding U.S. body ACIP has been live streaming its meetings on YouTube... transparency helps reduce faulty reasoning...we should have learned that lesson with the very first lockdown, no?

10.3390/pathogens10101267

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected more than 231 million people globally, with more than 4.7 million deaths recorded by the World Health Organization as of 26 September 2021. In response to the pandemic, some countries (New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea and others) have pursued suppression strategies, so-called Zero COVID policies, to drive and maintain infection rates as close to zero as possible and respond aggressively to new cases. In comparison, European countries and North America have adopted mitigation strategies (of varying intensity and effectiveness) that aim primarily to prevent health systems from being overwhelmed. With recent advances in our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 and its biology, and the increasing recognition there is more to COVID-19 beyond the acute infection, we offer a perspective on some of the long-term risks of mutational escape, viral persistence, reinfection, immune dysregulation and neurological and multi-system complications (Long COVID).

loading... settings Font Type: Arial Georgia Verdana Font Size: AaAaAa Line Spacing:  Column Width:  Background: Open AccessPerspective Uncertainty around the Long-Term Implications of COVID-19

From the paper - ventilation makes a big difference further away, but below 1-1.5m then you'd have to be in a gale to be safe! DISTANCE if you can VENTILATE - works even within 2m, but sadly not so much within 1-1.5m PPE if you have to get close #COVIDisAirborne

"history holds a long record of scientists who were right about one thing and utterly wrong about another, the most extreme example being Nobel disease” https://mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19/ivermectin-train-cannot-stop… via @CaulfieldTim

The article is on ivermectin but the sunk intellectual cost fallacy has lessons for us all: "Publicly backtracking when the results refute your idea requires a very large dose of humility” Such humility has been notably lacking among Nobels and other COVID inexperts

2/2 .. with break out sessions in which we will, collectively, be producing a manifesto on this theme!

Please join us at our upcoming workshop on "Science Communication as Collective Intelligence" featuring talks (@SpiekermannKai, @dgurdasani1), panel discussions (@kakape,@CaulfieldTim, @joshua_a_becker, @suneman, @GeoffreySupran and more!) 1/2

JCVI facing calls from within for greater transparency over decision-making https://buff.ly/3GwVqCZ JCVI has been criticised for failing to publish detailed minutes, modelling and analysis behind its decision to advise vaccinating all over-16s in Britain #covid19 #coronavirus

There is nothing new about this idea at all In fact, this is one of the reasons we don’t vaccinate children against chicken pox in the UK It is a totally reasonable thing to include as a point of discussion https://nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/chickenpox-vaccine-questions-answers/… 2/

It must be so frustrating to work on an expert committee and have non-experts totally misunderstand and misrepresent your work for their agenda The comment in the JCVI minutes about circulating virus in children providing immunity boosting to adults is a great example 1/

What I learned from getting polio 70 years ago? Amnesia is a traitor that lets old enemies through the gates.

Polio and Vaccination: A Memoir of What We’ve Forgotten

isn't that part of the concern? listing as potential negatives against vaccination population level benefits such as "boosting" adults is not that, right?

During a pandemic of an airborne disease like COVID-19, nearly all unvaccinated individuals will eventually be infected. Most children in Australia are currently unvaccinated. If they are not protected, 1-3% of unvaccinated Australian children may become hospitalised with COVID-19, and more may suffer from ongoing symptoms lasting for a year or more. Paediatric wards, hospitals and health systems may become overwhelmed. School closures and educational disruption are likely. We still do not know enough about the long-term risks posed by COVID-19 to children, but given what is currently known, and based on the precautionary principle, we should do what we can to protect children. San Francisco is an example where children have been successfully protected, whilst keeping schools open. Protecting children requires vaccinating children when possible, ensuring access to safe air through ventilation, and, where there is community transmission, using high quality masks, letting families make their own decisions about attending in-person school, and protecting children’s mental health.

Protecting children from COVID-19 and making schools and childcare safer.

2/2 from the paper "We speculate that the extraordinarily high antibody titers observed in vaccinated individuals who develop breakthrough infections may lead to subsequent long-term protection in those individuals."

This study is relevant to the current debate about whether UK's JCVI should have (and actually did) considered the value of children providing a source of booster through breakthrough infections to adults - (in addition to being an interesting study in its own right..) 1/2

No- the statement explicitly talks about infection in children being a 'booster' to adults i.e. children infecting adults to protect them against... infection! I don't think there's any level of cognitive gymnastics that could justify this or make sense of it.

10.31234/osf.io/8kzsn

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant school closures, social distancing measures, and restrictions placed on routine activities, the start of the academic year in September 2020 was a unique time for those transitioning to a new school. This study aimed to explore the experiences of parents who supported autistic children making a school transition in 2020, and to examine what impact parents perceived the COVID-19 pandemic had on their child’s school transition. Emphasis was placed on identifying facilitating factors that had benefitted school transitions, and barriers, which had negatively impacted these experiences. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 13 parents of autistic children in the UK. Reflexive thematic analysis was carried out to identify themes in interview data. Parents reported a variety of experiences, and factors that were perceived as facilitatory to some were observed to be barriers by others. For some parents, the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted aspects of school transitions. For example, school closure in March 2020, being unable to visit their child’s new school, and social distancing measures were discussed as being barriers to an easy transition. However, other parents identified these factors as being facilitatory for their child or reported that these circumstances created opportunities to approach the school transition in a unique, improved manner. This paper sheds light on the heterogeneity of experiences and perceptions of parents of autistic children, and highlights the need to examine the impact of COVID-19 on school transitions, including practices which may be advantageous to retain.

How did Autistic Children, and their Parents, Experience School Transition during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

10.31234/osf.io/gtqy8

Previous literature highlights the crucial role of economic inequality in triggering a range of negative societal outcomes. However, the relationship between economic inequality and the proliferation of conspiracy beliefs remains unexplored. Here, we explore the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs as an outcome of objective country-level (Study 1a, 1b, 1c), perceived (Study 2), and manipulated economic inequality (Studies 3a, 3b, 4a, 4b). In the correlational studies, both objective and perceived economic inequality were associated with greater conspiracy beliefs. In the experiments, participants in the high (compared to the low) inequality condition were more likely to endorse conspiratorial narratives. This effect was fully mediated by anomie (Studies 3a, 3b) suggesting that inequality enhances the perception that society is breaking down (anomie), which in turn increases conspiratorial thinking, possibly in an attempt to regain some sense of order and control. Furthermore, the link between economic inequality and conspiracy beliefs was stronger when participants endorsed a conspiracy worldview (Studies 4a, 4b). Moreover, conspiracy beliefs mediated the effect of the economic inequality manipulation on willingness to engage in collective action aimed at addressing economic inequality. The results show that economic inequality and conspiracy beliefs go hand in hand: economic inequality can cause conspiratorial thinking and conspiracy beliefs can motivate collective action against economic inequality.

The Impact of Economic Inequality on Conspiracy Beliefs

10.1038/d41586-021-02895-8

Catalogue of billions of phrases from 107 million papers could ease computerized searching of the literature.

Giant, free index to world’s research papers released online

2110.13790

In recent decades, the rapid growth of Internet adoption is offering opportunities for convenient and inexpensive access to scientific information. Wikipedia, one of the largest encyclopedias worldwide, has become a reference in this respect, and has attracted widespread attention from scholars. However, a clear understanding of the scientific sources underpinning Wikipedia's contents remains elusive. In this work, we explore Wikipedia's role in the public understanding of science from the perspective of its scientific sources. We rely on an open dataset of citations from Wikipedia, and use network analysis to map the relationship between Wikipedia articles and scientific journal articles. We find that most journal articles cited from Wikipedia belong to STEM fields, in particular biology and medicine (47.647.6\% of citations; 46.146.1\% of cited articles). Furthermore, Wikipedia's biographies play an important role in connecting STEM fields with the humanities, in particular history. Our results provide valuable insights into the reliance of Wikipedia on scientific sources, and its role in interconnecting knowledge across different topics.

A Map of Science in Wikipedia

People who are fully vaccinated against covid-19 are far less likely to infect others, despite the arrival of the delta variant, several studies show. The findings refute the idea, which has become common in some circles, that vaccines no longer do much to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

How much less likely are you to spread covid-19 if you're vaccinated?

I must confess I do not understand these arguments. Testing would not cause anxiety if it weren't discovering *lots of cases*

Yet another version of the coronavirus is getting global attention, this one dubbed AY.4.2. It appears that it could be slightly more transmissible than the Delta variant — a marginal difference that experts say is more of a headache than a devastating gamechanger in the scope of the pandemic. Still, the emergence of AY.4.2 offers lessons about the ongoing evolution of the pathogen.

3 takeaways from the emergence of the ‘Delta Plus’ coronavirus variant

The mystery of COVID’s origins has reignited a contentious debate about potentially risky studies and the fuzzy terminology that describes them.

The shifting sands of ‘gain-of-function’ research

Fully vaccinated people with cancer who have no history of SARS-CoV-2 infection have much lower levels of neutralising antibodies against the delta variant (54%) than against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus (83%), a study has found.1The Capture study, conducted by the Francis Crick Institute and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, analysed the immune responses of 585 patients with different types of cancer after they received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine.The researchers found that just 31% of infection naive patients with blood cancer developed neutralising antibodies against the delta variant, compared with 62% of patients with solid cancers. The response was 68% overall in patients who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 50% in recipients of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.Patients were recruited from May 2020 to June 2021. The median age was 60, and 60% were male. Overall, 31% (181/585) had prior confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Around three quarters of participants (447/585) had a current diagnosis of a solid cancer, and 24% (138/585) had blood cancer.Rather than looking at covid-19 cases, the researchers used viral neutralisation assay tests to measure the levels of antibodies that block different variants of the virus. The researchers looked at whether patients had levels of neutralising antibodies that were sufficient to block at least 50% of virus infection under laboratory conditions.

10.1136/bmj.n2623

Covid-19: Just a third of blood cancer patients had antibodies against delta variant after two vaccine doses, study finds

With FDA authorization for a kid-size COVID vaccine pending, a pediatrician and infectious-disease expert weighs in on what’s next.

Five Big Questions About COVID Vaccines for Kids

BackgroundThe SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant is highly transmissible and spreading globally, including in populations with high vaccination rates. We aimed to investigate transmission and viral load kinetics in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals with mild delta variant infection in the community.MethodsBetween Sept 13, 2020, and Sept 15, 2021, 602 community contacts (identified via the UK contract-tracing system) of 471 UK COVID-19 index cases were recruited to the Assessment of Transmission and Contagiousness of COVID-19 in Contacts cohort study and contributed 8145 upper respiratory tract samples from daily sampling for up to 20 days. Household and non-household exposed contacts aged 5 years or older were eligible for recruitment if they could provide informed consent and agree to self-swabbing of the upper respiratory tract. We analysed transmission risk by vaccination status for 231 contacts exposed to 162 epidemiologically linked delta variant-infected index cases. We compared viral load trajectories from fully vaccinated individuals with delta infection (n=29) with unvaccinated individuals with delta (n=16), alpha (B.1.1.7; n=39), and pre-alpha (n=49) infections. Primary outcomes for the epidemiological analysis were to assess the secondary attack rate (SAR) in household contacts stratified by contact vaccination status and the index cases’ vaccination status. Primary outcomes for the viral load kinetics analysis were to detect differences in the peak viral load, viral growth rate, and viral decline rate between participants according to SARS-CoV-2 variant and vaccination status.FindingsThe SAR in household contacts exposed to the delta variant was 25% (95% CI 18–33) for fully vaccinated individuals compared with 38% (24–53) in unvaccinated individuals. The median time between second vaccine dose and study recruitment in fully vaccinated contacts was longer for infected individuals (median 101 days [IQR 74–120]) than for uninfected individuals (64 days [32–97], p=0·001). SAR among household contacts exposed to fully vaccinated index cases was similar to household contacts exposed to unvaccinated index cases (25% [95% CI 15–35] for vaccinated vs 23% [15–31] for unvaccinated). 12 (39%) of 31 infections in fully vaccinated household contacts arose from fully vaccinated epidemiologically linked index cases, further confirmed by genomic and virological analysis in three index case–contact pairs. Although peak viral load did not differ by vaccination status or variant type, it increased modestly with age (difference of 0·39 [95% credible interval –0·03 to 0·79] in peak log10 viral load per mL between those aged 10 years and 50 years). Fully vaccinated individuals with delta variant infection had a faster (posterior probability >0·84) mean rate of viral load decline (0·95 log10 copies per mL per day) than did unvaccinated individuals with pre-alpha (0·69), alpha (0·82), or delta (0·79) variant infections. Within individuals, faster viral load growth was correlated with higher peak viral load (correlation 0·42 [95% credible interval 0·13 to 0·65]) and slower decline (–0·44 [–0·67 to –0·18]).InterpretationVaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.FundingNational Institute for Health Research.

Community transmission and viral load kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the UK: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study

10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00648-4

John Roberts@john_actuary·Oct 27So strong evidence here to support the need for booster jabs, and maybe to suggest that 6 months is slightly too late to prevent many serious infections of the retired population in the run up to Xmas. Report here: 7/7

To reiterate the point, most 60-64 year olds were double vaccinated in May, around 5 months ago. The low point was a couple of weeks after that, but the percentage not showing antibodies has risen from under 5% to 12% in just three months. (CI for that last pt 84% to 91%). 6/

At this point I'll caveat, as does ONS, that simply not testing positive for antibodies doesn't mean that there is no immunity. But nevertheless, the data is consistent with others that show a waning of immunity after around five months, based on hospital admissions. 5/

...if you look at the last 5 months, you can see that the proportion has roughly doubled, from 6% to 12%. (That's 5 months, not 6, by the way, which is the current threshold for boosters). 4/

Concentrating on the oldest three age-bands, let's now flip it around, and look at the percentage not testing positive, which may be a proxy for any effectiveness gap. In this view, it still looks OK, in comparison to pre-jab levels, as you might expect. But wait... 3/

First here's the picture for all the age groups. Note how for some of the older lives the olive green line is starting to dip down, as the proportion testing positive for antibodies is falling. It's noticeable from 60 upwards. 2/

After a month's absence, the ONS antibody study is back, and shows that levels measured are still in excess of 90% across the UK (highlighted in yellow below). I'm going to focus on the older lives though. 1/

WASHINGTON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Workers at the leading U.S. meatpacking plants experienced cases and death from COVID-19 that were up to three times previous estimates, according to a report by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis seen by Reuters.

Coronavirus infections at U.S. meat plants far higher than previous estimates -House subcommittee