Well, the masks do have a good side effect for people like me. Hay fever and similar allergies are much weaker with the masks, so I kept mine on outside for longer than necessary due to this.

Where I live we are also reinstating restrictions again after a few weeks of easing led to an increase in cases. 

In the end it wasn't the protests that led to an uptick, but allowing larger family gatherings, which I suppose makes sense and nearly everyone at the BLM protests here wore a mask and were in the open air, while people hugging, kissing, and otherwise getting close with family without masks is much more conducive to the spread of a disease like COVID-19.

Still, we're very fortunate compared to most countries; my state is the worst in the country and we totaled 19 new cases in the last 24 hour period. 

Did you folks know that the 1889 flu pandemic is often theorized to have been caused by the animal-to-human leap of the OC43 betacoronavirus? It was an unusual "flu" with the elderly being severely affected but the children were spared, and neurological symptoms were common in addition to respiratory ones in serious cases.

If that was indeed the case, it makes sense to theorize the HKU1 betacoronavirus could also have provoked a pandemic back when it leaped, although that is believed to have happened over a thousand years before OC43 going by calibrated biological clock estimates, and it does make you wonder if SARS-2 will eventually follow the same pattern.

Well, pandemic viruses do tend to become milder over time and eventually become an endemic illness; the viral subtypes responsible for all three flu pandemics of the 20th century, Spanish Flu, (H1N1) Hong Kong Flu, (H3N2) and Asian Flu (H2N2) all still circulate today.

On the other hand, hopefully COVID-19 will be more like smallpox or polio where vaccination can eliminate it.

Always nice to see the WHO is days behind the numbers.... That spike was on Friday.
Today is 130K for the world, 17K in Brazil, 26K in the USA, Sunday numbers.

I can finally get a haircut tomorrow.

Is Sweden finally beating Germany? If you guys follow the news, Germany R number is above 2 while Swedens is below 1.

"The coronavirus reproduction rate in Germany jumped to 2.88 on Sunday, up from 1.79 a day earlier, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for public health said"

"RKI said outbreaks have been reported in nursing homes and hospitals, institutions for asylum seekers and refugees, in meat processing plants and logistics companies, among seasonal harvest workers and in connection with religious events and family gatherings."

Source: https://news.trust.org/item/20200621162025-fbrru/

Swedens R number is 0.94 according to our goverment:

Source: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/4b4dd8c7e15d48d2be744248794d1438/riket-skattning-av-effektiva-reproduktionsnumret-2020-06-12.pdf

This is interesting as I remember reading twitter, where there were a study saying if 60% of people use a face mask it will keep the R number below 1. Now Germans has great discipline (Empire was based on them) so it's very unlikely that less than 60% of the German people are not using face masks, more likely 99% of them are using face masks.

Ofc we need to w8 and see what the R number for Germany will be this week.

Sometimes I wonder if you don't know or don't want to know that we don't wear face masks everywhere so that even if they work, we can obviously still infect each other as much except for where we wear them. 

But just because we have increasing numbers now doesn't mean that face masks didn't prevent numbers to be even higher. 

We have like 1400 new infection in one slaughterhouse alone. People who all live together in some fucked up buildings. And refugees don't run around with face masks in their accommodations and so on...

But that doesn't mean that the chance that I infect other people in a grocery store isn't smaller if I have a face mask so that I don't spit on other people while talking.

It's just one small part to fight Covid and it's also not a big deal to wear a mask for such a short time per week. 

Looks to me like Sweden has beat the virus and is all clear now :p


You guys set a bad example, now also Denmark and Belgium 'forgot' to report any numbers yesterday. Spain still reigns, dropped from around 100 daily reported deaths, following the decline of Italy and France to 4 deaths a day (while France and Italy are now just under 40 per day) A miraculous recovery.

June 8th is their cut off for R 0.95, smart. Just before the numbers started really increasing again. Although Seweden was already at 120% week over week change on June 8th, coming down a bit from 160% week over week on June 3rd.

I translated a bit of that link

The cases that, according to reporting, are staff working in healthcare, we have excluded when most were discovered in connection with targeted increased testing in that particular group, starting in May 2020. For similar reasons, we have also excluded cases that have been referred by primary care ( health centers) in conjunction with further widening of testing in early June. We have also excluded cases from the elderly. In this way, we aimed to have an epic curve based on the same criteria throughout the period.

So funny :/


There is a shift going on in the USA to younger people carrying the virus

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/more-young-people-across-the-u-s-south-are-testing-positive-for-coronavirus-officials-warn-1.4993483

The shifts in demographics have been recorded in parts of Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and other states -- many of which were some of the first to reopen. And while some officials have pointed to more widespread testing being done, others say the new cases stem from Americans failing to social distance.

In Mississippi, where one health officer called adherence to social distancing over the past weeks "overwhelmingly disappointing," officials attributed clusters of new cases to fraternity rush parties.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said last week that people under 30 made up a majority of new coronavirus cases in several counties. He said that increase in young infected people could be related to Memorial Day parties, visits to bars or other gatherings. "Our average age last week of people that were positive was age 30, the average age of people getting tested was 47. We have data from some of the cell phone companies that show in Galveston County less than 7% of the people are social distancing," Keiser said.

And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that the median age was 37 for newly diagnosed coronavirus cases over the last week. In the state, 62% of new cases for the week of June 7 are under 45 years old, he said.

In South Carolina, health officials said Friday people under the age of 30 were increasingly testing positive for the virus -- around 18% of the state's total cases come from people between the ages of 21 and 30.

Georgia's largest hospital also reported seeing an increase in patients in their 20s and 30s, according to CNN affiliate WSB.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, at least 23 states are trending upward in new cases compared to last week. Ten of those states reported more than a 50% jump -- including Texas and Florida, which were some of the first states to begin reopening. California, the first state to enforce sweeping lockdown measures, is also seeing an increase in cases.



No surprise to me young people are now adding the bulk of new cases. I've seen the same disregard to social distancing here from the younger population.

Brazil you can calm down now it wasn't a competition