coronavirus

With COVID-19, we should not just be looking at deaths. Deaths may actually be a poor indicator of the damage this virus may do. We should be looking at a continuum, as in: If the proportion of people who contract COVID-19, and who are over 80, die, what happens to those (of any age) who live? Given the ability of this disease (unlike flu) to cause clotting problems all over the body, affecting organs which affect other organs, we should be expecting that a proportion of survivors will have various rates of blood clots and organ damage. What proportion of these will clear, improve, or become chronic and dangerous? How long will how many survivors survive? Check out the following videos by doctors regarding clotting and organ-damage.

[Candobetter Ed: This article was developed from an extract from another, in order to highlight these concepts.]

"More long-term damage caused by COVID-19 than expected | COVID-19 Special" (August 26, 2020)

The above video has many comments of interest, from people who have suffered lingering damage from the virus.

"An NYC Cardiologist Explains the Long Term Effects of COVID-19."

The cardiologist in the above video points out that, even if you are young and fit when you catch COVID-19, you still may not be able to do what you used to do, after you recover. He also says that people should present early for treatment because then treatment can be started to reduce the damage to organs, thus perhaps reducing the severity of chronic conditions that may linger and prevent full recovery. He also says that four years after the 1918 Great Flu epidemic, many survivors still had debilitating symptoms.

"Long-term health effects of COVID-19" (Lung specialist talks about pulmonary fibrosis, which may lead to need for lung transplants.)

Most important to factor in, among all these continuum possibilities, is the incredibly infectious nature of COVID-19, far more than the flu. Cummins does not appear to think much about this.

Perhaps it would be more useful and educative to describe COVID-19 as a clotting disease, than as a respiratory one.

Ivor Cummins is a health writer and biochemical engineer, who calls himself The Fat Emperor. He has drafted a letter for people to send to politicians and the press, querying the seriousness of COVID-19. He calls it the "Corona Basic Realities Letter," and writes, advocating 'herd immunity', as one of his 'indisputable facts', that: "Sweden, who were vilified for their approach, has had a very similar death rate to other countries." But Sweden actually has had a much higher death rate than its neighbours, although it did practice social distancing and other hygiene measures, whilst leaving businesses open etc.

The virus killed more than 5800 people in the relevant period, giving Sweden one of the world’s highest per capita mortality rates.

To compare those figures with other Scandinavian countries, Denmark has recorded 621 deaths, Finland has recorded 334 deaths, and Norway 262." [Sweden has about twice the population of the other Nordic countries, but the number of deaths is still very high in comparison.]

"The study, carried out by the country’s Public Health Agency, found that just 6.1 per cent of the country’s population had developed coronavirus antibodies by late May. This figure falls far short of Dr Tegnell’s prediction.

Experts have said achieving herd immunity would require at least 60 per cent of the population to become immune to the virus." From: https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/coronavirus-sweden-has-recorded-its-highest-death-toll-in-150-years/news-story/086570ad4dc5336e46885fdef15e5fa3 (21 August, 2020)

You can find some other stats here: https://nucleuswealth.com/coronavirus-covid19-dashboard-charts-and-data-every-country/sweden

Cummins compares South American countries, Peru vs Brazil - lockdown vs none - claiming death rates are similar and assuming this proves lockdown does not help. But he should take into account other factors, such as dirty water, crowding, poor hygiene, undocumented workers, poor health system, which would make lockdowns and or treatment ineffective. See https://www.kunc.org/2020-08-31/peru-grapples-with-the-pandemic-despite-an-early-and-tough-lockdown.

Cummins criticises (Ferguson's epidemiological model> (an early influential British coronavirus epidemiological simulation that contributed - among others - to lockdown decisions), for Sweden vs 'actual' data. Strangely, Cummins does not appear to take into account the effect on the death rate of measures taken against the virus in Sweden, albeit lesser measures than in neighbouring countries (which had much lower death rates). This virus is so infective that, without any infection control measures, much higher contagion would be expected. This seems to be a common error in criticisms of quarantines and lockdowns. See this article for a thorough explanation of what the Ferguson model purported to do.

Ivor Cummings does not talk about Italy, which is an example of an entire country crippled by COVID-19, with a high severe illness and death rate that overwhelmed the hospital and funeral system. Three well-known factors operated there: The first was a mass infection that took place in a crowded football match; the second was that the government treated COVID-19 as if it were no more serious than the flu; the third was that Italy had such a high proportion of elderly people. The situation was made worse by the government failing to give financial support to its citizens, whilst ordering them into lockdown.

Victoria, Australia, is still experiencing in September 2020 what most of the world would see as a comparatively minor outbreak of COVID-19 in the community – certainly in contrast to Italy. The state initially locked down the most affected suburbs, but expanded lockdown quickly to the rest of the metropolis, and some affected regions. Contiguous states locked their borders against Victoria. Known new infections only reached 684 at their current peak, against a background of total known infections of 19,688 total, yet contagion reduced hospital and nursing-home staff, by quarantine and illness, to the extent that other states had to send in relief. What would have happened if there had been no lockdown? The virus would have spread to all other states and the hospitals would quickly have been overwhelmed. If, bizarrely, staff had continued to work in them without being tested themselves, without isolating if asymptomatic, patients presenting to hospitals with other illnesses would have run high risk of acquiring COVID-19 in addition to their presenting illnesses. Knowing this was a risk, even with quarantine, people avoided hospitals. Victoria is not out of the woods yet, and a small number of infections have escaped beyond the state, but the health system has coped to this point.

Cummins seems to be championing the idea of herd immunity, without thinking it through. Herd immunity needs definition. Many definitions disagree. The requirement, in herd immunity, for a much higher number of cases to establish, than usually allowed through strict quarantine, would mean potentially far more suffering. The virus would not go away, but would remain in the community to affect upcoming aging or otherwise vulnerable cohorts; thus a lurking endemic nasty. The capacity for COVID-19 to reinfect, and the ability of the virus to change rapidly, calls into question the very possibility of widespread immunity.

Not just deaths

Cummins should not just be looking at deaths, and neither should we. Deaths may actually be a poor indicator of the damage this virus may do. We should be looking at a continuum, as in: If the proportion of people who contract COVID-19, and who are over 80, die, what happens to those (of any age) who live? Given the ability of this disease (unlike flu) to cause clotting problems all over the body, affecting organs which affect other organs, we should be expecting that a proportion of survivors will have various rates of blood clots and organ damage. What proportion of these will clear, improve, or become chronic and dangerous? How long will how many survivors survive? Check out the following videos by doctors regarding clotting and organ-damage.

"More long-term damage caused by COVID-19 than expected | COVID-19 Special" (August 26, 2020)

The above video has many comments of interest, from people who have suffered lingering damage from the virus.

"An NYC Cardiologist Explains the Long Term Effects of COVID-19."

The cardiologist in the above video points out that, even if you are young and fit when you catch COVID-19, you still may not be able to do what you used to do, after you recover. He also says that people should present early for treatment because then treatment can be started to reduce the damage to organs, thus perhaps reducing the severity of chronic conditions that may linger and prevent full recovery. He also says that four years after the 1918 Great Flu epidemic, many survivors still had debilitating symptoms.

"Long-term health effects of COVID-19" (Lung specialist talks about pulmonary fibrosis, which may lead to need for lung transplants.)

Most important to factor in, among all these continuum possibilities, is the incredibly infectious nature of COVID-19, far more than the flu. Cummins does not appear to think much about this.

Ivor Cummins' letter suggests that recent rises (second waves) of corona virus are the result of countries conducting more tests, or the effects of seasonality. There seems to be little evidence of seasonality, however.

He speaks confidently of vaccines to help the susceptible, but there is no certainty of any effective vaccines arriving.

This video is from Dr Mike Hansen's excellent medical channel, June 16, 2020. Dr Hansen works in Emergency Medicine as a pulmonary specialist and has made a number of highly informative videos on the subject of covid 19.

Transcript for the above video, originally entitled, "Does Blood Type Matter for Coronavirus (COVID-19)?."

People have either blood type A, B, AB, or O.

Are people with blood type O less prone to suffer from COVID-19? And does blood type A make people more prone to COVID-19?

Let me first start out by saying that people of all blood types can get COVID. And people with all blood types can possibly die of COVID if they get the infection.

But, based on several different studies, it looks like people with blood type O have less a chance of getting COVID-19, and people with type A might have a higher chance of getting the infection.

Data from China was the first to show the ABO blood group association with COVID-19 infections.

The researcher Zhao and others compared ABO blood groups of controls from the general population with over 2100 COVID patients from three hospitals in Wuhan.

Across all three hospitals, blood group A was associated with a higher risk for COVID compared with non-A blood groups, whereas blood group O was associated with a significantly lower risk for infection compared with non-O blood groups.

There was another observational study on data from the New York-Presbyterian hospital system, which happens to be where I did my fellowship training. So there, over 1500 people tested for COVID, and they had similar results with blood types.

There was another study done by Andre Franke in Italy and Spain.

In this study, they looked at DNA samples from 1,980 COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized for respiratory failure. And the study produced similar results.

But what about the severity of illness?

Does having blood type O, make someone less likely to have a severe illness from COVID, compared to type B, type AB, and type A?

Well, Zhao and others looked at the case fatality rate, and blood group A was linked to higher mortality risk compared to blood group O.

Interestingly, the association of blood type is not explainable by other risk factors, like obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Recently, there was a study published by the personal genetics company 23andMe regarding evidence that blood type plays a role in COVID-19.

So if you don’t know, 23andMe is a company that sends out personal genetics testing kits to individuals who are interested in finding out their genetic history and or their predisposition to certain genetically transmitted diseases.

According to their website, they did a study based on over 750,000 people.

Their preliminary results suggest that O blood type appears to be slightly less susceptible to contracting the virus.

But the big question is why?

No one really knows, but there are a lot of hypotheses.

BLOOD TYPE is determined by genetics, and the genes determine the specific proteins on the surface of the cell. These proteins, then have specific sugar molecules that are added to them. They exist in our blood cells and other cell types.

People who are blood type A carry A-sugar-antigens

People who are blood type B carry B-sugar-antigens

People with O blood type have neither A nor B-sugar antigens.

What is the significance of this?

This means that the immune systems of people with type A blood develop antibodies for B antigens.

People with type B blood type have antibodies for A antigens.

People with type O blood have antibodies for both A and B antigens.

People with AB blood type will have neither anti-A nor anti-B antibodies.

And here is an interesting fact we knew before COVID.

There are studies showing that people with type O blood have lower levels of proteins that promote blood clotting.

More specifically, people with blood group O have about 25% lower levels of von Willebrand factor (VWF) than those with types A, B, or AB. This is due to increased clearance of VWF from the circulation.

VWF is always involved in the development of clots, so if there is less VWF, there’s likely to be less clotting. So this might explain why Type O blood type means fewer blood clots, and this might at least partially explain why people with Type O overall have less severe disease. Because as you probably know already, lots of people with COVID pneumonia also have blood clots. Also, we know that the SARS-CoV-2 can replicate in cells that express blood type antigens. Such as the cells that form the lining of our lungs, and the cells that form our tiny little air sacs, the alveoli. And the cells that line the inside of our mouth and nasal passageways. This means that when an infected person coughs or sneezes, there's a possibility that they release viral particles that are coated with their blood type antigens. So this is at least a theory from some scientists.

On 27 March 2020, the AWU and Master Builders Australia jointly called on governments to ensure the continued operation of the building and construction industry, claiming that without it the economic knock-on effects would be devastating on a scale that would dwarf what we have seen to date.

There is no question that many dependencies on this very costly and demanding industry would cause more economic disruption, but what about safety with regard to COVID-19? Although the industry argues that it can be safe, we will argue that the industry is not suited to workers keeping safe distances. On the principle that a stitch in time saves nine, it would be better to shut down sooner rather than later because the later action is taken, the worse the grip of COVID-19 will be on the economy. Since the virus has caused the government to cease the mass migration that has driven huge expansion in the construction industry, demand has dropped, and now is the perfect time to massively curtail construction industry activity. In the meantime, will the industry take responsibility for the return home of the many temporary migrant construction workers from China and Indonesia who, unlike international cruise-ship passengers, are already onshore, virtually invisible, but numerous? And an industry worker argues that the industry is not capable of adapting to safe distance practice.

“The shutdown of the construction industry would jeopardise not just those employed directly, but the whole livelihoods of millions of Australians employed in precarious sectors like manufacturing. It would devastate nationally important industries in the building supply chain, like the $30 billion steel industry,” say the AWU and MBA.

This shows that we have become too dependent on this industry. It has an unhealthy hold on our economy, our political system, our politicians and political parties. This hold has destroyed business, industry and employment diversity in Australia, because agriculture and ordinary manufacturing cannot compete with the inflated profits of the rapidly metastasizing property development sector, which attracts finance away from other sectors.

The same industry has successfully lobbied decades for faster and faster population growth, via mass immigration, to drive demand for its product. Now the demand will dry up as immigration has been stopped, finally providing an interruption to property-development’s hold on our economy.

As well as importing customers, the industry has also exploited many temporary migrants, undermining immigration rules, safety, wages and other employment conditions. The industry may have profited, but prices have risen and standards have dropped, to the extent that buildings over three stories are now uninsurable.

The AWU and MBA argue that, “Forcing the industry’s closure would also blunt the impact of federal, state and territory government stimulus packages as infrastructure projects would immediately grind to a halt. Civil construction, in particular, must continue to build the nation and can do so safely given the nature of its sites.”

The cry of ‘nation-building’ has led to overdevelopment with disastrous drops in building standards and environmental amenity. Australians have suffered from constant upheaval and loss of democracy as government outsourced planning to developers. In the name of catering to unprecedented population growth, Australian cities, suburbs and regions have been taken out of the control of their residents, subjected to constant infrastructure expansion, road-building, traffic diversions, and destruction of loved environment.

The AWU and MBA’s line is: ”Indeed, the catastrophic threat of a construction shutdown means the whole construction industry has a civic duty to impress upon authorities it can operate while ensuring compliance with social distancing and hygiene requirements.”

How could anyone have confidence in an industry known for corrupting government at all levels, bullying, unaccountability, uninsurability, and lawlessness? This industry has seen thousands of Australians bankrupted and homeless. Multiple inquiries into its dysfunctionality have failed to reform it. It is time to stop dancing to the demands of this industry. Australia has been living beyond its means in an artificially and unreasonably accelerated growth period.

The AWU and MBA try to present a picture of reform and responsibility:

“That means everyone in the industry has to step up and be accountable. Construction companies and project managers must ensure that protocols at their site are enforced. Construction workers owe it to each other and their families to be responsible and do the right thing. This is only the only way the industry can continue working while reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”

Unsafe: Safe distance mostly impossible in Construction industry

An industry worker, who prefers to remain anonymous, says:

“Practising safe distance at building sites for most activities is impossible.

It is generally not safe for one person to work alone in the industry. Usually construction sites involve many people in many activities simultaneously, crisscrossing each other in small and often confined spaces, sharing narrow temporary paths and causeways.

In multi-storey building construction, hoists are used to bring people to various floors. These hoists are always crammed with people. It is not affordable to take people (or loads) one at a time.

Concreters work closely together when they lay concrete, frequently in small areas. You might have one worker using a scrider, and two others using a shovel or a vibrator, not even half a meter from each other. You will often get four or five people a couple of meters square, due to the need to act together to carry out the work. It would be hard or impossible for one person to do such work alone. It would be uneconomical for less than four or five.

High-rise work employs huge crowds of skilled and unskilled workers. It is common in the construction of a multi-storey building to have 40 steel-fixers and 40 form-workers operating simultaneously on one floor.

The nature of the industry entails very basic conditions of hygiene and shelter. Disinfection and maintenance of disinfection in such areas, where many workers are coming and going, would require a large-scale dedicated team of cleaners and supervisors with the authority to stop and start work. It would be dangerous to have such teams present on building sites.

Construction sites are scenes of intense activity, with many people interacting on many processes, helping each other. The cost of construction means that things are done as quickly as possible.

When trucks are unloaded, you often have many labourers unloading next to each other.

It is rare for one person to work alone. Generally speaking, in this industry, safety requires workers to work in pairs or in larger groups.

People are often required to work in confined space and they then need another person to assist with tools and equipment, physically handing these from one person to the next.

Transport is often shared. People habitually organise to come and go to work in one vehicle because many jobs are not accessible by public transport.
Many temporary migrants are moved in and out of construction sites in busloads from densely shared accommodation. A large proportion are Chinese and Indonesian. They often do not speak or read any English, and certainly not enough to know how to protect themselves. They tend to be insecure in their employment and visa status and are not likely to exercise their rights to safety, if they know them. These workers are like a separate population on construction sites, with whom only basic communication is possible, usually via their own foreman.

Will the industry now take steps to finance these workers’ return home?”

The AWU and the MBA say in their press release:

”In times of crisis people look to unions, industry, and government to work together. We have to show we can not only slow the spread of COIVID-19 but ensure there's an economy left when the crisis is over.”

The problem is that unions and government have been working for industry and against democracy for too long. Let’s hope the AWU and the MBA, the Property Council of Australia and all the other corporate coercers who have been calling our tune start to adapt to reality for a change.

Chloroquine (and hydroxycloroquine) are related drugs that have been used for over 70 years to treat and prevent malaria. They have both antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties. French studies Professor Didier Raoult, who has a laboratory and hospital beds in Marseille, France, has been promoting chloroquine as an effective treatment for COVID-19 Coronavirus. From 16 March 2020 he trialed treatment of 24 COVID-19 patients with 600 mg of Chloroquine daily for 10 days. He reported that six days later only 25% of these patients still carried the virus, whereas without chloroquine one would expect 90% to still be infected and infectious. The implication is that Chloroquin shortened the course of the illness. The study may also have suggested that additional treatment with the antibiotic azithromycin led to better outcomes where secondary pneumonias of bacterial origin occurred. Raoult has the qualifications to make serious claims in this field. He is a microbiologist specialising in infectious diseases and a professor in the Medical Faculty at the University of Aix-Marseilles. He is widely recognised for his work. Since 2008 he has been director of the URMITE Research Unit in infectious and tropical diseases. Although the data are not yet published, the French Government is trying to reproduce the study. Olivier Veran, Minister for the French government has authorised the use of Chloroquine for treatment of very serious cases of COVID-19, under supervision by hospital medical teams, but does not authorise it for less serious ones. He has said that the French Government is working closely with Raoult's team. Didier Raoult disagrees with the French Government and says Chloroquine should be used at the earliest stages in the COVID-19 illness. The French Government is currently carrying out its own formal testing of this treatment, possibly in Lille, according to a report on 23 March 2020, on RT France, https://francais.rt.com/en-ce-moment/72699-chloroquin. The Chinese Government has used Chloroquine with COVID-19 cases. A Chinese study involving more than 100 patients was described in a letter published in BioScience Trends on 19 February 2020. Researchers said that Chloroquine phosphate was the most effective treatment available to contain the development of the viral form of pneumonia associated with COVID-19, improving the state of the lungs, to shorten the duration of the illness and the presence of the viral infection itself. Apparently the letter has not yet been followed up with formal data from the study. Anecdotally, Chinese researchers have apparently encountered obstacles in conducting formal trials involving controls because patients have obtained their own drugs in preference to submitting to the uncertainty of being part of a control group rather than a group actually receiving the drug in question. United States President Trump has initiated a trial in the United States, following an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight with a person reporting on Didier Raoult's claims. Alert observers will, however, notice that Anglosphere reporting on this matter is political, rather than informative. This distraction from essential information for the public complements a race by pharmaceutical companies to corner the US and international market with an expensive 'cure'. Nonetheless Chloroquine can be used by any doctor to treat anything they consider appropriate in the United States and elsewhere. The World Health Organisation has also initiated trials of a few drugs, including Chloroquine. Other countries use of Chloroquine for COVID-19 South Korea reputedly has guidelines that recommend Chloroquine for cases of COVID-19 that require anti-viral intervention and for the elderly. It also recognises its use as a prophylactic against the virus.[1] In the meantime a number of countries are already using Chloroquine in treatment of COVID-19 with less restrictions. The Bolivian Republic has begun giving oral Chloroquine to COVID-19 patients and also to their immediate contacts, which tend to involve around 15 people on average, as well as to health professionals working with COVID-19 patients. In Venezuela similar regimes are being undertaken. Algeria strong> is also using chloroquin for COVID-19 patients. Use of Tolicizumab in Naples for COVID-19 In Naples there have been trials involving small numbers of hospitalised patients, using another old drug, usually used for arthritis, called Tolicizumab (also sold as Actemra). See "Coronavirus, Napoli: 5 pazienti gravi su 10 migliorano, grazie al Tolicizumab, il farmaco anti artritie." (15 March 2020, Ildenaro.it). The information I was able to access about this trial was fairly old. This monoclonal antibody used for the treatment of rhematoid arthirits is also effective against COVID-19 pneumonia, claim doctors involved in its use in Naples. This treatment was inititiated in Naples by Paolo Ascierto, Director for the Pascale Immunological Clinic and Vincenzo Montesarchio, infection specialist at Cotugno Hospital in Naples. For Saturday 7 March the two doctors said that ten patients, of whom 7 were intubated [presumably for pneumonia] and three had respiratory difficulty [but were unintubated], experienced strong improvement compared to controls. The first patient treated had improved enought to have his intubation removed. Of the other patients, four stabilised and one, unfortunately, quickly died from respiratory distress. Of the other three patients who where not intubated, after about 24 hours one was stable and one had shown signs of clinical improvement. The doctors also said they had received optimistic signs from other centres: Treatment centres or hospitals in Fano/Pesaro reported improvement in eight patients treated in a total of eleven. And a Dr Chiari from United Hospital in Padova South reported improvements in two patients treated over the previous 24 hours. NOTES My reference for this is called "An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus (Covid-19)," a paper attached to "Fosfato di Clorochina e Coronavirus," https://youtu.be/8TpvDixTivw., a presentation by James M. Todaro, MD Columbia and Gregory J. Rigano, Esq.. It was initially published as, "in consultation with researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, the UAB School of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, March 13, 2020." Stanford Univ has distanced itself. It looks as if the writers may have discussed things informally with various university researchers who did not expect to be named and quoted. [Good luck finding the article because at the moment the author is reduced to using a brand-name mobile phone that makes it almost impossible to see the URLs for articles.] TAGS: coronavirus, COVID-19, Didier Raoul, France, international, Trump, controversy

With everything that’s happening about the Coronavirus, it might be very hard to make a decision of what to do today. Should you wait for more information? Do something today? What?
Here’s what I’m going to cover in this article, with lots of charts, data and models with plenty of sources:
How many cases of coronavirus will there be in your area?
What will happen when these cases materialize?
What should you do?
When?
When you’re done reading the article, this is what you’ll take away:
The coronavirus is coming to you.
It’s coming at an exponential speed: gradually, and then suddenly.
It’s a matter of days. Maybe a week or two.
When it does, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed.
Your fellow citizens will be treated in the hallways.
Exhausted healthcare workers will break down. Some will die.
They will have to decide which patient gets the oxygen and which one dies.
The only way to prevent this is social distancing today. Not tomorrow. Today.
That means keeping as many people home as possible, starting now.
As a politician, community leader or business leader, you have the power and the responsibility to prevent this.
Read more & see graphs here

I was talking to a nursing friend who works in a large suburban Melbourne hospital emergency department, triaging patients for a particular area. I will call her Angie.

Given the high through-put of patients in the area in this time when we are supposed to be trying to reduce the transmission of coronavirus, I was curious to know what measures her hospital was taking to protect their staff and patients.

ANGIE: "None, as far as I know," she said.

NEUTRINO: "You're not issued with masks for every new examination? You're not wiping down surfaces with alcohol or sodium hypochlorite, with every new patient? You are not even wearing gloves? You're not screening people in the waiting room for high temperatures?"

ANGIE: "That's right," she said, and laughed, as nurses do when they acknowledge helplessness at the behest of universally absurd hospital systems.

NEUTRINO: "Are they discussing policy with you, at least?"

ANGIE: "We get emails from them from time to time."

NEUTRINO: "Emails saying what?"

ANGIE: "Oh, just the number of infections in the state and the country."

NEUTRINO: "Do they tell you where they infections are and which hospitals are looking after them?"

ANGIE: "No."

NEUTRINO: "Then you're not getting any more information than the general public does from the news?"

ANGIE: "I guess so."

NEUTRINO: "Are you going to cancel your trip to Japan?"

ANGIE: "Probably, although it seems to me we may be in more danger here. At least the Japanese have cancelled most of their public festivals and tourism attractions."

NEUTRINO: "They have also closed all schools and universities."

ANGIE: "Yes."

NEUTRINO: "Ambivalence rules infection control in Australia. For instance, in Sydney, one school where there was an infected pupil reopened a few days later, and the day it reopened, another closed with two infected pupils."

ANGIE: "So, would you like to meet for coffee at the Italian restaurant on my days off?"

NEUTRINO: "Please don't take this personally, but I'd rather we keep it to telephone conversations for the time being."

ANGIE: "I don't take it personally at all. I don't blame you. Telephone is fine."

NEUTRINO: "Good.

ANGIE: "Although we could meet for coffee on the terrace of the Italian restaurant."

NEUTRINO: "How about we meet on a bench on the beach, and I'll bring a thermos."

ANGIE: "Okay, but I'll get my coffee from the restaurant."

Here is the case for wearing masks whether you are infected or not. In my opinion, people should proceed as if they are infected and wear a mask in order to protect others in the community. Waiting until you are infected is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. None of us know when or if we are infected until/if symptoms arise and are tested. We could be infected without ever knowing. If we all wear masks (and gloves) in public we can substantially reduce infection risk. Official support for this would help us to overide embarassment or the stigma involved in initiating a new public behaviour. Shop owners and other businesses with a public interface can reassure the public by offering masks and gloves at the entrance, and keeping alcohol wipes close to cash registers and electronic keypads, and wiping them with every use or making sure that customers wipe them with every use (and wait 10 minutes between uses).

In Australia and in many western countries, the public have been advised that they should not wear a mask unless they are infected. The explanation is that a mask helps to prevent droplets escaping from an infected person, and that it will not protect an uninfected person from other unmasked peoples' droplets. The problem is that people cannot know whether we have been infected and will only find out if they become ill or are linked to a known infected person and thence formally diagnosed. So if we behave as if we are infected, and wear masks, we will be increasing public safety by reducing droplet transmission through use of the mask as a barrier. We need to be careful when we remove the mask; we should avoid touching the exterior and abrupt movements that might dislodge droplets from the outside. See third video at the end of this article.

Most of us realise there is a logical dissonance in the advice we are receiving about masks. Some of us think this is because of the shortage of masks. The government should be ensuring local manufacture and distribution of quality masks. Unfortunately it is unlikely that really effective masks will become available to the general public - due to problems of supply as much as policy.

In the meantime, it is possible to make relatively effective masks to prevent the spread of infection, as in the first video. These are basically absorbent barriers and last 2-4 hours. The second video evaluates different kinds of mask, notably the N95 mask (which excludes up to 95% of particles). The third video explains how to use and remove a commercially manufactured N95 mask.