Looks like Canada has reversed its stance on wearing face masks again

“A non-medical mask can reduce the chance of your respiratory droplets coming into contact with others or land on surfaces,” said Dr. Theresa Tam. “So wearing a non-medical mask in the community has not proven to help the person wearing it but it is a way you can protect others.”

Canadians are now urged to wear masks when they are in areas where social distancing is more difficult, like in a grocery store or on public transit. These masks do not have to be medical grade. It has been suggested that a bandana or a scarf will be effective.

Our conversation about masks also led us to CNN’s senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen where she added, “after speaking with doctors I’m learning more about the potential for transmissions through just speaking and breathing.”

When asked if she will wear a mask in public she replied, “[Yes], I will wear a mask if I go to the grocery store. However, it is different on a walk in a rural area where the wind could disperse anything in the air.”

The science is still not certain if masks will prevent people from getting sick. However, reports are leaning towards masks decreasing the spread of potentially harmful droplets. At this point, wearing a mask seems to be the most simple and responsible thing we can all do to help flatten the curve.


I guess that's what Trudeau was on about when he was taking about speaking moistly...
https://globalnews.ca/news/6792967/coronavirus-trudeau-speaking-moistly/

Anyway can't get any masks here, they're for health care workers, so wear a scarf lol.

I don't have dust masks either, would need to go to a diy store to see if they have some. I didn't get any since they were considered pointless and price gauged. For now, no need to go out, we got plenty stuff to eat. I don't talk much either lol and yeah it's very uncomfortable with a scarf around your head, needed here when going out mid winter when it's -20c outside. (Perhaps a good tip for supermarkets, crank the AC up to max lol)

My wife is allergic to anything with latex, so gloves etc are out. We can't have balloons in the house either. Double whammy for her when going out to stores or anywhere now, which she doesn't.

Anyway that's just a very small risk, there are much bigger risks still going on. Like now with Easter. My sister is sharing homeschooling with a neighbor, so the kids go to one house one day, the other the other day. Not advised, but she's stubborn and needs to work as well. Then she's visiting my dad with her kid for Easter and before or after the kid goes to my sister's ex (the dad, visitation rules for divorced people still need to be followed) who takes her to his family for Easter. And so the chain continues. It's slower but, 6 degrees of separation, it's still all connected. Many divorced people with kids hook up with other divorced people with kids and connections multiply through visitation.

Meanwhile teenagers are flaunting social distancing rules and still go do stuff together in small groups. Are those always the same groups, probably not. Hence all these models only account for 60% effectiveness of social distancing. It's enough to get the curve to flatten, but it explains why it takes such a long time to get down from the peak. We're now well behind the rapid decline China managed in Wuhan.

At least some people start to smarten up. Stopping healthcare workers from working at multiple nursing homes is one thing that should have been obvious from the start. A friend of my parents in law has been self quarantined for 2.5 weeks now. She's pretty sure she has it (all the symptoms) but won't go to a clinic to get tested, since what's the point... It would only risk the health of other people. She gets food dropped off outside and is avoiding all contact. Why can't they drop off a test kit in the mail box, then collect it again later in the day... Hopefully she doesn't deteriorate and gets better soon.

Not much you can do but to avoid other people. Definitely not go to the super market and start fighting with the staff (70yr old idiot here that didn't like to be told to keep 2 meters distance for his own safety) Sadly there is no cure for stupidity.

More concerning news about reinfection or reactivation
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea/south-korea-reports-recovered-coronavirus-patients-testing-positive-again-idUSKCN21S15X

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean officials on Friday reported 91 patients thought cleared of the new coronavirus had tested positive again.

Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), told a briefing that the virus may have been “reactivated” rather than the patients being re-infected.

South Korean health officials said it remains unclear what is behind the trend, with epidemiological investigations still under way.


Re-activation might be preferable over re-infection, yet still not good.

“The number will only increase, 91 is just the beginning now,” said Kim Woo-joo, professor of infectious diseases at Korea University Guro Hospital.

The KCDC’s Jeong raised the possibility that rather than patients being re-infected, the virus may have been “reactivated”.

Kim also said patients had likely “relapsed” rather than been re-infected.

False test results could also be at fault, other experts said, or remnants of the virus could still be in patients’ systems but not be infectious or of danger to the host or others.

There's also still speculation of different strains going around. Well more than speculation actually, up to 8 strains discovered currently
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/27/scientists-track-coronavirus-strains-mutation/5080571002/

While researchers caution they're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, the tiny differences between the virus strains suggest shelter-in-place orders are working in some areas and that no one strain of the virus is more deadly than another. They also say it does not appear the strains will grow more lethal as they evolve. 

“The virus mutates so slowly that the virus strains are fundamentally very similar to each other,” said Charles Chiu, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

So far the differences are so small it shouldn't matter for the effects and hopefully also not for a vaccine or anti bodies.

The COVID-19 virus does not mutate very fast. It does so eight to 10 times more slowly than the influenza virus, said Anderson, making its evolution rate similar to other coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

It’s also not expected to spontaneously evolve into a form more deadly than it already is to humans. The SARS-CoV-2 is so good at transmitting itself between human hosts, said Andersen, it is under no evolutionary pressure to evolve.

It's a good way to track the virus apparently. Here you can see it spread as it evolves
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?dmax=2020-01-03&dmin=2019-12-24

That's not an easy feat considering they never were an EU member.

EDIT: btw. the reason the numbers are different is because they completely removed France for whatever reason.

Imagine the number of deaths the US(or other countries) would have had if it didnt have these lockdowns etc etc

the people needing intesive care whould skyrocket wich means the toltat % dying of corvid would be exceptional higher beacuse of the lack of Ventilators and such.

Too bad there are still many who don't want to understand this. Not only would we have way more infected but also a much higher death rate without ventilators, not enough medical staff or even hospital beds for many people. It would be horrible. 

You know the sad thing, though? Nobody gives a single shit about those 25k cold deaths. Or the hundreds of thousands of other preventable deaths. It's kinda morbid to think that there is a clear line of which people dying is cool and which people dying is not cool.

For example, 250k of people dying from covid in the US would be super uncool. But over 400k of people dying from smoking every year is super cool. US deaths won't reach that worst case scenario, but it will still be treated like the worst health crisis ever. Everyone will pat themselves on their backs and then continue to change nothing about anything else.

Its hard to say, exactly.
For one, theres likely 5-10 times the amount infected as the "confirmed cases" show.
For another, its still too early to say anything about mortality rates.

Why?

Because out of 500,000+ confirmed infected, only 27,000 have recovered.
About 19,000 have died.

Thats *only* ~46,000 out of the 500,000 confirmed cases.

You cannot assume, that magically people will just stop dieing and the remaining 450,000+ infected will all just magically recover.
So "death rate = 4%" cant be true (for confirmed cases, it ll be higher).

https://nypost.com/2020/04/07/scores-of-probable-coronavirus-deaths-are-not-being-counted-by-the-city/

“Out of the 12 [cardiac cases], I did on Sunday 10 had COVID symptoms. Flu-like symptoms, cough, etc. Nobody made it back. That’s going on all over the city,” said Anthony Almojera, vice president of FDNY, EMS union local 3621.

“There’s gotta be 200 a day… obviously are not all COVID, but they aren’t being tested,” he said.

The FDNY confirmed that paramedics are seeing more than 300 calls for cardiac arrest with “well over” 200 people dying each day. Typically paramedics would deal with around two dozen deaths on around 54 to 74 cardiac arrest calls.

So normally theres ~50-75 calls for cardiac arrests, calls each day. Out of these ~24 or so die.
Now they have 300+ calls each day, and over 200 pr day dieing? and its not noted as due to Coronavirus.

"New York City’s death toll — which surged past 3,000 on Tuesday — only includes the number of confirmed cases. The city does not test people for the disease after they’ve died — even if they end up in the Medical Examiner’s Office after fighting coronavirus-like symptoms."

Number of deaths due to this thing is being under reported by alot.

People are seemingly getting a bit more agressive when they see others crossing the border thinking it is always a violation but they forget that most of them like myself need to cross for the essential work we have to do.