He he, the very first post (by me)
LeSving wrote:
The wife of a colleague of mine is working with this virus, keeping track of the situation etc. She is genuinely concerned about it. This could get real nasty. But then, I guess all doctors are concerned? Not sure what to think, but I don’t think flying GA will help much
She was spot on. I’m still not sure what to think about it, except mask was and is, and will always be – a symbol (for better or worse 
) Also, flying GA helps for sure. I feel much better after a trip in the sky
This summer the Swedish government appointed a commission to evaluate how Swedish authorities at every level had dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic. Recently they published their first report – about elderly care during the pandemic. Their general conclusion is the same as I wrote in this tread already in April:
The Commission’s overall assessment can easily be summed up by the fact that, in addition to the general spread of infection in society, the greatest impact on the number of sick and dead in Swedish elderly care was structural shortcomings that have been well-known for a long time .
I’ve had a brief skim back through my thoughts and comments and they seem to follow what I thought. I was much more concerned about the virus initially than I am now with the data we have. I thought the mortality was far higher than it turned out to be. I’m more concerned now about the economic damage and loss of liberty. I’d rather people be given the information and make their own decisions on what they think are sensible steps to take.
Looking back I do see how difficult it was when no one had any reliable information and had to be seen to be doing something quickly. The blanket restrictions on GA really weren’t much help. And as always seems to be the case we had terrific flying weather and were not able to enjoy it.
The “hug a Chinese” idea in Italy didn’t seem smart at the time and has aged even more poorly.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
I could not agree more with the last sentence. There is a lesson for all of us.
Thank you. One of the greatest mistakes in the Covid-19 era was politicising the opinion about certain measures against the virus. This was especially apparent in the US, probably because the pandemic coincided with the presidential elections in an already starkly polarised country, but also elsewhere. The topic of masks is just one example of this. Instead of making masks a political symbol, they should be seen as a tool.
The problem of this symbolism is that changing one’s opinion about a topic is then seen as treason to the cause, instead of a mature response to a changing reality.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
i also suspect the speed with which vaccines could be engineered will not yet have been significantly reduced, so I am not sure the timeline will change significantly,
I am more optimistic, because the tool of mRNA vaccines – if successful – is extremely powerful. They are much easier to produce than classic vaccines, especially in large quantities. You no longer need any “boosters” for the immune system response, which tend to create most of the side effects in other vaccines.
All you need is the genome of a virus and then – in theory – you can create a vaccine against any virus. In practice, medicine is never that simple because there are always complex interactions at work that we don’t fully understand, but we nevertheless might be onto something great here.
Note that the same technology holds promise in fighting cancer, and Biontech has already announced they will research that next…
Malibuflyer wrote:
The Spanish Flu had two distinct peaks in mortality in the age distribution:
Thank you for posting the data – although one city only, this ties in with other, more qualitative descriptions I had seen. I guess I am giving away my age a bit by calling the 20-40 year olds “young”… 
As others have pointed out already, we don’t really have any disagreement that COIVD-19 affects a much older age profile than the Influenza pandemic 1918-20
If COVID-19 had a similar profile to the one you posted I still guess the younger generations would be a lot more willing to help suppress the virus.
Cobalt wrote:
If COVID-19 had a similar profile to the one you posted I still guess the younger generations would be a lot more willing to help suppress the virus.
I guess it will be one of the more interesting research fields in sociology in the aftermath of this crisis to figure out how the sentiment towards fighting it has been and has changed over time in the different age groups. Might be very different cross countries and different social levels as well.
In my environment of a typical German small town I would not say that the younger generations are less active: Yes, as youvenile are they not alway stick to every rule and therefore it might be that actually 6 of them meet although it has been decided a week earlier that only groups of 5 are allowed. However, in the grand scheme of things they behave quite rationally, wear masks in public and migrated their social life largely to online. What is true is that they tend to be quite “liberal” in the original sense and did not start to preach to people that had another attitude towards masks, distance, etc.
Perhaps they are just more pragmatic: “Why should I have objections wearing a mask when I’m already quite used to wear underwear?” is quite a common state of mind amongst the young ;-)
Why should I have objections wearing a mask when I’m already quite used to wear underwear?
Why would anyone object to wear underwear?
In Norway they are called “munnbind”, loosely translated to mouth-pad. The women’s sanitary pads are called “damebind”, womans-pad, or simply “bind” (pad). They are seldom called “maske” (mask), as a mask is something that is more sturdy than a piece of cloth.
In the underwear category of garments, a corona mask (mask made out of a piece of cloth) is much more related to women’s sanitary pad than underwear. In fact there is no similarity whatsoever to underwear. If you are not a menstruating girl/woman, you surely would object to wearing a pad. Just saying
LeSving wrote:
Why would anyone object to wear underwear?
Why would anybody object to wearing a mask? It’s a piece of cloth that is worn on your body – just like underwear.
Malibuflyer wrote:
just like underwear
No.
Just saw this on FB
